The metaphysics of the Clothes Care Center. Part IIa: In the world? Of the world?

The new/unsuspecting reader can find Part I of the Metaphysics here.

At the end of Part I, I implied that I would begin this post by describing the internal arrangement of the Clothes Care Center and THEN describing the neglect it has suffered, along with some speculation as to why that has occurred. But I think it better today to begin the other way around. For that is, after all, the way I myself, an initial unbeliever in--nay, truly one not even cognizant of--the Center's underlying symbology first, and for a long time, thought of the Center: as a ruins devoid and unworthy of any attention deeper than the thickness of the dryer sheets that litter its floor.

(Go ahead. Click. You know you want to.)

I think that the neglect of the Clothes Care Center has its origins in two places: a) the fate that also usually befalls the sanctuaries of state religions; b) the outer asymmetry of the Center itself. a) is easy enough to understand: except among those fervent believers in Clothes Care, the complex-decided necessity of having such a place and subsequent tendency on the part of most of us to take for granted such places leads inevitably to a general slovenliness of attention even to maintenance matters. b), though, deserves some closer attention, not only because, as I will show in my next post, that asymmetry contrasts with the Center's inner symmetry, but also because the resulting friction or tension or what have you is akin to Paul's "stumbling block": to fully appreciate the Center, we have to acknowledge that it requires certain things of us that mean the putting aside of certain other things.

In Part I, I mentioned that the sign "Clothes Care Center" appears by the poolside entrance to the Center but not by the parking lot entrance. Subsequent research shows that not to be true; it simply happens that more often than not, the door to that entrance is propped open (owing to the Center's oppressive heat from the dryers), thus all but hiding the sign from view. Nevertheless, one crucial asymmetry remains: the wall that limns the parking lot side of the Center is solid, with no windows other than one by the door, which itself is a dark-tinted glass. The poolside wall, though, is a floor-to-ceiling window that, though also tinted, easily reveals the interior of the Center to the pool's users.

And here we come to the friction/tension earlier noted: I also mentioned in Part I that, due to "the teleology of Sanctuary" that my and every other apartment complex I have ever heard of has adopted, the Center is named what it is named, as opposed to something like "Laundry Room," which unpleasantly evokes images of labor. Hence, I suppose, the opaque parking-lot wall. Who wants to see, upon arriving from a grueling day at the desk or at Hooters, yet another reminder of the work that no doubt awaits them at home, gathering in the closet hamper? But consider the even more confrontational GLASS wall on the Center's pool side. Surely the pool, as THE physical embodiment of the rhetoric of Leisure at my and at any apartment complex, exists in utter and irresolvable conflict with the Center, whose rhetoric, despite its afore-parsed pretty name, is that of Work. The tension, the reciprocal resentment of the visitants of both spaces, is palpable despite--precisely because of--the glass barrier defining the two spaces.

But in this the designer of the Center is to be applauded rather than wondered at. S/he has chosen not to hide the Center under an architectural bushel but to have it actively engage the world beyond it--and, most tellingly, at that part of the world most opposite it. It is the embodiment of the concept of the Clothes Care Center-militant. But it also reminds those inside the Center that all is not work, that equally important to the whole person is rest and leisure.

Our living in/engagement with the world, like a washer, can get off balance. That glass wall, an architectural asymmetry with regard to the walls of the Center, paradoxically serves to remind us of the need for balance via its permitting the pool's visitants to see into the Center and vice versa. Of course, we sometimes don't like or resent being reminded of that need--hence the neglect I spoke of earlier.

Next time: how a change of perspective revealed to me that the Center is a veritable Nazca Plains of line and symmetry . . . and a space for pondering the Mystery of the Cycle.

If you've read this far, you'll probably want to read Part IIb, here.

Technorati tags:
Metaphysics, Laundry rooms

Read More...

Summary only...

Proud father alert: A report on G.'s Honors Day

As Jack Benny once famously said upon winning an Oscar, "I'm trying to look humble." I fully admit, though, that I might not succeed. Those of you not wanting to bear witness to the trainwreck of glee that this post is will not want to

You just can't help yourselves, can you?

