Online reading and online school

In addition to enjoying the books I wrote about last week, I've also run across some interesting articles that I'll share here for future reference.

First, in relation to the original sin discussion yesterday, there was an article about Martin Scorsese movies in the latest Notre Dame Magazine. Here is a director who has spent a career studying the darkness of the human heart. I haven't seen The Irishman and I've never been a huge fan of mob movies, although I always enjoy them when I am watching them. The article makes me want to take another watch with a more critical eye: https://magazine.nd.edu/stories/the-dark-gospel-of-martin-scorsese/

My favorite article in the magazine, though, is this one about the power of literature to teach, or at least to encourage, empathy: https://magazine.nd.edu/stories/what-good-is-literature/.  Beth Ann Fennelly's "What Good is Literature?" is a pertinent read during this time when reading more is a good antidote to surfing social media, which I would think encourages insular thinking, or whatever is the opposite of empathy. Fennelly, who is the poet laureate of Mississippi, or was, summarizes a few studies that seek to prove the affective power of literature, but it makes explicit what I try to explain to my literature 101 students when I give them Azar Nafisi's essay "Mysterious Connections that Link Us Together" and Gregory Orr's piece "The Making of Poems."  Both of these short essays are old now but have timeless messages that capture the imagination and the heart of readers, and pertinently reluctant readers, to show both how literature creates relationships between readers, characters and authors, and provides a way to heal from injury and still be compassionate and vulnerable.

My aunt just sent me the link to the Harvard professor's rant against home schoolers that seems based on some imaginary ideal of home schoolers.  I suspect she wrote it before all parents became home school parents because of Covid closures.  I will say I have run into home schoolers who seem to want to outsource all aspects of home schooling or who seem to have jumped into home schooling without a lot of thought about how to home school, but the majority of home schooled children we've met are bright, cheerful, interesting kids. The relative number of odd birds is probably equal to the number of odd birds in the school system as well. And the number of wasted hours that school children spend looking out of windows or listening to their peers get in trouble or ask the same questions over and over probably outweigh the number of hours a home schooled child might spend playing or reading novels, activities with educational value. (Easy access to video games and vapid media might be the downfall of home schoolers, though, as our recent struggle in our return to home schooling has shown.) I have a horrifying memory of telling my high school history teacher when she got mad at me for reading Anna Karenina in class that I was learning more from that book than for her. My impertinence was unacceptable, but I can't help but agree with my 16 year old self. She was an older teacher who put old copies of notes on an overhead projector for us to copy and then spend the rest of the class trying to catch students who were exercising all of their creativity in coming up with ways to be naughty. "Slamming" was a favorite - the room was on the second floor, so students would lift their desks and let them slam down to disturb the classes below - and our own. The teacher was terrible at catching the perpetrators.

Meanwhile, my kids' teachers are sending them to Khan Academy and Quizlet and Discovery Channel videos, even Brainpop, for their assignments instead of crafting their own or having synchronous learning. All of these resources have been used by home schoolers for years, so if they are acceptable replacements for public school now, they should show that home schoolers have had comparable or better educational opportunities.  At any rate, the article seems to have mostly garnered negatives responses.

Time to disconnect and get back to life and trying to educate my children.

Bucket List item: Prince Edward Island

One of the pleasures of our summer vacation was visiting with my husband's sister and her family who currently live in Newfoundland, but came back to get warm and see family in OKC for a couple weeks. They love Newfoundland and love living abroad  - this is their 4th country. (They are not military.) They lived in Norway shortly after their first was born, then northern England, Spain, and now Newfoundland, where they had their sixth baby shortly after LCJ was born. We were blessed to be able to take a military space available flight to see them when they lived in Spain with the whole family, but I always regret not visiting them when they lived in England.  Their home base is in Houston, where they anticipate returning in a year or two - we've visited there, also, although not so exotic.  I was hoping that if we got sent to DC, our whole family could make a trek up the East Coast and visit them and other cousins in New York state, but recently we've heard whispers that we'll be staying in San Diego for our next tour (about which I have mixed feelings...).

That family history is prelude to sharing some links I just came across that set me thinking that perhaps a trip east might be in order -- one is a photo journal of a trip to Prince Edward Island to visit Lucy Maud Montgomery's home and the other is a notice about a new Anne of Green Gables miniseries coming to Netflix.  PEI was on my list of places to go on our honeymoon. I just googled flights and trips to Halifax aren't too, too expensive.  This IS our 20th anniversary year that we keep celebrating ...

I may have to reread some LCM just in case. Or just to dream. . .

