Musings, Nits, and Praises

The In-Service Scorecard

2010-08-02T20:17:00.003-04:00

Let's revisit #3 from the In-Service Survival Guide: bring a game. The In-Service Scorecard will keep you busy throughout the week.

+4 for catching up with colleagues you haven't seen in two months
+3 for each meal provided
- 1 if a breakfast lacks fruit, a source of protein, or anything remotely healthy
+2 for each time coffee is provided
- 3 each time that coffee is Folgers or Maxwell House
- 5 for any ice breaker
+500 if an ice breaker involves someone karate-chopping a block of ice
- 5 for any sort of cheesy, morale-boosting activity
- 15 if you had a hand in creating such an activity
-5 for a team-building activity that has nothing to do with preparing for the school year
-500 if the team-building activity involves juggling butcher knives blindfolded
+5 for each day you have two or more hours to work in your classroom
-10 for each day you have less than two hours to work in your classroom
+2 for every free thing you receive
-5 if one of those free things is a tote bag or over-sized t-shirt
+5 for any meeting lasting less than an hour
-10 for any meeting lasting more than an hour
- 3 for any vacuous motto
+500 if your motto is "Teachers Can't Force Kids to Care"
+10 for a motivational speaker who does more than comically tell you things you already know
-10 for a motivational speaker who offers little more than feel-good fluff or seems to think possessing the vitality of someone on speed is imperative to being a good teacher
+1,000 if registration day includes an open bar
+5 for every scheduled break
+50 if you're allowed to go home early
-50 for any impromptu meetings
+10,000if an impromptu meeting is to unveil a new teachers' lounge with a pool, jacuzzi, sauna, lounge chairs, a pool table, old-school arcade games, a ping-pong table, a calypso band, and free cocktails
-10 for dull, professional development sessions
+1,000 if a professional development session involves how to become a professional musician
+15 if you make it the whole week without falling asleep during a meeting

After the first day, this year's in-service has scored a +17. Not too shabby, really.

The In-Service Survival Guide

2010-08-01T22:39:00.006-04:00

Whether it's tomorrow (as it is for me) or a couple of weeks from now, the end is coming for teachers across the country--the end of summer vacation. Now, bidding adieu to traveling, sleeping in, reading, lounging, taking care of home projects and the like is sad, but we understand we get paid (however minimally) to teach. And, happily, a lot of us like to teach.

The problem is, though, that when the annoying staccato of the alarm clock wakes us at dawn, sounding the end of summer vacation, we won't be going back to school to meet our new students and dive into another year. Nope. First there's the week-long pedagogical potpourri of ice breakers, high-energy guest speakers (some of whom now spend more time talking about their love of teaching than actually teaching), cheesy morale-boosting sessions, meetings, meetings about what was discussed at previous meetings, and meetings about future meetings known as in-service.

Of course, a few of those meetings are necessary. A department meeting is helpful to establish goals for the year. An overview of changes made to the student and faculty handbooks is useful, although assuming everyone on the faculty is literate, it should take twenty minutes tops, not two hours. If in-service sessions consisted of these two things, and even, say, a meeting on state standards, meetings would be wrapped up before lunch the first day, and teachers would have the rest of the week to work in their classrooms to prepare for the year.

Simple, right? Of course it is. That's why it will never happen.

First, some people are addicted to meetings. Memos and emails just don't cut it. They need to announce things. Everything. I hope for the sake of those people's families that addiction is contained at work: "Honey, kids, come in the kitchen. You were asleep this morning when I got up, so I need to show you which bowl and spoon I used to eat cereal and where I sat at the table."

The other big reason in-service will never be streamlined is that some people think returning for work has to be a production. That's where the ice breakers, team-building exercises, and motivational speakers come into play. There are teachers who claim to actually like that stuff. I've concluded they're either delusional, or they were paid by the people in charge of those activities to convince teachers like me how fun they are.

For teachers who are healthy-minded and aren't paid actors, I've compiled an In-Service Survival Guide.

1. Stay caffeinated. This goes without saying, really, since most teachers quaff approximately 3,600 gallons of caffeinated beverages during a school year. But caffeine is even more important during in-service. Without it, hours of mind-numbing meetings coupled with the fact your body hasn't adjusted to getting up early will likely end up with you fighting off slumber--or falling asleep for a few minutes at time--annoyed that you could be sleeping comfortably in your bed or on your couch. So grab a cup of coffee on the way to work from someplace with good coffee. Don't settle for the Folgers in the teachers' workroom. Chances are you'll wind up having to drink that crap plenty during the year. As the day wears on, be sure to drink a soda or two.

2. Make lesson plans. Exciting? No. But productive. Why be sitting in a mind-numbing meeting, irritated you're not in your room planning, when you can be planning?

3. Bring a game. You can't stick with just lesson planning. Mix in some games--crosswords, Sudoku, cell phone aps.

You can also make up your own games. I'll be offering some suggestions the rest of this week.

4. Read a book. I like silence when I'm reading, this one doesn't work well for me. But some people can pull it off.

5. Maximize your pee. An added benefit of consuming caffeinated beverages is that you'll have to pee. But don't just head off to the bathroom at the first urge to go. Read over the day's itinerary and determine what will be the worst session. Even if it's painful, wait until you're a few minutes into that session, then walk out to use the restroom. The two-three minutes it takes to walk to the restroom, relieve yourself, and walk back to the meeting is often all the respite needed to survive until an actual scheduled break.

6. Take a Phone Call. If your spouse, another family member, or a friend calls, it could be an emergency, right? Better answer the call just to be sure.

7. Injure yourself. I've never tried this one, but if I get desperate enough someday, I might. I'm not talking about anything that would necessitate a trip to the ER, just something that would require you to leave the room--a papercut that draws blood, a fall out of your chair, spilling a hot drink on yourself, etc.

First Thoughts on Inception

2010-07-28T00:43:00.002-04:00

I'm late to the Inception dissection party, having finally gotten around to seeing the film just this afternoon. My initial thoughts are below. Chances are you noticed some of the same things and likely more. What's your take?

Like Memento, I think I'd probably need to see it several more times to begin having a real grasp--or as much a grasp as Nolan intends the viewer to have--on it.

Although the top appears to be losing momentum at the end--and it certainly sounds like it's beginning to wobble--the ending, I think, is an inception on the viewer, the idea that what appears to be Cobb returning home to his real kids may really just be another dream. But he doesn't seem to care one way or the other because he never stays around to watch to see it if stops; his kids turn to him, and he runs outside to embrace them.

Reading people's takes on whether the end is a dream or reality, I haven't come across any of the pro-dream theorists noticing some parallels to Memento. In Memento, before Leonard kills Teddy., Teddy explains that Leonard had already killed his wife's attacker. Being that Teddy. isn't the most trustworthy guy, it's hard to accept what he says until it's revealed that Leonard intentionally duped himself into killing Teddy (the most recent of multiple John G.'s) so he could continue on this quest he's created to give his life meaning. When Dom and Ariadne find Mal in the world he and Mal had constructed, she tells him what he believes is reality--the globetrotting, the working for powerbrokers, etc.--isn't. Her explanation may be nothing more than his guilt and subconscious pulling at him, or it could be--if he's still in a dream at the end--that she isn't dead in reality, that she enters his dreams trying to pull him out. She does stab him, after all. Or she could still be a projection of his subconscious but one that's connected to the part of his mind that knows he's dreaming.

Towards the end of Memento, especially during Teddy's revelation to Leonard, Leonard's memories begin shifting between what actually occurred and what his mind has construed: he sees himself in the mental institution instead of Sammy Jankis, he sees himself playfully pinching his wife, but then sees himself giving her an insulin shot. In every flashback to Dom and Mal's dream world, the two of them are young. But when Mal says, "You promised we'd grow old together," Dom says they did, and then there's a cut to a brief scene of them walking hand-in-hand in their dream world, but they're old. This wouldn't seem that odd except in flashback to them killing themselves on the train tracks in order to wake up, they're young and at that point they've lived in the dream world for 50 years. (Someone on imdb said there's a shot of their hands looking old before the train hits them. Did anyone see that?)

As for the "back to reality" interpretation, the fact that Dom wears his wedding ring in dream sequences and doesn't in what's supposed to be reality suggests there is a reality he returns to throughout the film. Also, as many reviewers have noted, it's not coincidental Ellen Page's character is named Ariadne, an allusion to the woman who leads Theseus out of the minotaur's maze. If reality is where Dom winds up at the end of the film, then Ariadne has been the one who has helped him navigate through his deep-seated guilt surrounding Mal. Some reviewers have noted that two sets of children played Dom's kids, which would seem to indicate his return home is a real one since the kids would've aged some since he's left. Also, if the whole movie were a dream--or he's in a dream at the end--at some point he's going to wake up, and not much time would've passed in reality. For it to be otherwise, a whole storyline would have to exist outside the movie--he's in a coma, he's in the Matrix, etc.

I lean towards the reality interpretation, (I think someone could make a strong case for him being in a dream from the basement scene on) but I don't think it's as big an issue for Nolan as it is for the viewer. Leonard, in his few minute segments of full awareness, knowingly perpetuates his quest, embracing what gives him purpose. With Saito's proposal, Dom finally has a means to get back home to his kids. Ultimately, he does that in reality or in a dream level, and his walking away from the top seems to indicate he doesn't care which one it is.

A couple of miscellaneous things I'm hoping you know the answers to:

The conversation between old Saito and Dom is different the second time. Is the second conversation supposed to be the tail end of the one they start at the beginning of the film or has Dom actually been there before?

Did you make out what any of the documents Dom pulls from Saito's safe say? I suspect the only significance is what's blacked out since in the next dream level up Dom says Saito was holding something back from him.

Did you notice if his passport stamp says anything out of the ordinary?

Oh, one last thing. I think it's interesting how even fundamental editing and storytelling techniques add to the film's ambiguity. For example, in an ordinary film, when a character says he's going to, say, catch a flight from Chicago to L.A., and boards the plane in one scene and in the next is somewhere in L.A., the viewer finds nothing strange about not showing the actual flight. But take the end of Inception, for example. In one scene Dom's father-in-law is greeting him at the airport; in the next they're at Dom's house and the kids are playing outside. At least twice in the movie, Dom explains to another character that in dreams you find yourself in the middle of a situation but don't recall how you got there.

Dispatches from a Teachers' Conference: Day Four

2010-07-22T22:11:00.006-04:00

This week I've been reminded that English teachers are a fraternity of sorts. We don't have any secret handshakes I'm aware of, no mystery-cloaked induction rituals, but we're bonded by similar interests and experiences, ones that to outsiders, like, say, those in the math fraternity, often appear peculiar (as if anyone in that fraternity has any room to talk).

But we don't all share the same level of enthusiasm for our group. Some of us like it well enough to maintain our membership but hold out hope a cooler fraternity will someday ask us to join. Others of us area active members who read up on the literature, attend the meetings, and embrace our few creeds but whose interests extend beyond those things. Then there are those of us who are zealots. We wear our fraternity apparel each day and sleep in it every night. We don't just know the know the lingo, we coin new lingo and write books about it. We don't just admire those teachers in inspirational teacher movies, we are the teachers those movies are about.

Which sort of English teacher are you? Well, I've developed the self-assessment below to help you find out. It's all very scientific, of course.

When the school year ends, you

1 - don't waste a single thought on teaching until you stroll through your classroom doors in August.

2 - relax, travel some, and mull over your plans for the coming year a week or two before it starts, saving the lesson planning for in-service.

3 - aren't aware the school year ever ended. Does it really? You've got conferences to attend, pedagogical books to read, and units to write.

If you won the lottery, you

1 - would call your principal at 11:00 at night when you found out and scream ecstatically, "I quit! I quit! You can take your differentiated instruction and shove it!"

2 - would quit, but you'd come in the next day to say goodbye to everyone, maybe donate a small amount of your winnings to your school, then travel to some of the places you've spent years reading about but have never been to.

3 - would keep teaching with no thought of ever quitting. You think you'd get bored if you quit. With part of your winnings, you purchase class sets of each of the novels on the Modern Library's Top 100 list, send your prized students to writing camps, and attend at least two Harry Wong seminars a year.

Your students

1 - are all lazy, stupid punks--with the exception of one or two.

2 - can be lazy, stupid punks at times--a few just are--but you like them and they like you. You enjoy teaching them--even mentoring some--and you gain satisfaction when something you've taught them sticks.

3 - all have the potential to wind up in a Norton Anthology someday; you just have to nurture them and help them discover their inner writer.

If you could do something besides teach, you would

1 - find whatever career paid the most.

2 - pursue a career in the arts or something related to travel.

3 - This is a stupid question. I'd never even consider doing anything else.

When someone makes a grammatical error in writing or conversation, you

1 - don't even notice. Who cares about grammar?

2 - occasionally correct the person if it's someone who know well. If it's a casual acquaintance or a stranger, you let it slide. If it's one of your administrators, you get a few laughs about it later with your department colleagues.

3 - correct the person immediately. Each grammatical error is a crack in the dam that holds back the flood of stupidity and illiteracy that threatens to destroy our country.

When you have time to read books not related to your curriculum, you

1 - don't read anything. You just spend your days on Netflix catching up on movies you've missed.

2 - might read a serious book occasionally, but you prefer something lighter or something from the best seller list/beach-reading fluff.

3 - choose a novel with some literary heft. There are classics and critically-acclaimed novels you haven't read. Why would you want to read much of anything else?

Scoring

6-7: You're an inactive member. If you've been inactive for a while, it's probably best to join another fraternity.

12-13: You're an active member. You're not consumed by the fraternity's activities, but they are important to you. Barring a windfall or a change of heart, you plan on being an active member until you retire.

14+: You're a zealot. Some fraternity members find your passion inspiring while others just think you're deranged. You don't care what anyone thinks, though. You were put on this planet to teach English! Our fraternity needs a few people like you, but you can't expect everyone else to share your level of dedication.

Dispatches from a Teachers' Conference: Day Three

2010-07-21T21:08:00.007-04:00

The one consolation this week whenever I returned to my half of the Spartan quad, with its jaundiced light, its bed high enough to avoid flood waters, its shower head that spritzes wildly from its seam over the shower curtain, and its toilet that refuses to stop running, was that at least I had it all to myself. Not anymore.

When I came back this afternoon after a run, I was just about to peel off my clothes and hop in the shower when I heard a knock at the door. At first, because of the way sound carries in the building, I wasn't sure it was my door. There was another knock. I could tell then it was definitely my door, so I decided to go answer it. I thought maybe the guy staying in a room on the other side of the quad had forgotten his key. Sweating all over the floor like a snail leaving its path of slime, I was just about to reach for the door when it opened, and in stepped the dull-eyed duo from Sunday's check-in table.

"Hi, we're _____ and _____ from the Residence Life office."

Oh, trust me, I hadn't forgotten you.

"Someone who'd been assigned the wrong room is moving into Room C. We're here to check it first."

What? How is there even such a thing as a wrong room? I'd understand if there were a reservation mix up--"I asked for a cell on the second floor overlooking the courtyard. The one who gave me overlooks the laundry mat." But nobody here reserved a room! And this is the third day of the conference, so the man didn't just check in today. That means he's been in the wrong room since at least Monday. Why not just let him stay there? Obviously he had no way of knowing he'd been in the wrong room. It's not like he woke up this morning feeling uneasy and thought, "Man, something's weird. I don't know why, but it feels like I'm in the wrong room." I'm guessing the dull-eyed duo or the Chief of Sprinkler Safety noticed they'd given him the wrong room and thought they'd better fix their mistake, inconveniencing the guy by making him move and ruining my beloved solitude.

I know there's a good chance I won't see or hear the guy at all tonight. But the morning is another story. I'm not a morning person. My mother-in-law even got me a t-shirt for Christmas one year that reads, "Good Morning Is an Oxymoron." I can get up early--I have to most days--I'm just not happy to. I can't stand anyone's perkiness before at least 8:30, and I can muster little more than grunts, nods, and half-waves anytime earlier than 7:00. (I make exceptions for my wife and daughter.) Because I prefer as little human contact as possible until I've had breakfast, drunk a cup of coffee, and regained full consciousness, I've been forcing myself out of bed at 6:30 this week. Now with a quadmate, I'm going to have to get up even earlier. Otherwise I may have to wait to shower and run out of time to eat breakfast. Or, worse yet, I may have to share the sink with him, each waiting our turn to spit and rinse. I'll take 100 tote bags over that any day.

Dispatches from a Teachers' Conference: Day Two

2010-07-21T01:33:00.003-04:00

Cramped with Lumbar-torturing desks and three pianos and cold enough to conjure thoughts of "To Build a Fire," our yellowed cinder block meeting room isn't what educational theorists would dub a welcoming learning environment. Adding fatigue and an increasingly long-winded instructor to the mix, I had myself a long day. Long, but not unproductive (I got some solid ideas for teaching synthesis essays) and not without its humor.

In my 12th grade English class, my teacher would occasionally play us recordings of poets reading some of their most famous works. Some, like W. B. Yeats and Dylan Thomas, were mesmerizing. But others were so odd or deadpan they all but sapped the life from their poems. E. E. Cummings sounded like a swaying drunk at times. T.S. Eliot had all the life of a British automated customer service prompt, and Elizabeth Bishop could've passed for a bored waitress reciting the day's specials. I still find it sort of strange how such brilliant poets couldn't do justice to their own work. But then again, it's not like gifted playwrights are necessarily good actors.

Um, Jason, what about the conference? Well, I've always believed an English teacher needs to have the ability to bring a work to life when you read it aloud. I don't mean being over-the-top, just conveying the tone and nuances of the text. (If you lack inflection or any sense of natural rhythm, don't blame the students when they've got their heads on their desks, drooling all over the work of your favorite writer.) During today's session we read several excerpts from noted essays, as well as student writing, aloud. Let's just say I'm not convinced everyone in there shared my conviction.

Most who read were excellent, but a few only made our time in the would-be meat locker seem that much longer. The worst, a lady who read through end marks and stumbled over several words per line, reminded me of the time I inadvertently assigned one of my worst readers the part of Mercutio--I'm not sure he's finished the Queen Mab soliloquy yet. When somebody is all-out butchering a passage, though, there's always the prospect of unintentional humor.

She didn't disappoint.

In the essay she was reading, the student cited an author who described his handwriting as "exotic, anonymous scrawl." Before she came to this phrase, she'd found her footing for a sentence or two. But no sooner did it seem she had finally stopped careening through the text than she said, "erotic, anonymous scrawl." You know, it can't be often a writer goes from self-publishing on bathroom stalls to being included on AP tests.

Dispatches from a Teachers' Conference: Day One

2010-07-20T02:33:00.001-04:00

After a night of fitful sleep filled with dreams of a wedding, a talent show, and attempted car bombings, I woke up around 6:30 feeling halfway rested, with a sore lower back and remarkably clear sinus passages. I guess I owe the latter to the mountain air (see yesterday's description of my bed).

The one thing staying on-site has over staying at a hotel is breakfast. You're not going to get gourmet fare either place, but a college cafeteria in the early morning offers the peace and quiet you just can't get when you're cramped into a continental breakfast space with thirty-seven other people, jostling your way past harried parents and hyperactive children to pour yourself the few flakes of cereal that will fit into crappy styrofoam bowl, douse it with lukewarm milk, grab a mushy apple and an oily muffin, pour a glass of the aforementioned milk or a cup of tasteless coffee, and then perform a balancing feat the likes of which plate spinners would marvel at as you weave to find an open table, stopping for a moment to consider making yourself a waffle until you notice a plump, bushy-haired woman in spaghetti straps who is no match for the technological sophistication of a waffle iron is holding up the line, at last plopping down at a table sticky from syrup to eat your disappointing breakfast.

I had no such experience this morning. I strolled into the cafeteria, poured myself a bowl of Total (crappy styrofoam bowl but cold milk), grabbed a plate with two of the morning's hot breakfast offerings--eggs that looked like couch stuffing but tasted decent and some steak fingers--and a fresh apple, poured a glass of ice water, and then had about fifty tables to choose from for a seat. Delightful. And, did I mention I ate steak fingers? They've been a cafeteria staple since at least 1983 when I was in kindergarten, but I suspect cafeterias were serving up those tasty, breaded, amorphous chunks of mystery meat long before I was even conceived.

So with food in my belly and memories of Lincolnshire Elementary in my head, I decided to kill the forty-five minutes before the opening session exploring the Student Union building. It's quite a nice building, really. The front is almost entirely windows, so plenty of natural light shines in. Each floor (there are three) has several seating areas with deep, cushioned chairs, and the third floor has a veranda overlooking the central part of campus. There's a campus book store, of course, and a career counseling center (depending on how the week goes, maybe I'll drop in) among other offices, but what really caught my attention was a sign indicating the Sun Belt Lounge was located on the second floor.

Intrigued, I headed to find it. The Sun Belt Lounge. The name conjured up thoughts of an oasis of relaxation, the sort of place I've always wanted as a teachers' lounge. Yes, I could see it--lounge chairs encircling a small pool, a jacuzzi, a retractable sun roof, waiters dressed in white carrying trays of mixed drinks to people sunbathing by the pool, and a calypso band playing off to the side. Ready to call out my drink order, I turned into the Sun Belt Lounge. But there was no pool. No jacuzzi. No mixed drinks. Not even a recording of a calypso band. Just a Starbucks stand closed for the summer, more of the chairs found elsewhere in the building, and a slew of computers on tables along the walls.

The school really needs to change the name of the "lounge." I'd go with Sunlit But Empty Email-Checking Haven That's Only Anything Remotely Like a Cafe from September-May. I guess that would be too long to fit on one of their signs.

Finally it was time for the opening session. As you'd expect, it was far from exciting. The fellow in charge made a few remarks and a woman who works for some institute/organization/association that goes by some acronym I can't remember rambled about a study someone conducted that found students who take AP classes in high school have higher GPA's in college than students who don't. Wow! Who could've guessed? Of course, now whoever led the study can add "demonstrates the ability to state the obvious through superfluous research" to his or her resume.

Boring? Yes. But I appreciated the opening session for what it didn’t have. I’ve attended about a dozen conferences in my ten years of teaching, and each one before this has included two things I abhor: tote bags and ice breakers.

Now, I realize my ineptness with power tools, my dislike of driving big vehicles, my inability to grow a beard, and my affinity for high-priced hair gel all preclude me from ever being labeled “rugged,” but I’m a heterosexual man, and no heterosexual man wants a tote bag, free or not. Especially one with the hokey name of the conference on it like “Ropin’ Up Dreams.” Whenever I’ve been really unlucky, I’ve received a t-shirt big enough to completely clothe the mother in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape along with the tote bag. Just give me a free pen or two and leave it at that. Please.

As for ice breakers, some people might argue I don’t like them because I’m an introvert. But that’s not it at all. I just prefer getting to know someone I’ve just met by simply engaging in a conversation. I can’t believe there’s ever been a friendship in all of history that began when two people learned they were born in the same month, had the same last digit of their SSN#s, or raced each other while balancing ping-pong balls on spoons they held in their mouths.

But I digress.

Once we broke off into the subject-specific groups we’ll be in the rest of the week, our instructor did have us introduce ourselves by telling our name, where we teach, and what we teach. It was during these introductions that I got an idea for a research study of my own that would measure whether teachers in small Arkansas schools have higher rates of depression, alcoholism, and suicide. I’d say ¾ of the people in my class (we have 30) have at least three or four preps, often in two or more subject areas. One lady has six preps! I hope her school stocks the teachers’ lounge with Prozac and Valium.

If I ever conduct a conference (yes, I know that will never happen), I’ll have the instructors pass out their myriad of lesson plans and teacher resources, and then give teachers the rest of the day to peruse the material. Then teachers will come to a session the next day where they can ask the instructor any questions they have after reading the material.

Obviously the folks at the College Board don’t think like I do. Our session today (Tuesday-Thursday will be the same) ran from 8:30-4:30, with two 15-minute breaks and an hour break for lunch. I don’t care if you’re in a class that’s co-taught by every teacher who’s ever had a movie made about them, that much sitting and listening in one place gets tiring quickly.

So I’d be hard-pressed to describe today’s session as interesting or entertaining (parts of it were), but our instructor, who has taught AP for years and served as a test grader many times as well, did provide us with a wealth of good material, including a three-ring binder as thick as a phone book with most of her activities and handouts for a school year and a free book. We’ll be receiving three more books later in the week. The only real downside to all that, though, as any teacher who’s been to a conference knows, is that so much information can be overwhelming, especially once you try to determine what of it you can manage to incorporate into your classes. It’s like to trying to catch a tidal wave in a teacup.

Seven hours of sitting and downing a caffeinated beverage or left me with quite a bit of pent up energy, so I changed into a t-shirt and gym shorts after the session and headed to the fitness center. In just over an hour I managed to squeeze in two exercises per upper-body muscle group (3 sets each), 150 crunches, and a hard, 12-minute run on the track. I think I could’ve given someone on speed a run for his money.

While I was working out, surrounded by a bunch of college kids, it struck me that it’s been ten years since I graduated from college—ten years since I was in some of their shoes, deciding where I’d live, how I’d live, what I’d do for a living, what aspirations I’d pursue, who I wanted to be. That wasn’t the first time I’d pondered those questions, though; that’s just when I realized, “Crap, I have to figure this out-now!” Those questions emerged years before in my early teens and took on a more definite shape my last few years of high school. But I wasn’t the only one asking them of myself. My parents asked them. Spiritual mentors asked them. Teachers asked them.

Occasionally my teachers asked me straight out, but more often it was indirectly, through engaging me in thoughtful discussions, through encouraging me to utilize my talents, through knocking me down a peg or two when my head swelled to where my 158 lb frame could hardly support it or offering an open door and a listening ear when typical high school emotional turmoil weighed heavily on me.

Not to sound sappy, but the opportunity to ask those questions of my students is a big reason why I teach. That and the free tote bags.

Dispatches from a Teachers' Conference: Day Zero

2010-07-19T01:14:00.001-04:00

The AP conference I'm attending at Arkansas State University doesn't even begin until tomorrow morning, but I've already learned something vitally important: If your district gives you the choice between staying at a hotel and getting reimbursed or staying on-site at a college, whatever you do, choose the hotel.

