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The Library of Congress, A Visit

I seem obsessed with this place. It has placed a hold on my mind, and seems to be the most wonderful place in Washington DC. I had a class there for Library Science, and I wanted to take my children there too. I’ve come to like it better than museums or the universities I attended for it separates wisdom from elitism and allows us common folk to interact with the artifacts of history and intellectual culture, a literal inheritance for anyone who will have it.

No tuition, no credential is required to make use of it. Just to make the time to visit.

When I took the children, I had been hoping to find George Washington’s diaries and items from the World War I Christmas truce. I found both and more. The Washington papers are fully digitized and available, free of charge, to anyone with an internet connection. https://www.loc.gov/collections/george-washington-papers/about-this-collection/

We first went to the Great Hall and saw the Gutenberg Bible, one of three complete copies on vellum of the first edition in the world. The Great Hall itself is a sight to behold in ornate neo-classical style and rimmed in wise quotations in golden letters. https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/bibles/the-gutenberg-bible.html

The top level had a large, lovely Christmas tree and inviting craft tables where guests could make a card or a bookmark using cut outs of prominent items in the collection. One such image was of the large mosaic at the top of the Great Hall of Minerva, the goddess of wisdom. We took my daughter Minerva there to see her namesake and her owl symbol. A collection of historic Christmas materials also lined the top of the Great Hall. We saw the first Christmas card ever and a first edition copy of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol (a great favorite of mine, having studied it yearly with my students and watched many film iterations).

We then wandered through some photography exhibits on the way to Thomas Jefferson’s original library. I was surprised to learn that some of his volumes are actually on display there. I had thought they all burned in a fire early in the Library’s history. A fire is exactly what prompted Jefferson to sell much of his collection to them in the first place, though he also had the financial need late in his life. The books that belonged to Jefferson had a green ribbon in them. Others were purchased to fill out the documentation of the original collection. Many were wonderfully normal volumes, such as a Tacitus, Cicero and Plato, classics still read in philosophy and politics programs around the world. A few medical texts and that of Hippocrates as well as various political notes and reports caught my eye. A collection representative of the man indeed.

We stopped by the Young Readers’ Room for a bit, and it much resembled a public library with current comics and picture books. It also had a puppet theater, braille Harry Potter, a map case, a place to make a bookplate, a stereograph with several prints to explore and a defunct card catalog just for viewing and enjoying.

After that, the crew was hungry, so we ventured down into the [not-so-secret] tunnels that connect to the capital and the other two buildings of the LoC. Though mainly for employees, the tunnels and small cafes are equally available to visitors. We went to Subway and wandered through the underground, pipes and wires-exposed tiled corridors that look like a ripe setting for a zombie apocalypse.

Then it was onto the Madison Building and one of the main reading-based parts of the trip. The Newspapers and Periodicals Reading Room there is unassuming and quite publicly accessible. I find it so very peaceful there. Gray and tan like a 1970s office, it has desks and shelves and everything looks out of date though it isn’t. Amazingly, on display right when we walked in were the original newspapers that reported the 1914 Christmas Truce that occurred between Germany and Britain during World War 1. Exactly what I had been hoping to see! I could have fainted. https://blogs.loc.gov/headlinesandheroes/2020/12/good-will-toward-men-the-great-wars-christmas-truce/ Magnolia, one of my favorite magazines, was the display of the month and a rack of bindered comic books was available for browsing. Minnie looked at a Looney Tunes one and William and I read a 1970s Avengers by Stan Lee while the very kind and somewhat bemused by all my children staff member dug us up some early Barbie Comics, Wonder Woman and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. My son read the latter; my daughter read the former. My youngest daughter drew a very detailed pencil drawing and I thumbed through the Wonder Woman issues from the 1940s. We were quiet there for a good while, perhaps an hours or so.

