Shakespeare Prepares to Travel

Setting: Shakespeare is sitting on his bed with his laptop, eyeing the clothes, books, and gizmos spread helter-skelter about his bedroom floor.

Background: Shakespeare is about to travel to the Upstate New York home of his friend Sir Walter Raleigh (Ben for short), where he will add Ben and Ben's luggage to his vehicle's inventory before continuing on to resume his studies at Hillsdale College.

To pack, or not to pack? That is the question.
Whether 'tis nobler on my bed to ponder
The feeds and wall posts of outrageous Facebook,
Or to take arms against a sea of laundry,
And by much folding, end it. To stuff my bags,
No more; and in those bags to say I end
The quandaries and the thousand small decisions
That packing's heir to. 'Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To stuff, to haul,
To haul, perchance to cram: ay, there's the rub;
For in that car what cargo space remains
When we have shuffled off this icy drive
Must give us pause; there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long trip.
For who'd not bear the boxes full of books,
The hefty sacks, the suitcases so portly,
The need to be efficient--and the toll
That countless choices on the chooser take,
When he himself must needs decide to pack
Or leave his bodkin? Who'd not fardels bear
But that the dread of something in New York,
That well-beloved country from whose bourn
The journey stretches on, puzzles the will
And makes us rather stare at bags we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?*
Thus packing doth make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And schoolward journeys of great length and distance
In this regard their currents run awry,
And lose the name of action.

*Shakespeare is blaming his procrastination on a fear of being crowded once Ben's belongings and his are united. Really, though, he'd probably find something else to blame it on if he were planning to drive the whole way alone.

The Horrid Disadvantage of a Scientific Major

As I was talking last Friday with the professor who teaches my Great Books and Rhetoric course, I was bemoaning my inexperience with close reading and digging into deep meaning within texts. I can do facts: I can name all the nations in Europe and most of their capitals, I can list the U.S. Presidents in order (I tried it just to make sure, and while I put Fillmore and Garfield in the wrong slots and actually forgot Cleveland entirely, the fact that I got them wrong will probably mean that I'll get them right in the future), I know most of the Periodic Table, and I can rattle off a pretty inclusive summary of yesterday's assigned reading from the Odyssey. I can do patterns, too. I am, after all, avidly pursuing the understanding of both math and music, and I think grammar is cool. But getting into the deeper structure of a work, understanding the mind of the author, finding the purpose behind the plot -- these are habits I have never formed.

Beyond the part that my personality plays in this unfortunate fact, I am largely to blame. As a homeschooler, I was basically in charge of my education throughout high school. My mom planned out my curriculum, bought my books, and checked on my progress, but it was up to me to make sure I was actually learning in my various subjects. Some courses were harder or more loathsome than others, naturally, but on one course and one only did I actually give up: Skills for Literary Analysis.

SfLA was a correspondence course that I took for about two or three months, during which time I wrote almost exclusively on The Call of the Wild (which I hated) and the story of Joseph in the book of Genesis. I got my first B on a paper in that class, and I couldn't figure out what was wrong. I had no illusions of grandeur--I didn't like the paper myself--but I could not figure out how to improve it. When I asked my teacher, he just told me that he "graded subjectively." I quit.

What am I finding most challenging in college? Literary analysis, or more broadly, critical thinking. Lesson learned.

I explained some of this in far fewer words and with far fewer details to my professor, noting that Calculus is my easiest subject.

"I got through Calculus in college, and that's about it," he replied. "I worked hard, and I did well, but I never looked back." Perhaps, he suggested, Rhetoric & Great Books will be like that for me.

But I do not think so. Although Calculus is a fascinating subject which increases one's ability to solve problems, to understand the way things work, and to appreciate the orderliness of creation and the genius of other men, outside of a math-related field, it is rarely used. Not many people are like my grandfather, whose job as the printer for our church's publishing outfit didn't stop him from spending his free time teaching trigonometry to his young grandchildren and forming theorems to go along with the one for which Pythagoras is so famous. No, most people either use calculus regularly or shelve it permanently, or they never study it at all.

Critical thinking is different. It affects how one views so many things: literature, news, philosophy, religion, other people... And I want to learn how to think critically and analytically. That's why I came to Hillsdale instead of going to some technical school where I could become a skilled engineer/musician without going through Hillsdale's famously rigorous core program. I want to challenge my thinking process, to improve my understanding, and to get the kind of education that improves the student himself instead of attempting to expand his internal database. And I'm pretty sure I have come to the right place.

