The Muses Love the Morning

What A Library Is

2011-11-07T09:09:00.000-08:00

A place for coffee and pastries, for pizza nights, dance parties, and flash mobs.

A free DVD rental service, an iTunes listening station, an e-mail portal.

A commons for all kinds of social traffic.

A student union building.

A club where people get together, and a place where they break-up.

A place to study, when all the quiet of your room is making it hard to concentrate.

Where you get your photocopies, and the latest gossip.

Where they hold your hand until you figure out that all roads do not lead to JSTOR.

Where, after first exploring the more reliable resources of the local Barnes and Noble or Borders, you finally go, as a last resort, to get some books.

This I Know

2011-10-24T09:56:00.000-07:00

A year and half ago, I sat at dinner during a job interview for a French teaching position in Upstate New York. The main interviewer, a man I came to like and in some ways even to respect in the coming months (I got the job) made a disparaging remark about the Book of Mormon (clearly he was not aware of my religious affiliation). I desperately needed this job (I had a wife, three kids) and so I didn't feel sufficiently empowered at that moment to mention that I was in fact, a Latter-day Saint myself and thus to dispel whatever false notions he may have had about us.

For all of the ensuing year as I worked with this colleague (he was my boss) I always longed for the opportunity to disabuse him of some of his notions. I even prayed for opportunities to bring up my faith so that I could set the record straight. But after one whole year, after a year's worth of discussions, and jokes, and pleasant conversations on all kinds of topics, I got another job in another state and ended up leaving everything I wanted to say about my faith to him unsaid.

There was the time I had my Book of Mormon prominently displayed on my desk, when he came in to talk to me. I noticed his eyes glance down at it several times throughout our conversation. But that didn't count. I should have opened my mouth. I should not have feared. I should have spoken up, even if my voice shook.

That experience still haunts me. It has caused me to think of something Elder Henry B. Eyring, one of the presiding elders and Apostle of my church, once said in General Conference:

"Years ago I worked for a man in California. He hired me; he was kind to me; he seemed to regard me highly. I may have been the only Latter-day Saint he ever knew well. I don’t know all the reasons I found to wait for a better moment to talk with him about the gospel. I just remember my feeling of sorrow when I learned, after he had retired and I lived far away, that he and his wife had been killed in a late-night drive to their home in Carmel, California. He loved his wife. He loved his children. He had loved his parents. He loved his grandchildren, and he will love their children and will want to be with them forever.

Now, I don’t know how the crowds will be handled in the world to come. But I suppose that I will meet him, that he will look into my eyes, and that I will see in them the question: “Hal, you knew. Why didn’t you tell me?”

There are some important things that I know are true. I hope the lines of people coming up to me in heaven, wanting to know why I didn't tell them what I knew when it could have helped them, will be short. And yet I already know that my former boss will be in that line.

So I want to testify now of things I know to be true. These are the kinds of things I would probably be more comfortable discussing in private, in person, but I feel a responsibility to share what I know. I also feel a love for God, and for the Gospel, and for my fellow mortal travelers which motivates me to speak so openly.

I know there is a God. He is our Heavenly Father and he loves all of us, His children, perfectly. I have felt his love and his presence in my life since I was a child, and He continues to be with me and to bless me in my adult life. He hears and answers my prayers; He always has and I do not doubt that He will continue to do so for as long as I live.

I know that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. He is my Savior and Redeemer, my Lord and my God. Through his great atoning sacrifice, and through obedience to the laws and ordinances of His Gospel, all mankind can return to live with Him and with our Heavenly Father forever, which is eternal life. It is through Christ that we can be forgiven from sin, that we can feel the burden of sin lifted and become whole again. It is through the majestic and incomprehensible power of his love and his atonement that we can overcome not only sin, but burdens and afflictions of all kinds. This is something I have learned from reading Isaiah 53, and from reading Alma 7 in the Book of Mormon.

"And he shall go forth, suffering pains and afflications and temptations of every kind; and this that the word might be fulfilled which saith he will take upon him the pains and the sicknesses of his people.

And he will take upon him death, that he may loose the bands of death which bind his people; and he will take upon him their infirmities, that his bowels may be filled with mercy, according to the flesh, that he may know according to he flesh how to succor his people according to their infirmities." (Alma 7:11-12)

I have felt the healing power of the atonement of Christ in my life, sometimes in very powerful ways. It is true, as Alma says, that the Lord knows how to "succor" his people. "Succor" comes from a medieval French word which means "to run to." I have felt my Savior run to me many times in my life. This is how I know that Christ lives and that he is my personal Savior. My relationship with Him is personal. I am proud to belong to the church that bears his name, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

I know that the Book of Mormon is the word of God. Some of my Christian friends think this diminishes the importance of the Bible in my life. It does not; in fact, for me, it only enhances the miracle and power of the Bible in my life. I know that the Bible is the word of God. I read both books and draw tremendous strength from doing so. Not only is my life as a father, a husband, a professional, and everything else that I am strengthened when I strive to live by the principles of these two God-given books of sacred scripture, but I can feel God's love and the presence of the Holy Spirit when I read these books. This is why I read from them daily, both alone and with my family. I am grateful for parents and for a faith that have taught me the importance of nourishing myself daily by reading from the good Word of God.

I know that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God. He translated the Book of Mormon from ancient records, by the power of God. I know this for myself because I have read its pages and pondered its message. I have prayed to know for myself if it is true, and God has answered my prayers many times over. Joseph Smith was the instrument whereby Christ restored his church and gospel to the earth in their fulness.

There is a prophet on the earth today, and Twelve Apostles, just as existed in Christ's church during his mortal ministry. You can learn all about it at www.mormon.org.

I know that families can be together forever. The family unit is eternal. Through sacred ordinances performed in God's temples, families can be united for eternity. The bonds of affection that exist between husband and wife, between parent and child, are sacred and holy and are intended to endure forever. Heaven would not be heaven without my wife by my side, nor without my children, parents, and other family members. The family is ordained of God.

There are many other things I might say, but these seem to me the most important.

I bear my personal witness that these things are true.

The Bourgeois Gentilhomme and Today's Would-Be Students

2011-10-03T10:01:00.000-07:00

I shuddered as I recently saw the new student dorms being built in places like the University of North Texas and North Carolina State University.

(see them here: http://www.cnn.com/2011/09/22/living/dorm-rooms/index.html)

I say shudder, though I didn't actually physically tremble so much as I seethed with moral indignation and outrage, two emotions well-internalized after years of higher education training therein. You see, as you get more and more education, the more you are supposed to shudder and feel outrage as beings lesser than yourself make decisions that you in your infiniter wisdom would never have made. But that is a topic for consideration another time, and a matter of private repentance for me to consider, well, in private.

I am still legitimately troubled, though, by this latest attempt to draw "students" to these desperately pandering universities. Adolescents they may draw, but true students probably not. Universities are now becoming, in the wise words of Mark Edmundsen, "retirement spread[s] for the young," with all of the country-club amenities that a young person who has never worked for them could want.

And why shouldn't universities provide these things? Thanks to decades of thorough corporatization, the American University (Inc.) after all has now long been in the business of providing customer satisfaction for its many eager clients. Who cares about the integrity of the product? It's what the focus groups say the students want, so let's give it to them, and at ever-increasing prices. If they want Economics Lite, or Diet Physics, or watered-down history and literature offerings, then let us give it to them. With the vast student loan and Pell Grant programs, we'll even have American taxpayers (and two-thirds of Americans never graduate from college, so think of who exactly is paying for much of this) underwrite the cost for all those climbing walls, those tanning salons, those flat screen tv's, those luxuriating campus dining halls. We may have to cut professors' salaries and increase tuition rates so that all but a few may attend this great carnaval of learning we have created, this confused circus of curricula we have constructed, but, hey, the customers are happy, so let's keep forging ahead. Bring on the monster stadium, multiply the army of invading bureaucrats, throw endless money into the pit of losing sports teams. That is what the customers want, and we will give it to them.

And since shopping is what they like, let's have them "shop" for courses, too. (Note: some students actually use the term "shopping for classes" and Princeton even has an offical "shopping period" when students can do said "shopping"-- this is language that speaks volumes). The courses that don't do well in this free-market forum, well, we'll just have to mold them according to the focus groups, or else get rid of them altogether. Little matter if students actually need some of these courses as an integral part of their education-- the product must suit the consumer, and what the consumer wants unfortunately often has little to do with education.

So what does the consumer want? I recently attended a roundtable for faculty members, where six students described what they liked about attending the university. They were explicitly told not to mention "it will help me to get a job," which made me very interested in what else they might have to say. Half of them basically still said that college would help them get a job, and the other half basically said that they liked having four years of a transition period before adulthood. No mention of education, broadening horizons, developing critical thinking skills, learning. Many (most?) do not come to college for those kinds of things. They come for the rite of passage, for entrance to the middle class, to enter softly into adulthood, to get a better-paying job.

But why?

Because we are a bourgeois nation, and that is what bourgeois nations do. I have been recently re-reading with my students one of my favorite plays, Moliere's "Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme" i.e. "The Bourgeois Gentleman" or the middle-class gentleman, an ironic, nonsensical title inasmuch as gentlemen are noble and therefore not bourgeois, or middle class. Most English translations render it "The Would-Be Gentleman." The story concerns a well-to-do merchant whose money, he hopes, will allow him to purchase a new social status for himself. He is the stereotypical buffoon of "new money," the arriviste and social climber who hopes that his money will somehow magically buy him the taste, attitudes, and experiences that will give him easy access to the upper class or nobility. He is, of course, mercilessly ridiculed throughout the play, inasmuch as Moliere recognized that there are some things that money just can't buy. The bourgeois, you see, knows the price of everything and the value of nothing because to him, the value is the price (channeling Nibley here). To have and to be are near-synonymous to those whose petty possessions are life itself.

Most of our college classrooms are veritably overflowing with the bourgeois spirit. Monsieur Jourdain, Moliere's protagonist in the play, hires tutors to teach him, but he does not want to learn what they have to teach. He wants to be taught only what interests him, and unfortunately only elementary spelling and superficial writing skills interest him. He does not want his tutors to question the existing structures he has created for himself, to introduce him to new structures or ways of looking at the world. His interest in learning is not even for the joy of learning itself, or for the opportunity to learn new things, or to learn old things in a new way, or to enrich his mind and thus his experience with the world. He simply wants wants to be seen as learned, to wear all the superficial trappings of educated finery without too much of the substance of it. He wants status. He wants position. He wants to seem and appear rather than to be.

Our corporate university model, which gives the student only what s/he wants, operates much in the same way. Like Jourdain, undergraduates pay exorbitant amounts of money to be taught what they want to be taught, not what they ought to be taught. And thanks to the customer satisfaction surveys/student evaluations to which faculty members are beholden, professors with any hope of tenure, renewal, or even a workable classroom atmosphere take note of what the students want and say they need. Like Jourdain, so many of our students want a college degree because it is seen as some kind of entrance ticket to the middle class, to a social status, and not primarily because of how their education can help to enrich their world view. Students and their parents, as we have seen, are often more than eager to pay enormous amounts of money for this kind of social status.

