panoramicgreen

Yesterday, I was going through my Greek flashcards on the train.

The man next to me saw what I was doing and said, "You know, Virginia Woolf studied ancient Greek her entire life, and never mastered it."

Well.  Thank you for that encouragement, kind sir?  What was I supposed to say to that? 

I wish I had snapped back something like, "Well, I have my own room and I'm not crazy, so I'm doing quite well with it, thank you very much."  ; )

(I actually said, "Oh, I never knew that.  Isn't that interesting.  Hmm.")

In Flanders Fields (1915)


In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

— John McCrae

Well, I'm sick right now.  With M.'s hurt foot, we're kind of a mess together.  I haven't been able to keep anything down for the past few days.  Last night I was shivering, and just felt awful.  I guess the flu is going around here at school.  I don't know if what I have is the flu; I've never had it.  I just feel sweaty, and then cold, and week, and pukey.  I had a meeting at work this morning that I had to be at, but I came home from work early.

Update to the death I wrote about last week or so, "122nd and Broadway."  According to the Columbia Spectator, they've arrested a suspect; he's a fourteen year-old boy.  When I saw that headline, I was just so sad.  I can imagine a fourteen year-old--that the age of my former students--just thinking he would grab someone's bag, a "simple mugging," and then the person dies, is killed--and suddenly he's up for second-degree murder.  It's terrible.  What a tragedy, for everyone.

There's still a shrine across the street, dedicated to the dead student.  His parents came all the way from China; we signed cards here at Union for them.

I have a paper due on Friday for Philosophy, but it's only seven pages, and after the thesis, that feels like a breeze.  Even if I'm in no state to wrap my mind around evidence of God, the problem of evil, or miracles.  Whatever it is that's ailing me, it can't last forever, right?

It's a good thing I slept in this morning.  I had work, and then immediately two hours of yoga, and finally got home at 9:30 p.m., after stopping for the ingredients for bread.

We have Chapel four days a week, at noon.  (Apparently, back in the day when it was all young male seminarians, Chapel was in the morning.  But as things progressed, they noticed that the morning population was dwindling.  So now it's noon.)  Thursdays are Communion services.

I have to admit that in my nearly two years here, I've only been to one Communion service.  The first year, I was pretty sure that I wouldn't like how "loosey-goosey" they did Communion.  Even a standard UCC Eucharist service has the potential to make me feel uncomfortable and unworshipful.  I've gotten a lot more "accepting" of these things, though.  I went to Communion on Valentine's Day, and it was amazing.  I wasn't the only one brought to tears in that service.

Anyway: we always have different kinds of bread, baked by a student or community member.  It's my turn tomorrow.  And, bread has to rise, and then be kneaded and formed, and let to rise again.  So that's what I'm doing.  I'm waiting for the last rising, and then baking, and watching Mystery! on PBS, which is mildly like an English Law & Order.  Only it has cottages instead of NYC apartments, and cricketeers.

I braided the bread.  That is, I divided the sets of dough (three loaves' worth) into threes, and then rolled each lump into a long noodle.  Then I braided the three strands together.  I could have made a wreath if I'd joined the two braid ends, but I liked the way it looked, just a braided loaf.  And I made three loaves. I guess I'm having a Trinitarian theme.  I also think they look Scandinavian, which pleases me and appeals to my sense of romantic, ancestral bread-baking.  (Except that I loaded up these loaves with shaved asiago cheese, thyme, and rosemary.  I also have problems with the Eucharistic bread tasting, well, tasty...but Union seems to be a place for tasty Communion bread.  So.  I made it tasty.)

Now it's ready to bake and then I'm off to bed.  After I post a note on the cooling bread that it's for Chapel, so my various floormates don't help themselves to breakfast before I can deliver it.

All I want to do, now that my thesis has been handed in, is putter around in my pajamas, watch Law&Order, and surf the beautiful things on Etsy.

(Etsy is an online store, where everything is handmade, by individual sellers.  Sort of like a craft fair, but much, much better.  Go ahead: abandon my post and start using Etsy.  Type into the search bar "large handbags," "spices," "wedding topper," "glassware," "altered books..."  The possibilities are endless.  Also, you can even search by _color_: click on your favorite color, and they'll serve up an assortment of beautiful things in just that hue.)

I went in to work yesterday, but was pretty tired.  We have a lot of events coming up, though, so I needed to be there.  I worked on some flyers and invitations; catering next.  And make sure everything's okay in the Canary Islands.  Luckily, not only am I friends with everyone I work with (so they understand that I'm tired and let me go slowly), but most of what I do can be done at my own pace, and over e-mail.  I greatly prefer e-mail to the phone, because I like to gather my thoughts, re-read for details, and make sure I've put down everything I need.  I tend to get flustered on the phone, in part because I worry that I'm not hearing everything (I have a hearing disorder).

