The Bog of Lost Scholars

15 December 2003

Further Proof that I Am Not a Humanities Scholar

Filed under: Religion — Castiron @ 13:35

From chapter 1, Carnival and Other Christian Festivals, by Max Harris:

“Support for my conviction that words are not the final interpretive authority can be drawn from the field of art history. In a brilliant essay, first published in 1983, Leo Steinberg drew attention to the previously unremarked fact that in Renaissance art Christ’s penis was not only portrayed–as had rarely been the case in medieval art–but that attention was drawn to it and, most astonishing of all, that it was frequently erect. He argued that this was not just a matter of increased naturalism but that it advanced a theological argument for the full humanity and sinlessness of Christ. Chastity without ability would have been impotence, not commendable restraint.”

See, this is why I’m not a humanities scholar, or at least not an art historian. I’d never think up an argument like that. (I love the “chastity without ability” line, though.)

12 December 2003

Holiday Friday Five

Filed under: Random Ramblings — Castiron @ 17:51

Friday Five:

  1. Do you enjoy the cold weather and snow for the holidays? Snow? What is this “snow” you speak of? True, I have seen white fluff fall from the sky, but that was the seeds from this one tree.
  2. What is your ideal holiday celebration? How, where, with whom would you celebrate to make things perfect? I have two versions of this. Version 1: With my son, my parents, and my siblings and sib-in-laws. Doesn’t matter where; we can just hang out, unwrap presents, and eat good food. Version 2: My son’s off with his dad or a grandparent; there’s no one in the house but me; it’s a bright sunny day, and I can sit in my living room and stitch and write to my heart’s content, undisturbed.
  3. Do you do have any holiday traditions? Putting the tree up on my mom’s birthday,
  4. Do you do anything to help the needy? Maybe an extra donation here and there, but mostly, I figure that I should be trying to do stuff all year round, and not just because it happens to be the second most important Christian holiday.
  5. What one gift would you like for yourself? For my son to develop language skills — speech would be great, but writing’s fine; just some way to have a real conversation with him. Going for realistic wishes, oh, a table loom would be pretty nifty.

Deja Vu

Filed under: Random Ramblings — Castiron @ 13:30

Ever see something that’s achingly familiar, and you can’t remember why the heck it’s so familiar?

I was flipping through a brochure for one of these blasted school fundraisers, and there’s one item that’s stopped me cold — an eagle charm for a bracelet. Cheapo metal charm, nothing special…and I know that charm. I don’t know where I would have seen it — Mom’s jewelry box? some cheesy necklace I had as a kid? — but once I had a similar charm on a pin or a necklace, and it was damn important to me, and I don’t remember a thing about it.

There are also items that give me strong feelings for no apparent reason. For example, earlier this year I saw Turandot; in the grand court scene at the end of Act I, these people march on stage bearing huge standards, and the sight of that made my heart leap. Why I found the standards so moving, I don’t know, but it’s not because of anything I remember. That doesn’t annoy me nearly as much as knowing that I should remember something and don’t.

11 December 2003

International Folk Dance

Filed under: Dance — Castiron @ 13:30

For the past year, I’ve been intermittently taking folk dancing classes at my church — mostly Eastern European folk dances, but some Israeli, Turkish, and French dances as well. This weekend, I went to a meeting of the local folk dance group for the first time.

It was great fun. Since it’s an amateur group, the fact that I’m a beginner doesn’t matter, and the totally unfamiliar dances are interspersed with ones that I’ve already learned. And two folks who knew me from the church lessons asked me to dance during the couple dances — first time someone’s asked me to dance in twenty years!

I’m hoping to start going more regularly; the dancing’s enjoyable, and the people are pleasant. It’s great exercise. It’s also rather nice, to do occasional dances with close body contact and not have to worry about whether it means anything — it’s just a dance! And it’s good therapy for the part of me that hates making a fool of myself; I can get out there and dance badly, and either no one’s watching or anyone watching will drop hints on what the next step is.

10 December 2003

Yuletide Music

Filed under: Music — Castiron @ 13:35

I don’t care what the stores say. Christmas decorations and music should not go up until, at earliest, the day after Thanksgiving. There’s enough latent Lutheran in me to add that really, they shouldn’t go up until the first Sunday of Advent. (Actually, if you’re really serious about the traditional meaning of Advent, they shouldn’t go up until 24 December, but my family wasn’t that serious about it.)