I should have seen this coming; modest soul that I am, though, I turned a blind eye to the possibility.

At the festival for 5th graders I reported on here, G.'s teacher said, among other things, "She's going to win so many awards at Honors Day." Well, sure, I thought, G.'s smart, but there are other smart kids in her class, too. They'll get their share. Besides, elementary teachers learn, even before their methods classes, never to say to the parents of a child, even when it's patently obvious, "Let's face it: Johnny's a loser."

Comes Honor's Day, which was yesterday. It's G.'s teacher's turn to pass out academic achievement awards for her class. She calls out the first one, for science, and G. has won it. G. turns to go back to her seat, but her teacher (according to G.) whispers to her, "Why don't you just stay up here, darling?"

In her class, G. had the highest average for every single subject area (Science, Reading, Language Arts, Math, Social Studies). She won the class's Citizenship Award. She was one of 3 students in the entire 5th grade to have had a straight-A average from kindergarten through graduation. She received a Certificate of Achievement signed by George W. Bush (no jokes, please--I've already thought of them all anyway, I'm pretty sure). She says she will frame it, and I would be dismayed if she didn't.

She didn't have perfect attendance; she didn't win the 5th grade's Spirit award but, ever gracious, she told me that the girl who did "deserved to win."

Middle school looms, but she is excited: having stridden like an academic colossus through elementary school, G. is ready to conquer new worlds. Puberty will be a bumpy ride, I know, but as I talked with her last night, she seemed especially happy and confident and strong, much more so than her father had when he was her age.

I do not think it possible that I could be more proud of her.

Okay--back later with more talk about laundry rooms.

Read More...

Summary only...

The Metaphysics of the Clothes Care Center. Part I: Reading the Sign

Neither of us Meridians especially enjoys doing the laundry, but I dislike it less than she does. So, once a week, give or take (I usually give), I spend a couple of hours in our apartment complex's Clothes Care Center. We've lived here about 9 months, but it was only yesterday, after (finally) finishing The Mezzanine and with some time to kill before the dryers stopped, that I looked around at the space of the Center itself, to see what I could see.

As is usually the case when I innocently think of something with which to kill "some" time, all this you're about to read (assuming you dare click) started with the name itself.

The phrase "Clothes Care Center" is emblazoned on a pale green sign by the pool-side entrance to the Center (more about the Center's topography in Part II), a line drawing of a wire clothes hanger helpfully appearing just above the words themselves as if to reduce if not eliminate confusion as to the Center's purpose. As best I recall, no such sign appears by the Center's other entrance, which gives onto the complex's main parking lot. The fact that the sign appears/doesn't appear where it does is itself, I'm just now realizing, worthy of a separate post, and it will certainly receive closer attention in Part II. But let that go for the moment, because it is because of the sign that you have this post to read in the first place.

"Clothes Care Center." Such an odd phrase, I thought. Not "Laundromat," not "Washateria," not "Laundry Room." "Laundry" and "wash" connote chores, drudgery; however, since each and every apartment complex markets itself as a Place to Get Away from It All, it simply will not do for this complex to name its laundry facility something not in keeping with the teleology of Sanctuary. Thus, "care," with its connotations of fastidious, even affectionate attention to something rather than labor. Indeed, the phrase carries with it the strong sense that someone else will be doing the Clothes Caring, doesn't it? Alas: that hanger on the sign that I spoke of is empty. It is a void waiting to be filled . . . and a quick glance around will show all present to be filling their own respective voids.

As I pondered the sign further, it occurred to me that it could be read as containing in it a subtextual rebuke to some of the Center's visitants. Consider: some of the complex's residents appear to be the sort of people who think of doing laundry not as a necessary evil but as Evil, period, and appear to be so disgusted with the task that they are, shall we say, a bit cavalier with their laundry in their zeal to just get it the hell over with. White clothes with darks, washing darks in hot, etc., etc. Might we not imagine, then, someone pointing out such a faux pas to another, who then responds,

"Who cares, man?"

The first one leads him over to the sign. Compels him to look.

"Du-u-ude. Clothes care. They care here.

