When, later, Mephisto appears

and smilingly declares himself the winner, he can still be defeated by the manner in which we accept the consequences of our action.

—Hammarskjold, Markings, p. 65

"Dangerous" speech

This makes me want to throw my hands in the air and despair utterly for the world we inhabit. It’s not like I don’t have other reasons for pessimism, but this—this—is breathtaking. In an Orwellian sense, because the control of language is the precursor to the control of thought. Always, always.

As my father would say, "such is life."

The tyranny of feelings

The first of what I’m sure is an ongoing concern...

I have noticed it in conversations with students, but of course with students you make certain allowances.

But here it is in an open letter from Apple Computer, for Pete’s sake (for what it’s worth, I applaud the decision of the company). They “feel" that they must speak up. Not just “we must speak up,” but the feeling must be put in there in a redundant construction.

Why say “feels”? And upon reading it, why do I care?

My students substitute “to feel” for “to think,” “to reason,” “to maintain,” “to assert,” “to argue,” and any other verb that might represent cogitation and the use of intellect.

to feel is not the same thing is to think…it’s a different mode of epistemology altogether, if one can even call it that. But though I can discount some of the uses of the term in casual conversation, I begin to notice the wholesale replacement of the more vague, subjective term for the more specific & objective ones. Minds are being reshaped through the changes in the language they have available to them, and we have yet to see what they are being reshaped for.

Lefty Turns 6

Our third boy, our surprise child, the one who decided to poke a hole in his swimming pool two weeks early, the one who’s left-handed and sucks his thumb and has a little bit of a stutter, the one who always wakes up at full speed and talks non-stop if you get him alone. The child who could be a twin of our eldest, which makes Little Red look that much more remarkable in comparison. The reason I got my plumbing fixed. The reason we now drive a Honda Odyssey.

Here he is (at about 4 months) sitting with the dearly departed Honey. Little Red in the background . . . when he was actually little.

In which Piers has to be a professional

Today I have had an interview with a student who is writing a feature on the big Shakespeare 400th anniversary. She wanted to know things about why Shakespeare is important for higher education, and what I wish for my students in the class. A couple of highlights:

I do in fact think Shakespeare is important as a touchstone for higher education and for the study of English generally because his plays are uniquely rigorous and accessible at the same time—and as such are important as core texts around which to build the ideal of a liberal arts education. Are there other texts that are as important? yes. Are there other writers who are more rigorous or profound? probably. But given what we are trying to do when providing the average English major with a relevant yet grounded education, Shakespeare occupies ground that no other writer can match.

What I want for my students in the class I teach every fall: To recognize that the Shakespeare they encountered in HS was a pale shadow of the true Bard; to gain a healthy respect for the range of topics, plots, and tones that he uses; and to remember that he gets better and better with age, never growing old or stale.

Adventures with Students, Vol. 55

Being a partial account of conversations with students this day, the third of Lent:

One student, having graduated last spring, now wishes to go to law school. I say, certainly, go to law school! It is hardly surprising that your entry level job isn’t 100% fulfilling. If you think law school will bring you what you’re looking for, you have nothing to lose and potentially lots to gain.

Another young man, very earnest, wishes to know about how he should handle relationships with his girlfriend’s family, especially individuals that are hard to deal with. I say, remember that what the woman in your life wants to know is that she can count on you. What she especially does not want is for you to jump in there and make her choose between you and family members in some conflict of wills (no matter how noble your intentions).

A third student, an older transfer from another state institution, wishes to know how my work with the literary magazine here on campus can help him with honing his craft and maybe help him in his desire to be a literature professor after he goes to graduate school. I avoid any mention of graduate school, but encourage his desire to work with the magazine, hoping that he will see fit to join as that rarest of creatures: a male editorial staff member.

My first year students: didn’t do their reading for today’s class.

My upper level students: are a good bunch. They are skeptical about moving on to lyric poetry, though.

Ash Wednesday

Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.