That was the lesson Kim and I learned the hard way this evening as we wandered helplessly across ASU's campus, guided only by vague directions, looking for where to check-in. Following the instructions we received in an email, we wound up in a nearly deserted parking lot next to a building that's under construction. No problem, we thought. We'd just walk until we found the check-in. So we walked. And walked. And walked. All the while we never saw a single soul. The campus had all the makings of a ghost town. All it needed was a few tumbleweeds rolling in front of the student center. No, scratch that. The buildings looked too new to be a ghost town.

It was more like the Stephen King story "The Langoliers," where a plane passes into some other dimension and lands at a deserted airport. Of course, we were short an Australian hitman, a blind girl, a crazy guy who stabs another passenger, and the strange, static noise in the distance of the langoliers coming to devour us.

I am convinced Jonesboro is in another dimension, though.

Eventually we spotted three campus security guys cruising around in a golf cart. Once we explained our predicament to them, one guy called the head of security who told me, "All you have to do is go over the hill to your right about three hundred yards and then you'll go to the Commons Building at the North Quads to check in. There are lots of signs up."

Okay. Simple enough. So we headed back to the car and drove in the direction he'd told us to go. We saw apartments that we supposed could have been the elusive North Quads, but we didn't know for sure because there were no signs. After we turned down a road not even listed in the directions, we found the entrance to the complex, and what do you know, there was a sign (the only sign anywhere on campus mentioning the conference)! Not the sort of sign you'd expect to see, mind you, one large enough to see from a distance, brightly lettered, welcoming teachers to the AP conference. Nope. Apparently they didn't enlist an undergrad in graphic design to tackle this sign--a white sign about 14'' x 20" sitting two inches off the ground that read "Check-in for Summer Conference," with an arrow pointing straight ahead. Thanks, that was really helpful.

Well, at least we'd found the North Quads. Now it was just a matter of finding the Commons Building . . . the Commons Building . . . the Com . . . oh, come on, where in the @@#I%%U!@#%U*%!!!!! is it!

The only building we saw besides the dormitories was the laundry mat. Dejected, I spotted a sign at the far end of the parking lot that read "Commons Building." At last!

Sweaty, tired, hungry, we lumbered up to the door where a college-age guy greeted us.

"Are you guys looking for the teacher conference check-in?"

"Yes."

"That's in the Commons Building. This is the Red Wolf Inn. Don't feel bad. You guys are like the fourth group in the past hour that's come here."

"You know, this building has a sign right in front of it that says . . . Oh, never mind. Could you tell us where the Commons Building is then?"

"It's that building right down there."

Yep. The laundry mat.

There, in the back of the laundry mat, sat two bemused-looking college girls at beige formica table, with a hand-made sign behind them that said "Welcome, Teachers to the AP Conference." I felt a bit like I was at a voting site in a third-world country, but without a few stray goats eating dryer sheets in the corner.

"Do you have any information packets?"

"No, sorry."

"Do you have a map of the campus?"

"No, but I think there might be a book in the other room that lists things to do in Jonesboro. Oh, before you go, Matt has to go over some things with you."

Matt, who had been manning the registration table for a bio-tech conference, stepped up and greeted us with a look serious enough that I didn't know whether he was going to give us a few helpful tips about the Quads or entrust us with classified government papers someone may try to kill us for while we're sleeping.

"Okay, just a few things I need to go over with you. Make sure you don't lose your keys. They're $135 to replace. The smoke detectors are very sensitive. Don't spray hair spray or light a match under them. Don't throw anything at the smoke detector or sprinkler."

Really? 'Cause I'd been pretty psyched about throwing my shoes at the sprinkler while I smoked a cigar and styled my hair.

"And don't hang any clothes from the sprinkler either."

So, I should use the clothes rod in the closet for that, right?

"And, give a hoot, don't pollute."

Okay, he didn't say that. He did hand us a trash bag and tell us to come back for more if we needed them, though.

So after that tutorial, we were off to our rooms. Well, we would've been, if we'd known where they were. Oh, our key envelopes had room numbers, it's just that no one at the laundro-check-in-o-mat told us which of the two dozen or so buildings we were in, and none of the buildings were numbered. So, it was back to the laudro-check-in-o-mat to find out which building. Thankfully, it was the building right behind it.

My colleague and I were/are staying on the second and third floors respectively, and, naturally, the building doesn't have an elevator. A short work out later, I arrived at my room. I'm not sure what exactly I expected my room in the quad to be like, but let's just say I found the roughly 8' x 8', linoleum-tiled space with a yellow overhead light, a small desk, and a bed set four feet off the ground a wee bit disappointing. It appears you can adjust the bed height. The problem is the conference's "what to bring" list didn't include a tool kit.

As I write this, I'm lounging atop Mt. Mattress, listening to the man in the adjacent quad who's snoring so loudly I can feel a faint vibration when I put my hand to the wall.

And, just to think, the conference hasn't even started.

Jason Boyett's O Me of Little Faith

2010-07-09T18:34:00.001-04:00

I rarely read a book in one sitting, but I did just that today with O Me of Little Faith by Jason Boyett. (A hat tip to Mike Cope for blogging about the book and to Melanie Semore for posting a FB link to Mike's blog.)

I finished the book all of fifteen minutes ago, so I haven't reflected on it enough to muster a thoughtful response to it yet. In short, I laughed some, nodded in assent numerous times, and even cried a bit. Boyett's story as a doubter is very much my own. These are but a few of the passages that really resonated with me:

After acknowledging the sensibility of arguments for and against the existence of God, he concludes, “God is hard to prove. God is hard to disprove. The existence or nonexistence of God is unprovable.”

Later, comparing “spiritual heavyweights” explanations of mundane occurrences with his own, he writes:

“These super-believers are so full of God that there’s no room for doubt. They rarely ask questions, and when they do, the answers are not the findings of science. The answers are supernatural. The answers are usually the same: God.

God is rarely my go-to explanation. On the contrary, my life is so full of doubt that I can’t find room for God. Does that make me a bad Christian? Am I a bad Christian because I do ask hard questions? Am I a bad Christian because explaining every detail as “God at work in my life” seems like religious narcissism instead of profound faith?

I don’t know. I honestly don’t know.”

“When it comes to matters of faith, I find more in common ground among atheists and agnostics than I do with doubt-free Christians.”

“I am not an emotional person. I’m an introvert. So in a Christian subculture that equates emotion with the presence of God, I shouldn’t be surprised that I ‘experience’ God less than everyone else . . . I don’t experience God very much at all, and I think it’s because I’m hesitant to automatically equate an emotional high with the presence of the Almighty.”

“Apologetics can only take a person so far, and it hasn’t taken me far enough. For some people, intellect may be an exit off the doubter’s road. For me, it’s the center line that keeps me on it.”

“What does authenticity look like when it comes to doubt? In almost all cases, it looks like humility.”

“There are few things that turn me off more than people who speak with absolute certitude about complex issues (like eschatology or the Bible) or deep mysteries (like God or the saving work of Christ).”

“I’ve seen brief glimpses of God, bits of glory and slivers of grace, but never the big picture. This frustrates me because the our world needs the big picture. For all the happy talk about God’s blessing and favor on Christian TV, you don’t have to look very far to find a God who seems less available than we’d like . . .”

Like Boyett, I try to "own up to doubt and keep moving."

2010-06-28T15:40:00.001-04:00

<a href="http://shortinthesleeve.bandcamp.com/album/dusting-off-the-cobwebs">That's What Makes Her Beautiful by Short in the Sleeve</a>

What Exactly Might IQ Influence?

2010-02-26T22:03:00.001-05:00

An intriguing article: http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/02/26/liberals.atheists.sex.intelligence/index.html?hpt=C2

I think the field of evolutionary psychology can make some useful insights into human nature, but I find in some studies--like this one, for instance--the psychologists' interpretations seem far more speculative than empirically demonstrable.

But, so long as we're open to speculation, I'll add some of my own. I think among the religious and non-religious in Western culture, faith is widely viewed as a feeling of certainty about a set of beliefs. Being that it's impossible to prove any religious tenet empirically, it should come as no surprise that more people who approach the world from a scientific/rational perspective wouldn't arrive at a belief in God. Also, someone's IQ is a factor in his or her educational path and career choice, two things that help shape religious and political beliefs.

Not surprisingly, though the author adds, ". . . the data should not be used to stereotype or make assumptions about people, experts say," the comments below the article show plenty of people doing just that.

Favorite Tunes of '09

2010-01-04T01:33:00.002-05:00

As a music nerd I pride myself in staying abreast of new music. But with the arrival of my first child, the demands of a new job, and the details of buying a house, the second half of 2009 didn't afford me much time to revel in my nerdiness. Nonetheless, after you've likely read at least two dozen Top Songs of 2009 lists, I give you, in no particular order, a belated rundown of my favorite songs of last year.

"Lisztomania" or "1901" - Phoenix -- I dare say Phoenix is the best French band since, well, ever. A friend of mine turned me on to their 2004 album, Alphabetical, which has some great laidback, chic alt-pop. But I prefer the band with the vigor they began adding to their sound on It's Never Been Like That (2006) and just about perfected on last year's Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. "Lisztomania" and "1901" are so good and ridiculously catchy the rest of the album could've been crap, and I still would've felt fine about buying it. Thankfully, most of the rest is pretty darn good.

"To Kingdom Come" - Passion Pit -- What do you get when you combine a synth bed that apes The Who's "Eminence Front," a synth hook that evokes memories of skating at a roller rink circa 1985, and a singer sounds like he was castrated as a young boy? You get an indescribably addictive song, that's what. Thanks to Andy for introducing me to this song on his Best Of 2009 CD.

"Kick Drum Heart" - The Avett Brothers -- I and Love and You is a good album, but between Rick Rubin's polished production and AB's newfound love of mid-tempo, piano-driven ballads (the title track is the best of those), the album offers little of the band's endearing rambunctious side. With it's indelible plinking piano hook, uptempo beat, slightly goofball lyrics, and gratuitous screaming on the final chorus, "Kick Drum Heart" is a much-needed musical caffeine rush.

"Two Towns from Me" - Blind Pilot -- The duo's debut has plenty of outstanding songs to choose from--"Oviedo," "The Story I Heard," "One Red Thread," and "I Buried a Bone" to name a few--but the exquisite harmonies and beautiful, melancholy chorus make this song resonate with me more than any other tune on the album.

"In These Arms" - The Swell Season -- Glen Hansard's cathartic outbursts are few and far between on Strict Joy and there's nothing as gorgeous as "Falling Slowly," but that doesn't mean he and Marketa Irglova don't muster plenty of emotional pull. The lyrics capture the mixture of sadness, anger, and bruised love that linger after a break up, and even if Marketa isn't meant to be in his arms, the harmonies are a reminder the two are definitely meant to make music together.

"Paradise Cove" - Pete Yorn -- Yorn garnered more press for his collaboration with Scarlett Johansson--The Break Up--(check out "Shampoo" if you haven't heard it) than for his solo album, but Back and Fourth is solid. Most of the album is comprised of low-key acoustic tunes, but "Paradise Cove" harkens back to a bit of the singer-songwriter-meets alt-rock--meets The Smiths--meets a dash of New Wave goodness that made Musicforthemorningafter a great record.

"The Fixer" - Pearl Jam -- Backspacer was a welcome surprise--PJ's best album since '98's Yield--and "The Fixer" was the catchiest song they'd written in a long while and the best meat-and-potatoes rock anthem of the year.

"Some Roads Lead Nowhere" - Matthew Ryan -- If there were a Grammy category for Sad Bastard Song of the Year, this song would win hands down. Ryan's whispery rasp, the spare acoustic guitar, and touches of piano all beautifully convey the heartbreak of the lyrics.

"Little Bribes" - Death Cab for Cutie -- I enjoyed this power pop strut from the Open Door EP better than all but a handful of songs from Narrow Stairs.

"Midnight at the Movies" - Justin Townes Earle -- Like Ryan's tune mentioned above, the music and Earle's vocals perfectly mirror the lyrics' mood--in this case one of loneliness and malaise. His cover of The Replacements' "Can't Hardly Wait" is great too.

"What Are You Willing to Lose" - Lucero -- I've never been much of a fan of Ben Nichols' croaking vocals, but I can't resist a good barroom rocker replete with a horn section.

"That Year" - Brandi Carlile -- Simply a gorgeous song.

"Bull Black Nova" or "Wilco" (the song) - Wilco -- "BBN" Quirky, catchy, rocking, and rather unsettling. I'll have another please. "W(ts)" Jeff Tweedy does indeed have a sense of humor--and a great sense of melody.

Quick Bit of Shameless Self-Promotion

2009-07-13T10:13:00.003-04:00

Our EP is now available on iTunes. You can get single tracks or the whole shebang for a mere $3.96. Just search Short in the Sleeve.

My Car Is Alive With the Sound of Music

2009-07-10T23:52:00.022-04:00

2008 was a pretty vanilla year in music for me. The two albums I had any real anticipation for--Okkervil River's The Stand Ins and Death Cab's Narrow Stairs--didn't make much of an impression on me (I like DCFC's recent EP much better), and despite the heaps of critical praise they gathered, I couldn't muster much enthusiasm for the likes of Bon Iver's folkie-dude-holed-up-in-a-cabin-in-Wisconsin-making-some-call-it-spare and mesmerizing-I-call-it-a-cure-for-insomnia For Emma, Forever Ago or Fleet Foxes' innocuous combination of Simon and Garfunkel and CSNY on their eponymous debut. (I liked a couple of songs from both records, but I couldn't handle listening to either album in its entirety). I dug a few albums--The Hold Steady, Kathleen Edwards, MGMT--but they didn't hold my attention for long.

2009's musical slate held more promise for me, with new albums from Bruce Springsteen, U2, Pete Yorn, Wilco, the Avett Brothers, BNL, and others. Neither the Springsteen nor the U2 managed to floor me. The Boss's Working on a Dream had some gems, but a lot of the album felt underdeveloped and "Queen of the Supermarket" swiped the title of "Worst Springsteen Song Ever" from "Murder, Inc." who had held it after a knock-down-drag-out match with "57 Channels."

Which brings me to a question I've had for a long time: Why is it that even the most talented songwriters will include an awful song(s) on an album, apparently oblivious to its crappiness? I mean, crappy bands are crappy because they write crappy songs. and having not ever written a good song, they happily go about releasing more of the same crap, not knowing it's crap. (Yes, I know, that was a crappy sentence). But how can a guy like Springsteen, a man who has written some of the greatest rock tunes of the past thirty years, not know when he's written a horrible song? Or maybe he does know and just doesn't care because he knows it doesn't impact his standing as an icon, like someone who works out rigorously and doesn't mind indulging in a Krispy Kreme or two occasionally, knowing it won't impact his physique. Or he knows and just laughs off critics, "You guys go write something worth carrying the musical jock strap of "Born to Run," then you can come back and tell me this song stinks."

As for U2, the pre-album hype from PR folks, music writers, and Bono himself, would have had you believe No Line on the Horizon was a return to Achtung Baby era experimenting. Sure, every nook and cranny is filled with some sort of synth, loop, blip, or fuzz, but the album is more a diluted combination of Achtung Baby and their soaring arena rock than anything novel or moving. Like the Springsteen album, this album has a couple of standouts and I played it regularly in my car for two weeks only to tuck it into my CD case not to listen to it since.

Thankfully, the two June releases I had looked forward to--Pete Yorn's Back and Fourth and Wilco's Wilco (the album)--have provided musical delight aplenty during my time on the road the past few weeks. It took me a while to warm up to the Yorn album. It's easily the most mellow album he's made. "Rocking" could be used to describe only two-three of the ten songs, and that's using the term loosely. Whatever A&R guy decided on "Don't Wanna Cry for You" as the lead single should be looking for another line of work. The song is one of Yorn's dullest songs ever. Nonetheless, the rest of the album contains some of the best songs he's ever written--"Paradise Cove," "Country," "Social Development Dance," and "Long Time Nothing New"--as well as the uber catchy "Shotgun," which anyone with at least one good ear knows would've made for a better single. The album isn't as good as musicforthemorningafter (that album is basically flawless--one of my favorites of the decade), but it outshines Day I Forgot (an album mostly worth forgetting) and Nightcrawler, which had some great tunes but was really uneven.

Wilco's 2007 laid back, guitar-noodling foray Sky Blue Sky left plenty of long-time fans yearning for the band's previous style. But which style? A.M.'s alt-country, Being There's Americana and rock, Summerteeth's sublime pop, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot's spare, sometimes beautiful/sometimes abrasive experimental folk rock, or A Ghost Is Born's part YHF reheated, part Neil Young and Crazy Horse? The thing is, some segment of Wilco's fanbase has gotten dismayed over every stylistic turn. Some of them have given up the band while others have stuck around to see what's next. I was ambivalent towards Sky Blue Sky initially, but it grew on me, particularly after seeing the band perform many of the songs live.

Enter their new album, Wilco (the album). Having listened to the album a dozen times or so now, I think it's good but not great. If it were Wilco (the EP), it would be incredible. Four songs into the album I was ready possibly to rank it at the bottom of my top tier Wilco albums (Summerteeth, YHF, Being There). The four-song stretch culminates with "Bull Black Nova," with the band scoring a 9.9 for artistic merit and 10.0 for badassness.

After that point the album loses steam. "You and I" seems like it ought to be better than it is. The bridge is terrific, but had a resurrected Janis Joplin joined Tweedy instead of Feist, even she couldn't have made singing "You and I" sixty-three times any more compelling.
I don't really understand the lead single choice here either. Wilco isn't a singles or radio band anyway, so maybe it doesn't matter, but the melody in the verses of "You Never Know" is far stronger than the chorus. Tweedy's repeated "I don't care anymore" sums up my feelings as I reach for the skip button with thirty seconds left in the song every other time I listen to it.

After that it's back-to-back ballads with "Country Disappearded" and "Solitaire." I like them both, especially "Solitaire," but I quibble with placing them consecutively. "I'll Fight" is a good tune, but I could take or leave "Sonny Feeling" and "Everlasting" is a slightly schmaltzy, poor man's version of "On and On." I can't even explain why I don't care much for "Sonny Feeling." It's like when you meet a girl during your single days. She's attractive, she's smart, she likes good music, yet for whatever reason you don't feel any sort of spark. But you convince yourself you should go on a couple dates with her because dating her seems like the obvious choice on paper. A few dates and fewer dollars later, still nothing.

If Wilco (the album) were an NBA stat line, it would be something along the lines of 18 points (9-18 FG), 6 rebounds, 4 assists, 1 steal, and 3 turnovers. If Brian Scalabrine puts up that line, it's a career game, and when you see it on Sportscenter, your first thought is their graphics guy must be drunk. If Lebron James puts up the same line, it's a good game, but not "King James" material. In the music world, Wilco is far closer to being Lebron James than Brian Scalabrine, so an album like Wilco isn't going to leave many fans with their jaws dropped. Of their seven studio albums, I rank this one sixth. Still, even with a handful of weak songs dragging down the back half, the core of good (and a couple great) songs have kept me coming back so far.

EP Available on CD Baby Now

2009-07-02T17:42:00.001-04:00

So Now I Can Enjoy My Summer

2009-06-04T10:22:00.003-04:00

I'm happy to say a trip to the unemployment office won't be necessary this summer. This morning I accepted an offer to teach English 11 (and maybe some 12) for Southwind High School in Shelby County. I may get to teach an AP class, and I assuredly will be seeing a hefty pay increase from my private school days. Good times.

She's Here

2009-06-04T10:19:00.002-04:00

Natalie arrived just after midnight on May 29th. With all the activity around here, I'm just now getting around to introducing her to the blogosphere.

She's a cutie.

New Ditty

2009-05-22T17:22:00.002-04:00

Enjoy the first installment of Live from the Nursery. - "The Only Song I'll Hear"

A Post Well Worth Reading

2009-05-22T13:36:00.003-04:00

Not my own post, mind you. Yes, I've been so remiss at updating my blog over the past two months, some people may have assumed I've joined the Witness Protection Program. With a job search, a baby on the way, and school winding down, I have plenty to blog about but little time to.

With that spiel out of the way, I give you a post I read today by Matt Wiebe on how we're quick to slap the "it's my calling" label on things of faith that make us happy, and, in turn, shrink from difficult situations, saying they're not our calling: http://mattwiebe.com/2009/05/the-crushing-calling/

The Headaches of an Unexpected Job Search

2009-04-06T11:18:00.003-04:00

I learned last week that due to a decline in enrollment next year and a whopping budget deficit my contract won't be renewed for next year. On the plus side the school will be paying me through August, so I have a decent amount of time to find another job. On the downside the news comes at a lousy time with our daughter set to enter the world in June, not to mention it's a hassle trying to find a new job while still having to fulfill the job you're set to lose.

I've contacted a half dozen or so other private schools in Memphis to no avail. Several of them are facing similar issues as Harding while others simply don't have any openings for next year. I'm working on getting all the paperwork together to apply to Shelby County Schools and to apply for a TN teaching license. The latter is a red tape headache worthy of a string of expletives. From what I learned from talking with a lady from the Dept. of Ed. this morning, I learned some of the information provided on their website is rather misleading. I'd like to think a state's department of education could put together a thorough and accurate website. Apparently I'm asking too much.

Short in the Sleeve

2009-03-10T21:38:00.001-04:00

9:30 on a Tuesday Night - The End of an Era

2009-02-26T20:23:00.008-05:00

Well, it wasn't 9:30 exactly, but it was Tuesday night that Barenaked Ladies announced Steven Page was leaving the band after forming the band twenty years ago with Ed Robertson. For ardent BNL lovers like myself, the news comes as a major disappointment. Based on multiple interviews, his departure seems devoid of acrimony. According to Page, his goals were no longer in line with the rest of the band's. He's working on a new solo record, has recorded an album with a side project band, and plans to continue his work with theatre music, including scoring for the Stratford Festival and working on writing his own musical.

Naturally, fans have speculated that his drug arrest from the summer contributed to the split, but Page says it had no direct bearing on the decision. He did admit, though, that the arrest caused him to reevaluate what he wanted to do with his life. Playing armchair psychologist, I think his divorce, new girlfriend, drug arrest, and parting with the band all speak to a discontent, a searching for a spark and direction.

As far as his leaving the band goes, if he finds greater fulfillment in pursuing solo projects, then good for him. You can't fault anyone for taking a new career route when the one he's been on has gotten stale. Nonetheless, I fear the split will diminish the band's work as well as his own--at least as far as his pop/rock writing goes. I know soon enough, I guess. The remaining four "Ladies" are set to record a new album in April, and Page will likely release something this year. As the band's co-founders, Page and Robertson have been the driving force of the band not only as the primary songwriters (usually writing together) but as the tone setters for their energetic live shows. Robertson says the band doesn't intend to look for a replacement. I think that's wise as any replacement would seem like a lesser imitation. Still, though I'm sure they'll perform some of the songs Steve sang, no one in the band has the pipes he has, and showstoppers like "Break Your Heart" and "What a Good Boy" probably won't be heard again. For readers unfamiliar with BNL, let me direct you to exhibits A and B:

"Break Your Heart"

"What a Good Boy"

On the plus side, "When I Fall," arguably their best song, should get played more regularly:

"When I Fall" from the Bathroom Sessions

"But I spent hours writing this paper"

2009-02-18T09:08:00.002-05:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/18/education/18college.html?_r=2&emc=eta1

Teaching high school, I face the "I worked hard therefore I deserve a good grade" mentality as well. At times to a frustrating degree.

One of the quotes I post in my room is from Samuel Johnson: "What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure." At the beginning of the year, I point out that quote and explain to my students that working hard is imperative if they want to earn a good grade but that assiduousness alone doesn't translate into good grades. Of course, come research paper time I still have a few students say, "I worked for hours on this and I made a C." I try to respond as gently as possible, but the crux of my explanation is always "That's because it's a C paper."

I think it's helpful sometimes to combat the "hard work is tantamount to an A" mentality by drawing parallels to non-academic activities. For example, athletes understand full well that they have to work hard to win games but that winning a game requires more than diligence.

The more difficult--but more important task--the writer in the NY Times alludes to is teaching students to view education as more than just a grade-earning system.

Ambivalence about an Afterlife Redux

2008-12-17T19:00:00.000-05:00

At the close of my last "theological musing," I wrote:"Still, I hope. I hope for a heaven not only that I might reunite with departed loved ones (if there is indeed truth in that popular belief) or that I may see God or that all I am will not simply dissolve into oblivion but also because if God is just and merciful as I believe Him to be as seen in Christ, then only in heaven could justice and mercy prevail entirely and God make all things new."

As I've pondered the topic some more, I've wondered if this notion--that God's justice and mercy necessitate a heaven--is in part what led to a development throughout scripture of a belief in an afterlife. For example, in Isaiah's prophecy of the Messiah, God restores Israel and renews all things through the Messiah as peace covers creation. But what about the Jewish people who anguished in captivity and would not live to see the Messiah? Where's the justice in that? Ah, but what if the dead are resurrected to join with the living in that time?

Now, I'm not suggesting rabbis and biblical writers simply worked through philosophical exercises and eventually wound up at a belief in immortality. However, clearly the belief in an afterlife developed over the course of scripture, moving from the murkiness of Sheol in the early OT to the more fully formed--albeit varied--ideas presented in the NT--and I think a belief in the ultimate justice of God had something to do with that.

Lastly, without any sort of smooth segue, does John 17:3 possibly challenge our typical notions of an afterlife? In Christ's prayer, he declares "Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent."

Theological Musing: Ambivalence About an Afterlife

2008-12-02T01:30:00.000-05:00

Growing up in a rather conservative Christian environment, I heard a few sermons about hell during my formative years, and as you might expect, those sweet homilies about hellfire (literal or metaphorical) were more than just a bit disconcerting to me. In fact, in our religious sphere the question of when someone was "of age" to be baptized was pertinent because there was always the terrifying possibility you could be, say, a happy-go-lucky 12-year-old who had always gone to church but not committed yourself to Christ in baptism, meet an untimely demise, and spend an eternity in the pits of hell all because you'd waited too long. Cue up "Almost Persuaded."

