3.5 Time Outs: Seen On My Screen Porch

Thanks once again to our host Larry D. at Acts of the Apostasy, who has me so well trained I had this ready to go before even finding out if he means to continue.  Updated to report: Yes!  And check out the stylish Christmas theme:

Click to find out if Larry D. received his underground Lair from Santa this year.

1.

This week we are Bunny-sitting.  Cinnamon and Jenny-Bunny look delicious, but they are not for eating.  We are working hard to avoid bunny-tragedy.  The dog sits at the glass door looking out on the screen porch and whimpers.  The cat sneaked in from outside when someone left the screen door open, and there was much bunny-scurrying in the cages.  But bunnies remain both safe and entertained, because also on my screen porch is . . .

2.

Ping Pong!  I felt un-American, having no ping-pong table all these years.  I still don’t, but I talked the 5-year-old into buying a package of balls for her brother for Christmas.   (She bought her sisters scented hand lotion; I didn’t think He Who Is Doubtful About Bathing would want the lotion.)  I sprung for two paddles.  Christmas afternoon we set up my 2×5 folding table on the screen porch — true Table Tennis.  Perfect size for children, and for adults who want to sit while they play, plus it is more compact than a regular table.  And you don’t feel bad about eating on it.   The balls don’t bounce well on the plastic table, so SuperHusband loaned us a sheet of luan plywood to place over top, and that both improved the bounce and gave us the happy ping-ponging sound.

The family is divided between the bitter minority that thinks we must have a net, and the large, superior-reasoning majority who observe that we’d just have 10,000 net balls.  Screened porches are the ideal place for ping-pong, because the balls can’t get far.  Plus, covered.  No rain.  But still outside.  Children + Balls = Outside.

NEWSBRIEF: LIVE FROM BOY’S BEDROOM:  DOGS EAT PING PONG BALLS.  Don’t store them in the house.  That’s the other reason dog sits whimpering at glass door.   All those balls, bouncing back and forth, and that horrid glass between.  It is the week of Dog Torment.

3.

Also seen from the living room is this view, which I included in the homeschool photo-fest this past fall not because it had to do with homeschooling, but because I was so excited about my invention.

Taken in warmer months. It is not this green in December.

Here’s what happened:

1. Our dryer attempted death.
2. My dryer-repair guy was going to be preoccupied with gainful employment for a while.
3. No problem.  Neglected laundry tree out in the back yard.
4. Wait. Rain.
5. Plus mosquitoes.
6. I’m not complaining just observing.
7. Did I mention dryer-guy not home to fix dryer?

Meanwhile, we had a patio table out front on the, er, patio. (Actually the driveway, but we don’t drive on that part so we call it The Patio.  Pretend with us.)  I pulled the umbrella out and stuffed it in the shed, then dragged the table into the screen porch.  Placed the umbrella stand in position under the table.

I used tools we don’t want to talk about to dig the laundry tree out by its roots where it was determined to be permanently affixed in the yard.  [If I have one superpower, it is furniture-moving.  Laundry Tree you met your match.]  Put old socks from the cloth bin on the pokey edges of the laundry tree, and very very carefully, with would-have-been-horrified-and-cringing spouse safely away in a neighboring state, erected the laundry tree in the hole in the center of the table where the umbrella used to live.

It works great!  The mesh top of the patio-table is perfect for laying things flat to dry.  Only caveat is that since the laundry tree is not in the ground, it stands taller than normal.  I’m 5’7″ in a pair of sneakers and can reach fine, but it doesn’t work for shorter people.  So now I’m commissioning child-height under-eaves laundry lines for the small people, because they seriously need a feedback loop about how much laundry they are generating.  Plus, see “Decrepitude”, “Plague”, etc., I would get a much more reliable flow of smug superiority if my ability to hang laundry didn’t depend on standing* quite so much.

I think SuperHusband is willing to take the job, because now the dryer is getting serious about its death threats (it wails pitifully), and it pains the man to spend money on something you technically don’t need, plus costs more money to operate, when all that cash could be spent, on, say, camera lenses.  He thinks that if we are serious about hanging out laundry all the time, maybe he can nurse the dryer along a few more years with urgent-case-use only.

3.5

So.  Smug superiority.  Hanging out your laundry, if you are the grumpy, complaining type, can make you downright peevish towards so-called environmental groups that are advocating for this and that alternative fuel, but can’t be bothered to push a serious campaign to cut American energy usage in very simple ways.  Laundry lines being #1.  And #2 on the list is

***

Something I’ll rant about next week. Hope your 12 Days are fantabulous — is anyone else having a Chocolate Year of Christmas?  I’ve been getting the stuff from everybody.  Let me just say: Best gift ever.  Okay and single-malt scotch is right up there, but not everyone is the SuperHusband, and plus you don’t have to be so moderate on the chocolate.