Today I only have two things to do: go to the Green Market (I want fresh bread, cheese, and veg) and finish some reading for my philosophy class tomorrow.  The readings are interesting, and I'm glad I'm going to know this stuff, but...  I sometimes feel like these philosophical arguments and breakdowns are very...male.  

I remember that as an undergrad, we English majors shared the building with the Philosophy majors.  And sometimes going into a room after a Phil. class, I'd notice that the students were mostly male, mostly wearing a lot of black, and mostly not smelling very good.  Here, the guys are cleaner and not as pale/smug, but the way it works seems counterintuitive to me.  Like: in evaluating and discussion religious experience, it's all: "If /x/ is like /y/, and /y/ can be said to be such and such, we can understand /x/ to come from blah."  I want to know: if we're talking about religious _experience_, why aren't we talking to and about people who have had them?  About hymns and prayers and laments, and the stories of _people_?  I

 don't know where in philosophy and culture we ceded that the scientific way of thinking* was better than a relational "telling-listening-connecting" way of thinking.

I actually have related worries about my thesis.  I'm technically a Church History major, but I feel like everyone else doing history (mostly, again, male) are doing economics, and population, and things that are facts that can be analyzed and held in comparison to other facts.  I do story, and character, and the relationships we have with fictional characters, writers, and God.  Really interesting, but is it history?  Am I an historian?

*Well, probably in the Enlightenment.

Okay: on to philosophy and cheese.

(To the tune of "Shake Your Booty" by KC and the Sunshine Band)

"Type type type

type type type

type that thesis (do doo do do do doo doo)

Type type type

type type type

type that thesis. The-sis."

Only three of us on my floor are doing theses, but it feels like a giant floor project. B. and I have taken over the large dining table in the Common Room, he at one end and I at the other. Sometimes M. (named after the thirteenth president, I think) sits in the middle. I moved all our Easter eggs to the top of our "mantle" (the television) for more room on the table.

We type and type and type. Last night, B.'s thesis spurred a long conversation about Malcolm X., the Rev. King, and J. Cameron Carter. Of course, this spins quickly into Senator Obama and the Rev. Wright.  Not my subject at all, but the energy of it keeps me going for a couple of more hours.

Yesterday, on the train home from work, I proofread the thesis of another classmate, a woman from Colombia who helps out my Spanish when I have to do contracts with the museums in Spain.  Not that I have time to be reading another thesis, but I kind of think of my thesis not as an individual thing, but as something that we are all doing together, at this concentrated time in our school year.  And besides, she's writing about Latin American women's fiction, which is very interesting to me, so it was a nice literary break.

So---I'm working away. I'd love one more day, or not to have to go in to work today, but I'll be fine.  I'm glad I read and type quickly; I feel that I fit more into the time I have.  And this evening, we're all watching Ninja Warrior, which is a fabulous and crazy-funny show (imported from Japan) that both brings any room full of people together, and energizes the rest of the evening.

Finally, speaking of television: one last note.  I often type little comments to myself as I'm writing, to remind myself to go find another piece later, and fit it into my idea.  For example, I'll type, "Intro EE (Eastern European) stories, watching for revelation and/or desire to connect w/ God" and finish the section I'm working on, and go back to that new idea later.  It usually works.  Sometimes, though, I'm too cryptic for my own good.  Here's a note I found today, and I have no idea what I mean: "Motives, readers, writers, sorting through their own pasts to make sense of their histories (try to remember the link with the scary television story)"

"Scary television story"?  Whatever could I have been thinking of?  Sigh.  It's gone now.  Unless it returns tonight, with the ninjas.
 

This time next week, I'll be finished with my thesis, and binding it. And trying to restrain myself from decorating the cover with tiny illuminations and gold-leaf decorations...

Easter didn't feel like Easter to me. I really miss my home church over the holidays. And Easter in particular doesn't really resonate with me unless I've been participating in Holy Week all along. At Emmanuel, I started with Maundy Thursday (one of my all-time favorite services), and even did a few hours in the middle of the night during the Good Friday all-night vigil. Stations of the Cross in the empty, barren church on Holy Saturday morning, and then Easter Even Saturday night--when Easter really begins, with a flash of fire in the back of the church.

And, yesterday's Easter service came in the evening, so without Holy Week, and the Saturday events, and an Easter morning service...it felt like I was just watching the holiday from afar. I suppose it's only my own fault, for not having found an Episcopal church that could be my church home. Next year.