* * * *

Well, perhaps. But for all the sweetness of that image, we must, here and now, mention an unpleasant fact, made more unpleasant by our eventual need to return to this unpleasantness once we have established certain facts and engaged in certain speculations as to the Center's nature and meaning. However much the name "Clothes Care Center" may evoke images of soft lighting caressing mauve walls, clientele who seem to glide by as they pass, and hushed, perhaps even hidden-from-view washers and dryers, there is no ignoring the strong impression that, while the Center Cares for your Clothes, no one seems to be Caring much about the Center. It is the unweeded garden of laundromats, possessed merely by such rank and gross things as laundromats are wont to be possessed merely by. Its one aesthetic virtue is that I have yet to see rats or mice there.

You may be scoffing at my Hamlet borrowing above for describing a laundry room. But believe me when I tell you that once I moved from considering the sign to considering the room the sign indicates, I saw that the Clothes Care Center's design practically screams to the visitant: Come here to contemplate the mystery of the Cycle.

All you have to do is open your eyes.

UPDATE: If you made it this far, you might be interested in reading Part IIa, here.

Read More...

Summary only...

For the Carnival-curious . . .

. . . you can find the latest Kansas Guild of Bloggers' weekly carnival here, courtesy of emaw_kc at his blog, 3 O'Clock in the Morning. All of these are pretty good; none of you, though--especially any of you with children--should miss Melissa's early-rounds-of-American-Idol-like search for a babysitter.

As I've said before, you don't need to live in, have been born in, or write about Kansas to submit something. You should also know that these people have selected themselves: emaw doesn't separate wheat from chaff, which is why the posts I send in keep appearing. As you can see, there's no theme (though a few of the posts happen to be about travelling): you just choose something you're pleased with and send it in (look for the "Submit" links over in the right gutter).

This particular Guild is the closest I or most of us will come to being Masons, and easier besides.

Technorati tags:
Blogs, Blog carnivals, Kansas Guild of Bloggers

Read More...

Summary only...

"Turning points"

Regarding political/policy discussions in the blogosphere, I greatly admire the big-picture bloggers I know of, and Steve Clemons of The Washington Note is one of the best. Here, he quotes from and comments on a recent Sidney Blumenthal piece in Salon. Go read.

I have nothing to add, really, except my musing that, for some time now, all this talk of "turning points" in Iraq has come to resemble my dog's chasing his tail and that, while it's hysterical in its absurdity when Scruffy does it, it is most assuredly NOT funny when a nation--our nation--is all too ready to deploy the rhetoric of freedom (rhetoric, even rhetoric about freedom, is just words after all, and talk is cheap), but not at all ready to deploy the various means necessary to secure that freedom . . . and, as Blumenthal and Clemons point out, both our allies and our enemies are watching and taking our measure with regard to what to do about Iran.

What wrecking the present administration has done to what we say we stand for as a nation in just six years, especially considering the enormous international sympathy we received in the wake of 9/11--not two centuries of meddling in Latin America*, not Vietnam, did this much damage--is beyond breathtaking. My fervent wish is that it not be beyond repair.

*Edit: Obviously--and rightly so--Latin Americans would have a rather different take on this particular observation. I was caught up in the moment above; thus the historical sloppiness.


Technorati tags:
Iran, Iraq, Policy

Read More...

Summary only...

Travelogue II

Music: Miles Davis, "So What." Diana of Stella Errans (see below) notes in her most recent post that the 25th was The Man with the Horn's birthday. She notes that Kind of Blue was the first Davis album she ever heard, and it's mine as well. I hope you enjoy the first cut from that album.

I have returned safe and sound from Mobile; and, as I sometimes have been known to do in the past, I bring you good reader(s) tales from that faraway land.

