General – Page 53 – neumatikos

I’ve found a solution

For a long time now, I’ve disparaged families who are so negligent as to “use the TV as a babysitter.” I had my reasons:

* TV are stuupid. Television is designed to pitch to the widest possible audience. In part, this is usually accomplished by also pitching to the lowest common denominator. This means that most television, even movies is noticeably lacking in any kind of content which might require an attention span. But people only mature and become capable of working with more complex information by being regularly exposed to stuff that is beyond what they’re actually used to. You don’t improve in anything unless you have to struggle a bit. Since TV constantly pitches low, a regular diet of television makes you dumb.

* TV are annoying. Young children are geared toward repetition and memorization. Which means that, even if you find a way to expose your kids only to “smart TV,” they’re going to want to be watching it a great deal more than an adult is quite prepared to tolerate. I don’t care how much better than the standard fare Thomas the Tank Engine is. It’s not good enough for me to have to memorize it. And I don’t know that I want my kids memorizing it either. OK. Maybe Veggie Tales songs. But I have limits.

Unfortunately, ideals are all wonderful until you encounter real life, in which a child requires a great deal of stimulation. Continue reading “I’ve found a solution”

In which I tell you everything

Latina mortua lingua est,
Ut mortua potest esse:
Necavit omnes Romanos,
Atque necat me!

(Latin is a dead language,
Dead as it can be:
It killed off all the Romans,
And now it’s killing me!)

The rumors of my death, unfortunately, have not been so greatly exaggerated as one could have wished. As you may recall, I was offered a job about a year ago to teach Latin at a classical school in Concord, North Carolina. This was very odd because, well, several reasons:

Though I love teaching, I had never taught in a classroom setting, nor had I been trained in any way to do so.
Though I had decided I wanted to try teaching, Latin was the furthest thing from my mind. I had applied to teach English.
Of all the positions to offer me, Latin was the least likely. I like languages, but I had never studied any with the diligence that produces proficiency. In other words, I didn’t know what I was talking about.

Nevertheless, the school and I endeavored upon a noble experiment, based in necessity: I needed a job, and I was interested in teaching. They needed a Latin teacher, and they were willing to try me, apparently because I sounded pretty good on paper.

About a month ago, I learned with the finality that the experiment was to be considered a failure. Contracts at our school are offered on an annual basis with no guarantee as to future years. I was not to be offered a new one. Continue reading “In which I tell you everything”

Cell phones bad for babies?

What in the world? I’d like to read the report and see what other confounding factors they thought of for the study. But this paragraph in particular is rather telling in my mind:

They add that there might be other possible explanations that they did not examine – such as that mothers who used the phones frequently might pay less attention to their children – and stress that the results “should be interpreted with caution” and checked by further studies. But they conclude that “if they are real they would have major public health implications”.

I think there are other underlying factors such as lack of discipline that might be skewing the data….

Home Health Aide

So, it’s been a while since I’ve done anything remotely resembling an update. So sorry (well mostly sorry); it’s been a bit busy on my end getting used to being a mama.

For those of you who haven’t heard, I took and passed my state test to become a CNA I. The first place I applied to for work was Bayada Nurses which provides care for people in thier homes. Within ten minutes or so of my online application, I received a phone call for an interview. Within a week I was hired and doing orientation, then the fun began of trying to set up days where I could work and have a sitter for David.

This past Wednesday was supposed to be my first day on the job (which I had set up a sitter for); and Moday I found out that my client canceled services for the day. I was also supposed to have another client today (Saturday and have Kyle watch the Bug), but I found out on Thursday that my client is in the hospital.

Friday, was not supposed to be a day of work, since I didn’t have a sitter and Kyle was at school. Apparently, however, God had different plans. Continue reading “Home Health Aide”

Thoughts on the writing of “modern” poetry

Dan Phillips recently started an accidental firestorm when he took it upon himself to criticize modern poetry. In particular, he criticized the poetry recommended by Karsten Piper. I protest that I was not at the center of the storm – I said to myself, “I will not say anything,” but at last the words burned in my heart and I opened my mouth:

Piper made the assertion that “the most important question is, how did you respond to the poem when you read it? Did you feel anything that you weren’t already feeling today? Did you think anything that you hadn’t already thought about this afternoon?” I protested that these are not the most important questions, and that, in fact they are bad questions. I offered instead that you should start with more basic questions, such as “what does this poem actually say?” and “does it say it well?” I was told that these kinds of questions are pedagogically troublesome, because they leave no connection between the reader and the poem. They are “well-suited to argument” but “don’t treat poetry as poetry.” And that’s the point where I really had to say something, and since I have a rule that any writing which takes up a substantial amount of my free time by rights ought also to appear on the blog, you have the argument that lays before you. (Below the fold.) Continue reading “Thoughts on the writing of “modern” poetry”

So I Shouldn’t Hear Voices?

Alexander Jordan and I have been having a discussion about how to know God’s will for your life, in which he has been proving himself to be pleasant, helpful, humble, and above all, thorough, while I have shown myself to be reactionary and emotional, responding to the feeling I get about the whole idea, rather than the actual arguments in his posts.