Only when America ceases to be a bourgeois nation, only when we willingly leave off the status-driven life, can the situation change. Learning must be pursued for reasons more eternally significant and ultimately transcendent than mere mortal, myopic, petty social ambition.

Why Foreign Languages Matter

2011-09-17T17:59:00.000-07:00

On the superficial level, the matter is quite simple. Foreign languages allow us to communicate with other people. This has significant impact on trade, diplomacy, war, humanitarianism, technology, and a host of other areas.

And that, really, should be enough.

But there is a deeper level still. When we learn a foreign language (or if we really want to be radical and subversive, several foreign languages) we open up our minds to new experiences, new conceptions, and new vistas of understanding. Learning a foreign language is not merely a matter of learning what sounds to make and in what order to make them so that we can say exactly what we would say in our own tongue. No: when we learn to speak a foreign language, we actually learn to say new things, things that could not even be conceived of through the prism/prison of our native tongue, things that widen our perspective and expand our horizons.

I will illustrate with a simple example. I have known French people who find it funny that we say sometimes that it is "raining cats and dogs," and admittedly, it is a somewhat amusing image, unless you are a person for the ethical treatment of animals, in which case it is horrifying. The French equivalent is "it is raining cords." I distinctly remember a rainy day in New Jersey when I looked out the neo-gothic windows and suddenly, to my astonishment, actually SAW cords of rain pouring down upon the verdant lawn below. It was through language, through specific French words and images unknown and inaccessible to me before, that I was suddenly able to see something that had always been there, but that I had lacked the linguistic-- and hence mental-- capacity or imagination to discern, plain though it was.

Of course, whether you see cords or various domestic animals coming down out of the sky is hardly the point, and I can't say my life is much richer for having seen "cords" of water descending from the heavens. The point is that new vocabularies and grammars give us access to realities never before envisioned. This is why we must not be the prisoners of one language only, for we would thus be limited in the scope and breadth of our imaginations as well as in our capacity to encounter and navigate the new. At the heart of a meaningful education lies the ability to engage with newness, to navigate ably new experiences. Our world is constantly changing and the ability to adapt our minds and ourselves to novel situations and conditions is vital. When we learn foreign languages, we realize that we can no longer simply place our new experiences in ready-made, preconceived mental categories by which we organize the world; we learn that we must create new boxes into which to fit the inevitable newness of the experiential worlds we are constantly discovering, and that some boxes must be significantly altered or even done away with altogether if we are to negotiate newness with any clarity or discernment. This is how learning foreign languages gives us a second chance at life; it tells us that there is a different way, that not everything must be as we have always assumed or taken for granted. It opens us up to new ways of thinking, challenging the very structures underlying our thoughts and our understanding of the world. It dares us to reconsider our organizing principles and even calls us to repentance, reminding us that other, newly discovered worlds of thought are lurking out there, and that sometimes the old thought patterns and world conceptions simply will not do, or at least that these could stand some enrichment.

So yes, while our performance on the cocktail circuit may seem enhanced by occasional references to foreign speech, while our friends may marvel at the linguistic variety of our bookshelves, and while women may swoon at the sound of the exotic idiom, these are mere distractions from the main or central purpose of foreign language study.

Foreign languages, with the possibility for new and varied experience that they bring, are, in fact, at the very heart of what it means to be human.

Mitt Romney and Me

2011-09-17T17:28:00.000-07:00

People tend to vote for people like themselves, and in a representative democracy, I suppose that's ok, since we are supposed to elect people who represent us. And while Mitt Romney and I actually have very little in common, I believe that there will never again in my lifetime be a presidential candidate with whom I have more in common than the Mittster.

Sure, I am not a millionaire, and I have neither the hair nor the handsomeness that he has. I have not his Cadillacs nor his Mustang (I never will, if not by force, then at least by choice). I have not his apparent health, nor the lakeside mansion in New Hampshire, nor the beachfront property in California. I have not his business acumen, nor do I share his view that (cringe) corporations are people. I have not his penchant for building fences to keep Mexicans out. I do not blame faculty lounges for the ills of America (there aren't any... lounges, that is). My father was not a cabinet member, governor, or self-made millionaire. I did not go to Harvard and share a class with George W. Bush. The ambassador to France was not a family friend when I was growing up, and Richard Nixon did not come to my ring ceremony. My wife does not ride horses, and her father was not the mayor. I do not care for cars. I was never an AP, and I never had a near-death experience resulting from a drunken priest's reckless driving.

And yet...

like Mitt...

I, too, met my wife when I was 18 and she was just shy of 16 (the odds! the coincidence!). I, too, am a lifelong Mormon, with a convert AND French-major wife (quelle coincidence!) and come from a family of four children. I, too, have a parent who was born outside the United States. I, too, was a missionary in France, and came home and got some Ivy League degrees. I, too, am a Republican with some left-leaning flavor. I, too, have sung my whole life and like to sing. I, too, have a wife who makes granola the staple of our breakfasts. When you consider the statistical (un)likelihood of finding all of these uncanny compatibilities between a major presidential candidate and yourself, how can you not consider seriously voting for such a person? I mean, this is exactly the guy I would want to represent me in the White House, the person I would most like to share a (root) beer with, right?

Too bad I like Huntsman better.

A Beloit College List For Latter-day Saint Missionaries

2011-09-05T13:35:00.000-07:00

The annual Beloit College Freshman Attitudes list just came out again last week. This is the list of attributes that incoming college freshmen supposedly share, and we as faculty are supposed to read the list and marvel at how different the attitudes of typical college freshmen are from our own. Usually, the list is at least moderately successful in accomplishing said goal of astonishing college professors, and the older the professor, the more astonishment there is to go around.

This got me thinking: we ought to have a similar list for Mormon missionaries. Technology and remarkable changes in both the church and the world at large have led to remarkable changes in the attitudes of young missionaries who enter the MTC this fall. Most of these changes are reflective of the miraculous growth that the church has seen all across the world in recent years.

What first got me thinking along these lines was a missionary who asked me, while I was on an exchange, whether my father spoke Russian because he served his mission there. What was astonishing to me about his remark has nothing to do with ignorance of recent church history or world events, but rather how important it is to describe to the rising generations the miraculous opening of the nations to the preaching of the restored gospel. Prophecies have been fulfilled in a remarkable way over my lifetime, and the miraculous nature of these needs to be emphasized.

So here is my list, in no particular order:

1) Missionaries have been sending e-mails home for as long as they can remember

2) Church membership has been in the double-digit millions for as long as they can remember, and maybe if they think hard, they can faintly remember a time when native English-speakers actually outnumbered non-English speakers in church membership.

3) Missionaries have always been sent forth to preach the Gospel to the nations of Eastern Europe.

4) Iron what?

5) A temple in Kiev does not seem any more remarkable than a temple in Stockholm, which definitely does not seem all that remarkable.

6) They cannot remember a time when the church did not have a web page.

7) There has always been an MTC, and it has always taught languages in the scores.

8) Missionaries with mandatory bike helmets and cell phones do not seem unusual.

9) mormon.org is a website that, under mission rules, they must spend some time on every week.

10) Of course there are thousands of members of the church in Mongolia; why wouldn't there be?

11) What are Targeteers?

12) Give said the who?

13) Sundays have always meant one single trip to church.

14) A Mormon Senate Majority Leader is not unusual.

15) Two Mormon presidential candidates is not unusual.

16) What's a flannel board?

17) They have always been as the armies of Helaman.

18) Of course missionaries can text people.

19) Smaller temples have existed ever since they can remember.

20) General Conference from the Tabernacle is a faint memory, eclipsed by many more memories of the Conference Center.

There are probably many more that could be added to this list (I think the Beloit list always has a 75 attributes). What are yours?

It Takes A Village

2011-07-06T10:48:00.000-07:00

Your kids are in public school, where they have teachers, coaches, psychologists, college counselors, and an army of other professionals to help them.

You take them to Young Men's, to Young Women's, to Seminary, to Boy Scouts, to Cub Scouts, to Achievement Days, to Primary activities- all places where other adults will help your kids. To Youth Conference, to EFY, to Young Women's Camp, to the Ward Campout, to the Father and Sons Campout, to the Youth Stake Dance, to the Multi-Stake Youth Dance, to the Youth Fireside, to the Roadshow- all places where other adults make great efforts to help your kids.

And then you say it doesn't take a village to raise a child, just a mom and dad?

Mom and Dad are by far the most important, and they are obviously indispensable and irreplaceable.

But they're just not enough anymore, if they ever were.

How to Write A College Paper

2011-04-26T08:04:00.000-07:00

Here is more unsolicited advice for college students, this time about writing papers:

1) Spell things correctly. You are in college. There is no excuse for bad spelling at this point in your life. Dictionaries can help. Spell-check can help. Dictionaries are even on-line now, so you don't even need to go to the library to look things up anymore.

2) Use spell-check, but do not rely on it completely. It may still make errors.

3) Punctuate correctly. You are in college.

4) Read over your essay before you turn it in. You cannot simply write from beginning to end and then turn it in. You must go over it again for typos, spelling and grammar errors, and to make sure your argument is strong, coherent, and well-organized. Read over it slowly, several times.

5) Use grammar-check, but do not rely on it completely. It may still make errors.

6) Take your time on your paper. Many errors are made when rushing.

7) Start writing your paper early, and then go through several drafts before turning it in. If you are turning in papers that you are writing the night before and you are still getting good grades, this does not necessarily mean you are writing good papers. Someone is probably grade-inflating your work. At any rate, you do not produce your best work the night before. "I work best under pressure" is high-school-level self-help rubbish.

8) Write complete sentences. This seems unnecessary to point out for college students, yet somehow it sadly is.

9) Make sure every paragraph in your paper relates directly and clearly to the argument(s) set forth in the introduction.

10) Your conclusion should not just be a rehashing of everything you have just stated. It should quickly rehash, then explore the implications of everything you have just said, to make an even deeper and more interesting point.

11) Eschew plot summary. Go heavy on analysis, light on summarizing.

12) You don't have to write your introduction first.

13) Meet with your professor, writing center people, etc. as you work on your paper. Get help and advice from people who can give you good help and advice.

14) Don't use trade jingle language. Don't say things like "fulfill his destiny," "do her best," "be all they can be," "achieve her dreams," or other such things.

15) The reason we want you to write well is because good writing reflects and perpetuates good thinking. Jumbled, foggy writing is a sign of jumbled, foggy thinking. Jumbled, foggy thinking will not help us to solve our serious and complex problems in this society, nor will they help you to deal with the myriad of more personal problems you will face in your lifetime. Don't think, "I know exactly what I want to say here in my head, but I just can't seem to put it on the paper." If it isn't clear on paper, it's because it's not very clear in your head, either.

16) Don't cheat. It's easy to catch, and the consequences are serious.