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*If you’ve been sitting on the edge of your chair wondering when on oh when I’ll post the next decrepitude-watch post, the short version is: All is way better than a year ago, not so good as two years ago.  Reliably walking maybe 2 miles?  And then I can fit in another hour or so of other house-yard-etc activity.  Depending on your perspective, that either seems like an extravagant plenty or a laughable pittance.  I agree.  Anyhow, it is enough to hang laundry, plague not withstanding.  I happen to love hanging laundry, so long as I can get the other people to leave me alone while I do it.  Silence.  It’s all about the silence.

3.5 Time Outs: Vocation Reality Show

Thanks once again to our host Larry D. at Acts of the Apostasy, whose plan for internet domination will no doubt culminate in underground bunkers.  Every indication the  Alvin- and-Chipmunks warning is not an idle threat.

Click the Picture to Learn about the Secret Lair

1.

Byzantine Christmas.  A friend sends in this link to a Byzantine Christmas menu.  Yummy.  FYI for those who can’t get enough of all things Byzantine, she forwarded it from the Byzantium Novum yahoo group.

Double FYI: No, I am not planning to cook all this.  I just like thinking about these things.  My 9-year-old has baked some cookies, though.  That’s a step up from last year, in terms of our ratio of homemade-to-store-bought Christmas foods.  Thank you  nice religious ed family who sent the mason jar of cranberry cookie mix.

Oh, and look what my DRE gave me (and all the other catechists, I’m pretty sure) for Christmas:

Mine is not this exact one. Mine is smaller and has just the Holy Family, and the stable is an arch shape.  But it’s from the same project and very similar. It looks super cool.  Maybe I could get some photographer guy I know to take a picture.

2.

If five-year-olds had to choose their vocations:

“I do not like most boys.  Most.  They make you play army all day.  But there is one boy I do like:  Jesus.”

The boy who makes her play army all day still doesn’t like girls, either.  Except when he can get one to run around the yard brandishing weapons.   In eight years I will have four teenagers.  Seriously enjoying the easy years.

3.

SuperHusband points out that hunting season only lasts two more weeks.  During which he will be designing and building shelving for the living room.  Not shooting things, and maybe his friends won’t be shooting things either?  Maybe the dog does not need her own stock pot from Santa after all?  Also, maybe my living room will not have the “Tornado Strikes Shed, Library, Toy Store, and Art Museum, Deposits Contents in Suburban Home” look?

Okay, no, let’s not overreach.  But at least I’ll be out of excuses.  That’s a start.

3.5

. . . they said she had torticollis.  In a five-year-old?  I’d only heard about the newborn kind.  I had no idea about the sort that makes a small, non-complaining, previously perfectly happy (if resistant to bedtime)  child suddenly start moaning and kicking her feet in intense, intractable pain.  The worst of it lasted through the night, and it took nearly a week of Rapunzel Therapy to effect a complete cure.  But she’s good now.  Next time we’ll know what it is.

***

Remember last week when I mentioned a vague specific prayer need?  This week, pick your favorite saint-who-suffered-slander-from-enemies, and ask for a little assistance on that same job.   Thanks.  Have a great week!

Book Recommendation : 5000 Years of Slavery

I have been frustrated in trying to find a good book about slavery.  Most in our library focus entirely on the history of slavery in the United States, with perhaps a brief mention in passing of the existence of slavery in other times and places.  I find this limited treatment of the topic leads to some problematic misunderstandings — in many ways perpetuating the same racism that enabled American slavery and the subsequent post-emancipation civil rights abuses.

So I was glad to discover this book:

This is an introductory treatment, very readable and with lots of pictures, but it is not for young children.  What I like:

• Separate chapters on slavery in the ancient world, pre-colonial Europe, Africa from ancient times to present, in the Americas among indigenous tribes and states, in Asia, and in the modern world internationally.
• Precise scope.  Serfdom, for example, is mentioned only when the conditions truly amounted to slavery — mere garden-variety medieval serfdom is passed over in favor of actual slavery in the era.  In the same way, contemporary slavery is restricted to true slavery — forced labor with no option of departure — rather than degenerating into a diatribe against poor wages and lousy working conditions.  (Those are serious problems, but they are not slavery.)
• Honest who-did-what-when reporting.  No bizarre cultural biases or weird anti-European narratives.
• Factual but not voyeuristic accounts.  The realities of rape, starvation, torture, and the like are all mentioned where the historical record shows they happened, but there is no morbid dwelling on gruesome details.