Before I begin, though--yes: you have time to get some snacks before the real show begins--I cannot help but note that some time while I was away the 9,000th unsuspecting soul paid a visit to good old Blog Meridian. As always, I am grateful to my reader(s) for visiting in the first place and--even more amazingly--deciding to return later. No: I take that back: What really humbles me is that some of you are not afraid, via your links lists, to declare not just that you are readers of this blog but you actually think others might want to read it as well. Thank you for that honor. Indeed, I have two new people in particular to thank here: Diana of Stella Errans, who lives in Mexico City and blogs in beautiful Spanish and who wrote me to say that she finds my blog "interesting," and j.d. of the Kansas blog Evolution: Take the Next Step, who blogs in beautiful Kansas conservative-Populist (if my ears don't deceive me) and who identifies this blog as a "popular Kansas blog." I'll take your word for it, j.d., and thank you for the kind words.

And now: on with the show.

Listening to "Jambi" from Tool's 10,000 Days on the way down Sunday, I realized one of my students--the very one, in fact, who had burned the CD for me to listen to in the first place--had passed off verses from it as his own for a graded assignment.

From now on, I have a perfectly-legitimate professional reason for listening to Tool where not only had none existed before, I hadn't even bothered trying to invent one.

G. has completed 5th grade, and this past Friday the 5th-graders' parents threw a festival for all the kids. I attended. I had to endure the pleasurable embarrassment of constantly hearing extraordinarily wonderful things about her from not only teachers but other parents.

Nicest teacher compliment, after relating the story of how her daughter had told her, "Some parents would kill to have a kid like me": "G. is the kind of kid who people know that about without her ever having to say so."

G. cannot stand this particular teacher.

Which--of course--made the compliment especially pleasant.

And especially embarrassing.

Nicest parent compliment: "G. reads like a fish."

Well, okay: that was the most intriguing compliment.

C.'s class has been studying the Amazon rain forest. Each student had to choose a rain forest animal from a list her teacher passed out and create a project. Due the Friday of the week I arrived.

C. chose the gecko: an animal of which there are 300 species and subspecies, only 7 of which are native to the Americas and about which, judging from the dearth of information about them, nobody seems to give much of a damn.

C.'s mother is skilled with the dark arts of Google and lives down the street from a veterinarian who cares for squirrel monkeys; as of last Sunday night when I arrived, though, their combined efforts had turned up squat on a single gecko species who clearly, indubitably, lives in the Amazon.

It is not likely you know more about turnip-tailed geckos--or, for that matter, about geckos generally--than I do now.

The turnip-tailed gecko is so-named because its tail's shape is like that of a turnip.

They live in the northern and western reaches of the Amazon, preferring to live in trees up to 60 feet high.

See? I know from geckos.

The clinging power of some geckos' feet is such that some scientists think a gecko clinging to a ceiling could theoretically support the weight of a child weighing up to 90 lbs.

That is an image I have been unable to shake since I read that five days ago.

C. weighs about 60 lbs.

The house she lives in has 12-ft. ceilings.

Now you see why.

Some species of geckos (not the turnip-tailed, though) are parthenogenic.

In relating this to Mrs. Meridian over the phone, she thought I said "carcinogenic."

Me: "The Surgeon General has determined that gecko smoking is dangerous to your health."

Anyway. Don't look at me with the naked eye.

Contrary to emaw's claim here, I am now the last person in the cosmos to have read The DaVinci Code. Other than Mrs. M., who refuses to.

Off and on from Wednesday to Saturday, in case you were wondering.

Dan Brown is the sort of writer for whom frequent reminders to the reader of his main character's claustrophobia is what passes for character development.

The girls' maternal grandparents recently bought this breed of dog.

C. pronounces it "Lasso Ass-oh."

Sign seen in Arkansas: "O.J. Commercial Cleaners: The competition can't lay a glove on us!"

Signs NOT seen in Oklahoma by the Muskogee Turnpike: "Failure to pay toll strictly enforced." They've been removed--clearly because of the blogosphere's great hue and cry over these signs.

Unusual moment: On the return trip, I stopped just south of McGehee, Arkansas, to buy some gas and a bottle of water. The total came to $28.28. Three men were loitering around the (very) pretty woman running the register; one of them said, "That sounds strange." "What--the number?" another asked. "Yeah--strange."

"Well," I said, "It's an echo."

They just looked at me; no one spoke again--not even when I wished them all a good day when I left.