We wrapped up our reading, returned the comics and wearily headed for the day’s final treasure: the reading rooms in the Jefferson building. The iconic Main Reading Room is available to “tourists” with a long line just to walk through it. However, the back of the LoC offers access to it as well as other reading rooms to “Staff and Researchers.” My son blanched as I walked us right back into the research area. I explained that I was a researcher and showed him my reader’s card. My daughter marveled at this. And here’s the part I love the most–it seems like special access, but it isn’t. “Researcher” status is free and available to anyone with an ID who shows up. It’s the most egalitarian title there is–there for anyone who would claim it, and so we did. And I hope others do too–that’s why the LoC strikes me as so impressive, even beyond a university of its libraries. The LoC is for anyone who wants to come, nothing else is required. It’s not elitist or expensive or demanding. It’s the intellectual inheritance of our nation and so much more simply available for any person who wants to accept it.

We took the elevator to the second floor to see the Hispanic Reading Room, beautifully decorated for Christmas with a silver tree and lights, and our title on hold of a 1954, first edition of The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien, complete with a fold out map in the back. Oldest daughter was disappointed that it wasn’t The Fellowship of the Ring, the volume she was currently reading. However, youngest daughter found a display of coloring pages from Latin American artists and immediately began coloring. My son found a comic book and sat on the floor reading it.

Lastly, I showed them the European Reading Room, which reminded me so much for my time at UVa and where I sat for a day to work on my paper on Germany typography for the Rare Books class. They look had a wonderful display of Christmas books about traditions in various countries. And wonderfully, when the reference librarian saw that I was there mainly to show the room to my children, he offered us buttons of the LoC, free book marks and a free book about the holdings in the LoC’s European Collection. I gladly accepted. It is a wonderful thing about librarians that they rarely seem protective or defensive of their knowledge and holdings, but rather are eager to share it. Librarians, in contrast to some scholars, have a career that aims not to garner glory from intellectual works or to make great contributions, but just to share them.

My youngest finished her coloring, and we were all tired, and we raced out through the rain over the blocks past the Supreme Court to my van. And the day was done.

Rare Books Welcome the Roll of Booksellers–how refreshing

As part of my library science degree, I’ve just enrolled in a course on Rare Books. This is a fascinating topic that is as strange and esoteric as it seems. Books as historical artifacts, studying everything from their bindings to their stitching and boards and covers etc, to how the paper is folded in printing, etc. I thought this was bizarre as a younger person. I saw books as only about their intellectual content.

The study of rare books differs however in that it brings together librarians, historians, and yes, scholars of English and the content of the actual printed words.

Many things have surprised me so far, but one thing more than the others: the role of booksellers– yes the finders and dealers of antiquarian books. It seems that rare books are a field where the practical meets the theoretical and anyone, regardless of academic background, may develop enough practical expertise through experience that a bookseller or private buyer or collector is just as pivotal to the whole enterprise as the librarians and scholars.

The respect paid to booksellers as garnered through experience strikes me as refreshing, as a practical cut through of the bloat of degrees and titles. Not that degrees don’t mean anything–they do, but it’s not true that one must have multiple degrees in order to have something valuable to offer. So far, I’ve found information science (or librarianship) to consider itself a pretty lofty field, raised above the capitalistic concerns of publishing itself or the need to make money or the realities of buying and selling. Libraries are indeed often lucky enough to have funding and enjoy general cultural respect, and that’s wonderful. I just find it unique and accurate that within rare books, an sort-of inherently lofty, specialized area, the academics know and value the role of the humble bookseller or private collector. It’s truly a field that anyone with enough interest can take part in.

In another demonstration of this, Charlottesville’s Rare Book School, while housed at the University of Virginia is not actually a part of the university. Its courses are not for credit, and its collection is separate from the university collections. How odd. Students, generally much older than the typical undergraduate, pay typical tuition to attend courses that don’t even offer them academic credit. For Rare Book Scool and its’ students, the purpose is simply the sharing of information among enthusiasts. Does it still cost a pretty penny? Yes, but no extended time on campus is required, the classes can be taken as a one off. No degree is granted. But the reputation within the field to scholars, librarians and yes–booksellers–is beyond question. Truly interesting. Specialized and privileged, but still, I find it somehow humbler and more egalitarian than traditional academic departments.