But, I'm back to work, in all ways. We dyed eggs in Sunday school, after washing the feet of all the stuffed animals (I wanted to tell the whole story in one evening, so we started with the foot-washing). I'm at the VUE offices now, working on events in NYC, Sonoma County, and Spain. Tonight, back to thesis work. I haven't really written on it for a week, as I had another paper due last Monday. I've been reading one final book, and am gathering my thoughts before I recommence typing tonight.

M. and I have been looking around at registry possibilities (we have some _amazing_ ideas!) and setting up a wedding website--part blog, perhaps, part information posting place. And I'm about to schedule engagement photos with an amazing photographer classmate of mine (hey, K!). I haven't really had time to think about it, much, because we've been so busy, but sometimes it just hits me: "I'm engaged. To marry M.." What an incredible feeling.

Okay, seriously: back to work...

Well, I made it.  The Burbank Airport is very mellow, not crazy airport-y at all.  We walked off the plane into the mild weather and walked across the tarmac into the small terminal.  The baggage claim was outside.  The weather is incredibly...soft: the air feels soft and smells like honeysuckle, and green grass, and clover.

M. lives up in the Laurel Canyon hills; the house overlooks everything.  When the taxi driver brought me up here, and I saw my first view of how high up we were, as he made a turn, I gasped with surprise and was filled with vertigo.  It's very quiet here in the house; all the doors and windows are open.  I'm barefoot, which feels wonderful after wet, cold New York, and bedbugs.

I think tonight we're going to the Chateau Marmont for dinner.  Pretty wow.   I'm tired now, because I was up so early, but I'm trying not to nap so I don't mess up my sleep pattern.  I'm going to read on my thesis topic, so when I get up in the morning I can type.  I'm at 33 pages out of 50, and in the perfect place to finish.

More later...

 
In the Inglehart-Welzel Cultural Map of the World, every country in the world is put on a simple grid, with two values as /x/ and /y/ axes.  The two values relate to how traditional (religious) or secular the people of a nation are, and which value the nation regards (or needs to regard) more: survival or self-expression.  
They are called formally, " (1) Traditional/ Secular-rational and (2) Survival/Self-expression values."

You can imagine how these might play out: in the US, few of us have the need to pursue day to day survival anymore, so self-expression is high for us.  We ask each other, "What do you do?" and mean, "Where do you work, or what do you make/create?"  Where we went to high school or college, or how we dress, music we buy...all of these things signal self-expression.  We are highly offended if someone "reads" us wrong: if someone groups me in with traditional Southern Conservatives because I'm a schoolteacher from Missouri, for example.

It's very interesting to see different countries in relationship to one another in this way--to see who we have things in common with, and do not.  For example, I heard a story on NPR where the commentators were trying to "explain" how Russians "think differently" than us.  One problem, my colleague and I identified, is that we _assume_ Russians will think and believe like us (about democracy, for example), because they _look_ like us (white/European-looking).  When, in reality, we are in very different places, both regarding tradition and faith, and regarding our values.

If I were teaching high school, I would so definitely have this map posted in my room. 

Note: the World Values Survey is a long-lasting series of questions regarding culture, values, happiness, religion...in different countries.  It was used, in one small example, to try to understand what Russians knew or believed about religion and faith, during Communism, right after the fall of Communism, and ten or twenty years later.  Sociologists, among others, use the survey results to try and understand the ramifications of educational systems and society values.  The surveys have been given to hundreds--maybe thousands--of different groups all over the world, for gathering different sets of information.  I'm using the Russian/religious set for my thesis research.

Here's the map (it comes up small, click upon it to make it completely readable):

http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/

 

I read about this "self-tag" over at Grammar Piano.  Here's what Lee wrote:

"So I'm tagging myself, and after this you tag yourself.

These are the meme rules:

1. Look up page 123 in the nearest book.
2. Look for the fifth sentence.
3. Post the three sentences that follow that fifth sentence on page 123."

Well...I'm in the Common Room, so none of these books are mine.  Here we go:  _All the President's Men_, by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward.

"Segretti was back that afternoon and answered the door.  Meyers introduced himself as a reporter for the _Post_.  The _Post_ had information about a certain work Segretti had done in behalf of Teddy Kennedy, or possibly Hubert Humphrey, he said.  Could they talk?  Segretti remained silent in the doorway."

Nice; nice and tight.  I've never read it (yet), but it feels like American noir.  The doorway, the introduction via omniscient narrator, the questions ("...a certain work...," "...or possibly..."), the hanging silence, and the easy political name dropping.  
Neat.  

Now: tag yourself.