From David Warren today (http://www.davidwarrenonline.com/2016/02/10/on-leaving-town/):

“Judgement is of the Lord, and not of the children in the playground,” as my father once patiently explained, after I had made a fool of myself, in the yard of Saint Anthony’s. He was quoting my grandfather, as I came to understand. (Grandpa had been quoting some older authorities.) “Take yer lumps,” would be a paraphrase. I have not yet mastered this advice myself, but can see that it is wise. So much of the power of “political correctness” comes from this wincing action, to which human beings are inclined: to explain what doesn’t need explaining. Let one’s statement stand, without explication, so long as it was heartfelt and true. Let the critic worm resume his furrow.

...

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust: this is a side of Christ’s teaching that seems particularly lost on many who claim to hear Him today. He was not a “nice” Saviour. He did not forgive those who did not ask forgiveness. He showed no mercy to those who wanted none. He was not the prophet of the sucks.

We owe our explanations to Him; and likewise our penitence. Not to the mob.

Adventures in Parenting, Vol. 52

A weekend in which Number One Son had to learn some hard lessons about competition and being on the losing end of it.

First there was the basketball game in a town just north of here; my son’s little team ran into a buzzsaw. The other boys were better organized, more aggressive, and bigger . . . and took our boys out of the game early. At halftime it was 15-2. Needless to say the end result didn’t go our way. Number One Son loves basketball, but he has some size and skill to develop, and he shares his father’s intuitive athleticism (i.e., not much of it). So. We had a long talk on the way home about responding when a team is eating your lunch, how sometimes it just happens that you run into a group that is better than you.

Then there was the outcome of the Big Sporting Event last night, in which the favored team got its nose bloodied and in which the reigning league MVP kinda got exposed especially in the character portion of the contest. Early on, when the game was close, Number One Son was having a good time (he was cheering for the Carolina Panthers) and doing a lot of whooping and carrying on at all the plays. It was good fun, and he and The Triathlete did a lot of teasing each other (we were happy for Carolina to win, but wanted Manning’s last game as a pro to be this victory). As the second half wore on, Number One did a lot less whooping, and by the end of the game he was really disheartened. It’s the first time I’ve seen him really invested in an athletic contest, and the first time he’s had to deal with that kind of disappointment.

As his dad, and as a man who has sometimes taken my team’s losses hard (read: every time the North Carolina Tar Heels dropped a basketball game in the period 1997-2013), I am responsible to help him see that losing is not the end of the world, that it happens to everyone, that championships are special because they’re so rare, and that what matters is your character in victory and defeat. And I also have to let him be sad and tell him I know just how it feels to be let down. I’d spare him the pain of it, but then he wouldn’t learn what he needs to learn if he’s going to grow up.

The Classical Trivium

I just finished reading a book that, had it been published in 2003 or 2004, would have transformed my doctoral thesis so completely that I am absolutely gobsmacked to think of it. McLuhan is famous for other kinds of work, but this (his hitherto unpublished Cambridge dissertation) is a testament to the rigor of his intelligence.

I mourn the fact that I haven’t read it until now.

On the other hand, I am gratified that, although we approached the topic from different directions and with different levels of erudition, we arrived at the same conclusions regarding Mr Nashe.

In which Piers watches the X-Files

Lileks captures my experience of watching the X-Files mini-reboot:

I've seen one new "X-Files" episode, and it was okay. I heard the third is better, and funnier. But that's not what I want. Anyone hear they were doing more X-Files, and think "hope it's a comedy"? There were comedic moments, but the show relied on dread, paranoia, cold logic vs. incomprehensible events, and of course a baffling, complex, indefensible mythos that brought the whole mess crashing down into cultural irrelevancy. At some point we realized, with a sick and angry feeling, that there was no master plot. They were making it up as they went along, introducing new wrinkles not to reveal the grand plan, but to compensate for their own inability to bring it all together. I can't think of another show I loved so much only to drift away. Oh, the VCR didn't record? Whatever.

Well, the Simpsons.

I tweeted out the other night something about the show being wrong for the times - the idea of an all-powerful super-competent government with plots within plots, capable of devilish secret schemes died somewhere around late 2001, if only because most of us realized it wasn't capable of such things, and the delicious shiver of 90s-era paranoia now seemed like a juvenile indulgence. (The people who believed, who Wanted to Believe in Mulderspeak, doubled down on Trutherism.) Time has left these characters behind, and in the episode I saw they seemed vaguely embarrassed they had to do this. Anderson looked as if she was still doing "The Fall," a show in which she plays a remote and clinical version of Scully without any of the smoldering warmth or softness, and Duchovney just rasped out his lines in rote flat tones as if he'd boned up on the character by watching parody videos. It was a bit disconcerting to see it all so pristine and clear, too - the old shows now look as if they were shot in a smoky room through a lens covered with hair spray, and that look defines not only the show but 90s TV. Looking back at the shows now, I think: those were happier times.