The “Torn-apart-hood” of my current life, captured in Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lingbergh

“For life today in America is based on the premise of ever-widening circles of contact and communication. It involves not only family demands, but community demands, national demands, international demands on the good citizen….What a circus act we women perform every day of our lives. It puts the trapeze artist to shame. Look at us. We run a tight rope daily, balancing a pile of books on the head. Baby-carriage, parasol, kitchen chair, still under control. Steady now! This is not the life of simplicity but the life of multiplicity that the wise men warn us of” (20).

Apt words for 2023, even though these were written in 1955.

I also appreciate her discussion of the beach as of vacation, not as something selfish or unnecessary, but as something truly restorative and as a needed part of life. That indeed is how I feel about it. And while I am lucky or priveleged to be able to go, many who are so privileged do not go, as she points out, and it’s a worthy enough goal for all people to have that time of recollection. “Eternally, woman spills herself away in driblets to the thirsty, seldom being allowed the time, the quiet, the peace, to let the pitcher fill up to the brim” (39). Clearly, Morrow Lindbergh is an introvert, and so am I.

Accurately captures women’s experience without the total negation of the goodness of homemaking seen in some shades of radical feminism nor unrealistic glorification of homemaking seen in some shades of traditionalist responses.

“But why not, one may ask? What is wrong with woman’s spilling herself away, since it is her function to give? …. What we fear is not so much that our energy may be leaking away through small outlets as that it may be going ‘down the drain.’ We do not see the results of our giving as concretely as man does in his work….Except for the child, woman’s creation is so often invisible, especially today….How can one point to this constant tangle of household chores, errands and fragments of human relationships, as a creation?”

What is needed, she says, is time to be alone, time to create. I wonder if many extroverted people will not identify with this, but I, very introverted, certainly do. And it’s something that feels more and more drained with each passing month and year. “The world today does not understand, in either man or woman, the need to be alone. How inexplicable it seems. Anything else will be accepted as a better excuse. If one sets aside time for a business appointment, a trip to the hairdresser, a social engagement or a shopping expedition, that time is acceptable as inviolable. But if one says: I cannot come because that is my hour to be alone, one is considered rude, egotistical or strange” (43).

So of the moonshell, “you will remind me that I must try to be alone for part of each year, every a week or a few days, and for part of each day, even for an hour or a few minutes in order to keep my core, my center, my island quality. You will remind me that unless I keep the island-quality intact somewhere within me, I will have little to give my husband, my friends, or the world at large” (52).

The imperative to spend some time alone each day isn’t groundbreaking. My Catholic friends and Catholic authors have long preached the value of time alone in prayer, and I find it a similar concept. Morrow’s perspective mentions the saints and the life of grace at times and certainly does align with the idea of our souls, and protecting that innerlife so that it can become a well-spring. How little I listen to this advice, because it is so hard and there are so many, many demands. But it is something I intend to do more of.

Very interesting commentaries on relationships as well and how they change. I found it very refreshing how she accepts and embraces change over time rather than seeing it as an diminishment. Of course, she writes, “we all wish to be loved alone,” (63) and there is a place for that. But it cannot be all the time, because we are finite beings, and such relationships exclude all others. But still, we can go back to those moments of “pure-relationship” (like the first blush of love or the first weeks of the newborn infant with its mother), in flashes, in date nights or couple-vacations, or time alone with one of the children, and those, like the vacation are a necessary life spring. Yet we cannot cling to them or try to pull them into permanence. That is where we err, and where i so often feel that I err, in trying to hold desperately to those first moments of loving alone. And here I am reminded of Buddhist-like detachment, to embrace and let go. Morrow Lindbergh invokes the image of a dance, two partners in sync though barely touching.

Her reflections captured so much of what I have experienced, but haven’t seen explained or discussed in other philosophers. It’s like what CS Lewis said, “we read to know that we are not alone,” and we are both alone, but surrounded by those like us, and reading this, I felt understood and encouraged and not crazy for feeling absolutely wrung out by the pace of modern family life. Something only a few of my friends will also admit. And maybe I am just introverted and need to guard that solitude more than others in order to overcome that “torn-apart-hood”, Zerissenheit, Morrow Lindbergh mentions. Maybe it’s okay to say no to activities or simply to seek them out less frequently.