17) Maintain appropriate scholarly distance when writing about other works. Though the first person may be employed, don't write about personal experiences when you're analyzing literature, for example.

18) You may have any opinion you like, as long as you back it up. Your opinion by itself is not worth very much to anyone- you need to back it up with coherent and relevant arguments.

19) Analytical papers are not creative exercises. If you want to write about why Benedick loves Beatrice so entirely, don't argue that "maybe they used to go out together, but then she broke up with him, and maybe he's still not over it." Unless you can find evidence for such a remarkable claim. Which you can't. So don't pull ideas out of the air- they need textual evidence to be relevant.

20) Do not use colloquial language. No "that's when he let the cat out of the bag", etc. Don't use contractions. I can use them because this is a blog.

21) Speaking and writing are not the same thing. Do not write as though you were speaking to someone. Learn the difference.

22) If you do not understand what you meant when you wrote something, then no one else may be expected to know what you meant, either.

23) Don't mess with the margins, font, etc. We can tell when you are playing with the format to make it look like you wrote more. It doesn't look like that. It looks like you should have written more.

24) To better understand the importance of honing your writing skills, read George Orwell's "Politics and the English Language."

25) Split infinitives are still technically wrong, though this is rapidly changing. Chief Justic John Roberts says he likes them, though, so maybe they are technically also unconstitutional.

26) Learning to write is one of the most important skills you learn in college. It is a skill that you can use in pretty much everything in your life during and after college.

27) Read. It is hard to write well if you don't also read.

28) Your paper should have a title.

29) Your paper should make (an) argument(s). The purpose of your paper should be to persuade others of this argument, to see things your way.

30) Anticipate objections. Bring up legitimate and thoughtful objections to your argument(s), and then do all you can to destroy them.

31) There is no need to begin your paper with broad and sweeping statements that are really obvious, like "Throughout history, man has often been at war." Your first sentence should be specific and invite the reader immediately to the specifities of your topic.

32) You do not need a comma after the word "but." In fact, if you are going to start a sentence with the word "But," think thrice before you write that sentence.

33) Follow directions. A three-page paper should be three pages long, not two pages and change. If it is due on Tuesday at 9:30 in class, do not e-mail it. Do not realize at 9:25 that your printer is out of ink or there is a line at the computer lab or you left it at home or what have you. Inherent in every assignment is the requirement that you follow directions appropriately and bring it to class with you on time.

34) It does not suffice that you got some advice on your paper from your professor during office hours. You actually have to incorporate that advice into your paper. You may want to see your professor more than once about your paper, to make sure you correctly understood the advice and correctly incorporated it into your paper. Replacing one bad thing with another doesn't improve your paper. Simply meeting with a professor does not automatically make your paper any better, either. Don't think because you met with your professor that everything is now alright.

35) Do not meet with your professor about your paper expecting to be told "Good job" and that everything is fine with your paper. The purpose of office hours is not to rubber-stamp things you have written, but to help you to be a good writer.

36) Do not get annoyed when meeting with your professor about a paper takes longer than ten minutes. If anything, be annoyed that you didn't work harder to write a better paper that wouldn't require so much time to fix. Or be annoyed with all of those teachers over the years who told you your writing was great when there was much that you could have done to improve it. Be grateful that you have finally found someone willing to sit down with you and help you to improve.

37) Get help from a writing tutor. Do not think the word "tutor" is only associated with dumb people. All of us can benefit from getting individualized help with our writing. Do not think office hours are only for dumb people.

38) Don't use office hours as a crutch. Present only your best work when you go to get help. Don't ask your professor to fix spelling, grammar, typo, or incoherence problems for you. This is an insult to your professor, an embarrassment to you, and a shame on your momma who raised you.

39) It's called a stapler. Use one. Dog ears are an embarrassment to you, your classmates, your momma who raised you, and dogs and their ears.

40). Curb your enthusiasm. Do not saturate your paper with unnecessary exclamation marks. I am happy that you are excited and happy to be alive. So am I. It is good to be young and alive, I agree. Gaudeamus igitur. But find other ways to express your joie de vivre, ways that do not involve exclamation marks.

Song of the Middle Brow

2011-04-22T08:38:00.000-07:00

Sing a song for the Middle Brow,

the Target-tossed.

See them

in their temples;

glitzy nothings buy momentary affection.

Hear them

singing not songs, not sounds,

but jingles,

the catchy tunes that never fail to catch.

See them

thronging at the thrones of screens and windows.

Marvel

at the lights that hide.

Advice for College Students

2011-04-20T13:03:00.000-07:00

Here is my list of unsolicited advice for college students, based on my past few years of teaching.

1. Early to bed, early to rise. It sounds crazy when you're in college, but being asleep by 11 and up by 7 is really good for you.

2. Take advantage of office hours. Don't use them to talk about your personal problems or personal life, but to talk especially about course-related material with your professors. Ask them specific questions about material covered in class, about papers you're writing, about tests you're preparing for. Believe the answers you might get.

3. Use proper e-mail etiquette when communicating with your professors.

4. When you work, work. When you play, play.

5. Learn to shut off the distractions and just work, or just reflect, or just do something that doesn't involve distractions, particularly of the electronic kind.

6. Pay attention to the syllabus.

7. Stop thinking you turned out fine. You haven't turned out yet. You still need to simmer in the oven a bit before you really know how you "turned out."

8. Eschew presentism. The past is at least as interesting as the present. The medieval period is relevant. Antiquity matters. Old is not bad.

9. Read. Read, read, read. Learn to read things that are long, several hundred pages long.

10. Find a way to get off campus and be with people who are not 18-22, in college, etc.

11. Don't start putting your things away when the professor is still talking.

12. Come to class a little early if you can and review your notes, and prepare your mind for what is coming.

13. You are in college to learn. The best learning happens in the classroom, at the library, when you are studying, when you are reading, writing. Important learning also happens in clubs and activities, but that kind of learning is not as important. I know that you think it is, but it really isn't. I know that glitzy college brochures tell you that it is, but it really isn't.

14. Sesame Street was wrong. Learning and having fun are not the same thing. Learning can be fun, but often it is not. It can be, must be, strenuous to be meaningful. Learning is especially not entertainment. The two are nearly antithetical.

15. You are in college to work. You should put in two hours outside of class for every hour spent inside class. Sometimes more, especially if it's in something that's a weak spot for you. This means that a normal fifteen-credit course load will turn into a 45-hour week. This is not unreasonable. It still leaves much time for activities, clubs, part-time work, personal time, social time, etc.

16. Date. It isn't done much anymore, but that doesn't mean that's ok. You will never have as many opportunities to be around people with similar interests and of a similar age again. Get to know many people. Date.

17. Don't drink alcohol until you're 21, and don't get drunk. This probably sounds radical to some people. It is not. Therapists' offices are full of people who are dealing with the effects of alcohol in their lives. Alcohol kills your brain cells, which you are in college to build. What you do under the influence of alcohol, or what you fail to do, may haunt you for a long time. Alcohol can multiply regrets.

18. To write a good paper, you must start working on it well before it is due. You must read it and re-read it and make changes.

19. Dictionaries can be a treasure. Learn to use them correctly. You probably think you know how to use a dictionary, but you probably don't.

20. Have opinions. Don't be afraid to think something and then to express it. Forget what your classmates think. When you read something, you should form an opinion of it. Come to class ready to talk about things you've read and to say what you think about it. Approaching things with indifference can become a really bad habit.

21. You want nothing to do with pornography. You have no idea how much it can destroy those who meddle with it.

22. Vote. Read up on the candidates and issues and vote. You may think you're too busy, but that is ridiculous. Our fourteen-hour-day ancestors were busy, not you. Your future self-- ten, twenty, thirty years down the road-- will be busy, but not your present self. Indifference is a disease, apathy a canker.

23. Television is really dumb. If you have not realized this, then you have missed out on something important during your four college years.

24. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert exhibit bias on their shows. If you have not realized this, then you have missed out on something important during your four college years.

25. Racism and sexism are all around. They are not struggles that have been conquered in the past.

26. Stop referring to your college as the Harvard of the (fill in the blank). Don't try to make your college sound better than it is. It is what it is. You don't need a fancy college bumper sticker on your car to have value. Your worth is great no matter where you go to college.

27. Dress. This may sound radical, but your clothing says a lot about your attitude. Pajamas, sweat pants, jogging shorts and the like say "I don't really care about this class and I lack sufficient respect for my professors, my fellow students, and the overall learning process."

28. Texting and Facebook have their place, but it is a small one.

29. Professors giving bad grades to students "they don't like" is largely a myth. Bad grades usually accompany bad work, not bad blood.

30. Nourish your spiritual life. Go to church, synagogue, etc. Read from the holy books. Figure out what you believe, and live it.

31. All those people who told you around high school graduation, "Don't ever change!" were wrong. You had better change, or else you will spend the rest of your life with the limited capacity of an 18-year-old. And you can't face 50-year-old problems, or even 30-year-old or 25-year-old problems with the limited capacity of an 18-year-old. You are in college to learn things you did not know and to grow and become better, and that is a good thing. 18 is fine when you're 18, but not when you're not.

32. Don't ask your professors questions that can easily be answered by looking at the syllabus. Questions about when office hours take place are among the most offensive in this category.

33. Your professors don't spend from 9-5 in their offices. They may be at the library reading or researching, at home on their computer typing, grading, and creating lesson plans, at conferences or symposia, at lectures around the university. They do many things outside of the classroom that are important factors in making the inside-the-classroom experience better.

34. Go to stuff. You think you don't have time, but that isn't true. Go to lectures, concerts, plays, exhibits, art museums, and so forth. Take an active role in your extracurricular cultural life.

Getting Jimmered

2011-04-20T12:32:00.000-07:00

I am happy for the hoopla surrounding this year's winner of every college basketball award in the land. What I like about the BYU senior is that while the temptation for him proudly to inflate his sense of self must be great, he remains a humble and likeable kid.

I am surprised by the "Jimmer" jokes circulating on the internet however. They have a Chuck Norris-like feel to them; e.g. "Death just had a near-Jimmer experience"; "HD watches basketball in Jimmer"; "I just saved 15% on my car insurance by switching to Jimmer"; and "When the Jimmer goes swimming, he doesn't get wet-- the water gets Jimmered."

I wonder how he'll do in the NBA. Especially because I really only know the college game and rarely watch the NBA. My amateur guess is that he'll fare much like J.J. Redick: he'll be a solid three-point shooter who can score coming off the bench and quickly put up some points when needed, but that he won't be a superstar.

Note: the Jimmer and J.J. Redick are both white, but that doesn't mean you can't compare white players to black ones, and vice versa. It was interesting to see how many white players the Jimmer got compared to last season, and how much difficulty some people had comparing him to black players.

Some people doubt the Jimmer. They say his defense is bad. They say he doesn't have many assists. He averaged 3-4 assists a game, and often had more. I think that's a good assist record.