So what is the "horrid disadvantage of a scientific major"? Well, it really isn't a horrid disadvantage at all. The "horrid disadvantage" is that everything I'm studying is to a purpose. Unlike the English and History majors, most of whom are studying math and science because they are required and will (I imagine) leave them behind when they graduate, I have to know the technical things and the critical thinking/literature things. Everything I'm studying is something I will need to know later; in the long run, I have to remember twice as much.

The flip side is that I get to remember twice as much. I love learning, and I love using what I learn. Being on track to be able to do a lot of both makes me pretty happy.

Virtus tentamine gaudet.

Perspective

A gentle little thing, a sparrow,
Perched himself upon a ruined fence of stones
Beneath the summer sun,
Protected from its glaring rays by rustling leaves
That swayed above him,
Casting dappled shadows by his side.
It was the perfect day.

Along the wall, just up the hill,
A subtle movement caught the sparrow’s ever-watchful eye:
A lovely creature came, a cat
With fluid, captivating stride
And fur as black as night.
Without a thought of care
The feline strode with confidence and poise
Along the trail of rocks. She paused,
And with her paw, and sometimes with her tongue,
She smoothed her soft and silken coat of fur
Until it fairly gleamed.

The sparrow, head to one side then the other tilted,
Watched this spectacle with curiosity
Until the cat, herself detecting that her ritual was not unobserved,
Graced her neighbor with a warm, beguiling smile
Intended to disarm.
Ostensibly without a purpose other than continuing
Her happy, carefree afternoon excursion,
She approached.

The little bird upon the heap of stones
Now had two options, and he must pick one.
Either he must stay and meet the cat,
Whose green, enchanting eyes bespoke a chance
To know excitement, sport, and games
If only he would wait
And, doing nothing, see what pleasures chance might bring his way;
Or else, launched with a tiny hop,
He might propel himself into the air
And, flapping tiny wings, soar with the breeze
Away
From every hope of undiscovered fun.

The sparrow hesitated, but not long.
He flew.

Silly little thing! Now he might never learn
What gay diversions still remained behind,
Watching as he flitted through the air
And thinking of what might have been
Had not the sparrow been so wont to flee.

Silly thing!
What had he to fear?

Misguided Connections

Miss Marple, the famous old spinster of a detective invented by Agatha Christie, had a keen knowledge of human nature. She could understand people's feelings and desires, see through their deception, and, of course, solve all manner of crimes because of her shrewd perception. And it all came because of her life in little St. Mary Mead.

In her little home town in the English countryside, Jane Marple observed the mechanic's hired hand elope with the minister's daughter; she saw her neighbor Gladys's dear niece move to the city to become an actress - which no one expected - and leave behind her job as church organist; she saw the vicar's maid (a very sweet girl) get caught stealing from the church treasury to pay for her nephew's hospital bills. And then, when she was in other parts of the world, her acquaintances would remind her of one or the other the people from home, and she could see right into their hearts.

I feel a little like Miss Marple. Younger, male, and possessing better fashion sense, it's true, but like her nonetheless. You see, here at Hillsdale, everyone (and I scarcely exaggerate) reminds me of someone I've known before. I meet someone, and I think, "Oh, he reminds me of so and so. She is so like Friend X." Like Miss Marple, I think of how Friend X would behave, and expect my new friend to do the same. Unfortunately, it turns out that this practice (in real life, at least) is less likely to solve mysteries than to breed confusion.

Case in point: when I was in line to have my picture taken for my student ID (a wait that lasted 2 hours due to technical difficulties), I was sitting with a guy who reminded me of Alan, an acquaintance from the music school I attended in NH, who was just about the ultimate musician. A quiet kid from a nice large homeschooling family, Alan played the piano for a chamber group, was the principal violist in the school orchestra, and is now getting his degree in organ performance. Well, the kid I was sitting with (I'll call him Marcus) was also quiet, also homeschooled, and also played the piano. He even looked a little like Alan. He must, I reasoned, also be the ultimate musician.

The problem was that he wasn't. Forgetting that my expectations of Marcus's musical knowledge were unfair superimpositions of my knowledge of someone else, I kept trying to make deep, intellectual conversation about classical music.

"What are some of your favorite pieces to play?"

"I like some classical pieces, especially romantic ones."

"Ah, yes, I like romantic, too. Do you know Chopin's Prelude in E Minor?"

"I don't know the name."

(Here I try to hum it, and finding myself unable to convey the feeling of the piece, I describe it.)