I too find the bare beach purgative and restorative. I am grateful for her honesty in Gift from the Sea, and more and more, I think that honesty is one of the best and only things we can do to have peace in our life and contribute to the world around us.

Middle Schoolers Need Structure Before They Can be Creative.

Safety is first–emotional safety too.

I had this thought watching my middle school class go horribly as I asked them to make a poster. Even though there was an example and clear goals, they did almost nothing. I realized I had asked them to be creative before laying a foundation of social safety, of firm discipline. Middle-schoolers, especially, cannot be creative, which implies some vulnerability (*Will my friends like it?*) too early on. They are too worried about how they will be perceived to do a good job.

Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

We are fortunate that most students come to our school having the bottom two needs met. My mistake was that I skipped Belonginess and Esteem and skipping to creativity. The next class, we did expected middle school reading activities–listening to a read aloud, answering questions, writing a paragraph, and it went way better!

After a few weeks of this, of them knowing what to expect, that I am consistent, that their classmates will follow directions, be calm and reflective, I have confidence that they will be able to engage their creativity, make art about the stories and themselves.

All this is just a good reminder for me. I think as I teacher I sometimes think I have to be fun and “not by the book” all the time. But often, by the book, is the first thing students need–not everything, but a start.

Are you a teacher? Does this sound right to you ?

Summer Reading Update 2022

I’ve read a lot this year and summer with books from school, kids and, library science courses and pleasure. Here goes:

Audio books with kids:

Charlotte’s Web by EB White.

Peter Pan by James M. Barrie.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling.

I Survived Hurricane Katrina by Lauren Tarshish.

Summer reading with kids:

The Enormous Egg. St Francis by Tomie dePaola.

Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Engalls Wilder.

Personal Reading: The Wave by Todd Strasser – amazing non-fiction about a teacher who recreated the Nazi movement unintentionally in 1969;

The Boys Who Challenged Hitler by Philip Hoose.

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood.

Crenshaw by Katherine Applegate.

Radical Integrity: The Story of Deitrich Bonhoeffer by Michael Van.

Steampunk! Anthology. Edited by Kelly Link and Gavin Grant.

William Shakespeare.

The Little Way of Terese of Lisieux by Jacque Phillippe.

Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds

Recent Alouds: Hatchet by Gary Paulsen.

Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain.

Stories of the Saints by Carey Wallace.

Mary of Nazareth.

Chronicles of Narnia: The Horse and His Boy, Prince Caspian by CS Lewis.

The Adventures of Winnie the Pooh.

Opposites Abstract by Mo Willems

Want to Read: Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. The True Story of Catch-22. Catcher in the Rye.

Books for Literature for Adolescents: Patron Saints of Nothing by Randy Ribay. Slay by Brittany Morris. The Troubled Girls of Dragomir Academy by Anne Ursu. Vampire Hearts and Other Dead things by Margie Fuston. New Kid by Jerry Craft. When Stars are Scattered by Omar Mohammed and Victoria Jamieson. Stuntboy in the Meantime by Jason Reynolds. Banned Book Club by Kim Hyun Sook. Before the Ever After by Jacqueline Woodson.

Note: I have read most of these all the way through. A few of them I skimmed or read sections, but enough to make a sizeable impression on me. Various other picture books and board books we have read together that are too many to name. We have a good time reading.

Reading, Stories, Writing as Transport. Considering a Defense of the Classics.

What is reading? A method of learning, total engagement of the mind, sitting in the corner of a couch turning pages, unaware of the clock ticking and calling the reader to other things. Seeing through another person’s eyes.

Listening to the voices of ages past, of humans from all written history. It is sharing, listening to secrets, the author knew and had to tell someone and couldn’t keep in. It is openness to whispers from across years, silent and ready. Openness to eons past, to infinite experience, seeking wisdom or fun or both.

What is writing? Leaving a trail of bread crumbs for anyone lost in the same woods as you are. Having an idea so pivotal, so important that it cannot stay inside, shadow-shrouded, that it must be shared and offered to others.

What are stories? Stories are lessons learned by others than we can learn through them. They are the lives we want to live, the lives we worry we’ll lead, cautionary and inspiring. Values lived out in choices, decisions and circumstances.