The best assist I got from him in class yesterday. I have a student from Glens Falls, Jimmer's hometown. We had just read a story in French in which an Eskimo laments that the old ways are disappearing and are being replaced with strange, new ways. The book says to ask students if they can think of anyone who similarly struggles with straddling the line between "the old ways" and modernity. My student from Glens Falls said Jimmer Fredette is like that. When he was in New Orleans with Team USA basketball people, everyone went out for a night on the town, to go drinking. Not the Jimmer. He stayed in the hotel and read the Bible. He is a Mormon.

That gave me the opportunity (on an assist from the Jimmer!) to say I am a Mormon, too, and that I didn't drink either. I always look for opportunities to let my students know I'm Mormon, so I was happy for this long-distance, 'cross two-time-zones assist from the Jimmer.

That day we all got Jimmered, in the best way.

Steven Slater Looks Like Paul Potts

2010-11-16T08:21:00.000-08:00

I think Steven Slater (of JetBlue fame) looks like Paul Potts, of Britain's Got Talent fame. I think they're actually the same person.

Mitt Romney is Starting to Look Like Donald Moffat

2010-09-01T11:14:00.000-07:00

Don't you think?

Joseph Goebbels Looks Like Warren Jeffs

2010-08-19T09:36:00.001-07:00

So I was watching a fascinating documentary on Netflix (I took the plunge) last night, called "The Goebbels Experiment," about the notorious Nazi propagandist and Hitler loyalist. It is almost entirely composed of quotes from Goebbels's diary, with images of the things he describes, all narrated by Kenneth Branagh. I have not the talent of an A.O. Scott or a James Lambert to provide an appropriate review of the film, but I will say that it was interesting to watch and that I recommend it, difficult material though it broaches.

Incidentally, I am still upset that Ken and Em divorced back in the mid-nineties; it cast a bitter cloud over part of my first-year college experience. KenandEm were the intellectual precursors of Brangelina; there was great hope for what their future artistic collaborations (and offspring) would accomplish. But alas, it was not to be. In spite of my disappointment, however, I still said "Kenneth Branagh" when we were asked in the MTC about who we would like to meet for dinner, if we could meet anyone in the world. As I listened to the other missionaries describe, in turn, whom they would like to meet, I soon realized that I was playing the game wrong; I was supposed to say Captain Moroni or Alma and Amulek or something, and I was suddenly filled with chagrin at not being more spiritually minded. I think I have repented since, but Branagh still makes the top ten.

Anyway, I realized last night that Joseph Goebbels looks like Warren Jeffs:

Right?

Seriously?

2010-07-23T04:50:00.000-07:00

President Obama is quoted in the New York Times today as saying that the first couple is ''not that far removed from what most Americans are going through'' in terms of being affected by the economic crisis.

Seriously?

He makes roughly half a million dollars a year, not to mention free rent, gym membership, meals, etc. Now, he's the president, so I don't have a problem with him getting all that. But we also know that he and the first lady pulled over a million dollars last year, according to their publically available tax records. So that officially makes them millionaires.

Millionaires are pretty far removed from what most Americans are going through.

Cornel West, the well-known Princeton professor, public intellectual, and erstwhile rap artist, says in the film "Examined Life" (I recommend it; saw it the other day) that to read philosophy is to come alive, that thinking deeply about things helps to make us more alive. Agreed. But then he does the unthinkable in the film: he points to a random assortment of pedestrians on a New York street and proclaims that they are not really living, that they are simply going through the motions.

Seriously?

Does he know those people personally?

What about people who don't have access to philosophy, like the poor of the world? Isn't it elitist to say that "really living" requires the luxuries of time and means available to the likes of an Ivy League academic?

U.S. Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee said recently that it was great how the two countries of North and South Vietnam were getting along so splendidly, even though we may not always like what North Vietnam is doing (see video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XK3rTUgoQD4)

Seriously?

Geography is a neglected study in this country. If I were a millionaire president or a public intellectual cum-professor-rapper seeking to help people live deeply and suck out all the marrow of life, I would require all elementary school students to play Risk regularly, which is where I got my first bearings about world geography.

Seriously.

Political Dynamite

2010-06-12T08:33:00.000-07:00

Without question the most amusing political story to emerge in the last year or so is the election of Alvin Greene as the Democratic candidate for Senate in South Carolina's primary last Tuesday.

Mr. Greene is a 32-year-old, unemployed, recently and involuntarily discharged military veteran who lives with his 80-some-odd-year-old father. He has neither campaign website nor yard sign nor cell phone nor Twitter account, and he didn't hold any rallies, but he IS currently out on bail for a felony charge involving pornography and stalking a "co-ed" (that's Old People talk for female undergraduate)and following her all the way into her dorm.

He also clearly does not have all of his mental faculties quite in order, as is made clear in this interview, very similar to others given on MSNBC and Fox News:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYtnrvn9xd4

Pundits and Democratic heavy hitters alike have been scrambling to find an explanation for this strangest of strange occurrences. One plausible theory to emerge is that he is a Republican plant, someone who the Republicans got to run so that they could vote for him (South Carolina has open primaries; you don't need to be registered with a certain party to participate in that certain party's primaries) and then the Republican challenger would be a shoe-in. This would be fitting with the history of dirty politics in South Carolina, and (after all) a similar feat was accomplished by the Republicans in 1990. Also, this would explain where on earth Mr. Greene got the $10,400 needed to run in the Democratic primary. He says the money is his own, but one wonders where an unemployed 32-year-old can get that kind of money from. (Heck, I'm an employed 32-year-old and I don't have that kind of money sitting around).

One problem with this theory is that the Republican challenger, Sen. Jim DeMint, is popular and well-liked and was seen as being in no danger at all of losing his seat, so one wonders why Republicans would resort to these shenanigans if their man could easily get elected without them.

Another theory, mentioned in the New York Times, is that Alvin Greene is clearly the name of an African-American, and that voters in South Carolina (many of whom, especially in the Democratic primary, are African-American) therefore voted for him, thus encouraging the rise of the first African-American senator from South Carolina since Reconstruction. The problem I have with this theory is that it could be seen to imply that black people are stupid.

Yet another theory holds that Alvin Greene's name simply appeared first on the ballot, above the name of his much better known and better financed opponent, and that Democrats simply voted for the first name they saw. Apparently, people do this, especially very partisan voters.

Whatever happened exactly (and I'm sure we'll find out soon), what's clear is that we have witnessed a fundamental breakdown in the democratic process in this country. Whether Mr. Greene is where he is because of manipulative and revolting Republican shenanigans or because Democrats voted for someone without knowing who he really is, what is clear is that the combination of ignorance and apathy is absolute poison to the democratic process. This is exactly what happens when citizens cease to be engaged in their own civic welfare. The importance of active and informed voting has never been clearer.

So while I say that this whole episode has been amusing, the truth is, it is more alarming than anything. Almost equally alarming has been the coverage of this story in the biased networks. Fox News actually spun this story as anti-incumbent fever and as an example of ruthless, kingmaking top Democrats trying to circumvent the voice of the people by insisting on crowning their own candidates (the party's top dogs have called for Mr. Greene to step aside in favor of the better-known Democratic challenger). MSNBC tried to spin this as clearly another manifestation of Republican ruthlessness in South Carolina. Again, active and informed citizenship is necessary in order to see through the filters that these networks provide.

A Big Loser

2010-05-18T07:58:00.000-07:00

I made an important discovery yesterday with the aid of the internet and that indispensable tool that I always discourage my students from using, Wikipedia.

Basically, it turns out that I am a big loser.

Last Christmas, my mother gave me a CD of Joel Wizanski playing Brahms. Joel Wizanski was my piano teacher at the Peabody Prep in Baltimore when I was in high school. When I learned some years ago that he now teaches at the Yale School of Music and that his performances have been reviewed in the New York Times, the LA Times, and the Washington Post (though not always favorably), I felt like a big idiot for providing what must have been torture sessions for him hoping against hope that I would finally get my act together and actually take piano seriously. He had a lot to give, and I only took him up on very little. So I was a big loser.

But I already knew that much going into yesterday. I had already felt pangs of shame for not seizing more fully what in retrospect was a fabulous opportunity.

Yesterday's internet stalking has proved me to be an even bigger loser than I even realized, however. It turns out that Joel Wizanski was taught by Leon Fleisher, who was taught by Artur Schnabel, who was taught by Theodor Leschitizky, who was taught by Carl Czerny, whose teachers were Beethoven and Antonio Salieri. So there you have it. My musical line of authority includes Beethoven and Salieri and yet I feel proud when I can sight-read a hymn.

Someone should engraven a big scarlet L on my forehead for shame.

UVA Lacrosse Death

2010-05-06T16:32:00.000-07:00

I have been following the UVA lacrosse death case in the media for the last few days. Not because it involves two photogenic people, not because I am happy for the opportunity to engage in the kind of class-warfare discourse that the media love to propagate (it sells, after all). Not because I am somehow more concerned when rich white people get hurt than when other folks get hurt. Not because I am scared by the realization that this sort of thing can happen "even" at a place like UVA. Not because I take an almost sadistic, voyeuristic pleasure in hearing endless recountings of just how gruesome the last moments of this lacrosse player's life seem to have been.

I'm interested largely because I am an alum of Mr. Jefferson's university and feel my part in the collective mourning that has come upon our community.

UVA has a long and storied tradition of student self-governance, with an honor code that could almost be the envy of a place like BYU. I still remember getting the honor video in the mail the summer before my first year and watching in awe as I saw recounted the almost mythical (albeit very true) story of the now-famous anonymous student who taped his coins to a vending machine when it gave him a free drink or something like that. And since nothing at UVA ever gets done without the approval of its patron saint, there were even quotes in the video from Mr. Jefferson himself about the propriety of taping money to vending machines (if I'm remembering that correctly).

My point is that with this honor code in place, merely glancing at someone else's ultimately inconsequential quiz during a discussion section could get you expelled from the University. While the community of trust and honor thus created may seem reminiscent of neo-medievalist chivalric codes better suited to the antebellum Southern environment in which the University was founded than to a twenty-first- century leader in higher education, I like the honor code and have no hesitation in confessing myself to be a proud defender of it.

So in a community where storied accounts of coins taped to a vending machine prevail and students are expelled for even the smallest acts of dishonesty, what on earth is a person with no less than three run-ins with the law (including a drunken, threatening, and ultimately tasered and arrested encounter with a police officer in Rockbridge County) still doing occupying seats in the "academical village"? The lacrosse player charged with the murder of his ex-girlfriend never should have been a student at UVA in the first place. He violated the honor code long ago and should have been sent on his way packing.

Jean-Francois Cope in the NYT Today

2010-05-05T12:37:00.000-07:00

Jean-Francois Cope is the mayor of Meaux (pronounced "Moe"), a city ingrained perpetually in my memory for both its excellent cheese and its police officers' disdain for innocently proselyting missionaries. During the Renaissance, Meaux was also known as the locus of freedom for a circle of reformation-minded theologians and thinkers, an ironic connection considering not only my own theological experiences there, but also considering Cope's strongly-worded op-ed in the New York Times yesterday calling for a public ban on the wearing of the burqa in France and throughout Europe.