But more often than not, the thoughts that troubled me about the afterlife had nothing to do with Satan or weeping and gnashing of teeth, but heaven. Yes, heaven. The crux of my anxiety at the time--and part of what accounts for my ambivalence now--was the impossibility of wrapping my mind around eternity. Oh, sure, I had no reason to doubt that heaven as I heard it depicted was indeed a "wonderful place, filled with glory and grace," but the idea that my time there would go on and on and on unendingly struck me as a rather frightening thought rather than a comforting one. I distinctly remember lying awake one night when I was around nine or ten, trembling as I thought about eternity, crying quietly to myself that I didn't want to die. My dad heard me and came in my room to console me. I never did explain to him that it wasn't exactly death that was troubling me but what would follow.

I still shudder at times when I think deeply about eternity, but as I've grown older, other things have contributed to my ambivalence toward heaven as well. Though I can believe strongly--or try to compel myself to believe strongly--that heaven exists or that it will include certain things, my beliefs do not make it so and only when I die can I hope to know the validity of those beliefs. Ah, but someone may be saying, "But, Jason, it's a matter of faith." Yes, it is, but the Bible does not provide a clear or consistent view of life after death. Much of the Old Testament says nothing of an afterlife besides sheol, which is far from being described as a land of bliss. Only in later OT books do intimations of heaven arise. In the New Testament, Christ himself spends little time discussing heaven in the gospel accounts, and in other NT books, the writers offer varying descriptions of heaven, which are usually conveyed in metaphorical language. Many of our popular ideas of heaven are comforting colloquialisms that have little, if any, scriptural basis. Even the notion of the soul is cloudy one. The term isn't used in the OT as we've come to understand it, nor is it used in that way many times in the NT. Some biblical scholars, including some conservative ones I know personally, suggest the idea of the soul developed in Christian thought due to Greek influence. Advances in neuroscience have also made the notion of a soul increasingly difficult to defend.

But soul or no soul, the dominant view of heaven in the NT, particularly in Paul's writings, is not one of bodiless spirits but of resurrection, of a new heaven and a new earth. Of course, this view still brings with it a host of questions. When I think of a resurrection and a renewing of the cosmos, I can't help but ask some "how many angels can fit on the head of a pin" questions, as silly as they might be. How can I be resurrected if my body has completely decayed? What about people who were cremated? People blown to bits? How exactly could everyone fit on the planet? Will people still eat? Sleep?And then there are deeper questions, questions of identity, free will, and theodicy. Consider the conclusion from James Wood's piece "Holiday in Hellmouth" from The New Yorker a few months ago:

For Heaven must be a place where either our freedom to sin has been abolished or we have been so transfigured that we no longer want to sin: in Heaven, our will miraculously coincides with God’s will. And here the free-will defense unravels, and is unravelled by the very idea of Heaven. If Heaven obviates the great human freedom to sin, why was it ever such a momentous ideal on earth, “worth” all that pain and suffering?

The difficulty can be recast in terms of the continuity of the self. If we will be so differently constituted in Heaven as to be strangers to sin, then no meaningful connection will exist between the person who suffers here and the exalted soul who will enjoy the great system of rewards and promises and tears wiped from faces: our faces there will not be the faces we have here. And, if there were to be real continuity between our earthly selves and our heavenly ones, then Heaven might dangerously begin to resemble earth. This idea haunted Dostoyevsky, who wrote a chilling fable about it called “The Dream of a Ridiculous Man,” in which the protagonist, on the verge of suicide, has a dream in which he has died and ended up on a pristine Greek island, a heavenly utopia where there is no sin. Then this man tells his first lie, and eventually utopia is corrupted: Heaven is just Eden all over again, and man is busy wrecking it.

'Come quickly, Lord' is the great refrain of both the Old Testament and the New. But the problem for Jews is that the Messiah never came, and everything stayed the same (or got worse), while the problem for Christians is that the Messiah did come, and everything stayed the same (or got worse). Jews and Christians are dependent, in different ways, on an always deferred Second Coming. Heaven—because it comes next and is not now—is, as so often in religious thought, a solution that merely creates another problem. If God supposedly wipes away all tears from our faces in Heaven, why does he not do it now? Why does God not now establish paradise on earth, as the Jehovah’s Witnesses believe he will do? And what is the purpose of these eighty or so years we spend on earth not having the tears wiped from our faces?

In response to Wood's closing questions, I humbly respond, "I don't know."

In my most skeptical hours, I wonder whether our time on earth is the sum of our existence. After all, death has been part of the world long before people showed up on the scene.Still, I hope.

I hope for a heaven not only that I might reunite with departed loved ones (if there is indeed truth in that popular belief) or that I may see God or that all I am will not simply dissolve into oblivion but also because if God is just and merciful as I believe Him to be as seen in Christ, then only in heaven could justice and mercy prevail and God make all things new.

Consumerism at Its Ugliest

2008-11-29T08:02:00.001-05:00

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/11/28/black.friday.violence/index.html

Even more troubling, here's a quote from an article on msnbc.com about the incident:

Kimberly Cribbs, who witnessed the stampede, said shoppers were acting like "savages."

"When they were saying they had to leave, that an employee got killed, people were yelling `I've been on line since yesterday morning,'" she said. "They kept shopping."

Ryan Adams and the Cardinals: Cardinology

2008-11-13T19:48:00.005-05:00

For the first decade of Ryan Adams’ career, his infamous petulance, starlet dating, and self-destructive behavior garnered nearly as much press as his often-arresting talent and prodigious output. Of the three, the self-destructive behavior, driven by dissolution into drugs and alcohol, not only impaired his ability to perform (or even finish) a coherent show but also threatened to render Adams the latest entry in the annuls of rock’n’roll tragedies.

But Adams has turned a corner over the past few years. A notoriously erratic and cantankerous band mate (see his days with Whiskeytown), he’s chummy with his cohorts the Cardinals, and he’s clean—sober now for two years. And though substance abuse never seemed to squelch his prolificacy, Adams, focused and mellowed a bit, seems to be bristling with perhaps a greater degree creative energy since kicking his habits as he’s set to unveil a book in the spring on top of the two full-length albums and an EP he’s released since June of last year.

Like last year’s Easy Tiger, his new album, Cardinology, offers a more even listening experience than most of his previous records. With the exception of the abysmal “Natural Ghost,” a track even the most ardent Ryan Adams fan might struggle to listen to for more than thirty seconds, the album is free of certifiable duds. But in attaining this level of consistency, Adams has sacrificed some of the raw emotion and reckless energy that, yes, resulted in some spotty track lists but also made for a lot of brilliant, poignant songs.

“Born Into a Light,” a country-imbued number in Adams’ musical wheelhouse, gets the album off to a strong start. A deft acoustic riff and stomping percussion usher in each verse, giving way to a gentle melody accentuated by Jon Graboff’s plaintive pedal steel and Neal Casal’s feathery harmonies that dovetail perfectly with Adams’ tenor. As good as the song is, though, Adams’ litany of clichéd self-help phrases like “Be your own best friend/ Have confidence and keep the faith” shows he has some work to do if he wants to be as penetrating lyrically when singing of hope and perseverance as when he mines the depths of heartache and loneliness.

The trio of rock tunes that follow are solid, too, though none of them boast the looseness or spontaneity Adams and company have displayed before on songs like “Cold Roses” and “Magnolia Mountain.” Kick-started with ringing electric guitars, “Go Easy” follows a fairly straight-ahead adult-alternative template before swelling into an uplifting coda that channels latter-day U2. “Fix It,” the album’s first single, showcases Adams’ affinity for classic rock, combining a gritty, bluesy verse with a deceptively restrained chorus that bares its teeth by song’s end while the power-chord feast “Magick” proves an infectiously catchy bit of swaggering garage-rock.

Adams slows things down with “Cobwebs,” which aims to be a slow-building anthem of sorts but never really erupts. Instead it grows rather tiresome, with Adams repeating “confuse my love for the cobwebs” as if incessantly singing the line will breathe profundity into it. But he regains his footing on the terrific, country gospel-flavored “Let Us Down Easy,” delivering an arresting vocal that captures every bit of pain and impassioned pleading entailed in the lyrics.

The back end of the album offers fewer highlights. Carried by little more than acoustic guitar and piano, “Crossed Out Name” is the one song on the album that displays Adams’ talent for creating beautiful melancholy with pared down arrangements, but it’s followed by the aforementioned musical turd, “Natural Ghost,” and the stale “Sink Ships,” which belabors a lover as job applicant metaphor and is made worse by the verse’s melodic similarity to Level 42’s “Something About You.”

As the album draws to a close, it settles into an increasingly relaxed vibe that makes the fervor of songs like “Fix It” seem like a distant memory. The ethereal, finger-picked folk “Evergreen” is a highlight, but “Like Yesterday, despite Casal’s tasteful country-rock solo, feels like a somnolent reprisal of the far superior “Let Us Down Easy.” On the closing track “Stop,” a piano ballad reminiscent of the haunting “Shadowlands” from Love Is Hell, Adams lays bare his experience in gaining a hard-won victory over addiction, singing in a fractured voice, “I know a sickness ancient and cross/ No crucifix could ever fix enough/ But in the basement of a church these people talk/ And there is a line that must be walked/ If you wanna make it stop/ Then stop.”

Ultimately, there’s little to pan about Cardinology, but its consistency isn’t tantamount to greatness. The album is the sound of Adams at peace with himself and at ease and in sync with his band, making music at times as beautiful, moving, and invigorating as anything he’s written, but often sounding a bit too easy and measured.

A Book That Steps on Toes, Mine Included

2008-11-10T11:29:00.002-05:00

Here's a link to Ron Sider's review of a book I feel compelled to check out: Passing the Plate: Why American Christians Don't Give Away More Money.

http://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/2008/006/5.11.html

Two of the most salient excerpts from the review follow:

Chapter 1 hits the reader like a ton of bricks, spelling out in detail what American Christians could accomplish if they would tithe. If just the "committed Christians" (defined as those who attend church at least a few times a month or profess to be "strong" or "very strong" Christians) would tithe, there would be an extra 46 billion dollars a year available for kingdom work. To make that figure more concrete, the authors suggest dozens of different things that $46 billion would fund each year: for example, 150,000 new indigenous missionaries; 50,000 additional theological students in the developing world; 5 million more micro loans to poor entrepreneurs; the food, clothing and shelter for all 6,500,000 current refugees in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East; all the money for a global campaign to prevent and treat malaria; resources to sponsor 20 million needy children worldwide. Their conclusion is surely right: "Reasonably generous financial giving of ordinary American Christians would generate staggering amounts of money that could literally change the world."

In their concluding chapter, the authors summarize their findings. They think there are five primary reasons for the fact that "the wealthiest national body of Christian believers at any time in all of church history end up spending most of their money on themselves." The most important is our society's "institutionalized mass consumerism." The second is the failure of pastors to deal with the issue. The third is that many Christians seem to be confused about the meanings, expectations, and purposes of faithful Christian giving. Fourth, some have distrust about whether their donations will be used wisely. Finally, the near total privatization of the topic means that almost no American Christians discuss their giving with anyone else.

Some Brief Post-Election Thoughts

2008-11-05T11:21:00.002-05:00

Whether your candidate won or lost, be thankful we live in a country where we can elect our leaders.

Whether your candidate won or lost, appreciate the genuinely momentous event in our nation's history we witnessed last night.

Obama supporters (of which I am one), enjoy his victory but don't gloat. When he takes office, don't expect perfection--we voted for an inspiring, gifted, and intelligent but nonetheless flawed man. But hold Obama to the pledges and ideas that compelled you to vote for him in the first place and do your own small part in helping fulfill those initiatives. No president is beyond reproach. For Christian Obama supporters (again, of which I am one), remember that we elect leaders, not a savior. Government can't begin to fix every problem we face nor can it change people's hearts.

McCain supporters, be rightfully disappointed but follow McCain's lead in accepting the disappointment with class and hope that Obama can provide strong, intelligent leadership for the country. I've never understood when supporters of the losing candidate in any election root for the failure of the President Elect. This isn't a heated sports rivalry where you embrace schadenfreude, delighting in your rival's missteps. This is our nation. To hope for the failure of a president so you can have an "I told you so" moment is to value petty personal vindication over the well-being of the country. Once Obama takes office, offer civil criticism when you disagree with him, but don't stoop to slander and baseless fear-mongering. Stay informed. And by informed, I don't mean listening to people like Limbaugh and Hannity and then feeling as if you've in any way objectively considered the issues (the same holds true for their counterparts on the left).

I posted this on my Facebook notes as well. Kester's response there was a salient one, so I'm including it here:

"For those whose guy didn't win, it is best to remember that our citizenship is in the Kingdom of God and that we don't panic or even sit the sidelines because of a Presidential victory or defeat. Our mission remains constant whether a Democrat is President, a Republican is President, or no one is President and chaos ensues. Our mission is the same if we live in the U.S. or Canada or Kenya or China. Our mission remains the same whether the world is a better place tomorrow or a worse one: To do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God. To love the Lord with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength and to love our neighbor as ourself."

Political Evolution

2008-11-03T11:31:00.002-05:00

A tip of the hat to Jeff http://runtowin.blogspot.com/ for posting a link to Donald Miller's post on the transformation of his political views: From Reagan to Obama.

My own shifting of political views in many ways mirrors that of Miller. Here are some excerpts that resonated with me:

"Having met the enemy, I discovered the enemy wasn’t who I thought they were. They were flawed, even as we were flawed, but they were no less patriotic, and no less good. And what’s more, they weren’t out to get us like my conservative friends had told me. I began to see, honestly, the far conservative right, the radical right (not the balanced, objective right) as being paranoid. The advertisements on conservative radio talk shows were about guns and alarm systems.

I wondered how I could be made to feel so prejudiced against Democrats. And then I took a hard look at the culture I was raised in. I realized every church I’d ever attended had been an insular community. Every church had been far off in the suburbs, off a bus line, protected from the poor and marginalized and, quite honestly, racial minorities. It’s not that these churches did this intentionally. I don’t believe that. The decisions to reside in the suburbs had to do with property value and opportunity. But the end result was an insulated existence."

Unlike Miller, I was raised in a rather apolitical household. My parents seldom mentioned politics and didn't subscribe to any particular political persuasion. I haven't a clue who my parents ever voted for. However, I did grow up around people--first at church and then in college--who staunchly supported right-wing politics. For some of these people it seemed that being a beet-red Republican was imperative to calling yourself a Christian.

As I've come to care more about politics (though I feel safe in saying I'll never be a political junkie), I've developed a strong distaste for such views and the insular, divisive, and un-Christ-like behavior they foster. Of course, the far-left's labeling of conservatives as greedy, racist, anti-intellectuals is no more productive or reflective of a Christian attitude than the right's demonizing of the left.

I'll add more to these thoughts in a follow-up post. It's lunchtime.

The News

2008-10-17T23:10:00.001-04:00

If all goes well, Janet and I will be proud parents come June 13th.

Seriously?

2008-10-03T15:37:00.002-04:00

If you found Palin's relentless folksiness during last night's VP debate more than a bit mawkish, get your barf bag ready before reading this quote from Rich Lowry at The Corner:

"I'm sure I'm not the only male in America who, when Palin dropped her first wink, sat up a little straighter on the couch and said, "Hey, I think she just winked at me." And her smile. By the end, when she clearly knew she was doing well, it was so sparkling it was almost mesmerizing. It sent little starbursts through the screen and ricocheting around the living rooms of America. This is a quality that can't be learned; it's either something you have or you don't, and man, she's got it."

A Layman's Version of the Economic Crisis

2008-09-22T10:07:00.004-04:00

I possess only really a cursory knowledge of the jargon and workings of personal finances, so when it comes to national economic matters, I need things explained in simple terms:

http://theamericanscene.com/2008/09/19/welcome-to-history

The Buoyant Basset

2008-09-17T01:52:00.009-04:00

Though Baxter could hardly be considered the Michael Phelps of dogs, he faired pretty well with his foray into swimming on Labor Day.

Since Baxter's only prior experiences with water in non-bath situations had consisted of walking into ponds up to his chest, we had to coax (well, coerce really) him into the lake.

Once I let him loose, though, he proved to be a quick learner, aided by his big paws and loose skin and fat.

2+2=5

2008-09-10T12:21:00.002-04:00

As the presidential race continues, the spinelessness of TV news journalists (print media has been much better) becomes increasingly apparent. You would think that reporting facts and lies about facts would not be a particularly difficult thing to do. Instead, facts have become nearly irrelevant as the media has kowtowed to political spin.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-begala/the-mccain-palin-lies-and_b_125240.html

No-Information Voting

2008-09-09T12:10:00.003-04:00

I'd like to think that with our access to information expanding all the time that more people would actually take notice of articles such as this one: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1839724-1,00.html

However, I surmise a depressingly large portion of our electorate accepts without question whatever talking points are floated by either party's pundits, content to vote on identity or single issues.

A Hook Not Quite Strong Enough to Bring You Back

2008-09-08T11:51:00.005-04:00

“Gonna get wild if it’s okay,” John Popper sings on “You, Me, and Everything,” the lead single from Blues Traveler’s North Hollywood Shootout. Yes, that would be okay—great, in fact. It’s too bad the song, an ode to the thrill and freedom of the open road, feels more like getting stuck behind an elderly couple creeping along in an RV than thundering down an open highway with the windows down and the radio blaring.

Unfortunately, much of the album shares the song’s tepidness. Programmed drums and uncharacteristically vague lyrics dampen the impact of album opener “Forever Owed,” a rumination on war inspired by Popper’s USO trip to Iraq and Afghanistan, while “Borrowed Time” matches hackneyed observations on mortality with a piano accompaniment dripping with sentimentality.

The laid back “Love Does,” one of the few tracks highlighting Popper’s trademark harmonica work, and “Orange in the Sun” are nothing if not catchy, and the power-chord feast “The Beacons” and the rough, swaggering “How You Remember It” show the band can still ratchet up the intensity, but little of North Hollywood Shootout sounds as fresh and spontaneous as the band did at the height of its powers in the mid to late ‘90s.

"We've Always Been at War with East Asia"

2008-09-04T16:35:00.003-04:00

One of the funnier segments from The Daily Show this week:

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/09/keeping-us-sane.html

As funny as it is, it's too bad it takes a comedian to point out the blatant hypocrisy the traditional media (the TV journalists anyway) either ignore, miss, or are too timid to point out.

One Post, Three Reviews

2008-08-23T19:31:00.004-04:00

Murry Hammond - I Don't Know Where I'm Going But I'm On My Way

From the moment Murry Hammond’s world-weary drawl joins his faint strumming on his haunting rendition of “What Are They Doing in Heaven Today?” it’s clear that residing in Southern California has done nothing to alter his Texas roots. On his 17-song self-released solo debut, the Old 97’s bassist proves himself not only a superb interpreter of gospel and country-folk standards but also an immensely gifted songwriter capable of crafting rich, evocative narratives that peer deeply into the human experience through the lens of Americana.

In the time of shuffle and single-song downloads, I Don’t Know Where I’m Going But I’m On My Way is a cohesive album best appreciated from start to finish, with Hammond’s original material seamlessly woven among the traditional tunes. Each song sounds lived in, intimate. Whether he’s singing about wanderlust or Jesus, he clearly feels every word.

Tales of trains real and metaphorical permeate the album—“Between the Switches,” “Riding the Rods,” “Grainer,” “As You Roll Across the Trestle”—and serve as a fitting motif for Hammond’s reflections on physical and spiritual journeys. Many of the songs move with the steady beat of railcar clatter, including the album’s two most immediately catchy songs, “Lost at Sea” and “Wreck of the 97,” which both reflect the melodic sensibilities of his Old 97’s work.

The album’s finest moments, though, come at the close with a trio of songs that reinforce the themes of loss, death, and faith. Only a harmonium joins Hammond’s quavering vocal on Bob Nolan’s “Rainbow’s End” while on “Other, Younger Days,” ambient acoustic guitars whirl as Hammond offers his most direct ruminations on his parents’ recent deaths: “Last few years, we’d brought him home/ To ease the day that she sailed on . . . “He said, ‘Now, sons, as you pass by/ As you are now so once was I/ As I am now, so you must be/ Dead to rights and following.” The final track, Hammond’s modern-day hymn “I Believe, I Believe,” resonates with the hope of his faith while retaining the ache of struggle and yearning.

Ray LaMontagne - Gossip in the Grain

Joined in the studio by members of his touring band as well as Ethan Johns—once again producing and lending a musical hand—Ray LaMontagne takes a few stabs at broadening his sound on his third album, Gossip in the Grain. The album kicks off with the punchy horn blasts of the first single, “You Are the Best Thing,” a slice of Motown-flavored R&B that showcases his soulful, raspy-like-a-worn LP vocals.

Sometimes serious to a fault, LaMontagne reveals a lighter side on the country crawl “Hey Me, Hey Mamma” and the alternately stomping and trippy “Meg White.” On the latter, though, the playful nature of the song is offset a bit by LaMontagne’s gruff delivery sounding a wee bit stalkerish.

But a few genre diversions aside, the album is still very much in the brooding singer-songwriter vein of his previous albums. On several songs LaMontagne again (see Till the Sun Turns Black) falls prey to the idea that sandpapery, whispered vocals can make dull, meandering songs good. Whispered vocals matched with a gentle, coasting melody and deft finger-picking, however, is good (“Sarah”) even if it means sounding like you used “One of These Things First” as a template. The passionate ache of LaMontagne’s best work resonates on the ballads “Let It Be Me” and the gorgeous “A Falling Through,” on which a pedal steel and Leona Naess’s delicate harmonies enhance the song’s stirring melancholy.

Josh Rouse - Best of the Ryko Years

Josh Rouse’s Best of the Rykodisc Years compilation could just as well be entitled The Best of Josh Rouse. The two-disc set, culled from the first seven years of his career, offers a reminder of his ability to infuse gentle melodies with a subtle intensity, an intensity lacking on the lounge –flavored fair of his past two albums, Subtitulo (2006) and Country Mouse City House (2007). “Under Cold Blue Stars” and the selections from the retro concept album 1972 all have large traces of the overly insouciant tone of his recent work, but the folk rock-influenced tracks, particularly those from Dressed Up Like Nebraska and Home, sound as engaging as they did when they garnered Rouse critical acclaim.

On the gritty rocker “Directions” Rouse pushes his thin, smoky voice as close to a Westerbergian growl as he can, but more often his songs create an enveloping mood of melancholy rather than fiery angst as on the horn-punctuated “Laughter” or the sleepy waltz “100m Backstroke.” Bittersweet ballads like “Ugly Stories” and “Rise” from Under Cold Blue Stars and Nashville respectively exhibit an increased sophistication both stylistically and sonically but retain the emotional pull of his earlier material.

Disc 2, likely of more interest to diehard fans, offers all six tracks from 2001’s Bedroom Classics, Vol. 1 EP as well as a handful of outtakes and demos.

A Far More Robust Definition of "Pro-Life"

2008-08-18T19:30:00.005-04:00

Saturday's Obama/McCain event at Saddleback offered yet another opportunity for a Republican candidate to recite pro-life platitudes to the delight of many evangelicals. I am pro-life; however, I don't view a candidate's position on abortion as a key factor in deciding whether or not I'll vote for him or her. I'm a bit befuddled that voters who do base their votes in large part, or solely, on the issue of abortion haven't noticed that the Republicans have done next to nothing to eliminate abortion in the three decades they've promoted themselves as pro-life crusaders. (Furthermore, overturning Roe v. Wade would not impact the states' right to allow abortions.) It remains a focus of their (the Republicans') message in no small way simply because it garners votes.

Frank Schaeffer's latest piece reflects many of my thoughts concerning the difference between "anti-abortion" and "pro-life":

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frank-schaeffer/frank-as-a-former-pro-lif_b_119435.html

Thelogical Musing: Because Then It Wouldn't Be Faith?

2008-07-30T10:58:00.003-04:00

In discussions of theodicy, the efficacy or lack thereof of intercessory prayer, and the like, a common response I've heard is "Well, if we knew everything, then it wouldn't be faith." Certainly in and of itself that statement is true, but I find it's tossed off quite often as a sort of reflexive response, not one the person has examined heavily in the context of actual experience. It seems to me there is ample room for faith between the little, if anything, we have to sustain our faith sometimes and God answering all the vexing matters of the human condition.

A typical defense for the "Well, if we knew everything . . ." argument is that our faith is inextricably linked to free will, that faith is a necessary by-product of God's granting humans the ability to choose to obey Him. However, God's intervening demonstrably in the world would not override our freedom to choose to follow Him any more than my demonstrations of love for my wife force her to love me in return.

If God does indeed desire that all men come to Him, then why not clearly act in the world in such a way to mitigate, if not eliminate, doubt concerning His presence or existence? Why is faith required to the degree that it is?

But then as I consider these questions, I'm mindful of the Bonhoeffer quote I wrote a post about back in February:

"It is not that God's help and presence must still be proved in our life; rather God's presence and help have been demonstrated for us in the life of Jesus Christ. It is in fact more important for us to know what God did to Israel, in God's son Jesus Christ, than to discover what God intends for us today. The fact that Jesus Christ died is more important than the fact that I will die. And the fact that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead is the sole ground of my hope that I, too, will be raised on the day of judgment. Our salvation is 'from outside ourselves.' I find salvation not in my life story, but only in the story of Jesus Christ. Only those who allow themselves to be found in Jesus Christ--in the incarnation, cross, and resurrection--are with God and God with them."

The skeptic in me thinks, "Ah, Diedrich, you're just letting God off the hook for the times he seems so absent." But when I consider Bonhoeffer's plight--a suffering which I'll likely never know--I think he understood so much more deeply than I the significance of Christ.

And so I continue to grapple.

They've Never Been All About Laughs

2008-07-23T23:27:00.002-04:00

In nearly every article I've read regarding Steven Page's arrest for cocaine possession the reporters have noted how surprising the arrest was given the band's seemingly squeaky clean image and their "goofy" or "feel good" music.

Obviously these writers aren't familar with much of Barenaked Ladies' catalogue.

Shortly after I started this blog, I wrote a short series called "Time-Defining Music" in which I highlighted the impact particular albums made on me at various points in my life. BNL's Born on a Pirate Ship was the first album I wrote about http://jmiddlekauff.blogspot.com/2006/02/time-defining-music.html.

Part of what has always drawn me to that record is the sad tenor of many of the songs. Perhaps that speaks to my own melancholic disposition.