In my defense, I have only to say that he has been the blogger, carefully planning his series, and I have been the commenter, responding in the moment. He also seems to have the advantage of a great deal more time in which to structure highly advanced explanations of his position while I am limited to responding quickly in slap-dash fashion. Nevertheless, I wanted to bring the discussion to the attention of my readers and see if I could get some opinion.

Jordan has been describing his view of knowing God’s will as contra writers like John Eldridge, which puts me at a bit of a disadvantage, because I’ve only read a little of John Eldridge, and usually I tend to agree with the general vicinity of where he’s going, but very little with how he gets there. So there’s a danger, I think, on both our parts, of shooting past each other. This is especially true since I have already confessed to not reading Jordan’s posts as thoroughly as I ought. Nevertheless, here’s what I believe is the position he’s advocating: Continue reading “So I Shouldn’t Hear Voices?”

Almost Perfect

My mom submitted An Ideal Husband for the category of perfect movies with no flaws. One day I may see. I still can’t get myself to watch it, what with the “lying to the spouse” thing. Apparently, except for this basic flaw, the movie is perfect.

More recently, Valerie and I have been getting around to watching a stack of movies that were given to us, but didn’t suit our mood when we received them. So I have a short review for you today of a movie out of season: The Holiday.

I put The Holiday in the category of “almost perfect,” that is, it was a film of impeccable taste and style, with absolutely flawless delivery and nary a misstep – except for one glaring detail which brought up the question of whether we ought to have the movie in the house at all. Continue reading “Almost Perfect”

Not Dead Yet

I’ve just learned (via Orson Scott Card) that the National Endowment of the Arts is suffering a remarkable renewal. It seems that, since 2001, the head of the NEA has been a businessman and a professional poet who has never been positioned on the authoritarian side of the professor’s podium, a man named Dana Gioia.

I’m now in the process of reading his article from the Atlantic Monthly, Can Poetry Matter?, which discusses the fact that much poetry written today isn’t even *intended* to matter. A key quote:

Most editors run poems and poetry reviews the way a prosperous Montana rancher might keep a few buffalo around—not to eat the endangered creatures but to display them for tradition’s sake.

This is essentially the reason that I’ve given up poetry for the most part – I was trained in the art of saying nothing, and saying it well. But it was no way to make a living without a lot of long shots.

At any rate, I see a glimmer of hope that Gioia may play a part in a revival of poetry that actually means something, and may be transforming the NEA into an organization that decent people admire, rather than revile

A Single Line

that caught my attention:

“If death is to be approached as martyrdom” he says, in the context of dying of old age, as if that were an assumption that everyone had already thought of. We proceed from there:

If death is to be approached as martyrdom, i.e., as an opportunity to witness to our faith, what do services do we require or request of our healthcare especially at end-of-life? how can that goal be realized in the greater Chrisitian community, i.e., the Church. For example, individuals lifetime spending on healthcare is concentrated to an astounding degree on the final decade of life. Is that a Christian response to healthcare?

One could say that this single perspective could change your whole view on medicine at the end of life…

Irenaeus, Mosaics, and Old Wives’ Tales

Being kept up by a baby who would not sleep, and who would wake his mother with his cries if he were not constantly being bounced about in a chair, with my supply of Agatha Christie and Dick Frances novels depleted, I found myself the other night reading a copy of Irenaeus’ *Against Heresies*, and I ran across this quote:

They gather their views from other sources than the Scriptures; and to use a common proverb, they “strive to weave ropes of sand,” while they try to adapt with an air of probability, the parables of the Lord, the sayings of the prophets, and the words of the apostles, to their own particular assertions, in order that their scheme may not seem altogether without support. In doing so, however, they disregard the order and the connection of the Scriptures, and so far as in them lies, dismember and destroy the truth. By transferring passages, and dressing them up anew, and making one thing out of another, they succeed in deluding many through their wicked art in adapting the oracles of the Lord to their opinions.

Their manner of acting is just as if one, when a beautiful image of a king has been constructed by some skilful artist out of precious jewels, should then take this likeness of the man all to pieces, should re-arrange the gems, and so fit them together as to make them into the form of a dog or of a fox, and even that but poorly executed; and should then maintain and declare that *this* was the beautiful image of the king which the skillful artist constructed, pointing to the jewels which had been admirably fitted together by the first artist to form the image of the king, but have been with bad effect transferred by the latter one to the shape of a dog, and by thus exhibiting the jewels, should deceive the ignorant who had no conception what a king’s form was like, and persuade them that that miserable likeness of the fox was, in fact, the beautiful image of the king.

In like manner do these persons patch together old wives’ fables, and then endeavor, by violently drawing away from their proper connection, words, expressions and parables whenever found, to adapt the oracles of God to their baseless fictions. (Book I, Chapter 1.)

It’s a pretty good image for misquoting the Bible, isn’t it? Continue reading “Irenaeus, Mosaics, and Old Wives’ Tales”