Just rambling thoughts here–I may some back and edit.

On another note, I’ve been stirred up by an assignment in my library class that asks me to come up with alternatives and supplements to modern classics. Two areas I agree with are: it’s good to consider and reconsider what we are reading. In particular, I’m no big fan of Lord of the Flies or The Great Gatsby. It’s good to audit curriculum to aim at including all students. Interestingly, I agree with all of #DisruptTexts points about literature being liberation and including works that represent student experience. ” Here is their manifesto:

• We believe that literature provides access to a diversity of experiences by providing “mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors” (Bishop, 1990) to develop empathy and understanding. A curriculum that does not reflect the diversity of human experience does a disservice to all students.
• We believe that no curricular or instructional decision is a neutral one. For too long, the traditional “canon” — at all grade levels — has excluded the voices and rich literary legacies of communities of color. This exclusion hurts all students, and especially students of color.
• We believe that critical analysis of all texts helps students become stronger thinkers. Each of us has studied, taught, and continue to teach from canonical texts, just as we also make intentional choices about teaching, pairing, and centering BIPOC voices.

-https://disrupttexts.org/lets-get-to-work/

I very much agree that no curricular decision is “neutral,” so I wonder what other values we are looking for in addition to diversity. Diversity is one aspect of human experience, more of a pathway really and less a destination. So what destinations are we aiming at? Truth? Goodness? What is the good life? Morality? I believe that all stories are parables, stories of values and what we value as a society and/or as storytellers. I realize these may be considered outdated notions, but I think they are true and unavoidable if we recognize that nothing is “neutral.” So while I support diversity, I ask what else are we spotlighting? What are our values? They aren’t neutral either.

I also ask this question of diversity. Diversity is usually considered as skin color, ethnic background, sex, sexuality, disability, and occasionally religion. I wonder about other types of diversity, ones that aren’t visible on the outside. What about people who are adult survivors of abuse? People who are adopted? People who deal with alcoholism in themselves or their families? People in poverty? Humans have infinite facets, infinite types of diversities. Some are more socially potent than others, but the point remains. We can aim at showing stories as both “windows” and “mirrors” to students, and I agree that we should. But I also would acknowledge that we will never reflect every type of diversity to every facet of every student. Nor will we offer all the windows. Of course, I don’t mean that we shouldn’t try. I mean only we have to set realistic expectations on what we can accomplish. For instance, a white male student may deal with horrible alcoholism in his home that is the defining struggle of his life, the thing that he aims to conceal everyday at school. He may not see himself in diverse books and how could the teacher or librarian know? While earnestly providing reflections in stories for students, I propose that we also consider values.

To that end, while holding the goal of a diversity of reflection, why not also highlight books, many of them overlap, that are generally human in character. And we ought to state that we are doing, and state what the values are, to help students see themselves even in old works, dare I say classics, in order to see some things that are true for all us humans and have been for thousands of years. We allow anthropologists and biologists to do this, but literature and philosophy are approaching banishment from doing the same.

In defense of classics, while I support shifting away from some, I would say to be sensical, that it must be values guided. Get rid of Lord of the Flies, but not just because it’s old, but because it’s brutal and maybe off the mark of human nature.

At the same time, I would hope that we allow for continuity of the “canon” of high school literature, for instance. It gives people something in common across countries, states and generations to have read “Hamlet,” for instance. As a society, a shared literature means shared values. It represents something we can all have access to and have in common. If we fracture and disrupt and replace everything, that is a statement about our society. In fact, I would say it is true that we are becoming (or perhaps already are) a fractured society with trouble agreeing on shared values, then the thinking about literature matters all the more. If we can find a way to share literature, then maybe we can agree about more than we think. For instance, if we can find new ways to read Shakespeare–what a tool that would be! I think of The Merchant of Venice, which can be read as anti-Semitic. Yet it can also be read as sympathetic to Shylock, who suffers unjust discrimination. “Has not a Jew hands? Eyes? Dimensions?”

So, if nothing is neutral, let’s agree that disruption for disruption’s sake isn’t of much value. So for what values are we going to disrupt?