This evening I came across this July 18th article by Chris Snethen in the Portland Tribune entitled "The Eternal Sadness of Steven Page" http://thevig.portlandtribune.com/2008/07/18/the-eternal-sadness-of-steven-page/

Snethen, who like Page has had struggles with mental health, offers a poignant assessment of Page's arrest as seen through the lens of the emotional and pyschological turmoil he has revealed in his songwriting.

Whether you're a BNL fan or not, Snethen's article is worth reading.

A Surprising Bit of News for BNL Fans

2008-07-16T09:32:00.001-04:00

http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2008/07/barenaked_ladies_singer_arrest.html

Not a Future I'd Eagerly Anticipate

2008-07-16T09:23:00.003-04:00

Brave New World meets the Six Million Dollar Man:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/07/15/bio.tech/index.html

Here's a salient excerpt:

Now, Kurzweil is predicting the arrival of something called the Singularity, which he defines in his book on the subject as "the culmination of the merger of our biological thinking and existence with our technology, resulting in a world that is still human but that transcends our biological roots."

"There will be no distinction, post-Singularity, between human and machine or between physical and virtual reality," he writes. Singularity will approach at an accelerating rate as human-created technologies become exponentially smaller and increasingly powerful and as fields such as biology and medicine are understood more and more in terms of information processes that can be simulated with computers."

By the 2030s, Kurzweil said, humans will become more non-biological than biological, capable of uploading our minds onto the Internet, living in various virtual worlds and even avoiding aging and evading death.
In the 2040s, Kurzweil predicts that non-biological intelligence will be billions of times better than the biological intelligence humans have today, possibly rendering our present brains obsolete.

"Our brains are a million times slower than electronics," Kurzweil said. "We will increasingly become software entities if you go out enough decades."

"No Values Voters"

2008-07-15T10:31:00.002-04:00

A good laugh from The Onion:

http://www.theonion.com/content/video/no_values_voters_looking_to

Powerful and Effective?

2008-07-14T10:37:00.003-04:00

An intriguing topic arose during our small group discussion a few weeks ago about prayer. How do you know if a prayer has actually been answered? Is prayer effective?

To answer the second question, of course, depends on how one defines effective. If by "effective" I mean that prayer focuses someone's mind on God (Lewis posited that the main point of prayer was changing the one praying), steers my thoughts away from self-interest and toward the needs of others, and can offer a sense of peace to the one praying or the one being prayed for, then, yes, prayer is effective. But verses like "The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective," "Whatever you ask in my name will be given to you," and "The prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well" suggest that the efficacy of prayer extends beyond practical benefits. Obviously, there are caveats for the aforementioned verses. For example, the passage from James about the sick person being made well has to be balanced against the inevitability of death. Nonetheless, the biblical writers contend that prayer can, and does, elicit a response from God.

So, let's return to the first question: How do you know if a prayer has actually been answered?I've noticed that often our prayers are so vague that we can assume there's been divine action with basically any positive event--"Lord, be with so and so," "Lord, bless so and so." What exactly do we mean? Do we even know? Whatever the answers to those two questions, I don't believe we can point to a beneficial circumstance in someone's life and say, "Ah! That's an answer to my prayer to bless so and so!"

The deeper issue here is that if we earnestly expect God will answer such prayers or any other kind, then we're inclined to interpret anything as a sign of His response. To use a rather poor illustration, think back to when you had a crush on someone. You analyzed everything that person did when interacting with you, looking for some sign that he or she reciprocated your affection. And, if your high school or college days were anything like mine, there were times that your desire for a sign led to misinterpret the person's intentions, finding a reciprocated interest where there wasn't one.But what about something with specificity? Let's say we pray for someone to find a job, and the person gets hired. Prayer answered? Maybe. Jobs are part of everyday life. Most people looking for a job hard enough find one eventually. Generally speaking, I don't see how finding employment is any sort of proof of God's intervention.

I've written several posts regarding theodicy, butting my head against the pervasiveness of suffering. But a tangental frustration that arises from theodicy for me is that if God demonstratively healed people, then such healing would be proof of the efficacy of prayer. However, as I've noted before, we all have increasingly long lists of sick people we've prayed for who have died, and the recuperation of the few who haven't died can't be cleary attributed to divine intervention (I've never known a cancer patient who recovered without medical treatment.)

I confess I've spent very little time in prayer in recent months.

Out of Order Update

2008-07-12T21:21:00.003-04:00

We're still waiting on Comcast to fix the issues with our internet. Geesh. We're housesitting for some friends this week, so I'm using their computer for this brief post. I'll write something substantive once we actually get the net up and running at home.

Temporarily Out of Order

2008-07-04T10:46:00.002-04:00

We moved to a condo in Midtown last weekend and getting our internet service up and running has proven much more of a hassle than we'd expected--two visits from Comcast, a split line outside, too weak a signal for internet, etc. Hopefully it'll be up and running at some point next week. I'm writing this post from my classroom computer, and as I like to avoid my classroom as much as possible throughout the summer, this will be the only time I'll post before we get internet restored at home. Until then, dear readers, have a good 4th.

Coldplay's Viva La Vida or Death and All This Friends

2008-06-26T15:07:00.004-04:00

Originally published in the Main Street Journal

In an interview in the latest Rolling Stone, Coldplay frontman Chris Martin jokes, “I would still give my left ball to write anything as good as OK Computer.” Judging by the the band’s prolixly titled new album, Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends, all of Martin’s reproductive parts are still intact. But while the band may still be in search of its masterpiece, Viva La Vida does find Martin and company willing to extend their musical boundaries—albeit safely—making for an occasionally brilliant album that’s exponentially more vibrant and engaging than 2005’s generally stale X&Y.

To aid in the their efforts in deviating from a Coldplay-by-the-numbers approach, the band turned to renowned studio egghead and “sonic landscape” guru Brian Eno, known best as a producer for his work with David Bowie, Talking Heads, and Coldplay heroes U2. Inspired by Eno and by their own globe-trotting, the band infuses their customary soaring Anglo pop with an eclectic batch of world music color. On “Life in Technicolor,” the album’s instrumental opening track, a Persian santur emerges from a warm bath of synthesizers to provide the hook as acoustic guitar, piano, and a barrage of percussion slowly join in, propelling the song steadily towards Martin’s climatic “woah-oh-oh’s.” The frenetic, flamenco-flavored “Cemeteries of London” follows, offering a gloomy counterpoint to the opening track, but the music retains too much of a sheen to match the angst hinted at in Martin’s graveyard musings: “God is in the houses/ And God is in my head/ And all the cemeteries in London/ I see God come in my garden/ But I don’t know what he said/ For my heart it wasn’t open.” A church organ and a tabla and handclap groove accentuate the uplifting “Lost!” a song on which Martin’s seemingly effortless sing-along melody is so good it makes a line like “You might be a big fish/ In a little pond” almost forgivable.

The band takes several stabs at eschewing verse-chorus-verse-chorus song structure to mixed results. “42” moves from a sleepy piano ballad that nearly sinks from Martin’s hackneyed attempt at profundity—“Those who are dead are not dead/ They’re just living in my head”—to a frenzied musical interlude led by Jonny Buckland’s caterwauling guitar to a hard-driving, arena-rock section before closing abruptly with a return to the opening verse.

Elsewhere, non-traditional song structure comes in the form of two songs sharing the same track space. An indelible plinking piano hook backed by Will Champion’s propulsive drumming and Buckland’s atmospheric, Edge-like guitars drives the soaring “Lovers in Japan,” which gives way to the ethereal “Reign of Love,” carried only by only ambient piano and strings and Martin’s delicate vocal. On the woozy “Yes,” the band’s most demonstrative break from their traditional sound and one of the album’s strongest tracks, Martin drops to a surprisingly low register to deliver a tale of loneliness and sexual temptation amid tortuous Middle-Eastern string flourishes: “There we were dying of frustration/ Saying, “Lord lead us not into temptation”/ But it’s not easy when she turns you on . . .” But whereas “Reign of Love” somewhat complements “Lovers in Japan,” the three and a half minute guitar onslaught “Chinese Sleep Dance” that follows “Yes” proves an awkward and superfluous juxtaposition.

If EMI execs were concerned that Coldplay’s musical tinkering would make for a lack of marketable singles, “Viva La Vida” has certainly alleviated their worries—as I write this review, the song sits atop Billboard’s Hot 100, making it the biggest hit of the band’s career. The song certainly doesn’t have the profile of a typical smash; songs with lyrics from the point of view of deposed king, washes of synthesized strings, dashes of splash cymbal, and the faint hammering of an anvil don’t generally top the charts. But thanks to the band's talent and Eno's know-how, they manage to mesh those elements into an ebullient orchestral pop anthem.

“Violet Hill,” the stomping lead single, offers some honest-to-goodness kick-in-the-pants rock (well, as close as Coldplay comes), with distorted guitar, thundering bass, and thudding percussion bashing away as Martin simmers at the abuse of power and the disintegration of society in wartime—“When the future’s architectured/ By a carnival of idiots on show/ You’d better lie low—while “Strawberry Swing,” a shimmering pop number steered by a backward guitar loop and African percussion, exudes a carefree, summery vibe.

On the closing track—well, sort of—“Death and All His Friends,” the band once again avoid verse-chorus structure but with more cohesion than on “42,” transitioning from a vocal/piano introduction to an extended instrumental break that veers into quasi-prog-rock that culminates with Martin declaring, “I don’t wanna battle from beginning to end/ I don’t want a cycle of recycled revenge/ I don’t wanna follow Death and all of his friends.” Though Martin’s cry would make for a powerful conclusion to the album, the band goes the “hidden track” route again with “The Escapist,” which reprises the layers of bubbling synthesizers from the beginning of the album as Martin sings, “And in the end/ We like awake/ And dream of making our escape.”

Of course, “and in the end” immediately brings to mind The Beatles’ “The End.” I wonder what body parts Martin would be willing to part with to write something as good as Abbey Road?

The album’s flaws—cut-and-paste hidden tracks, herky-jerky musical meanderings, lyrics that lack the specificity to convey the larger themes Martin tries to tackle—stem from the band’s reach exceeding their grasp. And that’s a good thing. They could’ve easily cobbled together a collection of X&Y-like songs replete with a handful of wave-your-cell phone ballads and an inordinate amount of falsetto and sold ten million copies. Instead the band sounds reinvigorated, bent on making an album that reaches their musical acme. They’re not there yet, but at least they’re trying.

Jakob Dylan's Seeing Things

2008-06-26T15:03:00.002-04:00

Rick Rubin's expertise proved the elixir to revitalize the music of Johnny Cash (his American series) and Neil Diamond (12 Songs and Home Before Dark), but his deft production apparently doesn't have the same energizing effect on younger frontmen turned singer-songwriters. Last year, former Semisonic frontman Dan Wilson teamed up with Rubin for Free Life, his well-crafted but hardly stunning solo debut. Rubin is also behind the control board on Jakob Dylan's new album, Seeing Things, his first solo release.

There are a number of problems with Dylan's first potentially post-Wallflowers release (it's hard to ascertain the exact status of the band), but none of them can be tied to Rubin's production. To his credit, Rubin captures Dylan's intimate, finger-picked folk so well that it often sounds like he could be playing in your living room (albeit a living room with great acoustics). Instead it is Dylan's lack of varied songwriting that makes Seeing Things as dry as a pack of saltines. The album's press release describes it as "raw and dynamic." If only that were so. Drawing inspiration from the likes of Robert Johnson, Neil Young, and his iconic old man, Dylan doesn't so much dispel his reputation as a gifted and articulate songwriter as he simply fails to achieve the visceral impact of his influences. His plaintive rasp is tailor-made for the album's soft, spare arrangements, but on a number of tracks the coupling of his just-rolled-out-of-bed delivery with the album's low-key sonic palette makes for a somnolent listening experience. It's ironic that the album is being released through a deal with Starbucks given that Dylan sounds like he could use a few shots of espresso.

Overall the album suffers from sameness, but it does offer a couple of captivating folk gems that excel at combining simple but engaging melodies with reflective and evocative lyrics. Whether it's the agrarian metaphor that carries "Will It Grow" - "My forefathers they worked this land/ And I was schooled in the tyranny of nature's plans" - or the rich imagery of "Valley of the Low Sun" - "It's boom, boom thunder and no sleep coming/ Out mining the slippery world/ Of snow-covered beaches, junkyards of diesel/ And bombers named after girls" - Dylan knows how to turn a memorable phrase. (Is wordplay passed down genetically?) On "Valley of the Low Sun," along with the beautiful melancholy of "War Is Kind" and the deadpan "Evil Is Well," Dylan offers his musings on the zeitgeist, wisely eschewing ham-fisted political and social commentary in favor of poetic, impressionistic portraits of the world. His introspective work retains the same intriguing ambiguity as his worldview. On the album's closer, "This End of the Telescope," Dylan sings: "Years of progress digging the sand/ Companions we made didn't last/ Now lousy lovers do well with their hands/ But I'll reach you like nobody can."

It's unclear whether Dylan's foray into austere folk will mark an extended change of musical direction or just a respite from his Americana-rock roots. In delving in headfirst into the singer-songwriter genre, he has retained his poetic wit but sacrificed much of the intensity of his best Wallflowers' work. There are pleasant moments, but by any measure Seeing Things as a whole is rather bland and featureless.

At 30

2008-06-18T18:17:00.005-04:00

Sunday marked the Big 30 for me. Besides the fact I bid adieu to my 20's, I can't say that my 30th birthday felt much different than my 29th birthday--or my 25th for that matter. Well, I take that back. My 25th birthday was exciting because I started paying less for car insurance.

As a means of commemorating my 30th, though--and as a means of having something to blog about--I thought I'd use this post to take stock of my life a little to this point, hopefully providing a little levity for my readers along the way. By the very nature of this sort of post, I know I'm risking steering into all-out navel-gazing territory. My apologies in advance.

At 30, I ___

1. am in the best shape of my life. (Kudos to Body for Life. I thank you as does my wife.)
2. still have embarrassingly little know-how for auto and home repairs.
3. find my questions about life outnumber my answers.
4. am no longer holding out for a growth spurt.
5. feel like I'm as ready as I'm ever going to be to be a father.
6. have spent 5/6 of my life following the school year calendar.
7. miss the days before reality TV.
8. have only read a fraction of the books I'd like to.
9. feel like I have a noble profession and believe I'm good at it.
10. wish I got paid considerably more for what I do.
11. wish finances would/could concern me less.
12. regret my perpetual self-absorption from high school through my mid-20's.
13. prefer Austin to any other place I've lived.
14. feel incredibly blessed to have a wonderful wife who loves me in spite of my quirks and flaws.

15. feel like I've been married for more than three years--I mean that in a good way.
16. don't miss dating.
17. miss the days before Clear Channel radio.
18. am increasingly aware of my own mortality.
19. would like to get back into writing letters.
20. hope to be a better husband, son, and brother.
21. am happy to say I still haven't ever seen Titanic.
22. readily admit to having conversations with my dog in which I speak for him.
23. can't eat nearly as much as I used to.
24. still prefer driving to any other mode of transportation.
25. hope I've made a positive, lasting impact on at least a handful of my students.
26. still can't explain why the outcome of Maryland Terrapins basketball games have an emotional impact on me.
27. am just as much of a night owl as I've always been.
28. have watched The Shawshank Redemption countless times and would gladly watch a TNT marathon of it right now.
29. still couldn't grow a beard if my life depended on it, which crushes any hope of one day being a lumberjack.
30. have amassed an inordinate amount of music trivia knowledge. Now if only Rock'n'Roll Jeopardy would come back on the air.

Soft Drink Vernacular

2008-06-16T23:55:00.003-04:00

I'd be interested to know how many folks from Maryland responded to this survey. I've always used "pop" when referring generically to soft drinks, but according to this survey, "soda" is the predominant term in my home state--I think there's just a hint of purple in Washington County, though.

http://popvssoda.com:2998/countystats/total-county.html

Cringing at the Pump

2008-06-06T14:05:00.001-04:00

I've gotten to where I actually try not to read how much gas costs me when I fuel up the car because knowing what I'm paying only makes me want to cringe, cry, cuss, or do all three.

But it wasn't until I did a little basic number crunching today that the long-term effect of the price increases really hit me. When I bought my car back in May of 2003, I had to pay roughly $20 to fill the tank. When I stopped at the gas station yesterday, I paid $50. So assuming I fill the tank four times a month, that's $120 more per month and $1,440 more per year.

If I could recall what I paid for particular grocery items five years ago (I suppose I could look that up), I'd calculate the difference as well.

A Rose for Hillary

2008-06-04T13:24:00.005-04:00

The day after his death [her father] all the ladies prepared to call at the house and offer condolence and aid, as is our custom. Miss Emily met them at the door, dressed as usual and with no trace of grief on her face. She told them that her father was not dead. She did that for three days, with the ministers calling on her, and the doctors, trying to persuade her to let them dispose of the body . . .

In William Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily," the reclusive Emily Grierson, the last of the once wealthy and prominent Grierson family of Jefferson, obstinately, and eventually downright insanely, refuses to accept change as time and the Reconstruction inexorably erode her standing in the community, leaving her at the time of her death little more than a "fallen monument" in the eyes of the townspeople.

The narrator, an anonymous townsperson who speaks on behalf of the entire community, offers glimpses of Emily's steadfast denial of reality throughout the story. When her father dies, she insists for three days he isn't dead; when a new generation of town leaders insist that she pay taxes, she refuses, telling them to speak with Colonel Sartoris, who had remitted her taxes forever. Sartoris did indeed remit her taxes, but he had been dead for ten years. But it isn't until the end of the story that the narrator reveals the maniacal extent of Emily's clinging to her past.

When the townspeople come to her house for her funeral, they discover Emily's horrifying secret. Wanting to preserve the joy of her wedding day and fearful of losing another man in her life, she poisoned Homer Barron, leaving his corpse dressed in wedding attire on their bed for over thirty years, the room and everything in it untouched, a frightening, dust-ridden tableau.

Of course, Hillary Clinton isn't that crazy. In fact, she's not really crazy at all. But she is a sore loser, unable to accept not only that she has lost the Democratic party's presidential primary, but also that the Clintons are no longer the face of the party. As Chuck Todd noted following the RBC's ruling on Saturday, the Democratic party now belongs to Barack Obama. HRC knows that, too. But the question is how long her clutching to her delusion will last.

The Democratic party, the media, and anyone else who can recognize obvious defeat is coming for the dead body of her candidacy. Hopefully she gives it up to be buried sooner than later because last night the stench became unbearable.

Another Reason Literature Matters

2008-05-29T20:32:00.001-04:00

"Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become." - C. S. Lewis

Summertime Here We Come!

2008-05-23T09:22:00.004-04:00

Today kicks off final exams at Harding Academy. With Memorial Day Monday, the kids have to come back Tuesday and Wednesday next week to wrap up exams. Weird, I know. But by this time next Friday I will have done the last of the tidying up around my classroom and will be ready to bid adieu to Room 214 until the fall (well, August).

Unlike the past five summers, I don't have any big travel plans, which is a bit disappointing. We'd hoped to at least make it to Austin to visit friends, but between budgeting for moving (we're moving to Midtown at the end of June) and Janet taking on full-time responsibilities with the UT Health and Science Center, traveling just isn't feasible this year.

Nonetheless, the next two and a half months promise some good times. There's our aforementioned move, a chance to meet up with the Wisers in Nashville in June, some low key gigs for my band, and a possible visit from my folks. And, of course, I'll get to read.

As I've mentioned on the blog before, summer vacation affords me the time to enjoy novels I simply don't have time to tackle during the school year. (I suppose I could make the time, but I prefer to finish a book in no more than a week.) Last summer I managed to read a half dozen classics--including my borderline migraine-inducing yet ultimately satisfying tackling of Ulysses. I've yet to whittle down my list for this summer, but the candidates include the following:

The Town and The Mansion - William Faulkner -- I read The Hamlet a few years ago but didn't get around to finishing the Snopes trilogy.

Suttree - Cormac McCarthy - It would be my foray into his pre-Blood Meridian work and be a nice compliment to the Faulkner novels.

Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (yes, I know I'm missing the accent marks) I found One Hundred Years of Solitude fascinating and have been meaning to read this for some time now.

Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky - Not only would it fill the heavyweight spot on my list, it would also provide me some good conversation with the Russian lady who cuts my hair who used to teach literature in Russia.

Goodbye, Columbus - Philip Roth - I've read little of Roth's oeuvre, so I figure I might as well start at the beginning.

One Reason Poetry (and Literature in General) Matters

2008-05-21T12:02:00.002-04:00

from William Carlos Williams' "Asphodel, That Greeny Flower":

It is difficult

to get the news from poems

yet men die miserably every day

for lack

of what is found there.

Long Time, No Blog and a Poetic Nod to Spring

2008-04-25T17:57:00.002-04:00

Yes, faithful readers--the two or three of you who still remain--I am, in fact, still alive. As is usually the case come springtime, I've been busy at work trying to squeeze all I can into the last few weeks of the school year. I've also been exploring some non-teaching careers. I'll expand on why I'm looking for a new career in other entry, but for now, suffice it to say I'm not having much luck. My most promising option, the Memphis Convention and Visitors Bureau, is leaning towards not filling any of their open positions this year due to budget cutbacks. They'll decide for certain one way or another by the end of May. I also applied for the communications specialist position at the Memphis Zoo a few weeks ago, but I've yet to hear anything back from them. Next week I'll be meeting with a small marketing business in Bartlett, but I don't know if they have any immediate openings. Frankly, I'll be disappointed if nothing pans out, but one could do worse than be a teacher of English.

In honor of the glorious spring weather that's finally arriving here in Memphis, here's one of my favorite poems by e.e. cummings:

Spring is like a perhaps hand
(which comes carefully
out of Nowhere)arranging
a window,into which people look(while
people stare
arranging and changing placing
carefully there a strange
thing and a known thing here)and

changing everything carefully

spring is like a perhaps
Hand in a window
(carefully to
and from moving New and
Old things,while
people stare carefully
moving a perhaps
fraction of flower here placing
an inch of air there)and

without breaking anything.

Tea Parties Aren't Tantamount to Treaties

2008-03-07T22:12:00.000-05:00

The Chicago Tribune has an article today that details Clinton's foreign policy experience (or rather lack thereof).

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-experiencemar07,0,51719.story

A Bit of Bonhoeffer to Ponder

2008-02-11T09:48:00.000-05:00

Last week I came across a quote from Bonhoeffer which, like much of his writing, kicked me in the spiritual pants. He wrote it on the day he was moved to Buchenwald concentration camp:

"It is not that God's help and presence must still be proved in our life; rather God's presence and help have been demonstrated for us in the life of Jesus Christ. It is in fact more important for us to know what God did to Israel, in God's son Jesus Christ, than to discover what God intends for us today. The fact that Jesus Christ died is more important than the fact that I will die. And the fact that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead is the sole ground of my hope that I, too, will be raised on the day of judgment. Our salvation is 'from outside ourselves.' I find salvation not in my life story, but only in the story of Jesus Christ. Only those who allow themselves to be found in Jesus Christ--in the incarnation, cross, and resurrection--are with God and God with them."

The skeptic in me thinks, "Ah, Diedrich, you're just letting God off the hook for the times he seems so absent." But when I consider Bonhoeffer's plight--a suffering which I'll likely never know--I think he understood so much more deeply than I the significance of Christ.

Nearest Book Tag Meme

2008-02-01T20:05:00.000-05:00

Steve tagged me in my Radiohead post. Here's how it works:

--Pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more.
--Find Page 123.
--Find the first 5 sentences.
--Post the next 3 sentences.
--Tag 5 people.

Unlike Steve, I didn't break out the tape measure--I didn't have one handy. But as far as I could tell, the closest book to where I was sitting when I read his tag was Arnold Rampersad's Ralph Ellison: A Biography.

In other words, Ralph should have been aspiring not to New Masses but to Partisan Review. Originally the organ of the John Reed Club of New York, a communist outlet, Partisan Review had resumed publication in 1937 (after a one-year lapse) as a journal explicitly opposed to Communist totalitarianism and suppression. Although still devoted to radicalism, the editors (Philip Rahv and William Phillips) wrote now about the "forms of literary editorship, at once exacting and adventurous, which characterized the magazines of aesthetic revolt."

If you're a fan of Ellison--or even if you're not--I can assure you the bulk of the book is more intriguing than this excerpt. I wrote a review of the book a while back here.

Now, I'm off to tag Janet, Chris, Kester, Catherine, and Mona.

Musical Estrangement and Radiohead's In Rainbows

2008-01-26T19:08:00.001-05:00

No matter how devoted you’ve been to a band there sometimes comes a point when you realize that they’re no longer the band you grew to love, that you’re only buying their new releases out of habit, listening disappointedly to them a few times before tossing them among the junk in your glove compartment or relegating them to a dusty section of your CD rack—or worse yet, selling them back to the store. The magic is dead. You’re tired of feigning interest, tired of spending money, tired of trying to convince yourself you’ll grow to like their new material if you listen to it enough. So begins what I call “musical estrangement.”

And so it was for me with Radiohead. From the mid to late ‘90s, they were a staple of my alt-rock diet. Whether it was the artsy but anthemic Brit pop of The Bends (1995) or the darker, more complex sound of their dystopian-themed masterpiece, OK Computer, their music felt fresh and engaging. I knew I was listening to something special.

Then came Kid A in 2000—the first strain on our beautiful fan–artist relationship. Oh, I could appreciate the band’s risk taking—for a lot of bands such a drastic shift would’ve been career suicide—but no amount of listening to the album brought me closer to finding the distorted vocals and cold electronic blips and pulses of their newly adopted avant-garde style in any way appealing. 2001’s Amnesiac, full of more atonal noodling, left me nostalgic for the days when the band actually cared about melody. I listened to a friend’s copy of their next album, Hail to the Thief, several months after it came out and was happy I hadn’t mustered enough enthusiasm to buy it.

But old musical flames are never entirely extinguished.

In October, Radiohead’s announcement that In Rainbows, their first album in four years, would be available as a name-your-own-price download from their website had critics and diehard fans salivating like Pavlov’s dogs. (It was released in CD format in January). The album hit hard drives ten days later, triggering torrents of effusive praise: “All of it rocks; none of it sounds like any other band on earth; it delivers an emotional punch that proves all other rock stars owe us an apology.” – Rolling Stone

Rave reviews weren’t about to sway me—the band has long been a critical darling. But name my own price? I couldn’t resist.