"It has a simple melody like that, and the accompaniment in the left hand is a series of chords that are descending chromatically, note by note, creating an impression of deep sorrow, or profound melancholia."

"Yes, well, I like Chopin. I play his stuff, mostly."

"Which of his pieces do you play?"

"I don't know any names."

Stunned silence. Can this be the Alan I know, the musical maestro who practically lived in the music school while he was in high school? Can it be? Oh, wait. No, it can't.

It keeps happening to me. I meet someone, he reminds me of someone else, and suddenly my mind is full of assumptions about his tastes, his abilities, or even his character. Chris reminds me of Richard. Veronica reminds me of Katie. Shannon makes me think of Hillary. Prof. Schlueter makes me think of Dan.

I don't always associate an old acquaintance with each new one. Sometimes I think of celebrities or fictional characters instead. Sometimes I don't think of anyone else at all. Sometimes I can't place my finger on who I'm reminded of; I just know there's some connection in the back of my mind, some bell quietly and indistinctly ringing. But even for the people who most strongly remind me of people I already knew before, the problem isn't permanent. As I get to know people better, their characters take a shape of their own. They become their own person. Sometimes the connections to friends from home remain valid, sometimes they don't. But in the meantime, my dear new Hillsdale friends, if I'm shocked that you don't know about Sarasate's Zapateado, or that you run cross-country instead of swimming, or that you don't already have your Ph.D. in geology your freshman year at a liberal arts school, forgive me. It's just my Marplean view of human nature kicking in. Give me a couple days, and I'll know you for yourself.

Possible Slogans for 2010

I don't know if this is something everyone does or not, but in my family we sometimes come up with slogans for the new year. You know, catchy phrases like "Buy a new crate in 2008," or "Things will decline in 2009." Those were not our official slogans from the past two years; in fact, if we had official slogans, I can't remember them. But whatever clever jingles we did come up with, official or not, are in the final stages of obsolescence. It's time for some new ones. I have lots and lots of excellent suggestions.

Pronunciation note: For some of these slogans you have to say "twenty-ten" and for others "two thousand ten." You can figure out which works better as you go.

#1. Meet lots of men in 2010. Sorry, ladies, no offense intended. It's not that I don't like meeting you just as much those of my own gender; but, to be quite frank, "ladies" does not rhyme with "ten." Nor does "girls." Nor do "misses," "madames," or "those of the female persuasion." "Women" does come pretty close, but the meter is all wrong. So men it is.

#2. Listen to Glenn in 2010. This is not really one of my goals. Glenn Beck is a pretty good host, but I haven't listened to him much and I have no overwhelming desire to do so. If listening to talk radio is on your 30 by 30 list, however, this is the year. Do it.

#3. Eat a hen in 2010. This is for those non-vegetarians who want really easy New Year's resolutions. If you really want a resolution that would be hard to keep, you could change the "a" to a "no," but I don't know why you'd want to.

#4. Eat like a Karen in 2010. A number of the students at Bible school this year are students from the Karen (pronounced kə-REN) ethnic group in Burma. Perhaps the most remarkable characteristic these people exhibit is a strength of taste buds that is positively astounding. Nothing is safe from the cayenne pepper shaker when they are around. Want to develop superpower tastebuds yourself? Want to be able to eat anything? The only way to get there is practice. Eat like a Karen.

Quick recipe for those who decide to follow #4:
Make oatmeal - lots of it. Pour it in a bowl. Cover it with black pepper, salt, and cayenne pepper until the oatmeal disappears. Mix it all up. Add more spices to taste. Enjoy!

#5. Stay friends with Ben in 2010. This one is going to be really hard for me. Ben and I have only been friends for twenty years, after all, and, though I can hardly imagine a closer, better friendship, who knows what could happen in the next twelve months? Don't worry, Ben, I'll stick to you like glue.

#6. Take up your pen in 2010. This one is actually serious. I want to write more. Writing improves with practice, as a quick glance back in my blog archives will prove, and I want my writing to keep improving. College will help with that, I'm sure, but I want to get better on my own, too.

#7. Never again in 2010. Do you regret anything from your past? Did you make any mistakes in 2009? This slogan is for you. It's very versatile. You can use it however you wish. As a matter of fact, "again" is itself pretty much a wild card in 2010 slogans. "Wash the car..." "Make dinner..." "Read the Bible..." "Stop smoking..." Pretty much anything goes! Take it. Use it. No charge.