What I had said was, apparently, a mystery to them; their silence (very rare in the speak-when-spoken-to South) a mystery to me.

Read More...

Summary only...

In which the Meridian seeks to clear up a case of cultural myopia

With the end of the semester comes my usual trip south to see my children. I'll be leaving tomorrow and willl be gone from "here" for a week. But I cannot depart without leaving my reader(s) with a little something in the Broadening of Cultural Horizons category. (You WILL appreciate this . . . maybe not now, but someday)

Man of the world that I am, I have heard of Eurovision; being a 'Murikin, though, it (like much other foreign phenomena of note) has a habit of sneaking up on me unawares. So a sincere thank-you to Fearful Syzygy for reminding me of this year's competition via this post at Delights for the Ingenious. Ahh, harbingers of spring: we have the swallows returning to Capistrano; the Europeans have Eurovision. Doesn't seem fair, somehow.

Do click on the links provided in his post and ponder what America's dominance of pop culture hath wrought. And since, by this time, you'll be postively salivating at the prospect of leanrning how Eurovision came to be (a blindly random biological process? intelligent design?), I've thoughtfully provided you with a link to this, a celebration of the 50th anniversary of Eurovision (hat-tip: Crooked Timber).

No need to thank me now, or at all. I can leave now secure in the knowledge that I have enriched your lives some little bit--which is, after all, the whole raison d'etre of Blog Meridian.

Technorati tag:
Eurovision

Read More...

Summary only...

The KGB has ways of getting you to post . . .

. . . like, you know, asking nicely.

EMAW_KC over at 3 O'Clock in the Morning, the host of the Kansas Guild of Bloggers, asks us other KGBers to remind our readers to submit something for inclusion in this Monday's KGB Carnival. You don't have to be a Kansan or have a post about Kansas or anything of the sort. We're pretty open-border that way. Just send in something you wouldn't be ashamed of having total strangers come look at . . . oh, um . . . when y'all come visit good old Blog Meridian, just stay in the parlor, and just know that you open the hall closets and that back-bedroom door at your peril.

Read More...

Summary only...

In which the Meridian shares a pretty good parody with his vast readership

Your correspondent loves good parodies--as, I would hope, is true of all lovers of language and literature. He appreciates them so much because, though he's tried his hand at it in the past, he doesn't feel that he's written a truly good one. It is a sad thing when people take them too seriously, because those who do just end up looking more ridiculous than the parody makes appear the person/reputation allegedly in need of protection. And speaking of protection, maybe the case he linked to above will be the last one we need to affirm that parodies are consitutionally-protected speech. And the people said? "Settled law!"

Usually, parodies poke loving fun at their targets' weaknesses. Sometimes, though, their sole purpose is to skewer the target till it squeals like a stuck pig or someone howls with laughter.

So: I present to you an original ad that's been the subject of much recent comment in the blogs I read, and a pretty good parody (hat-tip: Kevin Drum) of that ad.

Is that squealing and/or howling I hear? I hope so, 'cuz, like, some rich people spent a whole lot of money to make an ad that, like, really blows (pun intended in retrospect).

Read More...

Summary only...

For your listening pleasure

As a follow-up to this post (and as an excuse to both play with RapidShare and inflict some of my musical tastes on you), here are a couple of selections of music from Malian musicians.

"Debe" is from In the Heart of the Moon, the album by Ali Farka Touré (guitar) and Toumani Diabaté (kora) I've mentioned before. The Nonesuch site is sparing, to put it generously, with samples of their artists' music, so here's a small attempt to right that wrong. The liner notes say that the hotel room they recorded this in looked out over the Niger river, broad and peaceful, and that the kora is such a quiet instrument that everyone in the room had to keep absolutely still. I think this song in particular feels very much like a product of that context.

"Gnangran" is from Issa Babayogo's debut album, Sya. I think of all the songs on this album, this track shows off most effectively Bagayogo's fusion of centuries-old instrumentation and song structures with Western dub and club electronics and editing. The riffing stringed instrument is Bagayogo's kamele n'goni (see the pic), which is plucked rather than strummed; it has a percussive quality that lightens the song's steady thump.