A mélange of the band’s host of past stylistic leanings, In Rainbows is their most sonically rich album, mixing tempered experimentation with melodic sensibilities. Although the band doesn’t entirely eschew verse-chorus song structure, many of the songs hinge on dynamic shifts and instrumental layering. Opening track, “15 Step,” begins with a pastiche of programmed drumbeats paired with Thom Yorke’s quavering vocal, and just as you’re thinking, “Ugh, not another electronica album,” Jonny Greenwood’s sinuous guitar line slides into the mix, joined later by tumbling bass runs, synthesizers, and live percussion—there’s even a snippet of children shouting “Yeah!” “Bodysnatchers,” the band’s heftiest slab of guitar rock in a decade, builds from a bruising distorted riff into an onslaught of sounds that culminates in frenzied cacophony.

The ferocity is short-lived, though, as the band settles into subdued tones. Yorke’s ethereal falsetto floats atop a gentle guitar and ambient keyboards on the drowsy “Nude” while frenetic percussion and swirling arpeggios propel “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi,” building tension but never erupting. “All I Need,” the album’s centerpiece, proves that Radiohead can, in fact, still write a song that follows traditional pop structure. A bellowing synth hook undergirds the haunting melody before the song swells into its climatic coda.

The dynamic twists the band deftly employs on the first five tracks are in short supply on the second half of the album, with a string of songs each deviating very little from their first few bars—an acoustic folk figure on “Faust Arp,” a clattering dance beat and silky guitar line on “Reckoner,” a torpid jazz lounge progression on “House of Cards.” Taken separately, the songs are enjoyable enough—well, maybe not “House of Cards”—but listening to them consecutively feels like the musical equivalent of lying in tepid bath water.

Though it sounds underdeveloped, the feverish, acoustic-driven “Jigsaw Puzzle Falling into Place” provides a much-needed spark. The album closes with the minor-chord ballad “Videotape.” What the song lacks in variation—it’s no less repetitive than the aforementioned bath water songs—it makes up in emotional heft with a haunting piano and Yorke’s fragile vocal.

Besides “Bodysnatchers,” Yorke steers clear of his trademark cryptic, paranoia-tinged lyrics. But that’s not necessarily a good thing. He resorts to some pedestrian metaphors—“I am a moth who just wants to share your light” (“All I Need”)—gives a quick lesson in clichés—“Did the cat get your tongue? Did your string come undone (“15 Step”)—and sometimes just tosses off non-sequitur place fillers—“Squeeze the tubes and empty bottles/ It’s what you feel not what you ought to” (“Faust Arp”). But no line is more egregious than his declaration that opens “House of Cards”: “I don’t want to be your friend/ I just want to be your lover.” Prince may be able to get away with lines like that, but not Thom Yorke. Still, he does manage to craft some evocative lines that are notable for their unsettling singularity—“I am an animal trapped in your hot car” (“All I Need”)—or palpable gloom—“When I’m at the pearly gates/ This’ll be on my videotape/ Mephistopheles is just beneath/ And he’s reaching up to grab me.”

Sure, it’s not entirely the Radiohead I’ve missed for the past ten years, but In Rainbows is a welcome return to them sounding like a band again, to writing songs with some warmth, not to mention melody. So, I admit it. I’m rethinking my musical estrangement. Granted, I’m not ready to make a solid commitment again—I could very well find their next CD better suited as a drink coaster—but I’m willing to listen to what they have to say.

The Tale of a Java-Peddling Giant

2008-01-07T00:27:00.002-05:00

Originally published in the January 2008 issue of the Main Street Journal

My love affair with coffee began in college at a cozy coffee shop on the outskirts of campus. And though I still prefer small-scale establishments, I’ve indulged in my fair share of grande americanos with cream and Splenda, white chocolate mochas, java chip Frappucinos and the like. Millions of people have.

By the time you finish reading this review, there’s a chance that another Starbucks will have opened its doors somewhere in the world. What was once a hip little upstart company now boasts over 15,000 stores (over 10,000 in the U.S.) in 43 countries, including places like Oman, Malaysia, and Lebanon—there is even in a Starbucks at the Great Wall of China. The coffee-purveying behemoth opens an average of six stores per day and over two thousand in a year, and if company owner Howard Schultz gets his wish, the number of stores will eventually swell to 40,000. At that point no one short of cave dwellers may be out of the gaze of the green mermaid.

But how did Schultz manage to thrive in a market that barely existed prior to Starbucks? And is the company the greed-driven, deleterious enterprise some of its detractors accuse it of being? Taylor Clark explores these questions in Starbucked: A Double Tall Tale of Caffeine, Commerce, and Culture (Little, Brown and Company; 271 pages). Clark, a Portland-based journalist, finds the company’s ubiquity troubling, lamenting that “Starbucks diminishes the world’s diversity every time it builds a new café, and I can’t help but feel troubled by this.” Although Clark is wary of the culture impact of the company’s global proliferation, anti-Starbucks readers hoping for an invective against the chain will be disappointed. Clark blends thorough, objective reporting with a double shot of wit for an enlightening, entertaining read.

Starbuck’s meteoric rise is indeed a marvel. As Clark explains, “The company took a commodity that Americans could get for a quarter at carts and diners, reshaped it into a luxury product, convinced customers to buy it hugely inflated prices, and built stores only a few blocks apart in every major city, yet patrons continue to line up in ever-greater numbers to fork over their money.”

By the time Howard Schultz became Starbuck’s vice president of marketing in 1982, the company had enjoyed over a decade of success in Seattle, but Jerry Baldwin and Gordon Bowker, two of the three original proprietors (Zev Siegl sold his share of the business in 1980) had no desire to expand beyond their six stores. Schultz, though, insisted Starbucks could succeed on a national scale. His visit to an espresso bar in Milan in 1983, which he described as nothing short of an epiphany, only further fueled his desire for the company’s expansion: “It was so immediate and physical that I was shaking . . . If we could re-create in America the authentic Italian coffee bar culture, it might resonate with other Americans the way it did with me.” Schultz convinced Baldwin to serve espresso-based drinks in the newest store, and the drinks, particularly the caffe latte, were wildly popular, but Baldwin still had no desire to build more locations. Frustrated, Schultz broke out on his own in 1985, opening the first of five Il Giornale espresso bars.

In 1987, Baldwin decided to sell Starbucks in order to move to Berkeley in order to manage Peet’s Coffee and Tea full-time—he had bought the company from his mentor Alfred Peet, several years earlier. With his dream within reach, Schultz scraped together nearly $4 million in financial backing and bought the company. Twenty years later, Starbucks is a fixture of the modern world.

Clark attributes the rise of Starbucks in part to the societal needs it filled. With the growing incomes of the 1990s came increasing workloads, and people sought “affordable luxuries” to relieve stress: “For frazzled, affluent worker bees looking to feel spoiled and get a kick of energy, nothing could beat a warm, custom-made espresso drink.” But more importantly, he believes, Starbucks provided a place for social connection, even if it was only to hang out alone in the company of others. Schultz latched onto sociology professor Ray Oldenburg’s concept of the “third place”—in fact, he has begun claiming he coined the concept—with home and work being the other two places. Some of the company’s idealism is laughably far-fetched. A video for new employees explains, “At Starbucks, we are purveyors of coffee, and tea, and hope. And a little bit of sanity.”

Of course, Schultz’s idealism, genuine or not, does not account for the Starbucks’ global dominance. Clark details the company’s meticulously constructed marketing and growth strategies, ranging from its customized drink-ordering lingo, to its store design templates, to its cutthroat expansion tactics. Some of the strategies, such as building outlets near dry cleaners and video rental stores to give customers two chances to buy coffee, are quite clever, while others, like trying to predict what colors will be fashionable for summer apparel in order to create Frappuccino flavors that match, seem downright silly. Still, there’s no arguing Starbucks’ success.

But success at what cost?

In Part II of the book, entitled “Getting Steamed,” Clark examines charges Starbucks’ critics commonly levy against the company, and his findings are sometimes surprising. Many opponents of Starbucks argue that its practice of placing new stores near competitors’ stores in order to leech business has crippled locally owned coffee shops. However, Clark suggests that for independent coffee shops “a Starbucks nearby is actually a cause for celebration.” According to the Specialty Coffee Association of America, independents comprise 57 percent of the coffeehouses in the nation, with the number of independents increasing 40 percent between 2000 and 2005. Clark believes one reason independents have thrived despite Starbucks’ proliferation is due to what they can offer consumers: lower prices, later hours, a more diverse food menu, better coffee. And for first-time coffee drinkers, Starbucks may serve as a gateway drug of sorts into gourmet coffee, inspiring people then to venture into an independent shop.

In assessing the criticism that Starbucks exploits coffee farmers by paying unfair prices for their product, Clark provides a limpid, concise explanation of Fair Trade coffee and questions how fair it really is to the farmers and whether Starbucks, which purchases only 2 percent of the world’s coffee every year, could impact the market through an increase in Fair Trade purchasing. He reveals that in 2006, the company paid an average of $1.46 per pound, $0.16 more than the Fair Trade price. Clark contends that the real culprits of farmer exploitation are the Big Four coffee conglomerates—Nestle, Proctor and Gamble, Philip Morris, and Massimo Zanetti—which buy enormous amounts of dirt cheap, robusta beans, accounting for 60 percent of the U.S. coffee supply. The best way to help struggling farmers is to refuse to drink those companies’ coffee. “It’s simple,” he says, “more demand for good beans leads to better prices for growers.”

Clark goes on to explore contentions of detrimental health effects of coffee (calorie-laden decadences like Strawberries and Crème Frappuccinos prove the only real threats), employee exploitation, and the destruction of cultural diversity. In each instance he retains an objective tone steadied by his research. Though Clark sides with those who claim Starbucks’ ubiquity increases cultural homogeneity, he doesn’t make a censorious attack on the company, conceding that the company has thrived in even the most unlikely of settings because people are drawn to their product—and that with the decades-old derision of “Charbucks” becoming increasingly true.

Clark’s well-informed, insightful commentary alone makes the book worth reading, but the book gets its charm from the Trivial Pursuit: Coffee Edition-worthy tidbits he peppers throughout and his penchant for humorous asides. Writing about the commercials for Columbian coffee which featured the marketing icon Juan Valdez, he declares, “The coffee must have been good, because no one ever seemed slightly apprehensive about drinking something given to them by a grinning, poncho-wearing guy who had been hiding out in their cupboard with a farm animal,” and when reflecting on coffeehouses’ bygone reputation as centers of intellectual and political discourse, he jokes, “It’s tough to imagine Camille Desmoulins hopping up onto a purple velour couch and hoisting a venti iced mocha for liberty.”

You don’t have to be a Starbucks fan or even a coffee drinker to enjoy Clark’s take on the java-peddling giant, but I contend the book is best enjoyed while slouched on a soft, overstuffed sofa, the book in your lap, and a hot cup of your favorite roast in hand.

My Top 10 Albums of 2007

2007-12-22T18:24:00.000-05:00

Given that I've only heard a fraction of the albums released in 2007, that I basically narrow my music listening to various flavors of rock, and that I find it next to impossible to rank any kind of artistic expression, I really ought to call this list "An Arbitrary Listing of Ten Albums Jason Likes from 2007." About two weeks ago, I submitted my Top 10 list for an internet magazine I write reviews for. This list varies a bit from that one, demonstrating my aforementioned struggles to make such lists.

1. Josh Ritter - The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter
It lacks some of the poignancy of The Animal Years, but it's more adventurous. I never tire of listening to it.

2. The National - Boxer
Elegant, moody, urgent

3. The Avett Brothers - Emotionalism
The first seven songs are so good I sometimes never make it to the second half of the album.

4. Bruce Springsteen - Magic
The production is a bit too polished for my liking, but the songs are quintessential Springsteen.

5. Okkervil River - The Stage Names
A blend of eclectic, eminently catchy music and deft wordplay

6. Band of Horses - Cease to Begin
Thanks to Andy Dunham for recommending this one.

7.Wilco - Sky Blue Sky
This one has grown on me. The album took on a new life after seeing them in concert a few months back.

8. Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
The finest indie-pop export from the city I used to call home.

9. Ola Podrida - Ola Podrida
Kester Smith mentioned the band on his blog a while back and their name alone prompted me to check them out. But the "they" is really just one guy, David Wingo. The album is some of the best spare, folk-pop I've heard in a long while.

10. Arcade Fire - Neon Bible
I find some of their songs downright cringe-inducing, but so many others are undeniably compelling.

An Addendum to My Previous Post

2007-12-07T18:33:00.000-05:00

As an addendum to my original post, I'd like to briefly explain what compels me to take the leap of faith. As I made quite clear, I'm certain no amount of "Christian evidences" is going to prove the validity of my faith, but there are a number of things in various fields of study that make me feel my beliefs are not those of a crazy person. But pushing me more than what I can infer from empirical data is the power, the "rightness" that can't really be defined, that I see in even the smallest acts compassion, justice, sacrifice, and love, and which was manifested fully in the person of Christ.

Am I certain? No. But I'm compelled enough to seek and to follow.

I'll close by sharing a post I came across on Into the Wardrobe, a site dedicated to all things C.S. Lewis. Adam, a regular poster on the discussion boards, wrote this beautiful expression of what moves him to seek God:

On defining God:

He is the one who's voice you hear in nature and history. If life is an idiotic noise, then we are pursuing nothing. If life is a tune and a lyric, then we are seeking the player, the singer.

These sounds are unaccounted for. They most certainly exist. You are not their source. Seeking their source, hypothesizing its nature and character, is decidedly different from whimsically postulating a fictional creature.

You may argue that God's definition retreats as human understanding advances, His nature and character retaining only what is left of the unexplainable. But Theism was a relatively late development in human thought. The Philosophers knew that human understanding could never gain any ground against purpose; the Fathers knew the same about love.

But our contemporaries have deftly won the war by declaring that their own tiny patch of conquered territory is the only land in Europe; they are the kings of everything that their eyes, closed tightly, survey. The unexplainable is no threat to human understanding, because by definition anything that humans cannot understand must not exist. Purpose and love are whimsies, figments.

But I hear the music. I'll seek its source. And if it's merely idiotic noise, I'd still rather dance than just sit there.

Certainty Part I

2007-12-07T14:38:00.000-05:00

"Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see." Hebrews 11:1

Admittedly, I'm hardly a New Testament scholar and my ventures into in-depth exegesis have been dilettantish at best, so perhaps the verse above carries some nuances in the Greek of which I'm unaware. But reading it as I've always understood it, the verse gives me pause. How can we be certain of something we don't see? I don't know. After all, my faith can often be encapsulated in the father's plea to Jesus to heal his demon-possessed son: "I believe; help me overcome my unbelief." Nonetheless, one thing I do know is that whatever the writer had in mind when he wrote of certainty, he wasn't thinking of an objective, measurable, physical proof--the wording of the verse excludes such an idea. Yet amid the increasingly vociferous challenges to Christianity raised by atheists, it seems to me that many Christians are confident that a logical response will thoroughly deflate any atheistic criticism. In short, that's simply not so.

Some of our time-honored arguments aren't as compelling as we've made them out to be. Take, for example, the "something can't come from nothing" argument, a surefire selection for the Layman Apologetics Hall of Fame if there were such a thing. Now, I'll grant that there's something altogether counterintuitive, if not downright illogical, in the idea that the universe arose into existence from nothing, with no outside being or force serving as the catalyst for creation. However, is it really any more logical to posit that an eternal spiritual being, a being created by no one, brought the universe into existence? If it is, it's hardly overwhelmingly so. The reason we find the latter more cogent, I believe, is due in part to our presupposition that God exists.

Of course, science-wielding atheists bring hold their own presuppositions, the most fundamental one being that what is true is that which can be measured or detected empirically. Therefore, because God can't be proven empirically, He doesn't exist. But to claim that mankind in his little speck of the universe can declare the bounds of truth is not only arrogance but also flawed logic. In a discussion board on slashdot.org, a mathematician (perhaps a Christian) wrote the following:

Science and religion are orthogonal to each other. The
set of axioms that runs:

Science deals in falsifiable statements.
'God' cannot be falsified.
Science disproves (falsifies) 'God'

wouldn't last five minutes in Introduction to Logic 101.

The only rational thing to say is that science does not
allow us to make statements about the existence of
'God,' which should hardly be a surprise to anyone.

He goes on to write:

We know for a fact that mathematics as we practice it
today cannot derive all possible truths from a finite set
of axioms. We know that science doesn't give us the
tools to discuss matters of agency or initial-first-causes.
Watching people ignore those limits and use 'science' to
'disprove God' offends me as a mathematician.

Well, that settles it. We've thwarted Enlightenment-imbued atheism! No, not really. Although we cannot disprove God's existence scientifically, we can't prove it scientifically either. And to recognize that science has limits is not tantamount to proving there actually is a spiritual element that lies beyond it. The same holds true when we argue God's existence based on the existence of beauty, man's desire for justice, apparent order in nature, etc. That's not to say such things can't be used to show how a belief in God is reasonable, that we can't make inferences from them, but they aren't proof. As T.S. Eliot writes in "The Dry Salvages" from Four Quartets: "Hints followed by guesses; and the rest/ Is prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action."

Don't think that I'm denouncing apologetics. Far from it. I think the best Christian apologists demonstrate that Christians can, in fact, be highly intelligent, rational people. The problem is when we fail to recognize the limitations of apologetics, just as some atheists fail to recognize those of science.

Try as we might to compile a list of arguments that eventually add up to an irrefutable proof of our beliefs, we ultimately have to take Kierkegaard's leap of faith. For some the leap is shorter than it is for others, but we all take a leap just the same. But in acknowledging that a leap, however big it may be, exists, we're admitting that there's a chance we may be wrong. And that's scary. So we cling to the security blanket of certainty.

How do we know if we're clinging to the blanket? I'd say if any of the following statements are true (and some have been true of me at times), then you're a theological Linus:

- You assume all non-believers are denying God's existence--blatantly obvious to all mankind--because they'd rather pursue their own sinful desires than submit to God.

- When someone questions your beliefs, you become extremely defensive.

- When responding to criticism from non-believers, your main concern is to prove you're right and they're wrong.

- Convinced of the infallibilty of your position, you approach your study of any other world view assuming it's entirely fallacious.

- You refuse to respond, "I don't know" to any difficult theological question.

So going back to Hebrews 11:1, how can we be certain of something we don't see? Well, I still don't know really. But I suspect it has little, if anything, to do with constructing an invincible bulwark of logic.

"Lord, What's Your Will for ______ ?"

2007-11-28T16:24:00.000-05:00

"Lord, is she the one I should marry?" "Lord, which job should I take?" "Lord, where do you want me to live?" "Lord, what's your will for my life?"

You've all heard those sorts of questions. Maybe you've asked some of them yourself. I have. In fact, I used to ask those sorts of questions quite a bit, especially in college. That's not strange, I suppose, given that the idea of discerning God's will permeates mainstream Christianity. But why does it? There are scriptures that speak of God's will but not in the context of someone petitioning God to know if He has an itinerary set for the ordinary matters of his or her life.

Of course, it's commonly considered a demonstration of the strength of one's faith to "let go, and let God." To an extent, there's scriptural support for such an approach--"Don't worry about tomorrow..." "Be anxious in nothing..."--but those teachings aren't an invitation to inaction. And isn't spending inordinate amounts of time praying to God to reveal His will for mundane aspects of my life just a spiritually-disguised form of worry? To me, surrendering my will to God is not a call for me to postpone making decisions until He gives me insight into some meticulously arranged plan for my life, it's giving up my sinful and selfish behavior and ACTIVELY setting about living as Christ.

So, again, why is the idea of discerning God's will for your life so popular in contemporary Christianity?

Well, in one sense it functions as a security blanket, relieving us of the fear that we may make a bad choice. I admit I still pray for wisdom when I face a difficult decision, but I don't pray for some signpost from God to delineate which choice is His will. Isn't passively waiting for some clear indication of God's will in some ways similar to the guy who buries the talent his master gives him? *

The belief not only relieves us of the fear of making a bad choice, it provides the security of meaning, giving special significance to our ordinary endeavors and making those things matter in God's design for the cosmos. I believe there is meaning in life and that it comes ultimately from God; however, I haven't found any compelling reason to believe that God has laid out some individualized plan for my life. I suspect that if God had verbally responded to one of my "Lord, what's your will for . . .?" prayers, the conversation would've gone something like this:

"Lord, what's your will for my life?"

"Live as Christ."

"But, what about my job?"

"Live as Christ."

"A wife?"

"Live as Christ."

"Where should I live?"

"Live as Christ."

"So, you don't have a plan for my life?"

"Jason, I'm growing tired of repeating myself."

I'm not saying God doesn't work through and in the lives of people--He does--but that's not the same as laying out specified plans for everyone.

Ah, but Jason, what about the people in the Bible that God had specific plans for? Sure, there are plenty of such people in the Bible, and I don't discount the possibility that God can call people to specific tasks today, but as the biblical examples show, God gives those people blatant signs. He comes to them with instructions; they don't petition him for glimpses of a plan.

Most importantly, whenever God called one of those people to a specific task, his plans were large in scope. To me, the biggest problem with asking God what His will is for things like who we should marry, where we should work, etc. (well, besides the fact I don't believe He has one) is that it fosters self-absorption. How can I possibly place others above myself if all I think about is what God is going to do for me?

* I'd pondered this topic for a while but was remiss to write anything on it. To my surprise, I discovered last night that Richard Beck's latest post on his blog, Experimental Theology, addressed the very same issue--albeit more articulately. I think his assessment of absolving ourselves from decision-making as a means of comfort is insightful, so I'll include it here:

"To be a people of deep, hard won character we have to make choices without signs and support from God. Further, I think God demands this of us, just as we demand it from our children. At some point in moral development we stop making choices for the child and begin to ask, "What do you think you should do?" Forcing the child to make the choice and accept the consequences. Of course, the child resists this. As we do as adults. But to rescue the child from this anxiety is to do a disservice to the moral development of the child. And I ask, would not God be doing the same thing for us? If God gives out signs on a regular basis, constantly rescuing people from hard choices, would God not be turning Christians into dependent, needy, and passive persons?"

Bathroom Humor: Erudites in the Making

2007-11-13T16:01:00.000-05:00

I overhead the following conversation this afternoon in the bathroom between a junior in my English class and a student in another section of English 11.

My student: Hey, did you know George Wilson kills Gatsby?

Other student: Man, don't tell me about the end of the book; we're still reading it!

My student: You're actually reading the book?

Other student: Yeah, it's pretty good.

My student: I've only read the Spark Notes. I've heard it's a good book, though. I just haven't had time to read it.

Other student: Yeah, it's good. The thing I don't like about it though is when he goes into all those details. I wish writers wouldn't go into so much detail. If they just focused on the plot, you know, like sort of a summary, I'd like reading better.

Silly, Fitzgerald.

Jimmy Eat World's "Chase This Light"

2007-10-20T18:57:00.000-04:00

After exploring some murkier territory with Futures and the brooding Stay on My Side Tonight EP, Jimmy Eat World have returned with a brighter, more pop-infused sound on Chase This Light. That approach, of course, isn't exactly a new one for the Arizona outfit - Bleed American, the band's 2001 commercial breakthrough, offered one indelible hook after another. Although Chase This Light boasts a number of catchy songs that could generate a radio-play resurgence for the band, it lacks the eclecticism and sustained urgency that permeates their best work.

The album begins promisingly enough with the anthemic assault of "Big Casino." Lyrically, the song combines the band's trademark seize-the-day outlook with a measure of skepticism, with Jim Adkins' narrator weighing his romanticized ambitions against disillusionment: "Get up! Get up!/ Dance on the ceiling?/ Get up! Get up!/ Boy, you must be dreaming/ Rock on young savior/ But don't get up your hopes." The band sustains the opening track's intensity with the defiant rocker "Let It Happen," in which Adkins defiantly declares, "Say whatever you want/ I can laugh it off."

From there the band slides into the effulgent pop of "Always Be" and "Carry You" - both tracks are sweet treats of ear candy, but with their spit-shined production, breezy instrumentation, and similar lyrical focus they sound more or less like the same song. The politically-minded "Electable (Give It Up)" bursts with exuberance, melding a bit of the band's post-punk roots with a Killers-esque synth bed. The lyrics are far too ambiguous to provide any depth, but, hey, is anyone really expecting Adkins to be a "The Times They Are A'Changin'"-era Bob Dylan?

On the slinking "Gotta Be Somebody's Blues," Adkins' whispery vocals and a haunting string section help buttress the track's ominous tone, yet only fans of plodding, repetitive melodies will take to the song's molasses-like viscosity. The album regains some of its early energy with the buoyant power-pop of "Feeling Lucky." The song lacks any sort of rough edge, though, leaving it sounding closer to "That Thing You Do" than say, "A Praise Chorus."

Although Butch Vig's glossy production inhibits the album's harder tracks from reaching Jimmy Eat World's customary level of intensity, it does prove to be the perfect treatment for the danceable "Here It Goes." A combination of an eminently catchy melody and deft percussion, the song could compel even the most gawky, rhythmically-challenged post-emo wallflower to hit the dance floor.

Unfortunately, for having begun relatively strongly, Chase This Light ends with a three-song yawn. For a song about pursuing a desire with abandon, the title track sounds feeble, while "Firefight" is one of the blandest uptempo songs the band has written to date. "Dizzy" ends the band's run of phenomenal album closers that began with Clarity's "Goodbye Sky Harbor." The song is aimed at exerting some emotional pull, but with it's power ballad arrangement and forced lyrics ("Do you hear this conversation we talk about?") it's more befitting of a summer blockbuster's soundtrack.

Chase This Light's would-be killer singles make for enjoyable listening, but taken as a whole it feels uninspired for a band known for its ambition. It's not a mindless pop record, but it's highly unlikely to elicit any of the "this album changed my life" responses in listeners the way Clarity and Bleed American did before it.

Religion as a Hobby

2007-09-17T12:37:00.000-04:00

I read something on Richard Beck's blog today, Experimental Theology, that rings with a lot of truth. In his latest entry, "Hurry," he describes John Darley and Daniel Batson's 1973 study From Jerusalem to Jericho in which they conducted a controlled simulation of the parable of the Good Samaritan with seminary students. To read Richard's full post, including a description of the workings of the study, go here:

http://experimentaltheology.blogspot.com/2007/09/everyday-evil-part-6-hurry.html

In short, the seminarians who were in the least hurry were the ones who most often stopped to help someone in need.