(See http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/05/opinion/05cope.html?hp)

I never did like that Cope fellow. Perhaps it was his strong defense of the banning of the headscarf in French public schools a few years ago that first turned me off to him. His views, unfortunately, have become increasingly mainstream in the European Union: with the ban on minarets in Switzerland, the recently passed measure in the lower house of Belgium's legislature banning the burqa (and France likely to follow suit soon) and President Nicolas Sarkozy declaring publicly that the burqa is "not welcome" in France, religious freedom has taken some notable hits in the EU of late.

In his piece, Cope argues that the burqa must be banned because it poses a security risk.

There are approximately 1900 women who wear the burqa in France today, and I would challenge anyone to show what security threat, exactly, these women pose. Sure, some burqa-clad women robbed a post office in a shady suburb of Paris last fall and made off with 4500 Euros- wearing disguises and coverings is not uncommon in armed robbery cases. So why is no one calling for a ski mask ban then? A ban on wearing costumes in public? A ban on Halloween (an increasingly popular celebration in France, thanks to the thorough coca-colonisation of the American corporate empire)? Why is this called the ban on the burqa by the very proponents of the ban itself? If safety is the real concern, why not ban other disguises and face coverings in public as well then? That security concerns should be so closely linked to Muslims, in particular, seems troubling.

Cope wonders, "How can you establish a relationship with a person who, by hiding a smile or a glance — those universal signs of our common humanity — refuses to exist in the eyes of others?" It seems the problem has more to do with Cope's inability to allow such a person to exist than with the person's supposed refusal to exist. The reference to the difficulty of establishing a relationship with a person who wears a burqa probably says more about Cope's inability to embrace the Other than it does about any individual's purported refusal to exist.

Freedom of religion and of personal expression are also "universal signs of our common humanity," and to deny these is to deny the humanity of those whose religious expressions may be different from ours.

Cope goes on to note that many Muslim scholars contend that the Qur'an does not call for the wearing of the burqa. I'm no scholar here, but it does seem to me that the requirement that women wear the burqa is considered by most Muslim scholars to be outside the mainstream of Islamic thought. Nevertheless, it is not the place of the French government to interpret the Qur'an for individual women, or to dictate what the "true" meaning of its passages are. This is simply a violation of the separation of church and state, a principle that the secularist Cope ostensibly stands for. It's simple: no law in France should make its case by having recourse to an interpretation of the Qur'an.

Cope also states that "a few extremists" oppose the ban on the burqa, as though most U.S. citizens, Amnesty International, and many others aren't already clearly opposed to this fundamentally un-democratic legislation.

This op-ed from the Washington Post a few days ago had it right:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/30/AR2010043002131.html

France must not take the drastic steps that the Belgian parliament is currently taking; it must resist the xenophobic fear-mongering of the UMP party and stand for fundamental freedoms of religion and speech.

How I Know Napoleon Dynamite is an LDS Movie

2009-11-25T18:32:00.000-08:00

I just recently watched "Napoleon Dynamite" with my family. It is a film so inane, vacuous, and downright offensive in its vapidity that I vowed long ago never to watch it again. Yet there it was at the yard sale last summer, staring at my then-six-year-old son who, transfixed, was somehow unable to resist the siren call of "fifty cents." He promptly purchased the monstrosity and proudly displayed it to me when he got home.
Watching this film again and ignoring, this time, the multitude of wanting elements liberated me from the chains of my own prejudice and helped me to look at this non-tour de force in a new light. What if I counted the LDS elements in the film? There are many:

1) No swearing. No violation of the seventh commandment. Chaste. And not in the "this film has no sex in it even though sex permeates the entire production" kind of way that the Twilight series is "chaste."

2) Speaking of chastity, there is a Jane Austen-like scene where Napoleon's and Deb's hands inadvertently touch each other. It is the only hint of chemistry throughout the film and is charmingly innocent, in a Jane Austen sort of way. And let's not ignore the Jane Austen-Mormon link. Mormon women like Jane Austen. They make you watch it with them. There was even a Mormon version of "Pride and Prejudice: A Latter-Day Tale," which made youth road shows look like they were stacked with talent. And Jane Austen's work was done at the same time that Wilford Woodruff did the work for the Founding Fathers and "other eminent men and women."

3) Creative dating. This one is not so much Mormon as it is Jello Belt Mormon specifically. Pedro has to bake Summer a whole cake to ask her to the dance? Napoleon has to draw Trish a picture before he can ask her to the dance? That is intense. I remember a program on the Faith and Values channel back in high school that was done by some LDS folks that was targeted at high school kids. One episode talked about how you could have fun in a group date by going to the local public library and having a scavenger hunt to find the smallest book, fattest book, oldest book, etc. I remember trying to envision what it would be like if I actually asked a girl to go do that with me. My social standing was frail enough without "creative dating" making it worse.

4) And speaking of social standing, Summer Wheatley, who is supposed to be the coolest girl in school, works a part-time job at DI. I have great respect for people who work while in school and believe it is a good thing, and something that taught me good values and so forth. But cool kids in my school definitely didn't work, especially at a thrift store. Except maybe in the summer, but not during the school year. I think the Mormon work ethic still allows for coolness in this case, however.

5) The dance. Everyone was dancing like at a church dance. No hands at the waist stuff. Only gentlemanly clasped hands, with one hand awkwardly placed around the girl's back. No booty shaking. Good distances between partners. Clean music.

6) A veritable profusion of self-employed people. Uncle Rico and Kip sell tupperware-type stuff as part of their own business. Rex opens a Rex Kwon Do studio to make some money. Deb sells trinkets and takes glamour shots to pay for college. I think I read somewhere that Utah has the highest number of women who are self-employed. There's a wiff of Jello Belt culture in all this self-employment.

7) Sign Language. The Happy Hands club sings in sign language. The only places in my life where sign language has been prominent are in Primary and the MTC. There's a Mormon-sign language link that is strong.

8) References to Boy Scouts. Nuff said.

9) Hospitality for the Lamanite. The (vice?)principal is a bit mean and condescending to Pedro when he first arrives at the school, but it is Napoleon who is kind to Pedro. We also are brought to feel sympathy when Pedro gets in trouble for making a pinata of Summer Wheatley and having people beat it with a stick. He says that it was simply something that people do back in Mexico and that he didn't mean anything by it. The script clearly creates sympathy for Pedro, who wins the school election at the end. Similar hospitality can be found in the Twilight series, The Other Side of Heaven, Baptists at our Barbecue, The RM, Johnny Lingo, and others.

10) Jokes about soul mates. Kip is absurd when he talks about his "soul mate" Lawfanduh, and Uncle Rico, also an absurd character, likewise dreams about his "soul mate." The context for both of these mentions of a "soul mate" makes clear that the notion is to be mocked. As Presidet Kimball said, "Soul mates are fiction and an illusion."

11) Napoleon wears a Ricks College t-shirt.

12) Trish's mom makes her go to the dance with Napoleon because it's the right thing to do. This is so like what a Mormon mom would do.

13)Deb really stands up for herself. She lets Napoleon have it, telling him he is a very shallow friend. This kind of self-confidence and letting the guy have it is something I've seen over and over again in Mormon girls.

14) In the brief sequel at the end, the person performing the marriage ceremony tells a much watered-down version of a story I've heard in church and in General Conference.

So there you have it. MTV picked up a bona fide Mormon cinematic masterpiece (not) and probably didn't even realize it!

On the Accuracy of Language

2009-08-13T11:41:00.000-07:00

The august body of French language gatekeepers known as the Academie Francaise has always seemed a bit silly to me. I mean, they were founded by the notorious Cardinal Richelieu in 1635, so that's already a shadowy beginning. They didn't have any women in the rank files of their forty "immortels" (as they are called in all non-humility) for about three hundred years, and just got their first Maghrebite four years ago (hurray for Assia Djebar!). Their goal is to maintain the purity of the French language by publishing a dictionary that delineates which words are or are not acceptable as French. Le Computer? Heavens, no- l'ordinateur. Le software? No again- le logiciel. And so on. And besides, thanks to my father's brainwashing, I don't believe in prescriptive linguistics anyway. Language is a living thing, it evolves according to the changes in the realities it tries to represent. You can't really prescribe language use for people or impose linguistic parameters on them since language itself comes from the people, is not artificial, and can only be measured or recorded, not prescribed. And I'm somewhat sympathetic to the leftist linguists who decry language prescription on the basis that such prescription only becomes a tool for certain groups to distinguish themselves from others, often to the disadvantage or detriment of the poor, the outcast, the downtrodden.

We certainly don't need a similar body for the English language, and though I am a fan of the OED, it doesn't perform nearly the same role as the Academie Francaise-- serving, as it does, more as a record of language as it is used rather than a prescription for how language OUGHT to be used.

Reading Tocqueville has caused me to reconsider some of my animus against the immortals of the French Academy, however. He points out that democratic societies(and the United States in particular) inherently do not achieve the level of precision in their language that other societies (particularly aristocratic societies- at least in 1835 when he was writing- like France) reach:

"An author begins by slightly bending the original meaning of a known expression, and, having altered it in this way, he does his best to adapt it to his subject. Another author comes along and bends the meaning in another direction. A third takes it down yet another path, and since there is no common arbiter, no permanent tribunal that can fix the meaning of the word once and for all, the situation remains fluid. As a result, it seems as if writers almost never stick to a single thought but always aim at a group of ideas, leaving it to the reader to judge which one has been hit.

"This is an unfortunate consequence of democracy. I would rather see the French tongue bristle with Chinese, Tartar, or Huron words than allow the meaning of words to become uncertain." (Goldhammer ed., p. 550).

It seems that Americans have an almost horseshoe-like quality in their expressions of language. Often, we do not aim for precision in our speech, but rather for approximation. With the meanings of words only approximate and not fixed or regulated by a "tribunal" as in France, everyone is free to imbue words with their own personal or individualized meanings. While this may please the deconstructionists among us, it would cause disaster, and in fact, it already has begun to do so. I am sickened, for example, to hear talk of people buying or selling a "home." You can't do that! You can only sell a "house," a thing made out of earthly materials-- walls, linoleum, stone, siding. A "home" can neither be sold nor bought; it is something that money simply cannot buy. When realtors promise you a "home," they are lying and corrupting our language at the same time, as well as guilty of profanation and simony for promising to sell that which is sacred.

The lack of linguistic regulation in our country and the resultant approximation in language use may help to explain the (post-)adolescent affinity for the word "like," as in "I was, like, going to the store today, and I like saw these apples, and like they weren't expensive, so I like bought them." (Post-)Adolescents can't seem to commit themselves to stating that they simply went to the store, saw some inexpensive apples, and then bought them. They live in uncertainties and often experience only approximations. This is why I try to emphasize precision in language in my students' papers, because approximate thinking won't do in a world and a life full of complex challenges requiring clarity and discernment.