#8. Pray for peace in 2010. Okay, this one requires a little creativity. Running out of English rhymes? Pronounce the year in French! Deux mille dix rhymes with peace, and a whole slew of other words that would otherwise never make any New Year's slogans ever.

#9. Care for your chien in 2010. Another French trick. Chien means dog.

#10. Remember that God can in 2010. This is the best I could come up with for a real, pithy, worthwhile slogan. Nothing is impossible with God, and I want to live like I believe it. When big difficulties present themselves, such as paying $30,000 for college, or having lots of convention responsibilities, or even the constant difficulty of budgeting my time and arranging my priorities when I have a million things to do, that is when the recognition of God's omnipotence is absolutely essential. I need to remember that God can provide, that God can guide, and that God can inspire.

So there you go. All sorts of good resolutions for the new year, compacted into clever little rhymes. I hope they have motivated you to make this year a successful and glorious one. Happy New Year!

When We All Get to Heaven....

...what a day of rejoicing that will be!"

That song goes on to speak about seeing Jesus -- the biggest, most important, and most wonderful reason that heaven will be a place of rejoicing. But there's another reason that has become increasingly real to me recently, and that is the hope of meeting and getting to know countless others in a way that is simply impossible in this life.

Last month, I went on a college tour that included visiting six different colleges in five different states and driving, along with my traveling companions Mr. H. and Ben, through a total of thirteen states. It was a very helpful trip that radically changed my opinions about a number of colleges and left me feeling very much more informed than I had been when I left. I enjoyed the enlightenment; I enjoyed the scenery; I enjoyed the amazingly delicious cafeteria food. But mostly I enjoyed the people.

I made a lot of new acquaintances on this trip: professors, admissions counselors, students, and occasionally other prospective students. In all probability, most of these will never be anything more than acquaintances, or even former acquaintances. In some cases I have absolutely no problem with this scenario. In some cases I welcome it. But I met quite a few people whose friendship I would love to have, and the majority of these people will be swept into the back of my memory along with everyone else.

I consider this to be a very sad thought. You see, I wish I could know everyone in the world who was worth knowing: everyone who could teach me something new, or who could learn something new with me; everyone with whom I could enjoy a good laugh, or a good story, or a good conversation. I wish I could know everyone who shares my interests, my passions, and my philosophy.

I wish I could know that professor at Hillsdale College whose passion, eloquence, and enthusiasm all combined to make him the perfect teacher. I would love to get to know those two students from Wheaton (one of whom was the oldest of five in a home-schooled family) with whom Ben and I discussed the origin of truth on the train into Chicago. I would really like to be friends with the admissions counselor at Bryan College, who emphasized that whatever college God leads me to will be the right one, and the visit coordinator at the same school, who gave her own testimony of how nothing is impossible with God. The list goes on. Those students at Patrick Henry, that professor at Geneva, that Admissions Counselor at Hillsdale -- I wish I could know them all.

The problem, of course, is that I can't.

I think one of the saddest things in life is the impossibility of knowing everyone who would be worth knowing. So many potential friendships must be sacrificed to mere earthly practicality. The friendships we do get to enjoy are wonderful, and I have no complaints about my own. But just as every friend is unique and irreplaceable, so no friendship is a perfect replacement for another, even if the seeds of the other friendship never turn into actual plants.

I have a theory: since everyone who accepts Jesus' sacrifice for his atonement will go to heaven, and since we will live there eternally, once we get there we will have all the time we want to get to know each other. No potential friendship will have to be set aside. Never again will we have to wonder what a relationship could have been. Not only will we be able to enjoy God completely, unimpeded by our fallen nature, but we will also be able to enjoy each other completely as well.

What a day of rejoicing that will be!

More From the Pond

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Dragonfly on a Red Cardboard Box

I took this picture with a new lens I just bought, a Tamron 70-300mm lens with a macro function.  This photo is a composite of two different photos from the same perspective, using the better-focused part of each to make an in-focus whole.

My Wishlist Wishlist

As I was doing some shopping on Amazon.com today, carefully comparing some similar items and combing their reviews for useful information, I remembered a time when I used to do such things more frequently, albeit for a rather amusing purpose.

Way back in the early days of my relationship with the World Wide Web, when we paid $25 a month to get super-slow service from America Online, when e-mail was something of a novelty, and when things like Blogger and Facebook were only mystical concepts in the minds of the technological avantgarde - back then, in the dawn of my online experience, Amazon.com was my primary attraction to the internet. Strange though it may seem now, I spent hours on that site. In fact, I probably spent a rather large majority of my internet allowance perusing the world's biggest online store. And the irony is that I had no intention of buying anything. I was the ultimate Windows shopper.