What it amounts to is a book you can take seriously.  Good starting point, though it certainly left me wanting to learn more.  Highly recommended.

 

Rant-o-Rama: Trinkets of Death

Do you love the planet?  Or the poor?  Or low gas prices?

Boycott Dollar Tree*.

Okay, not specifically Dollar Tree.  Just all cheap plastic trinkets.  The adorable ones from Target.  The bargain ones from Walmart.  The pious ones from Oriental Trading Company.  And especially the ones in your McDonald’s happy meal.  Here’s why:

1. Plastic trinket are made from fossil fuels.   Better to ship those barrels of oil straight to the strategic national fuel reserve.
2. More fuel is spent manufacturing the trinkets.  At factories that might not be so zero emissions?
3. Using labor that could have been spent producing something a person actually needs, such as food, shelter, or clean water.
4. More fuel (and labor) is spent shipping the trinkets to your local trinket store.
5. Where you waste your time wandering around dazed and confused until your mind deforms under the glare of the flourescent lights.
6. When you could have been doing something wholesome and productive, like playing video games, or gambling.
7. And then the children who receive the trinkets will fight over them with their siblings.
8. If they have no siblings, they will find some.
9. The trinkets will end up lodged in some essential piece of household machinery.
10. And then you will put them in the landfill.

Trinkets do not build wealth.  Trinkets do not help the economy.  They are a transfer payment that wastes natural resources.  If you want to do a good work with your $.97,  invest in the production of a good or service people actually need.

End of rant.

 

*No bloggers darkened the door of Dollar Tree to ascertain what portion of the merchandise is trinkets.  100% of the Dollar Tree items purchased for the Fitz home happen to be trinkets.  But no doubt Dollar Tree sells worthy items as well.  Purchase those.

Think eternally, shop locally

Sarah R. on Reasons to Support Your Local Catholic Bookstore.

Yes.  Yes.

If there is not a local store you are able to shop at, mail order is the next best thing. For that reason, I’m 100% behind all catholic retailers.  But you’ve got to support your local shop, because they do a work the mail-order folks can’t do.  Mine:

• Provides real live friendly clerks to answer questions about the faith from passersby.
• Opens a whole world of catholic thought to people who just stopped in a for a first-communion card.
• Lets you look at the books!  It’s way easier to size up a book in person than on the pc.
• Supports local catholic events with a bookshop presence.
• Turns out for parish sales, allowing Catholics who would never even know great Catholic books exist to browse at their leisure.
• Provides a venue for authors to sell books and meet readers.
• Offers free book study courses — authentic, faithfully Catholic religious ed that reaches an audience your parish may not be equipped to teach.

This is not a profit-making venture.  No one is getting rich stocking GKC and nun-of-the-month calendars. Book stores have miserable margins, small dealers face higher costs than the big guys, and the Catholic niche is tiny.  These shops are run as a ministry.

If you knew your parish religious education program was evangelizing hundreds of non-Catholics and fallen-away Catholics, wouldn’t you put a few bucks into the special collection for that ministry?

If your parish had a full-time staff person whose only job was to answer questions about the faith from people too shy to darken the door of a church, don’t you think a little contribution towards that person’s puny salary would be in order?

Support your local Catholic bookstore.

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Here are the ones I know about in my corner of the universe:

St. Anthony’s in Greenville and Spartanburg

St. Francis Shop in Columbia

Pauline Books and Media in Charleston

UPDATED to add:

Queen of Peace Bookstore in Vancouver, WA

If you know of others, please add them in the combox.  Or write a post with your own links.

 

What use a Classics Degree?

Darwin answers the question:

This isn’t because a degree in the humanities is “useless”. I believe that learning Greek, Latin, history and philosophy was very useful to me. But it was useful to me in the sense that a liberal art is meant to be useful — in allowing one to think like a “free man”. It is not useful in the sense of providing instant and easy employment. I think that it would be helpful if colleges and departments were a little more honest about this. It would also be very, very helpful if people took it into account before blithely borrowing large amounts of money. (And if people were less blithe about borrowing so much money in order to fund college degrees, perhaps the absurd rate of tuition increase would slow down. You may be assured that one of the things allowing universities to make off like bandits is that people have the illusion that having a degree, any degree, is an automatic ticket to a “good job”.)

He also confirms that Rush Limbaugh is not a classicist.  Apparently people were confused on that point.