I do think many people who advocate for disruption may actually agree that it’s a question of values. However, that is rarely stated. The main statement is diversity for diversity’s sake. Instead, I want diversity for value’s sake. For affirming the humanity, the not-aloneness, of all our students. And I want the humanity of all humans–of those who have gone before. Of those who saw limitedly, as we inevitably do. And reconsidering, not discarding, and perhaps even affirming in literature, a humanness that we all have in common across nations and times.

[If you are actually reading this. Many thoughts spilled out without any revision–just a mind dump really. Please do consider commenting with something productive.]

Fiction for World Peace

I have a theory. It’s that we all should read more fiction and that it would help us be more empathetic and learn the detachment from local and global struggles needed for us all to live more peacefully.

Even within families, conflict, gossip, divisions and hopefully reconciliations are the norm. This is true on community, state, national and international levels. It’s just normal. But my thought is this: if we let fiction wrap us up in imaginary worlds where we cared deeply about returning to the characters and their problems, we could be less invested in fighting and convincing people of our rightness in our own lives. Ie–so what if my brother didn’t show up to my birthday party–I’ll go read about mistrust in Othello instead of calling my sister to complain about it. Or hey, if someone posted something on facebook that made me mad, I’ll take a break and read instead of firing off something hateful to them.

I’m not saying we should avoid conflict completely. After a time of cool down, I might need to tell my brother that I was sad he didn’t come to my party, etc. I may need to clarify my own thoughts on some hot social media issue. Or, I may not. But having a fictional world to go back means I might not have to let conflict bother me as much.

Add to that that reading fiction is shown to increase empathy because we learn to move beyond ourselves to identify with the characters and their struggles.

Plus, if we were all reading books, we could form little friendship book clubs, similar to how we watch shows or movies together, and gossip about the fictional characters instead of real people, and so preserve our real-life relationships from talking behind each others’ backs.

Overall, reading more fiction could increase our healthy detachment, give us space to cool down, increase empathy and give us some positive to talk about it. So what do you think: fiction for world peace?

Divergent and Other Reading Updates July 2021

It’s summer, that means oceans of pleasure reading. Every June I wonder why I don’t do this year-round, and the answer is always that school takes up all my spare mind-space. So I’ve been diving in now, and here’s a quick note–mostly to myself to track.

• Finished Divergent by Veronica Roth. – I started reading this for a class, but I actually finished it and I enjoyed much more than I thought I should have. Sort of like Twilight, the romance pulled me along much more than I thought it would. But Divergent was much more thoughtful, and while the idea of the five factions: Erudite, Dauntless, Abnegation, Amity and Candor isn’t the most complex political system, it’s more insightful than it may seem at first glace. So often I imagine myself bound by the idea of being just one main thing–“just a mom.” Or to expand that idea, we ask kids what they want to be when they grow up as if there is one right fit for everyone. But most of us don’t really fit that. I also appreciate the idea of divergent as someone who can’t be controlled and I think that parallels patterns in cultural thought. It is a struggle to think outside the categories given to us by cultural mediums, and yet we must. Note: A few parts of the ending bothered me, but I won’t say more so I don’t spoil it. Overall: I had a library audiobook, but when I was done I went out and got the whole series plus the accompanying title “Four.” And I am now listening to Insurgent and reading Four on and off. Actions reveal how much I enjoyed this series.
• Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh. I am almost done, and I enjoyed reading about 1920s Oxford and the families involved very much. It’s definitely an adult book, not as exciting, and with the main action being the shifting relationships between the friends, parents and families of the main characters Charles and Sebastian. Reading this is like reading about people I really know and involves a constantly-running undercurrent of Catholic life. Very interesting.
• Finish A Night Divided by Jennifer Nielsen, a middle grade book about the building of the Berlin Wall and one family’s experience trying to get West. Very packed with history, a good introduction to the Cold War.
• Earlier this year I re-read The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander, a classic my 5th grade teacher had read aloud to us. A student in my class was reading it, and I remembered it. A wonderful, kid-level entry into quest fantasy. Similar to Lord of the Rings, but on a simpler level.
• Things I want to read:
  • Gulag Archipeligo by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. – to remember the horrors of how Communist Russia controlled people.
  • Love in a Time of Cholera – Won a Pulitzer; I started it, it’s good by sad, so I’m slow in my progress. It’s one that I have to be in the mood for, but it’s good.
  • All the books for Battle of the Books for the 6th grade challenge this year. I’ve started The Youngest Templar by Michael Spradlin, but there is much more to go.
  • Ickabog by J.K. Rowling.
  • The Last Human by Lee Bacon
  • The Mystery of Black Hollow Lane by Julia Nobel.
  • Prairie Lotus by Linda Sue Park
  • Things Seen from Above by Shelley Pearsall
  • View from Saturday by E.L. Konigsburg
  • War Stories by Gordon Korman
  • When the Stars are Scattered by Victoria Jamieson and Omar Mohamed
  • Wink by Rob Harrell
  • A Wolf Called Wander by Roseanne Parry
  • The Wright 3 by Blue Balliet