Things to think about

I've come across some interesting links lately that have stirred cogitation.  I'd like to come back to some of these topics again, but needless to say, rarely do I actually come back to links I've copied and pasted. Rather than keep all of these interesting reads to myself, here they are, briefly annotated:

• This is an article my college son had to read for his theology class. It summarizes a study about adolescents and faith.  The study categorizes the type of belief that teens of various doctrinal backgrounds seem to profess under the title "Moralistic therapeutic deism."  In other words, most teenagers believe in a creator God that helps them feel good about themselves and inspires them to do good deeds. I don't know that this kind of faith is limited to adolescents.  People want to be happy and content, they want life to be fair, and people to be nice to each other.  It's easy to "sell" a faith that is all about good feelings. The authors don't speak about what they consider a "mature" faith, but certainly at some point, the parts of life that are ugly around the edges have to be accounted for - and responded to with mercy.  I know that I have much maturing to do in my own faith life, but motherhood, marriage and aging have helped me see how it is possible to love unconditionally, and to forgive unaccountably, and to embrace smallness and humility.  But still these could be called types of actions and aren't inextricably tied to faith, although they may be inspired by it, and strengthened by the graces of sacraments and Words. I have always found action easier than contemplation.  Where my faith is weak is in that very thing that distinguishes faith from morality: loving and worshiping God. I know God's presence in the world and the hope of the world to come are real things, but rarely do I stop to think or listen.  In many ways, it is easier to love the sinner, who wears skin.  My soul moves sluggishly toward God, unless inspired by some reflection of His beauty. I still struggle to comprehend grace in action.  So I remind myself to be thankful for those trials that reduce, that humble, that detach. 

• I meant to come back to this one from Humanum - a commencement speech to an all girls' school by Elizabeth Kantor about love being the most important vocation. I thought about emailing it to my older kids, boys and girl. 

• Another article from the New York Times captures what I had been wrestling with when debating whether to renew some print magazine subscriptions. This one claims that not only are ebooks and online articles changing the way we read, but they also are changing the way kids learn to read.  Long ago I read something about how "print rich" homes produce better readers. We have plenty of books in our house, but in between frequent changes of address, a tight budget, and plenty to read elsewhere, we get few magazines. Now another study shows that even if parents read a lot, if they aren't leaving material around for their kids to read, the kids are going to gravitate toward social media and games. My own experience emphatically confirms this: If my parents didn't leave copies of the Couple to Couple League newsletter around, I never would have understood Natural Family Planning. Cricket inspired my siblings' and my imaginations. If my grandfather didn't keep stacks of Crisis, the National Review, First Things, and Heritage Foundation newsletters around (along with National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, and the ever entertaining Reader's Digest),  my understanding of faith, culture, and politics (and trivia) would have been much hazier.  I worry that I may have deprived my own children by rarely subscribing to print journalism. We have intermittently received the Wall Street Journal, the National Catholic Register, Magnificat, National Geographic, Cricket and long ago got First Things, but I was more open to spending money on subscriptions when we were homeschooling and internet usage was limited by a dial up connection. And I would frequently get frustrated with myself for spending time reading magazines instead of getting things done around the house - or homeschooling. But now I am frustrated with myself for spending so much time online!

So in response, I ordered Image magazine (to support my dear sister), and I am waiting for a sale on WSJ to renew.  I like the trivia the kids pick up about the world from National Geographic, and I think I might get one other subscription to a periodical that nourishes our faith life - not sure which one - Magnificat, First Things, or something else.

• And I enjoyed the article that Preventing Grace linked to about the differences in American and British children's fiction. (The American being moralistic and the British being fantastical.) That article is not the point of her post, which is about how easy it is to imagine God as an engineer and to read the Bible as an instructional manual on achieving salvation, as opposed to seeing God as an artist who creates out of love -- a post that neatly circles back to my ruminations at the beginning of this post. How we long for an orderly checklist of what to do! But how blessed are the moments of pure pleasure of being with another, a someone or a Someone. 

• And so my last link is to this: an article from Notre Dame magazine (one of our few print journals which actually usually has a number of thoughtful articles) about the poet Robert Lax, a friend of Thomas Merton, and a poet of little renown, but great faith.  The article itself is brief, but has inspired me to look up more Robert Lax. And the picture that accompanies it looks like the portrait of a true contemplative. 

For [Lax}, artistic expression is spiritual expression, and the hands that grope for God are stained with ink and oil. In these days when it’s difficult to pass on values in a traditional way, we must encode them in literature and art.