But here's the part of Richard's post I'd like to focus on. In examining the implications of the study, he writes:

We are a different kind of person when we are hurried versus when we are unhurried. There is no "real" you. There is, rather, hurried you and unhurried you. And, as your family, friends, and coworkers can attest, hurried you and unhurried you are really two very different people.

Second, Jerusalem to Jericho makes this acute observation: Most of us pursue spirituality as a hobby. That is, Life with God is pursued as a leisure activity. Why do I say this? Well, hobbies and leisure activities are what we pursue when we have free, expendable time our our hands. But when we have "stuff to do," we tend to place our hobbies to the side. They are not allowed to interfere with our urgent agenda. If so, then the Jerusalem to Jericho study suggests that helping others, for many, is a hobby. It's something to do on weekends, when you have some spare time. This is a penetrating diagnosis. Too many Christians treat altruism as a hobby, rather than as a central and urgent feature of their life. In short, you know Life with God is no longer a hobby when altruism is allowed to interfere with your life.

Third, hurry is a form of everyday evil. Hurry turns us into self-interested, callous jerks. We need to be reminded that love involves slowness. Love has a speed, a pace.

So, how do we make our faith the "central and urgent feature" of our life instead of a hobby? I think the answer may lie in working and pushing each other in our churches as a community of believers. But how can we do that when as the individuals comprising a church most of us are rather complacent?

The Problem of Pain

2007-09-05T10:44:00.000-04:00

No, I don't intend to discuss C.S. Lewis' book The Problem of Pain, nor do I want to try to tackle directly the question of theodicy--"How do we reconcile the existence of evil and suffering in the world with a benevolent God?. Maybe that's a post for another week. But here are the questions I'd like to pose: Accepting the fact that evil and suffering do exist, why does God seem to do so little to mitigate them? Why does God seem to seldom if ever intervene when we pray for people with life-threatening illnesses?

Suffering can plague entire segments of a population or entire nations. As someone born into middle-class America, I essentially won the geographical lottery compared to someone born in an inner-city slum or in a third-world country. Millions of people around the globe go hungry and suffer diseases that we no longer have to bother about. Why the disparity in fortune? Some thinkers have suggested that virtues such as compassion would not be possible without the presence of suffering. But if God is love, then such virtues existed perfectly in Him before anyone existed on earth to suffer. Furthermore, the explanation feels like God would be using people as object lessons. Maybe He is, but I find the explanation rather cold. Whatever the reason for the disparity, if we as the church are to act as Christ's body, then we need to be about meeting the needs of the "least of these." Unfortunately, I don't think we focus nearly enough on doing so.

As to the second question, consider James 5:13-16: "Is any of you in trouble? He should pray. Is anyone happy? Let him sing songs of praise. Is any one if you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective." Some writers have suggested that James is concerned with spiritual healing in this passage. Perhaps some of you who possess some hermeneutical acumen could support or refute that claim for us. But as I understand the passage, although James does address spiritual healing, he also speaks of physical healing. We spend a lot of our time in prayer (as a church body and as individuals) asking God to heal the deathly sick or severely injured, but how often are they made well? Sure, we have to balance James' passage with the fact that everyone eventually dies, but I'm sure we could all compile rather lengthy lists of children or young fathers or mothers we've fervently prayed to be healed only for them to die. Are we misunderstanding scripture?

Victims of the Cold War

2007-08-31T15:44:00.000-04:00

The atrocities described in this article both sadden and infuriate me:

Inside the Nuclear Underworld: Deformity and Fear

By Matthew Chance
CNN

SEMEY, Kazakhstan (CNN) -- Kazakhstan's nuclear orphans are a distressing sight.

This young child slept at an orphanage, his deformities the result of nuclear testing in the region.

The first child I met in the local orphanage was lying limply in his crib. His giant, pale head was perched on his tiny shoulders, covered in bed sores, like a grotesquely painted paper-mâché mask. Peering out, a pair of tiny black eyes darted around.

It took me a few seconds to understand what I was seeing. The doctor told me he was 4 years old.

Through the bars in the next crib, I saw another child, twisted with deformities. His fragile legs and arms turned in impossible contortions.

These are the children of Kazakhstan's terrifying nuclear past.

Decades of Soviet nuclear testing unleashed a plague of birth defects. When the Soviet Union tested its nuclear devices, it chose eastern Kazakhstan, one of its remotest, most desolate areas. But no one bothered to evacuate the people living there. Watch the effects of nuclear bombs on villagers »

The testing began in 1949 at a site known as Polygon and continued until 1989. According to the Nuclear Threat Initiative, there were 456 tests, including 116 nuclear bombs tested above ground. The Polygon site officially closed on August 29, 1991 -- 16 years ago this week.

Local officials say there were hundreds of thousands of people, possibly as many as a million, who lived in the region during the nuclear testing. The end of the Cold War might have ended this dark chapter, but thousands are still paying a terrible price. Learn more about nuclear testing »

From the old Soviet city of Semipalatinsk, now renamed Semey, it was a long grueling drive across the barren, flat Kazakh plain. Nature can be hostile here, with temperatures hitting over 100 degrees Fahrenheit in summer, then plunging to 40 below in winter.

The people living in the villages scattered throughout this former nuclear testing zone have been through the unspeakable. Seriqkaisha is 62 years old. She remembers watching the mushroom clouds as a child.

"We were very frightened," she told me, "because the windows in our house would blow out and the walls would shake. My parents both died of cancer, and my own son is handicapped."

Almost every family in Seriqkaisha's village, 20 miles from the old test site, is affected -- from cancers to impotency to birth defects and other deformities. See where the nuclear site is located »

Meeting people was proving hard. The genetic defections and illnesses that afflict so many here are frequently a source of shame. The doctor told me that people hide their deformed family members from outsiders. For decades, they have felt like animals in a zoo, she said, and had grown to distrust prying eyes.

The region also has one of the highest suicide rates in the world, according to local health officials. Tragically, many young men who discover they are impotent -- one of the effects of nuclear fallout -- end their own lives.

A doctor introduced me to Biken -- one of the few residents who agreed to be interviewed. She was born in 1951, two years after the nuclear testing began. Her facial disfigurement, she said, has always brought her despair.

"If only there had been no bombs, I could have been equal to every one else. My youngest daughter looks like me too. I worry about her future, more than anything," Biken said.

It was heartbreaking to hear.

The problem of defects is so big, there's even a museum of mutations at the regional medical institute back in Semey, the largest city near the old nuclear testing site. It's a small room filled with jars containing deformed fetuses and human organs preserved in formaldehyde.

It's hard to look at them -- babies with bulging eyes and malformed brains, or conjoined twins locked in a contorted embrace.

The head of the institute, Tolebae Rakhipbekov, showed me around and told me how this house was more than just a grim collection of anomalies.

It was the reality for some parents, and a real fear for everyone who lives here.

"You could call these children, and others affected, victims of the Cold War. Kazakhstan has refused nuclear ambitions now because it experienced 40 years of this war. Nowhere else were there so many nuclear tests," Rakhhipbekov said.

And nowhere else, I suppose, are so many Cold War injustices still being felt.

Of, course our country's hands are blood-stained, too. Although the U.S. employed less egregious methods of nuclear testing than the Soviets did, our own testing led to cancers and health problems in hundreds of thousands of people. Check out this National Geographic article:

http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0211/feature1/online_extra.html

"Encountering" God

2007-08-28T15:26:00.001-04:00

There's a lot of talk these days among mainstream Christian traditions of "encountering" or "experiencing" God. Now, encountering/experiencing God would seem a worthy aim, but as it's often defined, it leans toward an emotionally-based concept--getting warm, fuzzy feelings about God. As I see it the focus on emotion poses several problems.

First, some folks simply aren't warm, fuzzy-feeling people. Some people are geared to intellectual, pensive worship. Most of the time I am one of those people. So does that mean I can't experience whatever it means to "experience" God? As I mentioned in the last thread, there are times that worship overwhelms me emotionally, but that doesn't happen frequently. Besides the fact that getting emotional in worship may have little to do with what it means to experience God (I think we sometimes get infatuated with our view of God rather than searching fervently to find who He actually is), many churches seem geared to evoking one emotion: happiness. Personally, I'd like to see worship services that encompass a fuller range of emotions. I mean, look at the Psalms. Sure, there are songs of praise, but there are plenty songs of lament, pleading, confession, and frustration, too. I'd find it impossible to sing songs like "I Was Made for This" if I were grieving the illness or death of a loved one.

Another problem with an emotionally-defined experience of God is that sometimes God seems nowhere to be found. Going back to Mother Teresa, she struggled through forty years of painful doubting, unable to "sense" His presence and at times even questioning His existence. Yet she exhibited more abandon to Christ's cause than most of us would ever hope to--or, to be honest, ever want to.

The last problem I have with the notion of experiencing God is that we typically speak of it in context of corporate worship. I'm all for having meaningful worship services (although I don't think dynamic is tantamount to meaningful), but participating in an incredibly stirring worship service once a week would do about as much to deepen my faith as spending only an hour with my wife once a week would deepen my relationship with her.

I'd contend that we "encounter" God when we're in community with other Christians--and that entails much more than sharing the same room with them once or twice a week--and when we're serving others. Returning one last time to Mother Teresa, although she had little if any emotional contentment, based on Christ's teaching in Matthew 25, she experienced Christ in the most profound way possible.

Josh Ritter - The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter

2007-08-23T18:51:00.000-04:00

Here's the review I wrote for Lost at Sea:

Coming only a year after the stunning The Animal Years, The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter finds the Idaho-born troubadour boldly claiming musical territory with a reinvented sound, turning from the meticulous arrangements and somber ruminations of his previous album to a more daring, moxie-charged approach that yields some of the freshest, most captivating songs of his career.

The album opens with the delightfully clattering “To the Dogs or Whoever,” a song that demands repeated listening not only because it’s ridiculously catchy but also because you can only grasp about half the lyrics the first time around. Backed by a jangling guitar and pounding piano and drums, Ritter, as literate as ever, delivers a dizzying array of images and allusions ranging from Joan of Arc to the Crimean War before the chorus storms in like a saloon sing-along: “In the dark I thought I heard somebody callin’/ In the dark I thought I heard somebody call.” That sort of boisterousness is in no short supply on Conquests. Whether they’re tearing through galloping country-western (“Next to the Last Romantic”) or bursting into a Steinway-pounding frenzy (“Real Long Distance”), Ritter and his band mates are definitely having themselves a good time.

On the swaggering, piano-punctuated “Mind’s Eye,” Ritter adopts the persona of a gunslinger who’s grown tired of feeble challengers: “I’m putting up with you lightweights/ Calling me out to the middle of the street/ Oh I’ve got you in my mind’s eye/ I’ve got you in my mind’s eye.” On “Rumors” he adds even more muscle to piano/percussion-headed strut with a husky horn section while on the propulsive “Open Doors,” he strips things down to a spare, low-fi arrangement of acoustic guitar and drums.

Ritter’s songcraft is no less superb when he smooths the edges of his sound. The bittersweet gem “Empty Hearts” coasts on one of his finest gentle melodies. A retro string arrangement and soulful horns fill out the breezy first single, “Right Moves,” as Ritter sings of the difficulty of rekindling a relationship with a former lover: “Am I making all the right moves?/ Am I singing you the right blues?/ Is there a chance that I could call you/ Just to see how you are doing?” On the spellbinding ballad “The Temptation of Adam,” perhaps the best song on the album, strings, muted horns, and a bass clarinet enhance the melancholy of Ritter’s acoustic figures. A love story set in a missile silo, the song moves from tender to unsettling as the narrator worries his relationship with his Marie will dissolve once they return to the surface: “As our time grows short I get a little nervous/ I think about the Big One, W.W. I.I.I./ Would we ever really care the world had ended?/ You could hold me here forever like you’re holding me tonight/ I look at that great big red button and I’m tempted.”

Ritter’s relaxed, free-spirited approach does lead to a few superfluous moments. The brief instrumental “Edge of the World” and the apparently unfinished “Moons” certainly could’ve been omitted, and the ethereal “Wait for Love,” though decidedly pretty, isn’t as strong as the full-bodied version of the song that closes the album. But with an album this good, what are a few short detours?

It’s a mystery how Ritter has been so under-appreciated in the States to this point in his career. As a masterful storyteller, playful and profound, with the ability to clear new paths in traditional genres, Ritter is likely more deserving than any other songwriter of his generation to be lauded as “the next Dylan.” And with a growing list of musical conquests to his credit, it’s not hard to imagine a time when writers will celebrate “the next Josh Ritter.”

Lit Bit #6

2007-08-23T11:54:00.000-04:00

Here's a poem by Bob Hicok, one of my favorite contemporary American poets. The poem appeared in the May issue of Poetry.

O my pa-pa
by Bob Hicok

Our fathers have formed a poetry workshop.
They sit in a circle of disappointment over our fastballs
and wives. We thought they didn't read our stuff,
whole anthologies of poems that begin, My father never,
or those that end, and he was silent as a carp,
or those with middles which, if you think
of the right side as a sketch, look like a paunch
of beer and worry, but secretly, with flashlights
in the woods, they've read every word and noticed
that our nine happy poems have balloons and sex
and giraffes inside, but not one dad waving hello
from the top of a hill at dusk. Theirs
is the revenge school of poetry, with titles like
"My Yellow Sheet Lad" and "Given Your Mother's Taste
for Vodka, I'm Pretty Sure You're Not Mine."
They're not trying to make the poems better
so much as sharper or louder, more like a fishhook
or electrocution, as a group
they overcome their individual senilities,
their complete distaste for language, how cloying
it is, how like tears it can be, and remember
every mention of their long hours at the office
or how tired they were when they came home,
when they were dragged through the door
by their shadows. I don't know why it's so hard
to write a simple and kind poem to my father, who worked,
not like a dog, dogs sleep most of the day in a ball
of wanting to chase something, but like a man, a man
with seven kids and a house to feed, whose absence
was his presence, his present, the Cheerios,
the PF Flyers, who taught me things about trees,
that they're the most intricate version of standing up,
who built a grandfather clock with me so I would know
that time is a constructed thing, a passing, ticking fancy.
A bomb. A bomb that'll go off soon for him, for me,
and I notice in our fathers' poems a reciprocal dwelling
on absence, that they wonder why we disappeared
as soon as we got our licenses, why we wanted
the rocket cars, as if running away from them
to kiss girls who looked like mirrors of our mothers
wasn't fast enough, and it turns out they did
start to say something, to form the words hey
or stay, but we'd turned into a door full of sun,
into the burning leave, and were gone
before it came to them that it was all right
to shout, that they should have knocked us down
with a hand on our shoulders, that they too are mystified
by the distance men need in their love.

#%*_@!!! Red Sox!

2007-08-12T20:25:00.000-04:00

I know it's bad of me to wish Eric Gagne would suffer an unspecified and injury and be place on the DL indefinitely, but I can't help thinking it would help the team. Of course, scoring some runs off the other teams' so-so pitchers would also help. I knew the Sox' big lead early in the season wouldn't last. But even with the Yankees' hot streak, if the Sox hadn't stunk for the past two months (only three games over .500 since June 1st), they'd be coasting to a division title. Instead, they seem to invent new ways to blow games. I'm anticipating yelling at the TV quite a bit when they play the Yankees at the end of this month.

Mother Teresa's "Dark Night of the Soul"

2007-08-07T13:32:00.000-04:00

As someone who grapples with his faith quite regularly, I was instantly intrigued when I saw a copy of First Things with an article entitled "The Dark Night of Mother Teresa" by Carol Zaleski on our "up for grabs" table at school today. You can read the entire article here (Sorry, the "insert a link" doesn't show up as an option at work for some reason): http://www.firstthings.com/article.php3?id_article=486

Zaleski explains how Teresa began her work with the destitute and sick in India with a real sense of God's presence, even a vision of Christ. However, in the decades that followed, she often struggled with intense doubts. Here are some of the more salient passages from the article:

"The Dark Night. Throughout 1946 and 1947, Mother Teresa experienced a profound union with Christ. But soon after she left the convent and began her work among the destitute and dying on the street, the visions and locutions ceased, and she experienced a spiritual darkness that would remain with her until her death. It is hard to know what is more to be marveled at: that this twentieth-century commander of a worldwide apostolate and army of charity should have been a visionary contemplative at heart; or that she should have persisted in radiating invincible faith and love while suffering inwardly from the loss of spiritual consolation. In letters written during the 1950s and 1960s to Fr. Van Exem, Archbishop Périer, and to later spiritual directors, Fr. L. T. Picachy, S.J., and Fr. J. Neuner, S.J., she disclosed feelings of doubt, loneliness, and abandonment. God seemed absent, heaven empty, and bitterest of all, her own suffering seemed to count for nothing, “. . . just that terrible pain of loss, of God not wanting me, of God not being God, of God not really existing.”

"The dark night of Mother Teresa presents us with an even greater interpretive challenge than her visions and locutions. It means that the missionary foundress who called herself “God’s pencil” was not the God-intoxicated saint many of us had assumed her to be. We may prefer to think that she spent her days in a state of ecstatic mystical union with God, because that would get us ordinary worldlings off the hook. How else could this unremarkable woman, no different from the rest of us, bear to throw her lot in with the poorest of the poor, sharing their meager diet and rough clothing, wiping leprous sores and enduring the agonies of the dying, for so many years without respite, unless she were somehow lifted above it all, shielded by spiritual endorphins? Yet we have her own testimony that what made her self-negating work possible was not a subjective experience of ecstasy but an objective relationship to God shorn of the sensible awareness of God’s presence."

". . . by converting her feeling of abandonment by God into an act of abandonment to God. It would be her Gethsemane, she came to believe, and her participation in the thirst Jesus suffered on the Cross. And it gave her access to the deepest poverty of the modern world: the poverty of meaninglessness and loneliness. To endure this trial of faith would be to bear witness to the fidelity for which the world is starving. “Keep smiling,” Mother Teresa used to tell her community and guests, and somehow, coming from her, it doesn’t seem trite. For when she kept smiling during her night of faith, it was not a cover-up but a manifestation of her loving resolve to be “an apostle of joy.”
One can better understand, having read The Soul of Mother Teresa, why she insisted that adoration of Christ present in the Blessed Sacrament should occupy the center of the Missionaries’ daily work; and why she felt it imperative to establish purely contemplative communities that would make the Missionaries of Charity an order of adoration as well as apostolic service. Adoring Christ in the Sacrament is also a way of dark knowing and dark loving. To all appearances he is absent, as Aquinas says in the Tantum ergo Sacramentum, so faith must supply what is lacking to our feeble senses. Humanly, there were times when Mother Teresa felt burnt out, but faith supplied what was lacking even to troubled faith; spiritually she was often desolate, but her vow endured and her visible radiance-to which everyone attests-was undiminished. This lifelong fidelity should not be confused with a Stoic determination to keep going in the face of defeat. It was something else entirely: objective Christian joy."

In one sense her feelings of abandonment were very much akin to Christ's struggles in Gethsemane. And perhaps that's one of the most profound ways in which Christ participated in our sufferings. But although her life is certainly a testament of perservering faith, the skeptic in me asks why she would so fully abandon her life to her faith when she felt no "sensible awareness of God's presence." Sure, the Bible speaks of God as a comforter, but how can someone derive comfort with no sense of God's presence? My wife wouldn't believe that I love her if all I did was tell her so. I have to actively demonstrate that love. Of course, one could argue that God, in Christ, has offered the ultimate demonstration of His love. I agree. But if He was willing to do something of that nature, why not decidedly smaller demonstrations of His presence? I mean, I'd like to think that someone who sacrificed her life as Teresa did would get some assurances from God once in a while. Was it because God felt she didn't need them? I know people often speak of God comforting them in suffering. I, too, have felt the same way at times. But are we comforted by God's presence or solely by our belief in Him acting as a coping mechanism? Is there any way to know the answer?

Lit Bit #5

2007-08-02T13:59:00.000-04:00

Another of my favorite poems

"Those Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden

Sundays too my father got up early
And put his clothes on in the blueback cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he'd call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love's austere and lonely offices?

Say It Ain't So!

2007-07-27T16:30:00.000-04:00

http://www.reuters.com/article/televisionNews/idUSN2439321520070724

Well, at least the investigators aren't contending that he didn't actually drink his own urine on several occasions.

The Minor Canon - No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

2007-07-26T14:06:00.000-04:00

The Minor Canon’s band bio certainly isn’t the first press release to belie a band’s sound, calling their music “gritty.” “Gritty” isn’t the best word to describe a piano/acoustic-based band with a horn section and a singer whose voice is often reminiscent of Matthew Sweet’s. Comparing the band’s sound to “Memphis soul on an indie bender” seems a bit of a stretch as well. But questionable descriptors aside, the Los Angeles-based sextet, led by singer-songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Paul Larson, offer a few twists to indie pop on their debut album, No Good Deed Goes Unpunished.

If every song on the album were as engaging as the opening track, “It Never Was,” then the band could add “one of the finest indie pop albums in years” to its bio and be justified in doing so. A perfect marriage of emotive dynamics and melody, the song is a true pop gem, steadily intensifying through verse/chorus progressions with new instrumentation announcing each shift, whispering through the bridge, and then exploding into a cathartic coda that fades into a somber horn arrangement.

Unfortunately, after the superb opener, Larson and co. quickly steer the album into the mid-tempo doldrums, with a trio of plodding, bass drum-thudding songs. The droning chorus of “A False Start”—“You’re never happy/And you’re never sad” effectively sinks the already monotonous song. On “Bend Like Trees,” the band breaks from conventional verse/chorus structure with a Ben Folds Five-like romp that segues into a horn solo only to return to the song’s lumbering central theme. “The Art of Quick Draw” is livelier than the other two songs, but Larson’s stab at a clever verse falls flat: “I move faster than you can possibly know/And did you want to see it again?”

Just when it seems the album will officially retire into all-out blah, an acoustic ballad of all things energizes the record. Combining a guitar figure Sam Beam would be proud of with Larson’s tender vocals and placid piano backing, “Killing Spiders” is positively beautiful.

With “The Rockets Countdown,” the band resumes the mid-tempo melancholy, but the songs on the second half sound fresher and more focused than those earlier on the album. Moving from shuffle, to waltz, back to shuffle, “Old Long Since” is stronger in its musical detouring than “Bend Like Trees,” but Larson is still a long way from “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant” territory. “The Present Time” coasts atop a gloomy piano arpeggio before ascending into the chorus’s lush texture, while “Cave In,” boasting the album’s brightest melody, is an uplifting, sing-along ode to malaise that would’ve been a fitting closing track. Instead, Larson closes with the seemingly unfinished “Upside Down,” which sounds like he recorded it while trapped in a storm drain.

That the Minor Canon began as Larson’s solo project before it grew into a six-man ensemble may account for some of the album’s unevenness. Still, when the band finds solid footing on No Good Deed, the result is sometimes fantastic and at the very least, as Larson sings on “Cave In,” “quite nice.”

Summer Reading Update

2007-07-24T17:42:00.000-04:00

With the start of in-service creeping ineluctably closer, I'm doing what I can to squeeze in as much reading as possible before I head back to work. Right now I'm a little over 1/4 of the way through Ulysses. Although at times Joyce's stream-of-consciousness leaves me dumbfounded, the novel, as the folks at Guinness like to say, is "Brilliant!"

I've made it through five novels this summer so far. I reread Winesburg, Ohio and Light in August (my favorite Faulkner novel) and tackled Darkness at Noon, An Appointment in Samarra, and The Adventures of Augie March. Darkness is fantastic, but 1984 is still my anti-totalitarian novel of choice. Appointment is very strong as well. Dorothy Parker called John O'Hara "the real F. Scott Fitzgerald." While that may be a bit of a stretch, the novel is proof that the guy knew how to write a tragic story. As I expected, Augie March is a wonderful mix of the comedy and profundity. My only real complaint is that Bellow could've pared down the novel. I'm all for an epic scope, but the novel meanders at times.

Andrew Keen's The Cult of the Amateur

2007-07-24T17:37:00.000-04:00

I wrote this review for the August issue of the Main Street Journal.

It may not sound all that catchy, but millions upon millions have taken up the battle cry of the Web 2.0 revolution: “All things user-generated and participatory!” According to the search engine company Technorati, as of April 2007, the blogosphere boasted nearly 70 million blogs, with 120,000 added daily, while MySpace held over 182 million profiles. And those figures don’t include the ever-increasing numbers of Wikipedia entries, Facebook profiles, message board postings, file sharing sites, or YouTube videos. For Web 2.0 visionaries, the rapid proliferation of user-generated/participatory sites pushes the world toward the dream of democratized media. For Andrew Keen, it harbingers a dystopia.

In his self-described “polemic,” The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet Is Killing Our Culture (Doubleday, 205 pages) Keen, a Silicon entrepreneur turned cultural critic, asserts that “democratization, despite its lofty idealization, is undermining truth, souring civil discourse, and belittling expertise, experience, and talent.” Although Keen’s general concerns possess merit—the difficulty of determining the validity of internet content, the saturation of the net with drivel, the need to protect the work of musicians and writers—his propensity for one-sided analysis, exaggeration and disparaging caviling undermine his arguments.

Keen makes his most cogent point when addressing the reliability of user-generated information. Wikipedia, the popular user-edited encyclopedia, draws repeated criticism from Keen. “By empowering the amateur,” he writes, “we are undermining the experts who contribute to a traditional resource like the Encyclopedia Britannica.” (He is in error to an extent—there are some experts among the site’s contributors). Keen is troubled not only by the site’s “democratic” editing system but also by the anonymity of the contributors, which allowed for a writer known as “Essjay” to pose as a college professor when he was, in fact, a twenty-four-year-old man from Kentucky with no post-high school degrees. Keen’s wariness of Wikipedia is justified, but rather than providing compelling evidence for the inferiority/unreliability of a typical entry compared to one from a traditional encyclopedia, he resorts to barbs and overstatements: “. . . while Dr. William Connolley may be able to discern the misinformed ravings of moonbats (a term Eric Raymond, a respected open-source pioneer, used to describe the Wikipedia community) from the wisdom of experts, the average Internet user cannot. Most of us assume that the information we take in can be trusted. But when the information is created by amateurs, it rarely can be.”