But since it’s December, I am now happy to see the lights going up around the neighborhood, and tolerant of the lousy excuses for Christmas music I’m hearing everywhere.

What’s good Christmas music? For me, the top of the list is the classic Philadelphia Brass Ensemble carol recordings. That was part of all my childhood Christmases, and I’m delighted that it was rereleased on CD. A more recent acquisition, less exalted but still enjoyable, is the Musical Heritage Society CD A Solid Brass Christmas.

Then there’s my two Mannheim Steamroller Christmas CDs. Yes, yes, they came from a $5.95 bin, but I like them.

For the Solstice, I like to listen to Malcolm Dalglish’s Hymnody of Earth, a collection of songs based on Wendell Berry’s poems, and Sneak’s Noyse’s Christmas Now Is Drawing Near, a collection of English folk carols.

I have Lorena McKinnit’s To Drive the Cold Winter Away because I like several of her other albums, but this particular one’s never entirely grabbed me. (And I’m sorry, while “Snow” is a nice song, I’ve got it on two other compilation albums, and I’m tired of it.) On the other hand, Windham Hill compilation Celtic Christmas is a wonderful album (in spite of “Snow”), with a wide variety of neat Celtic-influence music that’s sufficiently non-obviously Christmas to be playable in January.

For times when I’m in a spoken word mood, I put on Patrick Stewart’s recording of A Christmas Carol (and make mental notes of all the abridgements!).

When I’m Christmased out, my Dr. Demento Christmas CD is a welcome restorative. I find I can’t bear to listen to Weird Al’s “Christmas at Ground Zero” (too close to potential reality), but “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer”, “I Saw Daddy Kissing Santa Claus”, and the other songs and sketches are delights.

And Muppet fan that I am, ever since I was ten, Christmas hasn’t been complete without John Denver and the Muppets: A Christmas Together. That music still takes me back to the sight of my bedside table drawer, full of presents I’d made for my dolls.

9 December 2003

Weird Census Findings

Filed under: Genealogy — Castiron @ 12:15

1870 census, Frederick City, Frederick County, Maryland, 7 Jun 1870. Page 38a (13), line 18, house #93, dwelling #119.

Susan Ogle, age 60, born in Maryland, living alone.

Occupation: necromancer.

I swear, that’s what it says. Necromancer.

This is one of those little things that makes me go “argh! What’s the rest of the story????”

(She might be a relative of mine; there’s a batch of Ogles that are connected to me, but a much larger batch that aren’t.)

8 December 2003

Good Children’s Book, Lousy Children’s Book

Filed under: The Castiron Reading Journal — Castiron @ 18:16

Recent reading:

Zilpha Keatley Snyder, The Changeling. A long-time favorite story, about two girls from different family backgrounds who change each others’ lives through their friendship. I like reading about Martha and Ivy, and the stories they make up, and the weird things that happen to them.

Alas, can’t say the same about Laura E. Richards, Honor Bright. I grabbed this one off the library shelves just out of curiosity; sometimes I find a really wonderful book that way. This, alas, was not one of those times. It’s a treacly plotless book about an orphaned girl who lives in a small boarding school in Switzerland. I endured through the introduction of various characters, the trip up the mountain, Honor’s sprained ankle, and her sojurn in the house of the terribly sweet siblings who supply dairy products to the school; at that point, my insulin gave out. With a little tweaking, it could have been an enjoyable book; boarding school in Switzerland is a wonderfully exotic setting for this middle-class American, and while Honor felt like a Mary Sue, I could have tolerated it if there were a plot, or tolerated the episodicness of the plot if Honor had been a more interesting character. (Ditching the twee dialect of the French-speaking characters would also have helped.) As it was, I’m not interested in finishing the book; I’d rather listen to the Jolly Rogers’s song “Honor Bright”, which is about a murdered prostitute.

5 December 2003

Declassé

Filed under: People, Culture, and Society — Castiron @ 13:30

It’s time to admit it: at best, I’m lower middle class.

Okay, by income I’m not that far below the U.S. median, especially given that I only have to support two people on it (although then again, I’m in a somewhat pricier city). But visiting church members’ houses and seeing pictures of friends’ and relatives’ houses, I’m definitely dropping from my more upper-middle-class upbringing.