Linkage

Interesting ways to spend time:

First off: Let me plug my own kid's music!  He and a friend have formed a duo, The Righteous Cubicles.  I think I would call their style Americana.  Not sure really. They are their own songwriters and play banjo, guitar and ukulele. The friend's little brother also plays accordion on one song. They just recorded a cd with 7 songs. The quality of the recording is low, but their lyrics and music are good, according to this prejudiced mom.  I love listening to their CD, which is now available for the incredibly low price of $5.  It is priced so affordably because they have only performed live once - at the school talent show - and because they are producing it themselves - and, moreover, because I have bankrolled part of the production costs (Color copies!) Get a preview here:  https://soundcloud.com/righteous-cubicles
 *********
I love my teenagers. I can't believe I was so afraid of having them.  Maybe because my brother and I gave our parents a difficult time in high school. And then my sister went through a difficult time in college.  My younger brother, the quintessential phlegmatic, never intentionally gave my parents a really bad time. He did drive their van into a corn field off a gravel road and got his ears pierced. But he let the holes grow in and is an upstanding father today. Hope for all!

My own kids give me the occasional heart stopper, but usually it is accidental. Like a car accident. Or because I am overcome with pride.  Or because, TIME!  I saw a post from an old friend about her son participating in a senior class Mass. Wow, can he be that old!  But hark! My OWN son will have a baccalaureate Mass in just two weeks!  I am not ready.

*********

Part of my fear of teenagers is rooted in knowing teenagers who acting like the kids in "Greasy Lake" by T. C. Boyle, always a favorite in my lit class. Well, maybe my acquaintances weren't quite that 'bad,' but they had their sins.  One of my students is writing about Boyle for a research project, so I went on a rabbit trail. He was once a Catholic and counts Flannery O'Connor as an influence.  Maybe someday he'll come back.  Somehow, I got linked to reading about a book about Mormons, always fascinating to me: Latimes review of Elders by Ryan McIlvain, which lead to an article about Marilynne Robinson and her book When I was a Child I Read Books and on to a literary magazine called The Believer I never heard of before.  All interesting.

Needless to say, I didn't get to bed early that night.
*********
My late night computer habits can sometimes cause a strain in our marriage. I try to keep them to Phase 2, when distance is imperative, at least for now. (Some friends and I just read The Sinners Guide to NFP by Simcha Fischer for an informal book club. Really enjoyed it and the conversation. I left it sitting out in the living room, just in case my teenagers happened to get curious. Perhaps the easiest way to talk about these things with teenage boys? "Here. Read this." End conversation.)

I wrote this about marriage meaning to post it sometime, so now: I have said that marriage is a thing. An object unto itself. Not perhaps a material being capable of being touched, but an idea to be contemplated that is made physical. In the meeting of bodies, love is incarnated.  Here in these bodies of children lolling and lagging about me. Clinging and clashing. Pulling and pushing. A roiling mess of humanity under a roof too low to hold all the emotion and energy that pulses sometimes faster, sometimes irregularly, sometimes in even steady syncopated beats all of one accord.  Not me, not you, not even you and me, but us and it and them. Impossible to decline.  This marriage is not just the two of us, but the household, the furnace at its heart.  Where it is weakest is where the selves attempt to move alone or to grasp too hard.  "Most like an arch"  writes John Ciardi so wisely, falling in when not leaning toward. 

*********
I love poems about marriage. And here is an article about Wendell Berry on poetry and marriage.  I need to read it more closely, but at first glance it was intriguing.

*********

And I'm running far again. Thought I'd do a half marathon while we lived here, but can't bring myself to drop $100 on a race I can't win.  Nonetheless, I've started running a 10 miler regularly on the weekends.  It is surprising how easy it is to do this when you have a friend to run with.  Really. An hour and a half of running flies by when you are talking.  Blessedly, one of the Navy wives is right where I am with running, and I really like her. There are certain people you meet with whom you know you have a kinship (also the women in the NFP book club). You see them and know they are kindred spirits even without speaking.  What breaks my heart is when you don't really get to start to know them until it is time to move away. Alas, alack.

Like this quote by Earl Nightingale from seemomrunfar:

"We are at our very best, and we are happiest, when we are fully engaged in work we enjoy on the journey toward the goal we've established for ourselves. It gives meaning to our time off and comfort to our sleep. It makes everything else in life so wonderful, so worthwhile.
*******
Also like this article on surfing and God by Peter Kreeft. So many good things to read out there, so little time.  

In my year of little reading, my latest novel to finish is a YA book called Here's How I See It by Heather Henson about a girl whose dad runs a summer theater. The main character, Junebug, is having a difficult summer because of her parents' troubles and her own foiled hopes. Lots of Shakespeare and Chekhov quotes. I'd put it as a book for the 8-15 yr old crowd. And it ends happily! Hooray!

I'd read more if I didn't have a smartphone.  In the old days, when I nursed babies, I sat around and read.  Now I read emails and Facebook.  Lots of people who need prayers out there - for comfort and for gratitude.  At least Facebook is good for keeping track of people who need prayers.
***********
My days of nursing are growing shorter and shorter. Baby can go all day and has gone 1 whole night without it, but she doesn't like milk, and I don't mind using her as an excuse to sit in a quiet room every once in a while. 

All too soon she'll be graduating from high school.