My commitment to honesty compels me to admit that the simple joy of comparing the latest merchandise was not my only attraction to Amazon.com, per se. It wasn't all merely about finding out what was the best, the cheapest, or the best deal. Nor was it about just having fun, though of that I had much. No, I was a selfish little lad, as a retrospective glance at my ideas, misconceptions, and consequent action from that time would make sadly apparent.

I first learned about Amazon.com when Evan and Jill came over for dinner shortly after they had moved to New Hampshire. It's one of those random little memories that sticks in one's mind from his childhood for no explicable reason. Mama and Jill were talking about shopping, I think, and Jill asked if we had tried Amazon.com. I had heard of it - I think by that time it was already a pretty big company - but hadn't realized that WE could use it. I don't know exactly who I thought generally used it - probably rich people with fancy computers or college students who could sit down with only Notepad open and design a whole website (imagine!) - but that's beside the point. The point is that if Jill could shop at Amazon.com, so could I. Suddenly online shopping was a possibility, and I took my first opportunity to check it out.

Some time in the next few days, I opened my very own Amazon.com account. What excitement! And what bliss! I had already become the first member of my family to open a personal e-mail account, and to add "first Amazon.com member" to my resume cemented my reputation as the most tech-savvy member of the family.

But this was back in the days when pride had less appeal for me than materialism. Imagine my absolute delight when I learned three separate but related facts: Amazon sometimes overstocked and sold things for cheaper; Amazon asked what your birthday was; and Amazon let you create a wishlist. Clearly, Amazon users had only to report their DOB and ask for whatever they wanted, and the philanthropic managers of the good website would send you presents (if, of course, they happened to have more stuff than they really needed).

Well, from that moment it was my ambition to place all the overstocked merchandise I could find in my wishlist. I particularly desired a CD boombox and a digital camera, I remember, and I would fly around the electronics pages searching for whatever I thought was nice but unlikely to be extremely popular.

"This one looks nice. Memorex CD and tape player... with remote control! I doubt it will be overstocked, but I'll add it to my list just in case. Oh, here's a nice Sony... same features but way more money! No one will buy this! I'll add it..."

Birthday after birthday came and went, and though I watched the mail around those times with eager expectancy, my hopes for a complimentary gift from the wonderland behind my mother's inch-thick laptop screen were never realized. Nearly ten years later, I'm still waiting.

What you see...

…when you turn a 50mm lens around and, holding it face to face with your normal autofocus lens, look through the viewfinder of your Pentax K200D camera at the dead fly that’s lying on your bedside table:

The Joys of Painting

I mentioned in a previous post some of the sorrows of painting - how it can be tedious, how you have to bend over and move your arm a lot, how it can be messy, and how the end sometimes seems unreachable. I didn't mention how bugs stick the paint when you are painting at night and leave the door open.

But in all that moaning and expostulating I only mentioned one of the things that makes me like painting - that I can do it well. I meant to go on to mention a couple other things that make painting much more agreeable. In fact, I rather like painting. It's productive. It gives me a nice sense of accomplishment when I have finished a job. And most of all, I can listen to audiobooks.

For years, I have had a long list of books that I knew I wanted to read "someday." I suppose it would be more accurate to say I had several such lists, for I never kept any one of them very long before it got lost, destroyed, or filched. I would rewrite it, and the titles would change, but the more absolute list of books that I had actually read would remain the same. I lapsed into despair ... until, like the glorious, golden sun rising over the snow-capped Caucasus mountains in a perfect Azerbaijani sunrise, the great discovery of audiobooks peered over my horizon and became a part of my life forever.

I made this great discovery last year during summer work at Fairwood. I had known for some time that the NH library website offers free audiobook rentals, and I had purposely bought an MP3 player that could play them and hold a lot of them. (I had been planning to make this discovery for some time.) Most of my time that week was divided between insulating the attic over the main house apartment and painting the dining hall, and both jobs are great audiobook jobs. I tackled them, a very talented British woman whispering the words of Tolstoy into my ears, and by the end of the week I was able to cross Anna Karenina off my list. (Fabulous book, by the way. Highly recommended. And Wanda McCaddon is a highly recommended reader.)