***

Meanwhile, Archbishop Chaput demonstrates how to use such an education.  From his “On Being Human in an Age of Unbelief”:

That leads to my fourth and final point. The pro-life movement needs to be understood and respected for what it is: part of a much larger, consistent, and morally worthy vision of the dignity of the human person. You don’t need to be Christian or even religious to be “pro-life.” Common sense alone is enough to make a reasonable person uneasy about what actually happens in an abortion. The natural reaction, the sane and healthy response, is repugnance.

The whole thing is excellent, and eminently readable.  Print it out and read it on paper, because it merits sitting down and giving it your full attention.  Great essay to discuss with your high school or college student.

 

Logic, Criticism, & the 99%

There are two critiques of the 99% movement that I’ve seen floating around, that I wanted to address.  The first is this:

“You are criticizing capitalism, but you own a __[insert name of product manufactured by said capitalists]___”

There’s a little bit of truth in this criticism: Obviously someone who owns a smart phone isn’t secretly longing to run away and join the Amish.  (Who are capitalists, by the way.  They just aren’t no-holds-barred, if-I-can-than-it-is-good capitalists.)

But I think the criticism also points to a bigger problem: Consumers do not bear the primary responsibility for the behavior of their suppliers.  It is the job of the supplier to be a responsible employer and manufacturer.  A boycott is a useful tool, but it is one that only works at the extremes, when there is a known, egregious violation.  I can’t possibly know the inner workings of every manufacturer whose products I consume.  It is too big a task.  And to simply Boycott Everything and go be Amish is not the solution (unless you just want to be Amish, a worthy pursuit but not a universal vocation); boycotting every manufactured good also hurts honest employers and employees.

And then there’s the question of how evil is too evil?  Again, boycotting is a great tool for serious, longstanding, public offenses.  But it would be entirely reasonable, say, for someone who hired me to both say, “Jen, you need to come to work on time and get your projects done by deadline,” and at the same time, not fire me because I was five minutes late.  Or ten minutes.  Or an hour.  It’s up to the judgment of my employer to choose what combination of actions are the best way to deal with my transgression.  Entirely reasonable to both reprimand me severely, and keep me in their employ a little longer.  Public protest is the reprimand, boycott is the layoff.

–> In the case of the OWS, since protestors do not themselves have the authority to step in and oversee corporate operations, it is reasonable to insist that the proper authorities do what is necessary.

(We can agree or not on whether those demands have merit.  No one claims the OWS people even agree on these matters.  And I certainly don’t hold with violent protest of any kind.  I only argue here that our criticism of the criticizers ought to stick to logical arguments.)

UPDATE: Darwin points out in the combox that some OWS protesters really do want to dismantle capitalism.  So he is correct, to criticize that portion of the group for using the fruits of capitalism is a legitimate argument. 

 

The second criticism I’m hearing:

“You aren’t poor.  You have all this great stuff like running water and cell phones.  Quit complaining.”

What is the logic behind this kind of accusation:

• If you aren’t the victim, you aren’t allowed to protest injustice?
• If the robber is leaving you with all the stuff you really need, it’s okay if he just slips in and takes off with a few trinkets?
• If your pimp / master / feudal lord sees that your basic needs are met, therefore sex-trafficking / slavery / serfdom are acceptable social structures?
• You aren’t being pimped / enslaved / bound to the land, quit griping that you can’t afford the surgery you need?

Again, this is not a defense of any particular item on the all-purpose protest agenda of the OWS folk.  Only an observation that if you are going to critique someone’s arguments, critique their arguments.  Is there nothing to protest?  Then show that in fact our government is run fairly and efficiently, the needs of the poor are tended to adequately, workers are paid reasonable wages, and there is therefore no need for change of this or that type.

It is both fun and helpful to debate actual economic questions.  So do that.

Property Taxes, Vacation, & Friendship with the 1%

We sneaked away this weekend for a last-minute beach retreat, courtesy of the 1%.  Ridiculously luxurious surroundings, a feast for the armchair architect, but eventually I kept thinking the place needed an overhaul from Extreme Makeover, Monastery Edition — too much rich food begins to wear.  (All the same: Lovely weekend and we are very grateful to our patron.)

But here’s what I want:  Property tax reform that protects middle-class vacation retreats. My arguments:

1. There’s a legitimate need for retreat.  To withdraw to some quiet, natural place and just be very quiet.  It would seem self-indulgent except that even the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal  agree.

2. For married people with children, a house or cabin or apartment with amenities for children seems appropriate.

3.  In much of the world, there is a real shortage of monasteries set up for the drooling / yelling / jumping-on-the-bed set.