It’s not just the income, either; my attitudes are starting to shift. For example, my maternal grandparents scraped and saved to put all four of their kids through college in an era when most people didn’t go, and they were proud of it; my parents pretty much expected all us kids to go as well, and we did. I’m not expecting my son to go. Okay, yes, this is in large part because though three months from his fifth birthday, he can’t talk and he still wears diapers. But even if he makes dramatic progress later and ends up a relatively normal eighteen-year-old, I’d be just as happy for him to learn a trade or join the military rather than go to college, at least right out of high school. College is a wonderful thing, especially in the people you interact with. But if he’s going to have to major in something potentially high-paying just to be able to justify the loans, as far as I’m concerned he might as well just become a plumber and read Derrida for amusement in his spare time.

On the other hand, I do have the pathological allergy to debt, which I’m not sure is working-class (then again, I’m not sure it’s middle-class either, these days). I probably own a bigger percentage of my house than several friends with higher incomes and larger houses. I don’t mind so much having ugly hallway carpet and grungy secondhand furniture when I remember that my spare cash is going towards getting me out of debt — it won’t happen before I’m forty, barring a very successful publication or a stunning job offer, but by forty-five might be feasible.

Still. I don’t care about enough of the stuff that my officemate, trying to live an upper-middle-class life, has to care about. I don’t have the money to attempt that lifestyle, and I’m not sufficiently interested in enough of the trappings to try, and that’s all there is to it.

4 December 2003

(Not) Buying Craft Supplies

Filed under: Crafts — Castiron @ 13:30

It’s finally sinking into my head that I should not buy craft supplies for “later”.

I have, granted, taken the first step of not buying craft supplies just to build stash. I have stash coming out my ears. When I add up what I’ve spent over the years on threads and fabrics that I don’t use and have no plans for, I find I’ve already spent more than enough to buy some big things that I’d like. (A table loom, easily. Quite possibly Corian countertops for the kitchen. Probably not a new car, but perhaps a better used one.) So these days, I only buy a fabric or yarn or thread when I’ve got some specific project in mind for it.

Trouble is, some of those materials have been waiting for years to become that specific project. By the time I actually get around to them, I may not even want to make some of them!

And it’s not like I have any shortage of things to make someday. My crafts database contains nearly 500 unstarted projects. Yes, a lot of those are just notes so I can find the pattern in the right book or magazine; I don’t actually have the materials for them yet. But even just counting what I do have materials for, I could work on projects for the next five years and only set foot in the craft store if I run out of DMC 503 or blue sewing thread.

Realistically, saying “no more new materials till you’ve used up all the old” isn’t going to work. The kit in the store is always more interesting than the kit in the closet and all that. And if I see a fabric that would make an outfit I really do need in my wardrobe, or a kit that would produce the perfect birthday gift for a relative, I’m not going to care that I’ve got materials for two hundred other items. But another rule might well work for me: “don’t buy it unless you can in good conscience start it Right Now.” Birthday or Christmas gift that I’m going to start right away — great. Nifty garment fabric, and all my other nifty garment fabrics are at least cut out and in progress — okay. Kit for cross-stitch or needlepoint piece that while cool isn’t any cooler than the six I’m working on or most of the twenty in storage — better pass on it.

(Now, the real test: will I remember this, next time I visit the Yarn Barn in San Antonio?

3 December 2003

Religious Readings of Popular Music

Filed under: Music — Castiron @ 13:30

The Moody Blue’s “I Know You’re Out There Somewhere” works a lot better for me as a religious song than as a love song. Person looking for someone they’d loved in the past that they’ve lost contact with — yawn. Deal. Get over it. Find one of the other 3 billion people of your preferred gender in the world.

But a person looking for their deity, or their purpose in life…. The final verse, I admit, doesn’t quite fit into this scheme (“my arms will close around you and protect you with the truth”? unless you read it as the deity replying to the seeker, it doesn’t make sense), but the rest of the song? Much more satisfying that way.

This is actually true of a number of my favorite pop songs; I’m not into Christian rock, but music that’s more subtly religious often works for me. A lot of Kansas’s songs, for example, can be read as religious songs as well as ordinary love songs (and given that the Kansas members were Christian, this might well be intentional). On the other hand, I’m sure that Survivor didn’t intend “The Search is Over” to be a religious song; ditto REO Speedwagon’s “I Can’t Fight This Feeling Anymore”. But I’m the listener; it can mean whatever I want it to mean!

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