I have continued to take advantage of the opportunity to mingle work with entertainment and education throughout my painting this summer, and I have certainly enjoyed it. I love being able to listen to great stories and be productive - and earn money - at the same time. My list for this summer so far includes The Golden Key and Gone With the North Wind by George MacDonald, The Magician's Nephew, The Horse and His Boy, and Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis, Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, and The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle. In just the past two weeks I've listened to The Great Gatsby, Prince Caspian, and My Antonia. And I have copies of Persuasion, Moby Dick, The Age of Innocence, War and Peace, and Wuthering Heights waiting for me when I want them.

The beauty of this - perhaps I should say "another beauty of this," since I have just enchanted you with the beauty of listening and working simultaneously - the beauty of this is that it's all free! Not that free is always a good thing - I must admit that some of the readers from volunteer-based audiobook sites like Librivox have obnoxious voices, and I know from experience that it is hard to pay attention to the story when you're paying attention to the narrator's ridiculous accent or monotonous tone. One Librivox reader I previewed would read with a kind of sawtooth intonation. At the beginning of the sentence she would speak with a high pitch, and she would gradually lower her voice as she uttered each word. At the end of the sentence or clause she would begin again, with the exact same tone as before. It is difficult to demonstrate in writing the soporific effect of this habit of hers. Perhaps if you ask me I will demonstrate it for you some time. In the meantime, I listen mostly to the library audiobooks: every one is professionally recorded, and I have not been disappointed by many of the readers.

Of course, real reading with a book is not without it's distinct charms and pleasures, and I really enjoy sitting down with a good book. The trouble is that I never budget my time with reading in mind, and I never end up giving myself the chance. There are a number of books on my list of which I can't get free copies, and some of the ones that I can get for free are read by people with horrible reading voices. These ones I will read myself...

... someday.

Of One Whose Driving Skills Are Poor

When I was driving home the other day, I was behind a man in a nice SUV. The man in the nice SUV came to a stop sign before I did, as people who are driving in front of me are wont to do. Even though the road we were traveling ended there, and the man in the nice SUV must clearly turn either to the right hand or to the left, his turn signal was left untouched.

I always find it slightly annoying when people don't use their turn signals - especially when they haven't forgotten about it but have decided that it's unnecessary. The point of using your blinker is to show the drivers around you what you intend, and if you don't see any cars around you that's no excuse: it's the cars that you don't see that need to know what you're going to the most. Besides, it's just a flick of the wrist! If you think it's too tiresome, just pretend it's a Bop-it game, and whenever you're going to turn or change lanes, your car suddenly says, "Bop-it down!" or "Bop-it up!" That makes it fun. And besides, not using your blinker reveals a vacant mind. I rest my case, which has been logically and unanswerably presented.

Where were we? Ah yes, the man in the nice SUV had not used his turn signal. Well, I wasn't really worried about this gross lack of courtesy. I have seen too many drivers behaving similarly to think this instance remarkable. Anyway, the man in the nice SUV had driven to the far left side of the lane, leaving more than a car's width of pavement to his right. Clearly, he intended to turn left. I was going right, so I pulled alongside him and began to check for traffic... when the man in the nice SUV turned right.

"Silly driver," I said, rather loudly. But of course he pretended not to hear.

A Tearjerker

I have been painting for work these days - painting my dad's new office space so he can move his business into a place with pretty beige walls instead of bare sheetrock. It's no use denying that I sometimes get tired of painting. No, seriously, I will not deny it! I do! The constant up and down motion, the constant bending over to get more paint, and either the constant vigilance or the constant cleaning of spills and spots - it just isn't something I think I'll want to do in heaven. And when you have over a thousand square feet of wall space that is frequently interrupted by wooden trim boards that have to be painted with a brush, the job can be very tiresome indeed. There's nothing like a full week of repetitive work to make you appreciate the Sabbath.

Painting does have several notable advantages for me, though; it's not all a trial and a bore. For one thing, it's something I know I can do well. Sheetrocking, which I was doing last week, is not.

If I have any sheetrocking skills at all, they're pretty thickly buried under a couple strata of inexperience. I started last week with a couple pieces that had to be scribed to fit a rather irregular wall that included a ledge, a sill, an electrical track, and a beam. I measured wrong somehow and ended up with a nice one-inch gap between the board and the wall for about six inches at the top. The next piece I cut was almost just right, but was just big enough that I had to keep trimming down tiny slices off the end to make it fit. At least it was snug when I finally got it into place. By that time I was quite tired (just as, incidentally, I am now!), and I almost quit for the day. Not really feeling like I had accomplished much, however, I decided to try for one more board, this one a simpler specimen. All it called for was a simple rectangular window cutout. I measured once, measured again, and set to work cutting.