4.  But it’s not so hard to find a nice quiet place near a good Catholic parish church.

5. Somebody’s got to own the house.

But here is what is happening in my state: 

1. Ordinary families with normal middle-class incomes purchase land in some remote, unpopular, but peaceful location.

2. They erect a frugal structure suitable for family retreats.

3. For a while, family, friends, and guests (including complete strangers on tight budgets looking for a rental cheaper than a hotel), get to enjoy the retreat.

4. Then the area becomes popular, rich people buy up neighboring properties (no complaints there, rich people need retreats too), and land values rise.

5. So what?  You still have your humble little family cabin.

6. Until property taxes are raised to reflect the increase of land values.

7. And your family has to sell the retreat.  Because the taxes are so ridiculously high.  The buyer bulldozes your cabin and builds a beautiful, tasteful, mini-mansion that rents for more than anyone you know can afford.

8.  And then you don’t have anywhere to go.

9.  And you know that if you buy a little retreat somewhere else, the same thing will happen again.

I guess one could argue that if you take the windfall from selling the place then you’re so much happier with all that cash from your investment.  Except that a) you weren’t trying to invest for cash, you just wanted a family vacation cabin b) my experience is that the finances don’t end up working that well.  The general consensus is that the family well-being was greater when the family had the cabin.

I’m not sure how you do this in a way that protects the family cabin without also making it easy for land magnates to hoard vast stretches for future development and not pay taxes on their accumulation.  But that’s what I want.

3 Quick Takes: Rosary, College, Good things to read.

I could never be coordinated enough produce seven on a Friday.  But here’s three:

1) If you ever wondered how someone like me ended up in the Legion of Mary, yeah, it’s about how you’d think.  Don’t be fooled by that lovely little picture Sarah R. stuck up, I pray nothing but plastic these days.  Unblessed at that, which horrifies the gallant rosary-maker I thanked the other week, but I tell you right now there is a rosary permanently stuck in the track of the seat of my truck.  Yes.  With the cheerios crumbs and the hardened mass you secretly hope is just gum, but maybe it isn’t.  It’s all I can do to pray the thing; keeping it from falling out of my pocket and into the netherworld where no blessed objects belong is beyond my  ability.

2) I don’t care what the nice guy at the Newman Society says, $20,000 a year for college tuition is not “affordable”.  Put me firmly in the camp with Msgr. Pope, on the question of “Are We Unjust to Require College Degrees As Often As We Do?” Yes.  We are unjust.  It is a mockery to post “degree required” positions for jobs that don’t pay enough to cover the cost of student loans.

3) I am having massive fun today hitting the “share” button in Google reader.  I made a little sidebar here on the blog that shows my favorite google-read posts.  If you are like me and never, ever, actually visit your favorite blogs (because you read everything in RSS), but weirdly you want to know what things other people wrote that I think are worth reading, I think the link to my Google Reader Shared Posts page is here. Which in theory you could subscribe to.  I have to test and see if that works.  (Update: Yes!  It works!)

Vocation and Education

Glad I clicked on this article by Elizabeth Scalia at First Things.  (I almost never click on anything that doesn’t arrive whole and entire in my feed reader.  This one was worth it.)  She writes:

A sense of calling is an idea to which our children often lack an introduction. We tell students they can plot their futures based on test scores measuring information regurgitation; we have no means of measuring their imaginations or their dreams, yet is from these that their deepest and truest longings—and thus their vocations, the things they were born to do—are discovered.

Last year I tried discussing vocations with the fifth graders.  I began by asking, “What are you good at?  What do you love to do?”

My own children have a clear sense of these things by late-elementary school.  They know what they like — military history for that one, emergency medicine for the other.  Even younger, they know what they are like.  This one reads massive quanitities of everything, writes satire, and loves hard manual labor; that one has a talent for teaching and connecting with small children; this one wants to know how it works and then make her own; that one feels everything very, very deeply.

Those were the types of answers I expected from my 5th graders.  Instead, they produced a list of academic subjects and school sports.  They were a room full of people who like math and play soccer.  Very few had a hobby other than an organized sport or club; even fewer had an interest in a field of study beyond whatever passes for “social studies” or “language arts”. The idea that you might, say, love poetry and have developed a taste for this or that type of poem? Nope.

Their worlds, it seemed, were so narrow. No room in the schedule for finding out who they were and what they loved.

Sometimes I feel like the music instructor pushing the talented kid to attend a thousand workshops and camps, when I take parents aside and tell them that this son or daughter has a talent for theology, and needs to be given more instruction, above and beyond the regular parish offerings.

I tell my DRE that if we don’t offer a serious high school religious ed program, we are like a school praying for more pre-med students, but never offering high school biology.  Do we really want more priests and religious?  We have to give our students a chance to discover the depth and riches of an adult faith.  And then, if they are called, to fall in love.