Keen further suggests that the participatory nature of Web 2.0 taints users’ understanding of “authorship” and leads to plagiarism. He cites an Education Weekly survey in which 54% of the students admitted to plagiarizing from the internet and a 2005 study conducted by the Center for Academic Integrity in which 77% of the 50,000 undergrads polled didn’t think internet plagiarism was a “serious” issue. Of course, Keen is right to abhor plagiarism, but he doesn’t delve deeply enough in his analysis. The “blurring, obfuscation, and even disappearance of truth” stems from a relativistic world view that began pervading our culture long before the inception of the internet.

Keen then turns his attention to the amateurs he already blasted in the introduction, where he likened them to the monkeys in T.H. Huxley’s infinite monkeys/infinite typewriters scenario: “And instead of creating masterpieces, these millions and millions of exuberant monkeys—many with no more talent in the creative arts than our primate cousins—are creating endless digital forests of mediocrity. For today’s amateur monkeys can use their networked computers to publish everything from uninformed political commentary, to unseemly home videos, to embarrassingly amateurish music, to unreadable poems, reviews, essays, and novels.”

Keen is certainly not alone in bemoaning the woeful, and sometimes deplorable, content that permeates many user-based cites. But while glorying in his pompous denouncement of amateur work, he disregards the fact that the “experts” and “cultural gatekeepers” he extols throughout the book began as amateurs and that Web 2.0 houses the work of plenty of gifted and intelligent amateurs.

But his belittling of the amateur seems to stem as much from nostalgia as it does from his detesting of atrocious work. He devotes nine pages to an elegiac account of Tower Records, lamenting that “Tower’s remarkably diverse selection cannot be replicated.” For anyone whose immediate response would be “Amazon,” he later writes, “But what these online stores don’t have is the deeply knowledgeable Tower clerk to act as cultural tastemaker. Instead, our buying choices depend upon the anonymous Amazon.com reviewer—a very poor substitute for the bodily encounters that Tower once offered.” While there’s something to be said for personal interaction, how does he know that an Amazon reviewer cannot be as musically knowledgeable as his beloved Tower clerk? Not to mention, metacritic.com, a website that culls reviews from dozens of respected print and online publications, would prove more informative than one person.

As he notes, illegal downloading and piracy have impacted the music industry. But Keen is loose with his statistics in several places. For example, regarding the music industry he says, “Thanks to the rampant digital piracy spawned by file-sharing technology, sales of recorded music dropped over 20 percent between 2000 and 2006.” The source he cites, “No Suit Required” by Jeff Howe, merely notes the decline in sales; Keen attributes it all to piracy.

Piracy has impacted the movie industry as well, with the Motion Picture Association of America estimating the American movie industry lost $6.1 billion in worldwide revenue to all types of digital piracy, with 32% of the lost revenue coming from illegal internet downloads. Keen laments legal enterprises, though, such as ClickStar, Netflix, and Amazon that have cut into box office sales. He even discusses the disappointing returns for Snakes on a Plane despite an extensive internet marketing campaign and seems oblivious to how his relying on such a throwaway film to make his point raises questions about just how qualified he is to be a tastemaker.

According to Keen, Web 2.0 is to be blamed for the troubles across all traditional media, saying, “Every defunct record label, or laid-off newspaper reporter, or bankrupt independent bookstore is a consequence of “free” user-generated Internet content—from Craiglist’s free advertising, to YouTube’s free music videos, to Wikipedia’s free information.” Ridiculous exaggeration aside, Keen later expounds on the declining revenue and lost jobs for traditional media, particularly metropolitan newspapers, decrying Craigslist for taking away advertising dollars from them. The simple fact is that if a service is free (Craigslist) or cheaper (iTunes, discount retailers), then consumers will opt for low/no-cost efficiency.

Keen veers away from his thesis in the last third of the book, discussing the moral and cultural decay demonstrated by sexual predators, internet pornography, online gambling addictions, and identify theft. Few readers would quibble with Keen that these are serious problems, but the internet is but the latest way to feed such vices and evils, and those conniving enough to use them to harm others are hardly amateurs.

In the last chapter Keen examines some ways in which illegal uses of Web 2.0 are being curtailed and how traditional media industries are beginning to successfully adjust their business models to expand to the internet while retaining their traditional forms as well— all of which makes Keen’s fear that professional media is facing impending doom seem, yes, exaggerated.

Ultimately, Keen’s jeremiad is too broad. Upholding truth and decency is indeed imperative to preserving our culture, but superciliously stifling the “noble amateur” isn’t. Talent isn’t limited to the tastemakers; and though the din of Web 2.0 grows with each new jejune blog, navel-gazing song, or asinine video, true talent, be it professional or amateur, rings distinctly.

Mando Diao - Ode to Ochrasy

2007-07-24T17:34:00.000-04:00

Sporting Mod culture looks and embracing their garage rock, British invasion, and punk influences, Mando Diao are hardly musical trailblazers. But when they're at their best, the cocksure rockers from Borlange, Sweden, meld gritty exuberance with infectious hooks better than many of their retro-inspired contemporaries. On their latest album, Ode to Ochrasy, Mando Diao temper their rowdy roots a bit in favor of broadening their sound.

Ochrasy (a word coined by co-singer Bjorn Dixgard) is a concept album of sorts. The songs' narratives stem from the band's experiences while touring and the farrago of characters they met, ranging from drug addicts ("Josephine"), to homeless buskers ("Good Morning, Herr Horst"), to would-be bombers ("Killer Kaczynski"). And, as you might expect, there are plenty of songs about girls.

Although the narrative concept creates a loose lyrical cohesion, the band seems undecided where to venture musically. Raucous stomps like "Killer Kaczynski," "Good Morning, Herr Horst," (which sounds like a revved up version of The Libertines' "The Man Who Would Be King") and the album's first single, "Long Before Rock'n'Roll" recall the sound of their previous albums, particularly Bring 'em In, but are a bit stale by comparison. On the smooth "Josephine" and the Lennon-esque "The New Boy," Dixgard and fellow singer Gustaf Noren prove their adept at penning delicate melodies, although placing the songs back-to-back stalls the album. Dixgard's finest moment may be the closing track, "Ochrasy." The acoustic ode to a fantasy world highlights the soulful dimension of Dixgard's voice seldom heard elsewhere on the album.

On the album's best songs the duo crafts engaging, pop-drenched melodies while retaining just the right measure of garage rock roughness. On the relentlessly driving "You Don't Understand Me," Dixgard's lament of lost love, heartbreak sounds downright dance-inducing. Noren's hyperactive "Morning Paper Dirt" provides a punch of power pop, while his verve-filled "Song for Aberdeen" sounds a bit like "Sister Golden Hair" on speed. "The Wildfire (If It Was True)"-the best song on the album and quite possibly Mando Diao's best song period-churns along on a train car-clatter rhythm before bursting into an ebullient, irresistible chorus.

The band isn't lacking for confidence. Noren has said he believes the band's work surpasses anything by the Who, the Small Faces, or the Kinks-even that they're better than the Beatles. Sure, everyone besides the band themselves and some diehard fans would beg to differ, but his confidence seems to stem more from the band's tireless efforts to be something special than from an Oasis-like braggadocio. And, it generates more buzz, of course. But if Mando Diao hopes to find a seat among the rock pantheon, they have to stretch themselves, to test their limits, to discover new musical territory. Ode to Ochrasy marks the band's first--sometimes awkward, sometimes brilliant--steps in that direction.

Ryan Adams' show at the GPAC (Germantown Performing Arts Center)

2007-07-13T00:10:00.000-04:00

Until last night I'd never gone to a Ryan Adams' concert. As much as I love his music, I never had the desire to gamble my $30 ($60 with my wife) to see if I'd experience Ryan Adams, the vastly talented songwriter and captivating performer, or Ryan Adams, the petulant SOB who'd lumber drunk through a set or storm off the stage in a tantrum twenty minutes into the show. But with the positive reviews for his current tour and the fact that he's sober now, I decided to take the risk this time around.

Adams and his band, the Cardinals, took the stage around 8:30 (the show was scheduled to begin at 8:00). Wasting no more time, Adams offered a "good evening" to the crowd as he and the band settled onto their stools, and they struck into "Please Do Not Let Me Go," one of his finest bittersweet ballads, that showcased Adams' clear, impassioned tenor (all the more impressive given the theater's wonderful acoustics) and the Cardinals' impeccable musicianship.

Being an acoustic show, the set list favored slower material, mostly from his three 2005 releases and his new album, Easy Tiger, but Adams and the band performed each song with tireless precision and intensity. From the raw emotion of "The Sun Also Sets" to the tender melody of "Wildflowers," nearly every song from the evening was stunning. Even the five songs culled from 2005's spare and meandering 29 sounded fresh and compelling in their concise, reworked versions. The highlight of the evening was Adams' fiery rendition of "Peaceful Valley" on which the Cardinals nailed the multi-part a capella harmonies during the chorus.

For what would be the final song, Adams came to the front of the stage to sing "Goodnight Hollywood Boulevard," offering one last powerful performance. Adams gave a wave to the crowd after he finished the song and left the stage along with the band to the crowd's enthusiastic applause.

The houselights stayed down for over five minutes, and the audience continued cheering, anxious for an encore. There wasn't one, though, and the reaction of fans sitting in my vicinity ranged from satisfaction, to anger, to disbelief. As my wife and I made our way out of the theater, one college-age girl told us, "Don't go yet. He played 24 songs last night in Louisville. He's got to play an encore!" As much as we wanted to hear an encore ourselves, with the houselights up and "Rock the Casbah" playing, it was clear Adams was calling it a night. That girl may still be standing in the balcony as I type this.

Admittedly, the ending of the show was a bit peculiar. If the houselights had come up right after the band left the stage or if Adams had verbally bid a "goodnight," we still would've been disappointed there wasn't an encore--everyone wants more terrific music after all--but I think fewer people would've been annoyed.

With Ryan Adams' infamous erraticism, there's no telling why he didn't come back for an encore. Although he didn't say much during the show--well, nearly anything--he seemed in a good mood and he certainly poured himself into the performance. Several times during the show, he motioned to his sound guy to adjust the monitors, so maybe he had gotten perturbed about that and didn't figure the problem would ever be fixed to his satisfaction. Who knows? It could be he simply had decided ahead of time he wasn't playing an encore.

Still, even though I'm disappointed we missed out on an encore (I envy anyone who attended the Louisville show), the 18 songs Adams did play were incredible, so I suspect I'll be willing to roll the dice again if he comes around on a tour in the fall.

Set List

Please Do Not Let Me Go
Dear John
Let It Ride
The Sun Also Sets
Goodnight Rose
Night Birds
Blue Hotel
Starlight Diner
Two
Oh My God, Whatever, Etc.
Blue Sky Blues
Wildflowers
I Taught Myself How to Grow Old
Elizabeth, You Were Born to Play the Part
Carolina Rain
Peaceful Valley
Magnolia Mountain
Goodnight Hollywood Boulevard

Lit Bit #4

2007-07-06T13:09:00.000-04:00

I'm slowly making my way through Saul Bellow's The Adventures of Augie March--slowly because it's a long novel and the language is dense, not because it's dull. Some critics have asserted it's the greatest post-WWII novel in American literature--some even suggest it's the greatest American novel of all time. Wherever it ranks in the American canon, it's unquestionably a remarkable work. Here's one of my favorite passages I've read to this point (I'm only about 1/4 of the way into the book):

"If you want to pick your own ideal creature in the mirror coastal air and sharp leaves of ancient perfections and be at home where a great mankind was at home, I've never seen any reason why not. Though unable to go along one hundred percent with a man like Reverend Beecher telling his congregation, "Ye are Gods, you are crystalline, your faces are radiant!" I'm not an optimist of that degree, from the actual faces, congregated or separate, that I've seen; always admitting that the true vision of things is a gift, particularly in times of disfigurement and world-wide Babylonishness, when plug-ugly macadam and volcanic peperino look commoner than crystal--to eyes with an ordinary amount of grace, anyhow--and when it appears like a good sensible policy to settle for medium-grade quartz."

Catch Up

2007-07-03T15:54:00.001-04:00

Yeah, if maintaining this blog were my job, I'd have been fired a long time ago. I'd intended to provide some updates while we were in Austin, but I never got around to it. So, in lieu, of the thorough, undeniably entertaining narratives I'd hoped to write over the course of the past three weeks, I give you, dear readers, a synopsis.

Our only travels of the summer took us back to the Lone Star State. On the 9th we made our way to Houston to attend the wedding reception (the wedding was a family-only ceremony in March) for Andy and Jen Dunham. That night Andy and I mustered up a bit of the sleep-deprivation stamina of our college days, staying up into the wee hours of the morning burning CD's and cracking ourselves up. On Sunday, we went to church with Andy and Jen (late service) and then we headed on to Austin.

After living in Austin for six years, it feels like home when we go back for a visit. We squeezed a month's worth of activity into the nine days we were there--hung out with our friends, celebrated our second anniversary, celebrated my birthday, attended a wedding, and celebrated our youngest niece's birthday. See what I mean by not having much time to blog? For my birthday, Janet and Matt threw me a surprise party. I had no idea they'd been planning anything. Janet tells the story of the planning and near slip-ups much better than I do:

http://janetmiddlekauff.blogspot.com/2007/06/surprise.html

Two days after we returned to Memphis, my folks came into town for a six-day visit. We didn't do as much sightseeing as the last time they came down--Janet and my mom did take a Riverboat tour--but we managed to eat at a few of our favorite spots (Oh, blessed Blues City pork ribs!) and enjoyed just hanging out.

Now that things have slowed down considerably I'm trying to tackle my summer reading. I've finished three books to this point--Light in August (read for the second time), (ditto)Winesburg, Ohio, and Darkness at Noon--but I have five to go including Ulysses, which may have to wait until next summer.

To Be Older (Is to Be Sober, Is To Be Focused)

2007-07-01T13:33:00.001-04:00

Whatever Ryan Adams' stylistic whim over the past seven years--alt-country, AOR, country, dour Brit pop, folk, garage rock--nearly every album held two things in common: more than a few staggeringly brilliant songs that would make any songwriter envious (Rock'n'Roll and 29 perhaps being the exceptions) and enough certifiable to leave a listener wondering how someone with Adams' remarkable talent could display such spotty quality control.

Easy Tiger, Adams' first release in over a year (an epic drought by his standards) isn't his best album, but it his most consistent, offering some moments of splendid songcraft without the weight of a lot of filler. Backed by the latest lineup of The Cardinals (they're not billed on the album cover), Adams concentrates on straightforward, acoustic-based songs and various flavors of country. The album opens with "Goodnight Rose," a staggered, twangy rocker reminiscent of Cold Roses but downshifts into a subdued, melancholy tone with the first single, "Two." Complimented by Sheryl Crow's harmonies, Adams' ache-tinged tenor buoys even the most pedestrian of lines: "'Cause it's cold in here/And I wish it was hot/The sink's broke, it's leaking from the faucet."

Not surprisingly, Adams' trademark elegiac tales of broken relationships, crushed ambition, and transient youth permeate the album. He fails, though, when he tries too emphatically to convey heartbreak. With a tinny acoustic guitar doubling the vocal melody, "Off Broadway," a reworked tune originally recorded during the Suicide Handbook sessions, suffers from an insipid and painfully repetitive chorus as Adams loses his way home after spotting an ex-lover: "I don't know where that is anymore/I don't know where that is anymore/I don't know where that is anymore/Used to be off Broadway." Someone help the man home already! And, on "The Sun Also Sets," he mars an otherwise solid song with a strained, overwrought vocal delivery, which culminates with him channeling what sounds like the voice of Grover right before the final chorus.

More often, however, Adams strikes the right balance of sadness and subtlety. On the breezy "Two Hearts" he foresees the inevitable collapse of a relationship ("Two hearts/One of them will break/Like bad ideas on a beautiful day/Two figures moving through the dark/ Three words is all it takes to break your heart in two") while on the beautiful "Oh My God, Whatever, Etc.," he wearily surrenders to listlessness: "But the light of the moon leads the way/Towards the morning, and the sun/The sun's well on it's way too soon/But oh, oh my God, whatever, etc."

That sort of self-reflection lies at the heart of quite a few tracks. To be sure, there are some "young gal did me bad" moments, but they're tempered by Adams' acknowledgment of his own failings, whether he's admitting the difficulty of commitment--"I make these promises/But all these promises hurt/It's like they never get a lift off" ("Rip Off")--or confessing his weakness for anxious "late night girls" on "These Girls"--"It's so sad but when they smile/God, I've been had"--arriving at the conclusion that "These girls are better off in my head."

Adams achieves mixed results when he veers from sullen musings. "Halloweenhead," the album's lone musical departure, boasts a catchy melody and offers some self-deprecating humor, but the near Spinal Tap homage, replete with bells, storm noises, and the shout of "Guitar solo!," sounds decidedly out of place. The sunny bluegrass number "Pearls on a String" fares much better, providing a fun, top-tapping tune while retaining the instrumental textures common to the album.

Easy Tiger shows Ryan Adams can be focused and accessible, but it's fair to say that at times it sounds a bit too tame, too easy. With the album's heavy dose of balladry, there are few traces of his customary reckless energy or swagger. Maybe next time around he'll manage to infuse those elements into his maturing sound--chances are we won't have to wait long to find out. Still, Adams' talent as a songwriter is undeniable--"Oh My God, Whatever, Etc." "Goodnight Rose," and "These Girls" stand with the best in his extensive catalog--and not having to lunge for the skip button too often while listening to the album is a welcome change.

Lit Bit 3a and 3b

2007-06-01T19:15:00.000-04:00

Janet and I are taking a day trip to Oxford tomorrow, so I thought I'd use some Faulkner for this week's Lit Bit. Yesterday I started re-reading my favorite Faulkner novel, Light in August. Here are two excerpts from early in the novel:

(Speaking of what would eventually become of a planing mill)

"But some of the machinery would be left, since new pieces could always be bought on the installment plan--gaunt, staring, motionless wheels rising from mounds of brick rubble and ragged weeds with a quality profoundly astonishing, and gutted boilers lifting their rusting and unsmoking stacks with an air stubborn, baffled and bemused upon a stump-pocked scene of profound and peaceful desolation, unplowed, untilled, gutting slowly into red and choked ravines beneath the long quiet rains of autumn and the galloping fury of vernal equinoxes."

(Regarding the rumors surrounding Reverend Hightower, a former minister)

"Byron listened quietly, thinking to himself how people everywhere are about the same, but that it did seem that in a small town, where evil is harder to accomplish, where opportunities for privacy are scarcer, that people can invent more of it in other people's names. Because that was all it required: that idea, that single idle word blown from mind to mind."

Ralph Ellison

2007-05-24T23:18:00.000-04:00

In my summer reading post, I mentioned I was reading a biography of Ralph Ellison and would be writing a review of the book for the Main Street Journal. This is the extended version of the review (a shorter version will appear in the June issue of the magazine). One day I may go back and tighten the language a bit.

In 1945, providing his agent with a rough sketch of his then nascent novel, Ralph Ellison said of its protagonist, “He is something very rare, a true Negro individualist.” Like his unnamed protagonist, Ellison was an individualist. Staunchly opposed to racial divisions, he endorsed integration, setting himself at odds with other black writers and leaders who championed separatism. He was proud of his race and heritage but unwilling to define himself primarily by it. Rather, he sought to affirm himself as an individual through his artistry—a formidable task given many whites’ refusal to acknowledge that blacks shared in their humanity. He hoped, though, to craft a novel of such force and scope that the white literary elite could not dismissively praise it as merely fine “Negro literature” but would acknowledge it as one equal to the most celebrated of the American canon. In 1952, with his first (and only finished) novel, the surrealist masterpiece Invisible Man, he did just that.

In his compelling and copiously researched biography, Ralph Ellison (Knopf 672), Arnold Rampersad reveals the complexities of Ellison’s mercurial character as he examines the author’s early influences, his development as a writer, his triumph with Invisible Man, and his vexation at his failure to complete a second novel.

Ellison was born on March 1, 1913, in Oklahoma City, to Lewis and Ida Ellison, and knew suffering early in life. When Ellison was three, his father, a coal and ice deliveryman, died of complications resulting from being pierced in the stomach with a shard of ice while delivering ice to a store. Struggling to sustain herself and her two sons (Ralph’s younger brother, Herbert, was born in 1916), Ida took on a host of menial jobs. Ellison grew to resent his mother’s generosity towards the destitute and rejected her Christian devotion. With little desire to spend much time with Ida or Herbert, Ellison endeared himself to the Slaughters and Randolphs, two wealthy families for whom Ida worked. His time with the families developed in him an affinity for sophistication.

After a failed move to Gary, Indiana (Ida had relatives there), the family returned to Oklahoma City. It was during his time at Douglas School, thanks to his music teacher, Zelia Breaux, that Ellison developed a love of music. She not only taught him music but also instilled in him a sense of what it was to be an artist. Ellison said, “It was Mrs. Breaux who introduced me to the basic discipline required of the artist, and it was she who made it possible for me to grasp the basic compatibility of the mixture of the classical and vernacular styles which were part of our musical culture.”

In 1932, at the insistence of his friend Malcolm Whitby, Ellison applied to Tuskegee Institute, where he hoped to join the orchestra (he had been training on the trumpet). Rejected once, he applied again and was accepted.

Ellison had hoped to impress the orchestra leader, W.L. Dawson, who he’d idolized since he conducted the Tuskegee choir at the gala celebrating the opening of Radio City Music Hall at Rockefeller Center. Rampersad explains that Dawson was seldom personable with students and did not offer Ellison assistance for fear of upsetting his superiors. Disappointed with Dawson’s indifference and oppressed by the administration, particularly Dean Alvin Neely, Ralph said of his time at the school, “My trip to Tuskegee was my journey into the ‘heart of darkness.’” He was frustrated, too, with his meager finances. Rampersad notes that Ellison often curtly wrote to his mother to demand she send money or clothes. However, while he was there, Walter B. Williams, the school’s librarian, and more so Morteza Drexel Sprague, an English professor, fueled Ellison’s interest in literature. A suave aesthete, Sprague centered his curriculum on contemporary writers. Sprague saw potential in Ellison and encouraged him to read challenging texts like Eliot’s The Wasteland outside of class.

In 1936, following his junior year, Ellison decided to travel to New York in the summer in order to earn money in order to return to Tuskegee in the fall as well as to practice sculpture. On his second day in the city, Ellison met Langston Hughes. Impressed with Ellison, Hughes introduced him to prominent communist Harlem-based writers. It wasn’t until he befriended Richard Wright, in 1938, though, that Ellison pursued a career in writing. Wright, considered the most promising young black writer at the time (his most acclaimed works Native Son and Black Boy were published in 1940 and 1945 respectively), secured Ellison a spot with the New York Writers’ Project and encouraged him to try his hand at fiction. Wright, who eventually distanced himself from Ellison once he perceived him as a rival, would be Ellison’s biggest influence over the next few years.

By 1945, Ellison had published several short stories (some which come from an attempted novel Slick) as well as numerous critical pieces, and he had served as editor of the ill-faded Negro Quarterly. However, he was reluctant to accept an offer from a young publishing company, Reynal and Hitchcock, to write a novel, but eventually accepted the offer. As Rampersad observes, “He knew how late he had come to writing fiction, how much he had to labor to create stories, and how weak had been his grasp of literary technique.” Still, Ellison pressed on.

And on. It took Ellison nearly seven years to complete Invisible Man. Rampersad provides an insightful analysis of the novel’s three sections and details Ellison’s approach to composing the book. Influenced heavily by the literary philosophy of Kenneth Burke, the work of masters like Twain, Faulkner, and Eliot, and rich Western folklore and myth, Ellison aimed to tell the story of a modern black man who was also an Everyman: “Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?”

When the novel was published in 1952, it met mostly with strong critical acclaim. In the New York Times Book Review, Wright Morris went as far to say, “The geography of hell is still in the progress of being mapped and [Invisible Man] belongs on the shelf with the classical efforts man has made to chart the river Lethe from its mouth to its source.” More impressively, Invisible Man won the National Book Award in 1953, besting Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea.

In the decades the followed, Ellison continued to reap the success of the novel. Wooed by elite universities, literary institutions, and even presidential councils, he became a prized speaker and teacher and established himself among America’s literary elite. With Ellison earning a substantial income, his second wife, Fanny, who had supported him financially while he wrote the novel, was able to quit working, and the two of them enjoyed an increasingly upscale lifestyle. Still, despite his acclaim and success, Ellison’s failure to complete a second novel would vex him the rest of his life.

Ellison often suggested that the fire that destroyed his home in Plainfield, MA, in 1967 (the fire destroyed what he’d written of a second novel to that point) stymied his attempt to complete another novel. Rampersad dismisses Ellison’s excuse, providing evidence to the contrary. In 1968, Ellison told Richard Kostelanetz that “[it] has become inordinately long—perhaps over one thousand pages—and complicated.” Throughout the second half of the biography, Rampersad asserts that Ellison’s failure to complete a second novel stemmed from his hobnobbing with white writers and subsequently distancing himself from the black community. “As a novelist, he had lost his way. And he had done so in proportion to his distancing of himself from his fellow blacks.”

Rampersad’s claim seems a bit tenuous. Certainly, Ellison had a host of white friends in the literary community, including Richard Wilbur, John Cheever, Kenneth Burke, Stanley Edward Hyman, and Saul Bellow (at times), but he also maintained relationships with black intellectuals such as Albert Murray and Nathan Scott. Ellison had long preferred the company of those who shared his interests, and many black leaders and writers of the ‘60’s and ‘70’s, vehemently promoting Black Power and separatism, ridiculed him for his relative conservatism and privileged lifestyle. (Rampersad includes an anecdote that a librarian in the Black Studies program in the late 60’s at Southern Illinois University said the library didn’t carry Invisible Man “because Ralph Ellison is not a black writer. While Ellison’s optimism for integration may have been a bit naïve in those chaotic times, one could infer that Rampersad begrudges him for not abandoning his ideals. Furthermore, Rampersad seeks to bolster his assertion by detailing Ellison’s coldness towards a number of young black writers. It’s possible his coldness stemmed from concentrate on his own work and likely an anxiety that given his extended dry spell, they’d supplant him. Rampersad doesn’t establish cogent support that would demonstrate Ellison consistently showed any favor for young white writers either, though he does make a strong case that Ellison cared little for women writers of the time.