Sports slogans, trade jingles, and soundbites only make things worse. I once had a student tell me that the message of a certain film was that "through education, you can achieve your destiny." I told her I didn't really know what that means. Did she believe in destiny? If you believe in destiny, then why can you only achieve it through education? I thought destiny was destiny, and not something to be achieved. It turns out that she meant that through education, people can reach their greatest potential (still only an approximate and cliche-ridden phrase, but a step upward nevertheless). And yet our very own universities, in their glossy brochures, commit such egregious crimes against the English language all the time when they promise students that their institution will help them precisely to "achieve their destiny" and other such absurd Jedi-talk.

Corporate interests, or at least our collective lack of resistance against them, have also contributed their fair share of the corruption of our language. My grandmother once asked me to go get her her "Skin So Soft," since her skin was dry and she needed some lotion. I wished she had simply asked me to get her her lotion, because to include (false) advertising in the very name of an object is a rank perversion of language. I want to eat chicken, not "I Feel Like Chicken Tonight," have sugar cereal, not Lucky Charms (think about it- eating lucky charms actually sounds kind of gross), and drink orange drink, not Sunny Delight. I give people tissues, not Kleenexes. And the corporate perversion of our language has gone so far that I sometimes find myself standing completely mystified at the Ben and Jerry's counter, wondering what the heck Chunky Monkey is doing on the menu (sounds like something out of an Indiana Jones movie) and why I can't just have a scoop of banana ice cream. I was once drinking a Mountain Dew in Germany, and my friends had no idea what it was, and wanted to know what the German translation for it was. When I explained it to them, they thought it was weird that a drink (especially one produced in a chemical laboratory) would be named after the moisture found in the grass on a mountain in the morning.

George Steiner commented on the corruption inherent in the German language during and after the fall of the Third Reich. So did Henry James, during Word War I, anticipating Hemingway in A Farewell to Arms. James writes

One finds it in the midst of all this as hard to apply one's words as to enure one's thoughts. The war has used up words: they have weakened, they have deteriorated like motor car tires; they have, like millions of other things, been more overstrained and knocked about and voided of the happy semblance during the last six months than in all the long ages before, and we are now confronted with a depreciation of all our terms, or, otherwise speaking, with a loss of expression through an increase in limpness, that may well make us wonder what ghosts will be left to walk.

George Orwell likewise criticized the perversion of language in 1984- isn't that where he used the neologism "superdoubleplusungood"? I have oftened wondered what the Nephites meant exactly when they said that the Mulekites' language had become "corrupted," but the above reflections, I think, may bring me to a nearer understanding of just what was going on.

Maybe the Academie Francaise isn't such a ridiculous institution after all.

Confession and the Surveillance Society

2009-08-11T12:12:00.001-07:00

It seems that confessions are replacing baseball as our national past-time. Eliot Spitzer, Jim McGreevy, John Edwards, Mark Sanford and far too many others are clogging up the airwaves with their heartfelt, public confessions, loyal wives at their sides, promising penitence and reform. I have never understood the "loyal wife" role in such cases, though I do sympathize strongly with notions like repentance and forgiveness, some of the first lessons of marriage, after all. But at least Jenny Sanford had the good sense to be out of town with the kids while her husband went on and on about his "soul mate" in Argentina before a live national audience.

Part of what troubles me about these confessions is that there is a sense that a good, public confession will settle everything and that afterwards everyone can go back to business as usual, as though the act of confession itself, particularly when performed publically, serves as an automatic expiatory balm that sets everything in order again. And given our heavily Protestant culture, we do not really understand what private confession is, causing me to wonder aloud with John Proctor in Arthur Miller's excellent play, The Crucible, "Is there no penitence but it be public?"

Certainly, Puritans and Protestants have long turned to their private journals for their confessions, filling in a space for penitence left empty by the absence of the confession booth. But today, in an age where the sacred divide between public and private is collapsing, where the written word can be quickly disseminated to thousands, and where blogs are often performing, particularly among young people, many of the functions of the now almost anachronistic "private diary," it appears indeed that there is hardly ANY form of communication anymore but it be public. So out come the Ted Haggarts, the Kobe Bryants, the David Patersons, and so on.

Of course, it is precisely the loss of this distinction between the public and the private sphere that leads to such a confessional society. When technology allows us to gaze into the lives of others-- think reality shows (with their appropriately-titled "confessional" scenes), blogs, the social networking sites such as the mystical one our esteemed Secretary of State once referred to as "MyFace" and my mother regularly calls "Spacebook," YouTube moments that derail presidential aspirations ("Macaca," Mr. Allen? - "I respect and will protect a woman's right to choose," Mr. Romney?) and invite access to the most intimate of strangers, not to mention wiretapping, patriotic library snooping, and ever-present surveillance cameras, whether I'm buying groceries or visiting the restroom at the public library (yes, they even have cameras in there...)-- confession becomes a necessity, since there is a sense that everyone is already watching, so we may as well come clean, and thereby claim our subjecthood by rejecting the inevitable objectification of ourselves that such a surveillance society surely brings.

Little wonder, then, that Arthur Miller's Puritan Salem would require such public confessions, "nailed to the church," for here was also a society under constant surveillance, not from the technologies available to us today, but from the close scrutiny and watchful eye of neighbors under which everyone in the community lived. And little wonder that my students, accustomed to constant connection (albeit artificial) with others, and to the ensuing surveillance by others into their private lives that such a connection ensures, all too often confess transgressions and intimacies related to their personal lives in the writing assignments that they hand in to me, something which embarrasses me but seems natural to many of them. After all, if my Facebook site, my blog posts, my YouTube clips and my loud, public cell-phone conversations have already revealed these things, why keep them from my professor?

Because a confessional society is a surveillance society, and a surveillance society is a confessional society.

Five Guys

2009-06-26T13:26:00.000-07:00

It was my singular privilege to eat with my family at Five Guys Burgers and Fries in Nags Head, NC, last night. This is the East Coast burger chain to which President Obama has recently given great visibility by gracing with his presence one of its Northern Virginia venues. They boast the burger the Washington Post calls the best in the world, or something like that. It's a greasy place, but there is no want of peanuts or refills on soda. I'm glad they call it soda, too, since our last two years in Iowa have forced me to denominate only "soft drinks," since I refuse to say "pop," and saying "soda" sometimes brands me as an outsider in the Midwest, and I like to keep incognito.

The ease with which I could order "soda" instantly gave me a wonderful, homey feel, but it was a remarkable experience I had while filling my own soda at Five Guys that really gave me a feeling of being at home, of being comfortably situated in my own Bourdieusian habitus. Five Guys always has a sign inside that lets you know where your french fries came from that day. It's usually a place in Idaho, in my experience, though probably not limited to that fine state. As I was pouring my drink, my soda, I overheard a family noting that today's potatoes had come from none other place than Rexburg, Idaho. "Rexburg, Idaho? How random is that? Did they just throw a dart on a map and decide to get their potatoes from there? What's in Rexburg, Idaho?" they said. And suddenly finding myself in a place where Rexburg, Idaho, is not where you met and fell in love and got your education and got married and had your first child and used to be on the rodeo team but a random place you've never heard of, I confidently poured my soda in my cup and knew I was home.

(Note: I can probably count on my thumbs the number of people reading this blog, and I think they have both spent some time in their lives in Idaho, so I may have just lost whatever meager readership I once had, but hey, just sayin...)

Henry Higgins and Women

2009-06-09T09:18:00.001-07:00

When I was a senior in high school, I got to play Henry Higgins in our school's production of "My Fair Lady," one of the few occasions in my life where my stuffy white-boy persona actually came in handy. The many years of my childhood spent watching Britain's Sky Channel (yes, while everybody in the U.S. watched Spiderman and the Transformers on Saturday mornings at home, I was subjected to DJ Kat and Yummy Mouse, and Kitty Curls comm... er... advertisements) helped me to develop an ear for various British accents, particularly the sort of South Kensington thing required for the Henry Higgins role. Since many of my classmates knew few other accents than south Baltimorese (which to this day rivals Tennessee-Appalachian as one of the more grating sounds on my ears) it was my privilege to spend five months memorizing and rehearsing some of the greatest lines in the English language, most of which, of course, came from George Bernard Shaw's wonderful play, Pygmalion.

It was also my privilege to learn that fame and status can compensate for what may be lacking in other departments when it comes to receiving attention from the opposite sex, particularly the adolescent sort. Where I was a nice but nerdy guy with horse sweaters and an awkward hook shot before, I was now a star, and to my great surprise, I started receiving attention from girls for no other reason than my status as the main character in a musical. This was shallow and I knew it, but I liked the attention anyway. I, too, was of the adolescent sort. (Note to Lindsay- actually I'm lying about all of this. The truth is that I can't actually remember anything about my life before I met you...).

When I got to college, I went to the sort of school where football players weren't quite as cool as the a capella singers. For the first two weeks of my college existence, I walked around with little attention from the fairer sex. But when word got out that I was now a bona fide member of the Academical Village People, everything changed. Suddenly, I found myself invited to all kinds of parties that I never could have gone to on my own merits, and I was even developing my own groupies who followed us around on our gigs and faithfully came to our concerts with signs and things. (That's actually weird, now that I think about it, but again, remember the adolescent thing). On one incomprehensible occasion, I was talking to Miss Teen USA (a fellow first-year) and she was actually more nervous around me than I was around her. (Those of you who know me and know what I look like will share in my astonishment- again, it just shows what a difference status, even if only localized, can make, especially for the adolescent crowd). Now, there is no need to exaggerate my new success with the ladies, but I did actually notice a change, and it had to do with little more than my new status (as an a capella guy, of all things!).

I felt like Seymour in Little Shop of Horrors (since we're talking about musicals), who wondered whether "Audrey, lovely Audrey" would still love him without his plant. I wondered if Peter-sans-AVP-status would still get the same attention, and discovered after my mission (when I quit AVP over the new Sunday rehearsals) that the answer was the same one that all men who have ever enjoyed the slightest display of status in their lives come to discover upon losing it: a resounding NO.

I think it is this status phenomenon that merited me a surprising "hotness" chilli pepper from one of my (obviously visually impaired) students this semester. Status (he knows SO MUCH and he's SUCH A GREAT TEACHER!) still can go a long way.

Anyway, before this post digresses more than Melville's Billy Bud, playing Henry Higgins in high school meant I got to sing-song the classic misogynist tune, "Why can't a woman be more like a man?" If women told me after the show that they were really upset with my character when I sang that song, I felt like I had done my duty as an actor. I think the whole purpose of that song is basically to annoy women.

And yet...

Deep down, aren't there many women who secretly believe this? Isn't success in our male-centric world defined largely in masculine terms? In significant ways, I think, we have not come very far in the last six hundred and fifty years. The great Italian poet Boccaccio wrote in his book ON FAMOUS WOMEN in 1362:

"If we grant that men deserve praise whenever they perform great deeds with the strength bestowed upon them, how much more should women be extolled— almost all of whom are endowed by nature with soft, frail bodies and sluggish minds— when they take on a manly spirit, show remarkable intelligence and bravery, and dare to execute deeds that would be extremely difficult even for men?"