Suddenly, I stopped myself. I had just been about to cut on the wrong side of the board! I sighed with relief as I settled down to doing it right. The cuts were clean and beautiful, exactly following the lines I had carefully delineated with a pen and a square. I was sure that in a few minutes I would have earned my rest for the day. As I picked up my opus (it wasn't really magnum; just an opus), I was confronted with the awful truth: I had been right the first time.

There I stood, grasping the mirror image of the piece of sheetrock I wanted and having no way to rewind the time so I could cut it right. It fit perfectly into the space for it if I held it against the wall backward, but that wasn't much comfort. I just left it there and departed for a long weekend. When I got back on Tuesday, the sheetrocking was almost done, and boy was I glad! I've been painting ever since.

The Tales of the Tired Mind

If you look at the timestamp on this post, you will note that it is rather late. I was actually working on another post - a longer, more detailed one - until about ten minutes ago, at which time something happened that showed me I should probably go to bed.

I was writing about some of the work I have been doing lately, work that involved sheetrocking. And I was really tired. Slowly, involuntarily, my eyelids began to droop as I typed away, recounting how the other day I had been tired but had decided to put up just one last sheet of drywall before heading to supper.

Suddenly, I realized I had been drifting into that misty semi-unconsciousness in which one is neither alert nor slumbering. I hadn't quite fallen asleep, but I had begun to dream at least a little. I shook myself, unable to recall where my thoughts had just been wandering, and looked at the clock. It was past one.

"Maybe I should finish this later," I thought, and when I looked at the computer screen I decided that was a good plan.

"By this time I was very tired," I had written, "but I decided that I would lend my land to the farmer boys..."

The Other Side of the Coin

You know how the squeaky wheel gets the grease? Well, sometimes the whining mosquito gets the slap.

Debunking a Myth

We have all heard it said that a picture is worth a thousand words, and in some cases this statement bears a degree of accuracy. It is, for example, difficult to reproduce in words a facial expression portraying absolute shock, or joy, or anguish. The words we use, if used well, may evoke mental images that accurately represent what language is attempting to convey, but it is still pictures that do the trick. Show someone a picture of the beautiful view you enjoyed from a mountaintop and a thousand words of description are immediately rendered unnecessary. Show someone a picture of an adorable baby, and information that words simply cannot express is successfully shared.

Words, on the other hand, wield a kind of power that pictures would only dream of, had they the ability. A good book is far more likely to make me want to cry than the saddest of pictures – though I must concede that both pictures and words can make me laugh without great difficulty. Language can conjure thoughts, feelings, and emotions that photography cannot touch. If I let it, a good novel can toss my heart around like a hacky-sack. An encouraging personal note, though it be only ten words long, can mean more to me than all the pictures in China. Words can do things to me that pictures never could. That is why Microsoft Word is more used than Adobe Photoshop. That is why the library has so many books that are largely devoid of illustration. And that is why Edgar Allen Poe wrote “The Raven” instead of sketching a big black bird sitting on a statue.

So the question I want answered is this: to what words and pictures was the proverbist referring when he made his precise comparison of their value? Sometimes words are priceless, and sometimes pictures are; sometimes one is absolutely useless where the other is quite invaluable. It is all relative. There are instances where a picture truly is worth a thousand words, and there are other instances where a thousand pictures will not suffice for a simple word fitly spoken.

I am of the opinion that photography and writing cannot be fairly compared. They are apples and oranges, two different forms of expression that were created for different purposes. I take pictures because I like to capture visual beauty and to explore different perspectives. I write because I like to use verbal beauty to positively affect my audience, whether through humor, insight, or intellect. Both an essay and a poster have some degree of worth, but that worth is pretty subjective. Is this 500-word article worth half a picture? I think not.

A lot depends on the quality of the sample in question, by the way. A picture may be worth a million LOL’s, but no number of photographs will ever be worth a Dickens.

Some things never change…

Found in an old school notebook that included such math problems as “136-59=77.”  Note the creative use of X’s to show that the boy was NOT thinking about his dirty dishes and unmade bed.

East Inlet

This is a loon. She is nesting . I thought about naming her Claire and making some fantastic pun along the lines of “Au Claire de la Loon,” but I couldn’t quite manage it without being ridiculous.