So that’s where I am. What are you reading these days?

Summer rambles: People Fractal and Can I get out of winter?

People fractal and regroup. It seems the more I observe of us humans in groups, the more I see that no matter how small the group, it will break into factions and divisions. We see this in countries, within countries, within states and even within a school community, religion, sports team or a facebook group. Division arises anywhere and everywhere that people come together. Sometimes when I observe this division, the urge not to hurt others or be hurt by disagreements is so strong that I want to withdraw from the community and retreat to a smaller circle. However, in most cases that seems to just make our experience smaller, in a negative sense, less rich, less involved, less dynamic and resilient. And ultimately, even in families, division arises. Parents and children feud, siblings feud, married folks get divorced. There is no human community small enough to avoid division. I always admire the desert hermits of the early Church who lived alone in the desert. Only alone with God can there be no division. And yet, while I admire them, we are not all called to that. Most of us are called to reconciliation, to healing, to overcome division and promote unity. It’s hard though. Even in a Catholic facebook group, to give an easy example, I don’t always agree with everyone. Sometimes I fall on one side, and sometimes on the other. But I realize that it’s good to disagree and stay together. If I were to fracture and join a different Catholic facebook group, eventually they would be conservative/trad for me or too left, and I would run afoul of them. That’s how we all are. None of us fit perfectly into any category, though they are still helpful overall, and we produce harm when we try to force others to do so. In the grand scheme, we should draw as few uncrossable lines in the sand as possible, and leave plenty of room for disagreement and unity to coincide. I think the Church maintained this well for many years, especially with orthodoxy. I give the Church as an example, but I think the same logic applies to other communities too–families, schools, teams, towns, etc. At yet at times, lines that cannot be crossed without breaking the communal bonds do arise. We cannot tolerate murder in any community, for instance. The basketball team cannot allow players to break the rules and continue. We do have to draw lines sometimes and stand behind them. In saying this, I am just reflecting on the nature of communities and my role in them, and pondering how and when to deal with lines in the sand that I face and even how to recognize them accurately. It is difficult. I still would like to favor unity, disagreement, reconciliation and community membership even when it is hard. When we can make room for difference within unity, what we might term diversity, we are richer and more expansive people for it. I just pray I make and heed the right lines in the sand.

Scheming to get out of winter. It is summer. I am at the beach. I am so peaceful and filled with joy. I want this all the time and never to be hunted by the thought that winter is coming. Is it possible to be happy everyday? Or does happiness rely on contrast– does summer’s expansive joy rely on the harshness of winter? Could I make a schedule that would bring happiness everyday? Could I travel to warm parts of the country realistically every year and get out of winter forever? I am in Florida now, and it is a paradise. Could I get the means to buy a house or an RV to go to warm places year round? Could I still have meaningful communities? Could my children still learn and become social citizens of the world? I never want to raise my voice again.

I want to wake up, pray, run and/or do yoga every morning. I want to write, and read and give discussion to and with others. I want to garden and eat and cook, and work with children. I want to read them stories and teach them in joy to revel in stories, in words, in numbers, in each other. I want to be Maria from the Sound of Music. I want to take them on walks and into forests and onto beaches. Can I be that everyday?