This was all we had to worry about, and it was a fairy tale. We knew it, of course, but once a week, it was fun; we all wanted to believe.

It was a simpler time. We didn’t realize how good we had it.

What, in the end, was I doing all that time?

In the weeks and months since my mother in law passed away, and even more intimately since the great cancer scare with The Triathlete, I’ve become more and more invested in parts of my life that I had allowed to become rather cobwebby and dusty. I neglected so much.

I wasted so much time. It eats at me.

I didn’t mean to. I thought all along that I was following the best and highest path I could; I thought that my priorities were in order and, furthermore, the right ones. I would have said that though I was not as righteous as I would like to be, I was at least making an effort. I was deceived in myself and in my choices. And like waking up in an unknown place, I found myself several months ago having inadvertently landed in a dark wood with beasts and monsters all around.

I am working hard to make it right. I am climbing out of that dark wood, with the help of a guide or two, and the way is arduous. I am ashamed of having gotten there to begin with, and progress is slow. It is small comfort that my intentions were (mostly) honest.

Macintyre on protest

Protest as virtue-signalling:

But protest is now almost entirely that negative phenomenon which characteristically occurs as a reaction to the alleged invasion of someone’s rights in the name of someone else’s utility. The self-assertive shrillness of protest arises because the facts of incommensurability ensure that protestors can never win an argument; the indignant self-righteousness of protest arises because the facts of incommensurability ensure equally that the protestors can never lose an argument either. Hence the utterance of protest is characteristically addressed to those who already share the protestors’ premises. The effects of incommensurability ensure that protestors rarely have anyone else to talk to but themselves. This is not to say that protest cannot be effective; it is to say that it cannot be rationally effective and that its dominant modes of expression give evidence of a certain perhaps unconscious awareness of this.

After Virtue, ch. 6 (p.71)

In which Piers reads about accountability

In examining the news and my email today, I have noticed three items that are far apart in space but conceptually adjacent:

First, it is reported that the professor at the center of one of the uglier scenes at Mizzou this past fall is being charged with a misdemeanor.

Second, I read with interest that the Georgia state legislator in charge of education appropriations has told university administrators that unless they enact due process protections for their students, they can get to work on some serious (and state appropriations free) budget revisions.

Third, I read the acceptable use policy for my university owned computer, and the reminder that every single email sent on a university account is searchable, readable, and should by no means be thought of as private.

None of these developments qualify as what I would call pleasant, but that’s not the point. What they do show is that the university as a broad institution - especially in the realm of publically-funded education - should always be accountable for its actions and the actions of its administrators and faculty. I am free to do anything I wish in this job, pretty much. But I should be ready to answer for what I say and do. So should my colleagues and my multitudinous bureaucrat-administrators. If we will not embrace that notion wholeheartedly, it’ll be done for (to) us.

In which Piers and Family experience snowstorm time dilation

And so, in an unusual development for NWTN in mid January, we had a bit of a snowstorm at the end of last week. This on top of a minor sleet-fall that left the kids out of school on Wednesday and Thursday. They were out on Friday while it all piled up to about 6-8 inches, and then today while the rest of the ice melts off the roads. Thank heavens the temperature climbed up above freezing.

So what. It’s just a typical southern snowstorm — not even that uncommon these past four years. We usually don’t get ours until late February or early March, though. It is instructive to observe, however, the reactions of adults and children to the novelty of snow on the ground, especially when one is laid up recovering from surgery and the other is stuck between the world of parenting and the world of studying. What ends up happening to me is that I forget the studying almost entirely and devote myself to dealing with the kids. Lots of clothes on and off. Lots of making of hot chocolate and feeding them various foods. Lots of running the dryer. All of it fun, but strange in that the rest of the world is continuing to move while our little house becomes a snowbound fortress of solitude.