Anyway. Enjoy.

Read More...

Summary only...

Boxing with Pandora

Seeing JMB's widget for Pandora on her blog this morning reminded me that Mrs Meridian had set up a Pandora account a while back, so I've been playing with it a bit today.

As the title of this post suggests, it's been something of an initially-frustrating but ultimately humanity-affirming experience.

For those who don't know, Pandora is a product of something called the Music Genome Project: the idea is that you pick a favorite artist and Pandora will sort through its vast catalogue of music for songs that share musicological similarities with that artist and "build" a "station" reflecting your tastes (you can thumbs up or thumbs-down selections, query as to why a certain song was selected, etc.). Pretty cool, as far as that goes.

So today, I created a new station by selecting Ali Farka Touré as my artist, in hopes of hearing more African music in more or less that style (Saharan blues, if I had to describe it). A prompt immediately asked me if I "meant" Ali Farka Touré and Toumani Diabaté, in reference to their album I mentioned here a couple of days ago, In the Heart of the Moon. Well, no, Mr. Algorithim, I didn't "mean" that, but it's a good album after all, so I'll play along and say Sure. So: Pandora selects the first song from the album plays and I'm happy . . . but then come song after song after song of fairly uptempo acoustic guitar pieces that, whatever their provenance and pleasant though they are, are decidedly NOT African. What gives? I do some exploring on Pandora's site and learn that their 100,000-song, 10,000 artist repetoire doesn't include (many) world music artists. Alas.

Then it was on to a station Mrs. M. had set up for me to show me how Pandora works, "Sigur Rós Radio." The first song was indeed a Sigur Rós song and the one following was similar . . . but the third was, of all things, Jack Johnson's song, "F-stop Blues" (from his debut album). I like Jack Johnson well enough, but: the fact that I once posted about him and Sigur Rós in the same post notwithstanding, they clearly aren't in the same stylistic continuum. The songs that came along afterward were hit-and-miss as regards that thing called stylistic similarity: some yes, some less so . . . James McMurtry, though?? So, I thought I'd help out Pandora a bit by adding Steve Tibbetts. His music is not all that similar to Sigur Rós, but I thought that plugging their respective styles into the algorithm might cause Pandora to select some music that would be new to me. Alas again: Pandora selected a Billy Cobham fusion thingy, then a Tibbetts song, then shut down (the way it stated the matter was that Pandora was "taking longer than expected to select the perfect song"). I had stumped it, I guess.

What to make of all this? Well: somewhat in the sense that there exist any number of poems called "sonnets" but not all of them will be in the "style" of Petrarch or Shakespeare, Pandora can tell you if a selection has, say, major-chord harmonies or acoustic and electric instrumentation . . . but it seems to me, especially if someone's tastes or curiosities run in courses other than the mainstream, there's still no substitute for a few pairs of ears attached to like-minded people.

That fact does not entirely displease me. Print the t-shirt: Computers don't share music; people do.

Technorati tags:
Music, Pandora

Read More...

Summary only...

Thinking about God in a Darwinian cosmos

(Hat-tip for the cartoon: The Panda's Thumb)

The cartoon doesn't have too much to do with what follows, but I find it funny . . . and, it DOES have to do with the search for understanding and some of the perils of such a search.

I have mentioned in the past that the institution of higher learning that employs me has a philosophy club with once-a-month informal discussions of texts and philosophical questions. This summer, the club will be discussing Daniel C. Dennett's 1994 book, Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life, and I began reading it yesterday. The recent years of back-and-forthing in Kansas' State Board of Education over the teaching of evolutionary theory and/or "Intelligent Design" in high schools is the chief reason we're reading it; but, as a person who does not doubt the reality of God--or, for that matter, the validity of evolutionary theory--I am reading it with especially keen interest in seeing what will happen to my understanding of (as distinct from faith in) God and the nature of His relationship to a material cosmos that operates in accordance with the mechanisms Darwin and generations of scientists have described and amassed evidence in support of.

A lengthy post follows below the fold.