Considering that Ellison had composed over 2000 pages of the unfinished novel by the time of his death, an inability to shape and direct the work, not a dearth of ideas, would appear to be the main reason for his failure. One can only speculate as to why he failed to form the text into a coherent whole. Stanley Hyman, who had helped Ellison revise and hone Invisible Man as Ellison toiled with the novel, died in 1970. In 1982, Ellison said that the swiftness of cultural changes had stymied him. “Part of what’s taken so long is that so many things have changed so fast in our culture that as soon as I thought I had a draft that brought all of these things together, there would be another shift, and I’d have to go back and revise all over again.”

Toward the end of the biography, Rampersad explores Ellison’s legacy. The assessment of his career by contemporary black literary figures ranges from praise to rebuke. Rampersad writes of Charles Johnson’s acceptance of the1990 National Book Award, “his acceptance speech seemed to be one long tribute to Ralph.” Cultural critic Shelby Steele believes Ellison will prevail over his detractors: “. . . the hostility of many blacks toward Ellison is unexceptional in itself; and if history is any indication, the future will likely belong more to Ellison than to his accusers.” Ten years after his death, Toni Morrison, one of the writers to whom Ellison was aloof, said that his career had spawned a “spectacular novel; elegant essays; international respect” but went on to say, “The contemporary world of late twentieth-century African Americans was largely inaccessible, or simply uninteresting to him as a creator of fiction. For him, in essence, the eye, the gaze of the beholder remained white.”

Although some continue to question Ellison’s allegiances and ambitions, few contest the brilliance and perspicacity of his artistry. Even with the specter of an unfinished novel looming over his career (a pared down version of the unfinished manuscript was published in 2000 as Juneteenth), Ellison’s place in 20^th century American literature is secure.

Lit Bit #2

2007-05-24T16:05:00.000-04:00

I managed to cover a few post-WWII pieces with my juniors last week before we began reviewing for finals (today was Day II of finals). Without the time to cover the entire unit, I had a chance to select writers I particularly enjoy--that meant Robert Lowell, Theodore Roethke, and Richard Wilbur among others. Here's one of my favorite poems by Wilbur:

The Writer


In her room at the prow of the house
Where light breaks, and the windows are tossed with linden,
My daughter is writing a story.

I pause in the stairwell, hearing
From her shut door a commotion of typewriter-keys
Like a chain hauled over a gunwale.

Young as she is, the stuff
Of her life is a great cargo, and some of it heavy:
I wish her a lucky passage.

But now it is she who pauses,
As if to reject my thought and its easy figure.
A stillness greatens, in which

The whole house seems to be thinking,
And then she is at it again with a bunched clamor
Of strokes, and again is silent.

I remember the dazed starling
Which was trapped in that very room, two years ago;
How we stole in, lifted a sash

And retreated, not to affright it;
And how for a helpless hour, through the crack of the door,
We watched the sleek, wild, dark

And iridescent creature
Batter against the brilliance, drop like a glove
To the hard floor, or the desk-top,

And wait then, humped and bloody,
For the wits to try it again; and how our spirits
Rose when, suddenly sure,

It lifted off from a chair-back,
Beating a smooth course for the right window
And clearing the sill of the world.

It is always a matter, my darling,
Of life or death, as I had forgotten. I wish
What I wished you before, but harder.

Cary Brothers' Who You Are

2007-05-18T19:37:00.000-04:00

For aspiring musicians, garnering a spot on a ubiquitous film soundtrack is a surefire way to attain a rapidly growing fan base. Just ask Cary Brothers, who crooned his way onto the indie singer-songwriter scene with "Blue Eyes," the plaintive tune featured prominently (albeit not as much so as the Shins) on the soundtrack to Zach Braff's 2004 indie hit, Garden State. Over the next three years, Brothers built upon his foundation as a mopey troubadour, with several of his songs used as touching jingles to punctuate shows on the small screen and the song "Ride" appearing on The Last Kiss soundtrack (apparently he and Braff are old university chums), yet during that time he managed to only release two EPs, All the Rage and Waiting for Your Letter.

Full of tales of love fulfilled or unrequited, Who You Are, Brothers' full-length debut, shows hints of the songwriter's promise as an artist - particularly a knack for crafting catchy alt-pop on the album's livelier tracks - but becomes mired in mawkish, somnolent balladry. Propelled by syncopated percussion, the Pete Yorn-esque "Who You Are" provides plenty of pep as the first single, while the 80's-imbued "The Last One" boasts a riff that recalls The Cure's Porl Thompson. "Ride" matches Brothers' light but resonate vocal delivery with lush guitar arrangement as the song builds to a dynamic coda. Brothers has an unquestionable flair for penning poignant ditties for those oh-so-gripping moments in television and film, but the problem with Who You Are is that there aren't enough engaging songs to compensate for his ballad-happiness.

Brothers could certainly stand to curb his effusiveness. With the exception of "Jealousy," which begins with a subdued verse and then crashes into an impassioned, soaring chorus, the rest of the slower numbers swell with schmaltz and contrivance, with tinkling piano lines, delicate string arrangements, and Brothers' pathos-heavy vocal delivery. Lyrics that sound as if Brothers culled them from a junior high love letter only exacerbate the problem: "This is a glass parade/ A fragile state/ And I am trying not to break/ The stars are shining/ The moon is right/ And I would kill to be with you tonight" ("Glass Parade").

The breezy, acoustic-driven "Think Awhile" breathes a little life into the second half of the album, but both the pretty but plodding "All the Rage" and "Precious Lie" prove to be a cure for insomnia. Two empty tracks before the real bonus track, "Blue Eyes," give even more time for a siesta. Rearranging the track order or substituting one of the ballads with a more energetic song like "Waiting for Your Letter" (from the EP of the same name) would have helped to mitigate some of the monotony and combat - albeit slightly - the onslaught of smarm.

With a rich, ranging voice and an ear for pleasing melodies, Brothers is definitely talented, but Who You Are is the sound of a guy trying way too hard to show that he is. Before he pursued a career in music, Brothers worked in film production, and he certainly aims to create a captivating, cinematic dimension of sorts in his music. Unfortunately the overly earnest tone that pervades the bulk of the album is the musical equivalent of a lugubrious teen drama.

Reflections on Graduation

2007-05-15T11:29:00.000-04:00

Last night, for the first time in seven years, I attended a high school graduation without taking part in it. When I taught at Brentwood, we walked in with the seniors and delivered charges/blessings to the students before they received their diplomas. I enjoyed just being a spectator at Harding Academy's ceremony (I always spent hours writing a two-minute blessing for Brentwood's graduation). Although the ceremony was sans blessings/charges, it still ran for just over an hour and a half--plenty of time for my mind to wander.

Some thoughts on graduation (not limited to Harding's ceremony):

- "Pomp and Circumstance" is quite possibly the worst instrumental piece in the history of Western civilization. The New York Philhamonic could play the song and I'd still hate it. I'm not a march connoisseur by any means, but I can't imagine one more plodding than "P&C." As I suffered through a six-minute rendition of the song last night, I started wondering who in the world deemed it the "official" graduation song. Well, after I conducted a little research today, I found we have Edward Elgar and Samuel Sanford to thank for their excrutiating contribution to commencement tradition. "P&C" is actually called "March No.1" and is one of five marches (I can't begin to imagine how boring the other four have to be) in Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance Marches. In 1905, Sanford, who was a music professor at Yale, enlisted a slew of musicians, including the New Haven Symphony Orchestra, to play the song during the graduation recession. He chose the song to honor his buddy Elgar, who was on hand to receive an honorary Doctorate of Music. Apparently the song then became the popular choice for graduations across the country. You'd think that in the past 102 years, someone could've written a song to replace it!

- Even when played by a small high school band, Copland's "Variations on a Shaker Melody" from Appalachian Spring is stirring.

- It would be fun to replace caps and gowns with sombreros and sarapes.

- Commencement addresses are superfluous. If someone polled 1,000 people about whether they could remember anything their high school commencement speaker said (and that includes graduates from this year), how many people would have even the faintest idea what their speaker said? Three? Maybe.

It doesn't matter whether a commencement speaker's address is one of the most moving speeches in the history of the English language or a cliche-ridden snoozefest. Why? Because no one goes to a graduation to hear someone talk. As someone who teaches seniors, I know that some of them struggle to pay to attention to anything starting the first week of school, so they certainly aren't going to focus on a long-winded speech when they're on the cusp of graduating. The only thing graduates want to hear is the principal calling their name so they can go on stage to receive their diploma; family and friends of graduates only care about seeing their graduate receive his or her diploma and taking pictures.

I remember who spoke at my graduation--Kris Osborn from Channel One--but I have absolutely no idea what he said. I was too busy trying to inconspicuously open my bag of confetti.

Our speaker last night delivered a solid message replete with some bits of humor, but he spoke for thirty minutes! (Somewhere around the ten-minute mark is when I started imagining how fun sombreros and sarapes would be.)

It's unlikely someone will ever ask me to give a commencement address, but just in case they do, I've composed the following speech: "Seniors, life passes quickly, so I'm not going to take any more of your time. Congratulations on finishing high school. God bless." That's worthy of a standing ovation, right?

- There needs to be a designated place (preferably a spacious one) for people to offer their congratulations to graduates after the ceremony. I had hoped to speak with some of my students last night, but after wading through a sea of humanity in the lobby for five minutes and not finding a single graduate, I headed for my car. (I learned today that all the seniors exit to the library following the ceremony--I wish I'd known that last night.)

- I'm glad I don't teach at a large school.

- I taught a good group of students this year. They weren't always the most studious bunch, but they were funny, respectful, and kind. I'll miss them next year.

Lit Bit #1

2007-05-14T11:52:00.000-04:00

Back in the summer I attempted to maintain a "Poem of the Week" series. That lasted about two weeks. Undaunted by my miserable following through with that idea, I'm making my inaugural post in what I'm dubbing the "Lit Bit" series. Each week I'll post an excerpt from something I've read recently that struck me as particularly profound, strikingly well-written, or both. I'll probably change the name of the series at some point--"Lit Bit" just sounds glib. And, I realize that posting a measly excerpt from a work hardly does justice to the whole. But maybe if something I post grabs your interest, you'll read the entire work. That's my hope, anyway.

So, I begin the series with the closing passage from Cormac McCarthy's The Road*:

"Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery."

* I commented on the novel a few posts ago.

More from The Grapes of Wrath

2007-05-10T14:21:00.000-04:00

I finished the novel this week with my juniors. As I mentioned a few posts ago, I've found re-reading the novel quite rewarding, particularly in regards to how the themes of the sanctity of human life and the need for compassion and community have challenged my complacency in following Christ's call.

Tom's parting words to Ma in Chapter 28 echo both themes:

"Wherever they’s a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever they’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there. If Casy knowed, why, I’ll be in the way guys yell when they’re mad an’—I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry n’ they know supper’s ready. An’ when our folks eat the stuff they raise an’ live in the houses they build—why, I’ll be there. See?"

And they also remind me of Christ's description of the "sheep" in Matthew 28:34-40:

"Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.'

Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?

The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.'"

Beale Street Music Festival

2007-05-08T00:09:00.000-04:00

In the weeks leading up to the Beale Street Music Festival, whenever Janet and I would express our excitement about attending the last day of the festival, the very mention of the event elicited harrowing cautions from nearly everyone we spoke to. Judging by their responses, we'd face a daunting struggle for survival in a rain-soaked, riotous, post-apocalyptic land, where we'd have to defend ourselves from hoards of inebriated savages and trudge through a quagmire of mud, spilled beer, and vomit. Or something to that effect. But we weren't about to be deterred by our well-meaning prophets of doom. I mean, what's a little filth, bodily harm, and destruction when Guster and Barenaked Ladies are playing back-to-back on the same stage?

As I had expected, our cautioners' horror stories were rather exaggerated. Besides getting slightly soaked in a mid-afternoon deluge and catching an occasional whiff of reefer or the trash bins when the wind picked up, we had nothing but an enjoyable experience. Now, I realize what I consider minor inconveniences would be enough to keep some people from going, but you can't expect a festival to be an ideal concert venue. And, compared to the 109 degree heat and Dust Bowl-like cloud of dirt we faced at ACL (Austin City Limits Music Festival) two years ago, Music Fest was a picnic.

We arrived shortly after the gates opened and made our way through the park to claim a spot at the front of the Cellular South Stage (there were three main stages). Guster wouldn't be playing for another three hours, but we didn't want to have to fight our way to the front later.

Local rockabilly legend, Billy Lee Riley opened Sunday's music. Riley was an artist on Sun Records during the label's heyday, but despite his talents as a singer and songwriter, he never achieved the popularity of Elvis Presley or Jerry Lee Lewis. Nonetheless, he remains a Memphis icon and at age 73 still performs with some of Sun Records' finest musicians. He played for about an hour, covering some classics like "That's All Right Mama" and mixing in some songs from his own material including his biggest hit, "Red Hot." It was cool to see such an energetic performance from someone his age, but after a while every song sounded a lot like the one that came before it. That's just the nature of rockabilly, I guess. It's better for dancing than concentrated listening.

The rains tried to take center stage when the jam band Umphrey's McGee took the stage after Riley. The downpour drenched the crowd and the stage, sending roadies to frantically cover the equipment with plastic. The weather didn't really faze the band, though, and their loyal contingency of fans danced and cheered in the deluge.

Like Riley, UM was new to me. I did a little research on them when I got home and found that in 2004, Rolling Stone said they were in line to be the next Phish. Their style struck me as a melange of Phish, Yes, and Peter Gabriel-era Genesis, with a bit of reggae and Van Halen finger-tapping thrown in for good measure. If that sounds a bit weird, it was. I appreciated their musicianship--they were gifted instrumentalists--but it didn't take long for me to tire of their extended jams. From what I could tell, they only played about five songs the entire hour.

With the rain subsided and ten-minute musical interludes behind us, Janet and I were fired up for Guster--though not as fired up as the girl to my left who was celebrating her 21st birthday and screamed things like "Will you marry me, Adam!" and "You're all I wanted for my birthday!" after every song they played. Needless to say, she had probably spent more than a little time at the Budweiser tent.

Guster kicked off their set with the galloping "The Captain" from their latest album, Ganging Up on the Sun, and then rolled right on into "Barrel of a Gun," a classic from Lost and Gone Forever. The set included three more songs from GUOTS, some favorites from older albums like "Demons" and "Happier," a cover of Geoff Muldaur's "Brazil," and a new song (actually an outtake from GUOTS) called "G Major." Their combination of catchy songs, impeccable musicianship (Brian Rosenworcel's astonishing hand percussion work is reason enough to see them live), and a little humorous interplay with the crowd made for a memorable show. So, not surprisingly, just like when I saw them in 2000 at the Erwin Center, they proved the perfect lead-in to Barenaked Ladies.

As much as I enjoy listening to BNL's albums, nothing beats seeing them in concert.*

They burst into their set with "One Week," "Old Apartment," and "Sound of Your Voice" before jumping into the first of two improvs. For an hour and fifteen minutes, with Steve breaking out his full repertoire of crazy kicks, jumps, and dances, the band stirred up the crowd with high-energy favorites like "It's All Been Done," "Alcohol," and "Brian Wilson." The highlight of the show for me was "Break Your Heart." There are power ballads in the sense of cheesy, hackneyed hair metal love songs, and then there are power ballads in the dynamic, build-to-a-musical-catharsis sense. "Break Your Heart" is the latter. That song alone makes a good case for Steven Page having the most powerful voice in rock/pop music.

And, a BNL show wouldn't be complete without some hilarity. The funniest moments were Ed's improv about his almost fruitless quest to find a BBQ joint open on a Sunday and the guy's talking to people watching the show from their patio across the street. They joked that one of the guys on the patio looked apt to moon the crowd. He did.

Although BNL were the high point of the day for me, Counting Crows were the closing act. In high school and early in college, few bands moved me the way Counting Crows did. I think melancholy songs about unrequited love provide a fitting soundtrack for that phase of life. But I wasn't drawn just to Adam Duritz's lugubrious lyrics; their music was great. With This Desert Life, though, the quality of their songs began to wane. Oh, it's not a bad album by any means and neither is Hard Candy. But if you think either of those albums comes close to August and Everything After or Recovering the Satellites, then you must be a relative of someone in the band. (And if you like their cover of "Big Yellow Taxi," there are people that can help you kick drugs.)

By the time Counting Crows started playing, we'd been standing in basically the same spot for almost seven hours. I felt like someone had beaten me in the legs and back, and Janet felt worse. We stuck around for four songs before we headed out to grab a late dinner with Chris and Andrew (I failed to mention they arrived at the tail end of Guster's set.) Counting Crows opened strong with "Recovering the Satellites," "Hard Candy," "Mrs. Potter's Lullaby," and "Mr. Jones." The band was sharp, but I got annoyed by Adam Duritz's tendency to fall into "spoken word" renderings of parts of verses rather than sticking to the melody--You wrote a melody for the song. You're a singer. Sing! As we were leaving, we got to hear the band's slow version of "The Rain King." Fast or slow, that song is awesome. And he sang the whole time!

No attacks by drunken marauders. No sinking knee-deep in mud. No contact with spilled beer or vomit. Just Guster, BNL, and a little Counting Crows. That's a great day at the Beale Street Music Festival in my book.

*Even if you're convinced you don't like BNL, see them in concert. You'll like them. If not, well, then you wouldn't know a good time if it smacked you in the face.

The Erudite Basset

2007-05-07T23:59:00.000-04:00

How many people can say they have a well read dog?

Calipers and Custard

2007-05-01T23:21:00.000-04:00

There are a lot of things in life you can get away with putting off doing--unpacking your suitcase after a tiring trip, organizing your closet, filling out superfluous paperwork at work, getting out of bed in the morning to pee before you're ready to get up (I don't recommend putting that off too long). But I learned today it's not a good idea to put off having your brakes checked when they start showing signs of wear and tear.

My brakes had been squeaky for a while. I'd like to say that means they started squeaking a few weeks ago, but it was more like ten months ago. Until the past month, the noise didn't amount to much. By then the sound grew loud enough that I could hear it even with my radio blaring. Still, I had better things to do besides take the car to Value Brakes. That is, until two days ago when the squeaking was accompanied by a grinding, I-think-may-wheel-may-fall-off noise.

So today I broke down and took Clifton (yes, I named my car) in for repairs. The front left brake was metal on metal, the rotor needed resurfacing, and both front brakes needed new calipers and brake pads. And all for the price of just $402! Of course, I had no room to complain about the cost. I'd expected the repairs to be expensive.

And so the wait began. Every repair shop is basically the same. There's a water cooler, a TV with terrible reception, and a stack of six-month-old magazines. And all you can do to pass the time is thumb through the magazines and think about any number of things you'd rather be doing or how much money you're about to spend. A repair shop isn't as bad as a doctor's office, though. After waiting in the lobby, the mechanic doesn't lead you into the garage where you wait longer. And, better yet, nobody examines your nether regions. Still, with two hours needed for repairs, I wasn't about to sit around the whole time.

Strolling around in search of a place to buy a snack, I spotted Sheridan's Custard. With a menu the length of a phone book, a shaded patio, and oldies playing over the speakers, it proved the perfect place to enjoy a frosty treat on a hot day. (Ah, the delight of mocha almond custard.) I found out this evening that Sheridan's has locations in ten states: http://www.sheridansfrozencustard.com/

When I returned to Value Brakes, I was surprised to find they actually had a few intriguing magazines, including a Smithsonian with an article on Shakespeare. (Yes, I teach English.)

Taking a stroll on a sunny afternoon, enjoying some mocha custard, and reading a good magazine. That's not a bad way to spend an afternoon. Well, as long as I leave out the part about the $400.

The List

2007-04-29T21:02:00.000-04:00

As I'd mentioned in my last post, before I purchase any new books for my summer reading binge, I have to tackle a few that have been collecting dust on the bookshelf since last summer. Right now I'm in the midst of finishing Flannery O'Connor's A Good Man Is Hard to Find. O'Connor mastered the short story genre as few other authors have. Once I finish with A Good Man, I'll be on to the following books:

Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez - After I read One Hundred Years of Solitude a few years back, I decided I'd need to read some more Marquez.

All the Pretty Horses - Cormac McCarthy - I'm ready to tackle the Border Trilogy.

The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow - Henderson, the Rain King is one of my all-time favorite novels. (Thanks to Dr. Long for assigning it for American Novel class back in college.) When I read Herzog a few years later, I was a bit disappointed--it's a good novel, just not Henderson.

Next month I'll also be reading another author bio--Ralph Ellison: A Biography. I'll be contributing a review of the book to a local publication, The Main Street Journal, in June.

Summer Reading Comes Early

2007-04-24T18:42:00.000-04:00

Ah, summer vacation. My time to sleep late, watch an inordinate amount of baseball, travel, and binge read. Well, summer vacation is still a little over a month away, but I've gotten a head start on my binge reading. Every year from mid-August to the end of May, I have every intention of reading some novels in addition to the ones I teach, but invariably I don't find the time. I'll go to a bookstore, spot a novel I've intended to read or someone has recommended I read, buy the novel, file the book on my bookshelf, and then think every few weeks, "Man, I really need to read that book."

Oh, sure, I could read several books during the course of the school year, reading a few chapters one night, squeezing in a few more a week later. But for me, dragging out the reading of a novel over several weeks or months ruins the reading experience. When I begin a novel, I like to finish it in two to three days, if not faster, not skipping a day of reading. To read a novel over a long period of time is like buying a new CD and taking a month to listen to the entire album. I don't like to read more than one novel at a time either. Now, I know some people who can juggle reading half a dozen books over several weeks, but I've never read that way.

I didn't manage to read much the past two summers--married in '05, took a lengthy road trip and moved last summer--so I decided to get a head start this year. (There are some books I bought two years ago that I'll finally get around to reading this summer.) With school still in session, I haven't hit my stride yet, but I've read three books in the past two weeks.

The Road - Cormac McCarthy --I've been a big fan of McCarthy ever since I read Blood Meridian. (It's a testament to the brilliance he displays in that novel that after you've read it you can think, "That may be the darkest, most disconcerting book I've ever read, and I loved it.") The Road isn't the work of art stylistically that Meridian is, but it's an undeniably arresting and moving book.

The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro -- a subtle, character-driven book that evokes laughter one moment and sadness the next

William Faulkner -Stephen B. Oates -- I don't read much non-fiction, but I enjoy biographies. Since Faulkner is my favorite author, I already knew quite a bit about him, but I learned plenty more after reading the book. Oates' style is enjoyable as well. It's not a dry, fact-by-fact story of Faulkner's life.

Questions

2007-04-19T10:44:00.000-04:00

A friend of mine, Kester Smith, recently wrote a good post about doubt as part of our walk as Christians (a link to his blog is on the right side of my page). After reading his post, I had the idea to write a post comprised of questions that I've wrestled with at one time or another and probably will continue to. The questions are by no means unique to my life, as I know plenty of Christians and non-Christians who've asked the same things. So, here they are in no particular order:

- Why doesn't God make it easier for people to believe in Him? Specifically, why doesn't He reveal Himself more overtly in the world?

- Why does intercessory prayer for someone's health seem feckless so much of the time?

- If God is indeed the Loving Ultimate Creator, why does He allow so much pain in the world? Yes, I know a lot of pain in the world is man-made, but what about disease? I suppose one could offer Polkinghorne's idea of God allowing creation to develop freely. Polkinghorne's reasoning seems sound enough, but even if he's right, it's something I find hard to swallow. The idea strikes me as God saying, "Well, I'll let creation 'do it's own thing' and that's going to cause people a lot of suffering, but I don't want to crimp nature's fruitfulness, so I won't intervene."

- How would people victimized by disease and inexplicable suffering who were not raised in Christian families ever come to view God as a loving father?

- Why does death exist? Yes, I know our typical response to this is that death is the result of the fall of man (and certainly man has turned from God whether or not you take Genesis 3 literally or not), but given that death and disease was present in the world prior to man (and, yes, I'm basing that on science--I'm not a biblical literalist about creation), then why death? Sure, you could say it was a natural process, but for people, it's a natural process that causes suffering, if not for the one dying, then for his/her loved ones.

- Why do we assert that it's any more logical to believe that God has always existed than it is to believe that matter and energy have always existed?

- If Isreal did actually slaughter some of the people the OT says they did, why would God order such things? Did Israel just perpetrate atrocities in the name of God?

- How much, if any, of the OT patriarch stories are intended as historical accounts?

- Why are there no demonstrative (in the NT sense) miracles in the world today? Maybe there are some, but I've certainly never witnessed such things.

- How can "becoming a Christian changed my life" be a useful testament to the validity of our faith when adherents to other faiths can make similar claims?

- How "free" is our free will? I'm not a determinist by any means, but considering the effects genetics, upbringing, and environment have on our decision making, a "strong volitionist" view may not have a strong footing.

- More Christians are asserting that we do not possess an immortal soul. Some base their stance on their interpretation of scripture, others on neuroscience, and some on both. Although the lack of a soul would be irrelevant in regards to resurrection (a bodily resurrection isn't dependent upon a soul), how could free will be anything but an illusion without some sort of soul, immortal or otherwise?

- Some NT writers seem quite confident of Christ's return in the short term. Two thousand years later, He still hasn't returned. Are we misintepreting what they wrote? Were they just wishful thinkers? Is the whole idea just bunk?

- Would I be a Christian if church hadn't been part of my upbringing?

- Why are we so slow to recognize our own Pharisaical tendencies?

Well, I could add to the list for some time, but I'll stop. I'd like to hear some readers' takes on some of these questions.

I'll end by coming back to Kester's post. In his discussion he referenced the passage from Mark 9 where a man brings his demon-possessed son to Jesus to be healed. The man's statement to Christ--"I believe. Help me overcome my unbelief."--has long been one of the most poignant scriptures in all the Bible for me, not only because the man's plea is often my own, but because Christ doesn't turn away from him. He heals the man's son.

Lord, be patient with us. Renew our faith. Remind us of your faithfulness. Give us strength to follow you in spite of our doubts.