Eventually, though, cabin fever takes over and makes it hard. We just aren’t the sort to be constantly taking the children all over the place.

In which we have a happy ending to recent events

The Triathlete returned home to NWTN yesterday evening, a little earlier than we had anticipated. All tests, all indicators, all reports from the doctor put her in great shape. She has some resting to do, and the hardest part for her will be the taking it easy part, but we will take that; the main thing is that she isn’t sick. She just has to finish her “laying in."

Being a husband in the case of a thoroughly and intimately feminine surgery like this one, albeit minimally invasive for the sake of her recovery, puts me in a strange position. Women tend to retreat into a space that doesn’t exactly shut men out on purpose, but they do make for themselves a space where the man seems . . . superfluous. I do what I can, getting drinks and fetching blankets and what-not.

And she settles into something like a cocoon, waiting for the strength to come back.

Interstellar

I don’t watch many movies as a rule. Not that I don’t want to — it’s just that by the time I get around to thinking about catching a given film, it has usually left our local theater and then it’s an even chance whether I’ll catch it on Netflix/AmazonPrime. I did make a note to catch this one, though, because several people had mentioned that it is really remarkable.

Even though I’m a sucker for hard sci-fi like this film, I enjoyed it for what I think are legitimate reasons. As is always the case with Mr Nolan the atmospherics were perfect. I expecially appreciate the way that the film sets us in a world where there’s a lot going on, mostly bad, but neither bogs down in exposition nor merely settles for the grey goo of a dystopia (itself a pattern wherein writers often expect to gain credit for deep thinking without actually doing the deep thinking).

Two details that stand out to me: the film’s utterly silent scenes in space, where of course the various movements of the spacecraft would make no noise; and the film’s attempt to take seriously the relationships between mass, time, and space — where there are no short trips in the cosmos, and where the weight of long isolation must be dealt with forthrightly.

And a beautiful but non-conclusive ending.

Parts of the Job that I may not love

I am not particularly good at writing recommendation letters, though I understand quite clearly how important they are. And in most cases, the students who ask are the sort that I want to help out.

But this kind of thing makes me want to pull my hair out:

Thank goodness for Safari’s “suggested password” feature.

WW

Tomorrow we will leave NWTN for Nashville the weekend so that The Triathlete can have surgery. A few weeks ago she got back a blood test with some worrying numbers, so after a consultation with the same oncologist that treated Honey, she set up a procedure for a full hysterectomy. She will have the procedure laparoscopically on Friday morning, and will spend the remainder of the MLK weekend hopefully getting in good enough shape to make the drive back on Monday.

We are all a little tense about it, though not particularly worried that this will turn into a long term cancer battle. The main thing is minimizing her risk and taking out the parts that would be most likely to cause trouble.

To her credit, and unsurprisingly, she has spent this last week ministering to her friends and keeping up a pretty active schedule. I think she wants to get as much living in as she can before she has to be sedate for a while. The 15-20 days of taking it easy may make her crazy.

I have many reasons to be thankful for her and to admire her, but the energy she is able to muster and spend on other people is astonishing.

Adventures in Parenting, Vol. 51

There was snow on the ground when the boys woke up yesterday. I had seen it before I went to bed for the night, so it wasn’t all that exciting for me, but it was thrilling for them. I enjoyed very much how excited they got.

Which brought these thoughts to mind, as an antidote for the gloom from last week:

I enjoy Number One Son for his zany sense of humor, his gentle spirit, and his gift for impressions and remembering movie dialogue (not that he can quote all of Mary Poppins or The Sound of Music like his mother, but he’ll get there). When he’s not at the house, it just doesn’t feel quite right.

I enjoy Little Red for his tender heart, his outgoing friendliness to everyone, and his tendency to be a smaller version of his mother. And that husky voice and raucous laugh of his. I am fortunate that he has chosen me to be the recipient of so much affection.

I enjoy Lefty for his sprightly cheerfulness every morning, how he is almost exactly identical to his oldest brother, and how he is an entirely different child when he’s not around his older brothers.

Every day that passes, I remember that they’ll never be this little again. I’ve started taking breaks from what I’m doing when they ask — because I know that each phase of life has its own pleasures. I don’t want to miss these.