Dennett is a great stylist; 80 pages in, he has so far shown himself to be breezy yet patient in his explanations of the principles of natural selection (12 pages alone on how algorithims work and how evolutionary processes are best understood in those terms). He's eminently logical and, thus, very persuasive. Because he is, it becomes clear very early why he's titled his book as he has: Darwin's idea is dangerous precisely because, now that the preponderance of evidence is on its side, it cannot help but cause us to reassess in fundamental ways all sorts of taken-for-granted assumptions (and that includes the secularists among us, not just the believers).

But for those of us who insist on the reality of both God and the physical world, I can already see, we have our work cut out for us: it is simply nuts to ignore or distort the truth of what Darwin offered as theory, and even nutsier (as I myself confess to doing before starting Dennett's book) to blithely pretend that, for lack of a better way to put it, God is in his Heaven and Darwin is "down here" and never the twain shall meet. That course is certainly the easier, much-less-frightening one, but it is both intellectually and theologically dishonest. Faith, after all, is neither the insistence on that divide nor the insistence that all the world conform to (one's particular version of) God's will; faith is that tool the believer has to help him/her navigate through a world that is at best indifferent to his/her beliefs.

W. H. Auden, smart guy and poet that he was, seemed to have the right sense of this. The always-excellent group blog 3 Quarks Daily recently linked to a review in The Weekly Standard of Auden and Christianity by Arthur Kirsch. The following is from Wilfrid M. McClay's review:

The notion that religious faith and serious thought are mutually exclusive categories always struck Auden as risible and unintelligible. But he would have bristled at an effort to separate out his religious beliefs and restate them as systematic propositions, or examine them independently or thematically, rather than see them as players in his rich and various inner symbolic drama. Such an undertaking would probably have struck him as unspeakably vulgar and, moreover, an invasion of his privacy, putting his devotional life on display and forcing him unwillingly to be judged by the public standard of a "religious" man, a role for which he felt singularly ill-equipped.

To be able to separate out one's faith from one's life would be tantamount to saying that faith is a guise, a persona, and thus not faith at all but, to borrow a phrase, the trappings and suits of religiosity. Such a faith would be superficial at best, hypocrisy at worst.

I'd like to offer, briefly and (very) sketchily, something that came to mind on the morning walk regarding the role of God in a Darwinian universe. Dennett has already spent some time discussing the Second Law of Thermodynamics, or entropy (the tendency of all matter toward inertia), and how the numerous variations within and among species can be understood as living things' resistance to entropy (which in this context can be understood as "death"). I suspect he will have more to say about entropy later that will probably cause me to have to modify the following, but this morning I found myself thinking, "Why may not God be thought of as resistance to entropy, as a resounding No to death?" That is not just the message of the empty tomb but, indeed, of Christianity itself (and, for that matter, Judaism and Islam): that real, genuine Life is found in acknowledgment of God's sovereignty and obedience to His will. Indeed, every living thing, even--especially--in Darwinian terms, proclaims that resistance. Evolution is not a denial of God's power but an inescapable affirmation of it.

This is very attractive to me just now, but I'm suspicious of it. It's been my experience that, the more attractive the idea the earlier on, the more suspect it is. Indeed, as I sit here now, I see some questions that need answering: Why would God create a cosmos in which entropy is even an issue, especially since God is the creator of the inanimate universe as well? This is analogous to problem-of-evil territory and, as I learned to my shame a while back, I just don't know enough about that, either. But the correct solution is not to deny it's a question or throw up one's hands and say, Oh well, but to earnestly wrestle with it.

I have more reading and thinking ahead of me. I'll get back to you.

Technorati tags:
Evolution, Darwin, Intelligent Design, Faith, Entropy

Read More...

Summary only...