I took this picture a couple weeks ago while I was helping on the “Young Men’s Time” (more commonly known as “Guys’ Week”) trip up to Pittsburg, NH. On the second day we were there, we piled into the van and headed to East Inlet, canoes in tow. East Inlet is an official “Moose Sanctuary” or something like that, and we were hoping to see one of those legendary creatures in their natural habitat. Alas, we failed in that respect, but in several other ways we were most successful.

East Inlet is one of those spots in creation where you lose track of how many times you have said, “This is so beautiful!” The vista is breathtaking. Though shallow, the water is smooth and vast. The shore is thick with tall, vertical pines – a kind of tree that I have generally thought looked drab and scraggly compared to, say, a maple or a birch, but which by East Inlet somehow becomes the most beautiful of plants. And, of course, the wildlife is lovely, as wildlife generally is. I didn’t see any terribly exotic species, and nothing but birds, but when you have time to really look at it, even a crow is a miraculous creature. Fortunately for us, we had nicer animals than crows to gaze upon, and we had all the time we wanted to do so.

The beauty of East Inlet is not just skin deep, either. There's some kind of a beautiful aura there. It is so quiet – so peaceful. The kind of place where it’s easy to think about God and to be completely awed by His power and creativity. In that respect, it’s in the same category as mountain tops and secluded beaches. I love such places. They feed my soul. Have you ever experienced it? That feeling of just drinking in the glory, beauty, and serenity of your surroundings? If you haven’t, you’d better go climb a mountain right away. You’re missing out on one of the best experiences this planet has to offer.

“For the invisible things of Him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, even his everlasting power and divinity.”

Oh, by the way, going to East Inlet was also successful because we had lots of fun. When you get past the vast lake part of it, it turns into a winding maze of a stream that turns 180 degrees countless times. And, boy oh boy, it’s waters like that that separate the canoe men from the canoe boys. Craig and I shared a canoe, and we had a blast seeing how sharp we could make that thing turn. We got it down to quite a science, too. We even raced past one of the other canoes on the inside of a curve, though it passed us again a dozen or so switchbacks later.

Some of the other guys were having slightly less of a blast, and when they tried to remedy this by switching places in the canoe, it flipped and drenched the three of them. They complained long and hard when we got back, but I think secretly they enjoy having the memory, and some of them at least do enjoy telling the story.

“Well, I certainly wasn’t the one who stepped on the side of the canoe…”

We continued our labyrinthian voyage until approaching darkness and obstructive beaver dams bade us return. It was a fun time, a fulfilling time, and – for us photographers – a fruitful time. I’m going to go again some day. Count on it.

Try Harder! Stress Less!

I played table tennis for a couple hours this evening, first with Ryan and then with my dad. I played appallingly poorly. True, the lighting in our basement is less than ideal, and if we showed our table to anyone with real ping pong skills and ambitions, he would probably stare at it icily or guffaw in our faces and our relationship would have to be discontinued. But if the playing field was not even, at least its unevenness was shared by both players. I could not complain that it was not fair. No, my big excuse for Ryan beating me something like eight times out of ten was tension: I wanted to win so badly that I would find myself straining every muscle in an attempt to be more ready for every shot. Then, recognizing my stress level and sagaciously remembering that I perform better stress-free, I would try to be calm and relaxed. Unfortunately, this usually resulted in my growing increasingly floppy and unfocused. I would try so hard to relax that I would not try to play. It was distressing.

It can be so hard to “try to relax.” That’s the trouble, really. Stressing out about not being relaxed is counterproductive, not to mention illogical. "Relax and try harder" is a different statement altogether, however, and paradoxical though it may sound, I would go so far as to say that, in many situations, relaxation and exertion must both be pursued for any measure of success to be attained.

When I played my dad later, it was a lot better. Something about playing someone who is not your little brother and who used to be a high school champion (though when he was a senior he came in second to a sophomore and still kicks himself about it) makes it matter slightly less that you win. And when the stakes are lowered, relaxing is easier. I lost every game to my dad, and by bigger margins than when I played Ryan, but I played much better and had more fun. And that’s really what the game is all about.

(Well, primarily about.)

Ping pong is not the only area where the principle of simultaneous relaxation and exertion is effective – it is merely the example that is most current in my mind. The other example that comes quickest to my mind is playing the piano. You simply can NOT play with great speed if you are not relaxed. And you cannot play with great speed unless you focus and apply yourself, too.

It’s also true for running. It’s also true for debating. It’s also true for singing, for web design, for swimming… Oh, good grief! It’s a universal principle of life! The Great Aaron has revealed it. Use it often. Use it well.

Fiddler Crab