Boccaccio's misogynist contention is that women's acts and deeds should be defined in "manly" terms, that is, by the degree to which women's acts or deeds provide evidence of a "manly spirit." Proto-feminists like the French Christine de Pizan spent their lifetimes countering these ridiculous claims, but even over six centuries later, I think we still define success, virtue, greatness, and so forth in largely male-centric terms. My wife, for example, is convinced that Jane Austen has been underrated as a writer precisely because she writes about women's perspectives in a way that men cannot readily understand. I used to think this was unfair, but I'm starting to come around to her thinking. Jane Austen captures very keenly and insightfully the longings, ambiguities, and viewpoints of certain rural, middle-class Englishwomen during a particular point in history. Her insights are every bit as brilliant as many of the canonical male writers', but because they concern women, they do not get as much credit.

But why would a woman want to be like a man, anyway? I like these lines from Eliza R. Snow, where she says that some who would improve women's status "are so radical in their extreme theories that they would set her in antagonism to man, assume for her a separate and opposing existence; and to show how entirely independent she should be would make her adopt the more reprehensible phases of character which men present, and which should be shunned or improved by them instead of being copied by women."

In response to Henry Higgins's question, "Why can't a woman be more like a man," an authority no less than President James E. Faust has responded, "What a terrible mistake that would be."

And so say I.

Iowa Supreme Court and Gay "Marriage"

2009-04-20T18:34:00.000-07:00

Yeah, I'm going there.

Proponents of so-called "gay marriage" often ask how someone else's family would be affected by the recognition of same-sex marriage. Can't heterosexual couples and their children continue to live their lives as they wish, unaffected by what others may be doing?

I want to answer this question.

It seems helpful to invoke John Donne at this juncture, who understood that "No man is an island" and that "Every man's death diminishes me," reminding me of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s statement that "What influences one directly influences all indirectly." Donne and Martin Luther King, Jr. understood something that in our highly individualistic society (now thirty years past the "Me Decade") seems to be becoming increasingly incomprehensible, namely, the idea that we all form part of a community and that we are linked to one another as human beings. The rugged individualism on which Americans have long prided themselves (and which has, for the record, helped to accomplish great things and to instill an admirable sense of self-reliance in our culture at various times in our history) has now all but turned into an egocentric me-ism, a worship of self, a creating of God in our own image.

Witness the ubiquitous i-pod, helping to cut off nearly a whole generation from meaningful interaction with their peers (and especially with their non-peers), the cell phones and texting devices that promise increased human interaction but provide only counterfeit communication in its place. Witness the homes in which individuals (the word "individuum" didn't even pop up in Latin until ca. 11th century A.D.), all attached to their private screens, sequester themselves in their own separate spheres, a phenomenon not only criticized in Pixar's recent "Wall-E" (I love Pixar: "The Incredibles" and "Ratatouille" have restored my faith in modern animation- and Ed Catmull, one of Pixar's founders, is an LDS returned missionary) but also in a great conversation between Dana Gioia, former Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts and a personal hero (see, for example, his excellent Stanford speech here: http://news.stanford.edu/news/2007/june20/gradtrans-062007.html), and Jonathan Katz, CEO of the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies (see http://www.nea.gov/av/index_v.html).

So I think we have become, or are gradually becoming, in Walter Scott's words, wretches "concentred all in self," bowling alone, as it were, ordering tickets and dinner for one, strolling down lover's lane holding our own hand.

There is a sense of community that we have lost in all of this disconnected individualism, and it is precisely this lost sense of community that causes some to stand mystified at the suggestion that the actions of a few could, in fact, have a significant impact on others, even on those never met personally. Small wonder, then, that it is precisely the under-30 demographic-- the i-pod consumed, constantly texting, rarely voting, and often single folks who express their bafflement at the idea that one's actions may have an impact beyond one's own limited, personal spheres.

If this is all a bit abstract, let me provide some specific examples how gay "marriage" is already affecting heterosexual families:

(Now mind you, the following information is not coming from some crazy right-wing website- this is all from National Public Radio- see http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91486340)

"When Gay Rights and Religious Liberties Clash
by Barbara Bradley Hagerty

NPR.org, June 13, 2008 · In recent years, some states have passed laws giving residents the right to same-sex unions in various forms. Gay couples may marry in Massachusetts and California. There are civil unions and domestic partnerships in Vermont, New Jersey, Connecticut, New Hampshire and Oregon. Other states give more limited rights.

Armed with those legal protections, same-sex couples are beginning to challenge policies of religious organizations that exclude them, claiming that a religious group's view that homosexual marriage is a sin cannot be used to violate their right to equal treatment. Now parochial schools, "parachurch" organizations such as Catholic Charities and businesses that refuse to serve gay couples are being sued — and so far, the religious groups are losing. Here are a few cases:

Adoption services: Catholic Charities in Massachusetts refused to place children with same-sex couples as required by Massachusetts law. After a legislative struggle — during which the Senate president said he could not support a bill "condoning discrimination" — Catholic Charities pulled out of the adoption business in 2006.

Housing: In New York City, Yeshiva University's Albert Einstein College of Medicine, a school under Orthodox Jewish auspices, banned same-sex couples from its married dormitory. New York does not recognize same-sex marriage, but in 2001, the state's highest court ruled Yeshiva violated New York City's ban on sexual orientation discrimination. Yeshiva now allows all couples in the dorm.

Parochial schools: California Lutheran High School, a Protestant school in Wildomar, holds that homosexuality is a sin. After the school suspended two girls who were allegedly in a lesbian relationship, the girls' parents sued, saying the school was violating the state's civil rights act protecting gay men and lesbians from discrimination. The case is before a state judge.

Medical services: A Christian gynecologist at North Coast Women's Care Medical Group in Vista, Calif., refused to give his patient in vitro fertilization treatment because she is in a lesbian relationship, and he claimed that doing so would violate his religious beliefs. (The doctor referred the patient to his partner, who agreed to do the treatment.) The woman sued under the state's civil rights act. The California Supreme Court heard oral arguments in May 2008, and legal experts believe that the woman's right to medical treatment will trump the doctor's religious beliefs. One justice suggested that the doctors take up a different line of business.

Psychological services: A mental health counselor at North Mississippi Health Services refused therapy for a woman who wanted help in improving her lesbian relationship. The counselor said doing so would violate her religious beliefs. The counselor was fired. In March 2001, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit sided with the employer, ruling that the employee's religious beliefs could not be accommodated without causing undue hardship to the company.

Civil servants: A clerk in Vermont refused to perform a civil union ceremony after the state legalized them. In 2001, in a decision that side-stepped the religious liberties issue, the Vermont Supreme Court ruled that he did not need to perform the ceremony because there were other civil servants who would. However, the court did indicate that religious beliefs do not allow employees to discriminate against same-sex couples.

Adoption services: A same-sex couple in California applied to Adoption Profiles, an Internet service in Arizona that matches adoptive parents with newborns. The couple's application was denied based on the religious beliefs of the company's owners. The couple sued in federal district court in San Francisco. The two sides settled after the adoption company said it will no longer do business in California.

Wedding services: A same sex couple in Albuquerque asked a photographer, Elaine Huguenin, to shoot their commitment ceremony. The photographer declined, saying her Christian beliefs prevented her from sanctioning same-sex unions. The couple sued, and the New Mexico Human Rights Commission found the photographer guilty of discrimination. It ordered her to pay the lesbian couple's legal fees ($6,600). The photographer is appealing.

Wedding facilities: Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association of New Jersey, a Methodist organization, refused to rent its boardwalk pavilion to a lesbian couple for their civil union ceremony. The couple filed a complaint with the New Jersey Division on Civil Rights. The division ruled that the boardwalk property was open for public use, therefore the Methodist group could not discriminate against gay couples using it. In the interim, the state's Department of Environmental Protection revoked a portion of the association's tax benefits. The case is ongoing.

Youth groups: The city of Berkeley, Calif., requested that the Sea Scouts (affiliated with the Boy Scouts) formally agree to not discriminate against gay men in exchange for free use of berths in the city's marina. The Sea Scouts sued, claiming this violated their beliefs and First Amendment right to the freedom to associate with other like-minded people. In 2006, the California Supreme Court ruled against the youth group. In San Diego, the Boy Scouts lost access to the city-owned aquatic center for the same reason. While these cases do not directly involve same-sex unions, they presage future conflicts about whether religiously oriented or parachurch organizations may prohibit, for example, gay couples from teaching at summer camp. In June 2008, the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals asked the California Supreme Court to review the Boy Scouts' leases. Meanwhile, the mayor's office in Philadelphia revoked the Boy Scouts' $1-a-year lease for a city building."

Now, who goes after Boy Scouts?

When you throw a stone into the water, there is a ripple effect. Changing the definition of marriage will also have a ripple effect, as it is already beginning to have. And we're only a few years into same-sex unions- I wonder what the effects might be ten or twenty years from now.

Iowa, and every other state that hasn't already done so, needs to pass a state constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman. The United States likewise needs to pass a Federal Marriage Amendment doing the same. There are fundamental, First-Amendment freedoms at stake.

Selfishness

2009-04-15T12:19:00.000-07:00

I hate the letter "I," that lonely, spear-like pronoun.

I love these lines from Walter Scott:

High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonor'd, and unsung.

Elder Neal A. Maxwell said, "Selfishness is really self-destruction in slow motion," and President Hinckely said that "He who lives only unto himself withers and dies, while he who forgets himself in the service of others grows and blossoms in this life and in eternity."

A Kierkegaardian Reading of March Madness

2009-04-08T19:02:00.000-07:00

Between my junior and senior years of high school, I took an introductory philosophy course at Georgetown. The course description stated that we would read a certain book by Soren Kierkegaard, and for the life of me I can't remember the title of it. So I read the book early that summer, to get a "headstart" on the course. (Turned out that we didn't end up reading it at all- a classic case of the all-too-frequent divorce between course description promises and the harsh reality of actual classroom experience).

I wish now that I could recall the name of the book, so that I could quote from it directly, but I will have to rely on my fallible memory instead. I remember that the writer of the preface said that no one would object more to having a preface to his works than Soren Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard believed that people should define their own experiences, come up with their own interpretations of what they read, and not have someone else impose their preface, their interpretation, on anyone else.

All this has made me think of March Madness, and how the commentaries made by the sportscasters seem like an important part of each game. What would the Carolina-Duke rivalry be without the wisdom and enthusiasm of Dick Vitale? And yet, is my interpretation of the game being imposed on me by someone else? By listening to the analysis and commentaries of sportscasters, am I letting go, in some small way, of my liberty to interpret my own experience and to frame my own basketball narrative?

Would Kierkegaard tell me to turn the sound off, watch the game, and form my own analysis of the events before me?

Sometimes I wonder.

Raising Kane

2009-03-31T08:46:00.000-07:00

Colonel Thomas L. Kane (1822-1883) was always a hero of the underdog. As a Pennsylvania attorney, he frequently took up the causes of the outcast and the oppressed. He was a staunch abolitionist, even preferring to go to jail rather than to comply with the Fugitive Slave Act (and the even more stringent provisions of the Compromise of 1850) requiring him to be more active in returning escaped slaves to their Southern masters. The Supreme Court, fortunately, decided that his incarceration was unconstitutional, and he was set free.

His taking up for the underdog eventually led to his great and continual intercession on behalf of the Latter-day Saints, and time and time again he negotiated with government leaders on their behalf. The gratitude of the Saints has expressed itself in the establishment of Kane County, UT, the naming of the Kanesville Tabernacle in Council Bluffs, IA (where on Dec. 27, 1847, Brigham Young was sustained as the second president of the Church), and numerous articles and other publications recounting his many great acts of friendship towards the Saints. As Brigham Young once wrote Kane in a letter dated April 16, 1871, "Those who know you cherish for you the fondest recollection, while with all, your name is held in honorable remembrance" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_L._Kane).

Kane also spoke French, publishing several articles in that language while in Paris, and fought in the Battle of Gettysburg (where he was promoted to major general for his bravery in battle). He was, in short, a hero.

But it is his wife, Elizabeth, that I have been reading about recently and I find her to be an equally intriguing figure. On a visit with her husband and two children to Utah, she commented on the idea (which she disdained) that theological discussions belong properly to the male domain, and that women should not trouble themselves too much with doctrinal matters. The existence of this notion she traces to a (faulty, in my opinion) reading of the Apostle Paul. On the question of whether a woman should "refer all theological puzzles to her own husband at home" she writes, "Ah, St. Paul, little didst thou foresee how busy our husbands would be all day in Wall Street, how tired and cross every evening at home! Fancy our asking THEM to extract roots of doctrine for us!" (TWELVE MORMON HOMES VISITED, 1874).

Wonderful comment from Elizabeth Kane.

President Kimball taught: "We want our homes blessed with sister scriptorians." Elder Maxwell said that for too long in the church, men have been the theologians while the women have been the Christians (see http://www.lds.org/ldsorg/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=2354fccf2b7db010VgnVCM1000004d82620aRCRD&locale=0&sourceId=c86f44584a204110VgnVCM100000176f620a____&hideNav=1#footnote7). It seems to me that women could more confidently study and expound doctrine while we men could sometimes stop expounding so much and actually start living more fully the Christianity of the doctrines that we are so happy to discuss.

Sameness

2009-03-24T19:52:00.000-07:00

Madeleine L'Engle is wonderful, and not just because she received an honorary doctorate from BYU in 1999 and gave a great commencement address there (see http://www.byub.org/findatalk/search.asp?all=true"). She is also a solid writer for children (intertext with Shakespeare, Goethe, the Bible!) in a time when the stultifying and the vapid have cornered too much of the children's literature market. As President Monson said recently, "In our age of mass culture, when so much that we encounter is abridged, adapted, adulterated, shredded, and boiled down, it is mind-easing and mind-inspiring to sit down privately with a congenial book." I consider Madeleine L'Engle's A WRINKLE IN TIME to be just such a "congenial" book.

There is a wonderful scene in A WRINKLE IN TIME where, on the planet Camazotz, the characters encounter an unusual town:

"Below them the town was laid out in harsh angular patterns. The houses in the outskirts were all exactly alike, small square boxes painted gray. Each had a small, rectangular plot of lawn in front, with a straight line of dull-looking flowers edging the path to the door. Meg had a feeling that if she could count the flowers there would be exactly the same number for each house. In front of all the houses children were playing. Some were skipping rope, some were bouncing balls. Meg felt vaguely that something was wrong with their play... 'Look!' Charles Wallace said suddenly. 'They're skipping and bouncing in rhythm. Everyone's doing it at exactly the same moment...'
Then the doors of all the houses opened simultaneously, and out came women like a row of paper dolls. The print of their dresses was different, but they all gave the appearance of being the same. Each woman stood on the steps of her house. Each clapped. Each child with the ball caught the ball. Each child with the skipping rope folded the rope. Each child turned and walked into the house. The doors clicked shut behind them" (pp. 103-04).

When one of the children breaks rhythm by dropping his ball, the visitors to Camazotz try to return it to him. They knock on his door, but his mother protests:

"The woman pushed the ball away. 'Oh, no! The children in our section
never drop balls! They're all perfectly trained. We haven't had an Aberration for three years'" (p. 106).

There is a wonderful criticism of sameness in this scene, one with which Brother Brigham might perhaps have agreed: "There is too much sameness in this community. . . I am not a stereotyped Latter-day-saint and do not believe in the doctrine. . . away with stereotyped Mormons!" (http://www.dialoguejournal.com/excerpts/36-2a.asp)

It is this form of sameness that often finds itself under fire in much of the criticism of suburbia that has long seemed fashionable, particularly of late. From recent New York Times articles and editorials extolling the "authenticity" of city or even rural life, to architectural history books decrying the "artificial" nature of suburban sprawl and its accompanying cookie-cutter lifestyles, to contemporary films like "Revolutionary Road" that emphasize the supposedly vacuous and unfulfilling lifestyle to which suburbia condemns its prisoners, it is clear that the 'burbs have gotten their share of negative publicity. The perceived lack of architectural variety among the monolithic rows of "bedroom communities" becomes, for some, symbolic of the homogeneity of the inhabitants, whose lives thus reflect the monotony and lack of individualism faced and even sought out by these native suburbanites, these worshippers of the temples of kitsch and conformity.

While I find some of these evaluations of suburbia somewhat unfair and even occasionally elitist and self-congratulatory, I do find something intriguing about this criticism of sameness that finds its way into such anti-suburban discourse. Sameness can stifle creativity and individuality, force individuals into roles which they neither wish for nor even are capable of filling. It can create suspicion and xenophobia towards all but the most limited of homogeneous circles. I have met people who were suspicious about folks in the next county over. Is this not xenophobia in the extreme?

I believe that our personal righteousness will lead us to greater individuality; as Elder Neal A. Maxwell (I miss him!) once said, "Of course, our individuality is actually enhanced by submissiveness and by righteousness. It is sin that grinds us down to sameness-- to a monotonous, single plane" (see Educating Zion, p. 202).

I am also reminded of a key opening passage in one of my favorite novels, Hermann Hesse's UNTERM RAD. Describing Joseph Giebenrath, Hesse writes:

"Er haette mit jedem beliebigen Nachbarn Namen und Wohnung vertauschen koennen, ohne dass irgend etwas anders geworden waere. Auch das Tiefste seiner Seele, das schlummerlose Misstrauen gegen jede ueberlegene Kraft und Persoenlichkeit und die instinktive aus Neid erwachsene Feindseligkeit gegen alles Unalltaegliche, Freiere, Feinere, Geistige teilte er mit saemtlichen uebrigen Hausvaetern der Stadt" (pp. 1-2)

(I apologize for the lack of umlauts- an ugly sight indeed. I'm still new and in the process of learning the ropes around here).

I am also reminded of those all-too-often repeated American evaluative phrases: "That was... different" or "She's definitely... different"-- as though variation from the norm were somehow unnecessarily transgressive and therefore undesirable. It is usually to avoid using other negative words that "different" is thus employed- after all, isn't it nicer to say "different" than incompetent, boring, stupid, annoying, etc? Yet by using "different," we thus inevitably inscribe the word's negative meaning, situating it firmly on the derogatory end of the lexical spectrum. Variation becomes transgression and invites ostracism and rejection. Those who seek individuality quickly find themselves despised and rejected of men.

It is often jealousy that seeks to impose rigid conformity. W.E.B. Dubois perceptively described this phenomenon when he stated, citing Booker T. Washington, that "we are like crabs in a barrel, that none would allow the other to climb over, but on any such attempt all would combine to pull back into the barrel the one crab who would make the effort to climb out" (see http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:i86bVA89DCkJ:xroads.virginia.edu/~MA03/faturoti2/Ambrose/relg280-washington%2520dubois%2520garvey.doc+%22w.e.b.+dubois%22+and+%22crabs%22&cd=11&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us).

I began this (lenghty) post with a children's book, and now I end with one, J.K. Rowling's HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER'S STONE. While Yale critic Harold Bloom excoriated the book in his (in)famous Wall Street Journal op-ed (see http://wrt-brooke.syr.edu/courses/205.03/bloom.html) and claimed that reading Harry Potter was in fact not reading at all but "eyes simply scan[ning] the page," there is at least one aspect of Rowling's description of the Dursleys that I find appealing, particularly in this context of writers questioning sameness and conformity. The very opening lines of the book set the tone for what will become a subtle critique of the stifling, British "middle class morality" that English writers like George Bernard Shaw and others have long derided in their works:

"Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you'd expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn't hold with such nonsense" (p. 1).

Now, I'm all for morality, middle class or otherwise, but the term "middle class morality" carries with it sometimes connotations of contented, suburban conformity, an "All is well" mentality that is dangerous not only for its immediate and long-term spiritual ramifications (see 2 Nephi on that), but also for the rigid regimentation of behavioral codes it often imposes on others. There is no room for difference with such codes in place. Thus, the Dursleys' harsh treatment of Harry is not contempt for the boy himself per se; it is, rather, contempt for the very idea of difference, contempt for individuality, for non-conformism. The Dursleys are not so much of afraid of Harry's mysterious powers as they are of what their friends and neighbors, many of whom live in neatly-arrayed rows of nearly identical houses very similar to their own(the film makes this even clearer, depicting, as it does, the almost stereotypically middle-class, non-descript English suburban neighborhood), will think of them if they ever find out about their "freak" (a word that signifies the ultimate otherization) of a nephew. Petunia Dursley gives voice to some of this conformist anxiety in her speech before Hagrid when she reveals that she knew all along that Harry has magic powers:

"Knew! Of course we knew! How could you not be [a wizard], my dratted sister being what she was... I was the only one who saw her for what she was-- a freak! But for my mother and father, oh no, it was Lily this and Lily that, they were proud of having a witch in the family...
Then she met that Potter at school and they left and got married and had you, and of course I knew you'd be just the same, just as strange, just as-- as--abnormal-- and then, if you please, she went and got herself blown up and we got landed with you!"

As Elder Eric B. Shumway (a personal hero) has pointed out, "We [can] become victims of a self-satisfied, narrow provincialism that can snuff out curiosity and harden our opinions into prejudices. There is a provocative Tongan saying that warns against the dangers of a "small fish" perspective. 'The lokua [a tiny reef fish] thinks his tidal pool is the vast ocean'" (http://home.byu.net/few2/pdf/BYUHawaii.pdf)

Like the lokua fish, the Dursleys have a hard time seeing beyond their own immediate, limited circle, and they guard fiercely the parameters and contours of the narrow sphere they have drawn up for themselves and those around them. Yet there is a whole world out there, with many different kinds of people doing many different kinds of things.

There is no need for us to impose sameness on one another.