Music from Mali

I own a decent sampling of musics from throughout Africa, from traditional to more contemporary styles, but if I had to say which nation's/region's music I preferred most, I would have to say Mali's. Of late, I've found myself newly appreciative of this place's music. There's a delicacy to this music, even that of Issa Bagayogo's meldings of traditional instruments and song structures with club-ready editing and dubbing: the music is so rhythmically intricate that it never becomes beat-heavy, even when a song gets a steady thump going. Granted, we here in the U.S. are hearing the best of the best, but I have yet to hear a poor Malian singer. I also like how its songs clearly have structures to them, yet they just-as-clearly aren't Western. They have a flowing quality to them. But this music is also accessible to American ears; Ali Farka Touré, perhaps Mali's best-known guitarist, is often called a blues guitarist, but his blues is Malian, not Mississippian. I often take this music with me when I head out on the road: there's an expansiveness to it; it finds a groove and won't let go, but it never gets dull, either.

Below the fold, some places to go if you're curious.

My online friend Fearful Syzygy is responsible in part for this little post. He recently forwarded me a link to an old WNYC New Sounds show called "Mali Cool" (here, by the way, is another, more recent show). As he promised, I was entranced by what I heard, so much so that I printed off the playlist and, earlier today, went off to the nearby record emporium to see if I could find any of this wonderful music. No luck there (I'll try again elsewhere tomorrow), but I did find two albums that it would be difficult to imagine someone would not like.

Putumayo's sampler Mali is a great selection of styles and artists. There simply isn't a miss in the bunch. The best-known artists on this compilation are the contemporary artists, Habib Koité and Babayogo, but older artists such as Idrissa Soumaoro, Kélétigui Diabaté, and Boubacar Traoré are also well represented.

Ali Farka Touré and Toumani Diabaté, In the Heart of the Moon. Touré died from bone cancer in March of this year, which adds poignancy to this extraordinary album--as if it needed any further enhancement. Touré's guitar duets with Diabaté's kora (the Malian harp). These are unrehearsed, first-take recordings made by two men separated by a generation and the very different musical traditions of northern and southern Mali who, according to the liner notes, had played together a total of 3 hours over the previous 15 years. The songs themselves could not be simpler: two chords over which the players take turns soloing. It can begin to sound a bit same-y, but you won't care, it's such beautiful playing.

Technorati tags:
African music, Mali, Malian music

Read More...

Summary only...

End-of-harv-, er, semester round-up

Well. "Tomorrow"--see the post below--is now Monday. But I've read all the papers and assessed them and entered grades, and this evening I'm on my second Fat Tire (two beers is about my limit; that's me, in the white shirt and propped up against the tree. But hey--it's the end of the semester). The New Belgium beers--and, for that matter, the brewery itself--are worthy of their own blog post, but not tonight.

What follows are a few odds and ends and observations and such from the past few days that will probably be of interest only to me.

*The big news is that Mrs. Meridian has decided on a law school and is looking forward to the fall with a mixture of excitement and nervousness. I am as well, especially seeing as I'm still not sure whether I'll find work that'll pay, um, enough to let me leave my job here. But she'll be only a couple of hours away, which is some compensation.

*I had real troubles with plagiarizers this semester: 3 in one class alone, 5 total, after a couple of years with none (that I'm aware of). One who strove for artfulness (he wrote the first paragraph-and-a-half of his paper, then cut and pasted from a much longer paper, changing some names here and there) meant for the last word before the cutting and pasting to be "like" . . . but instead he wrote "lie." How Freudian-slippery of him.

*Counterbalancing the plagiarizers, though, were the more-numerous-than-usual students who told me, in various ways, Thank you. This is my 13th year of teaching, and it still never fails to amaze me that what students are most grateful for are things THEY decided to learn more about, things that were just one of many options for them. One of them believed himself not to be much interested in art before this semester began, but my little talk about some paintings by Velázquez inspired him to try his hand at a critical essay on Vermeer as his research project. Though he found a site that was a sort of Vermeer-meets-The DaVinci Code kind of thing and he let that influence his arguments a bit overmuch, he chose as his subject 4 paintings that involve letter-reading or -writing, and he had some (to my mind) subtle and imaginative things to say about them. Anyway, he kept thanking me, and I kept telling him, You chose the topic, but you're welcome.

*And I have something to thank one of my students for: he burned me a copy of Tool's new album, 10,000 Days. Really. Thanking him, I mean. I confess it: I'm 44 years old. And I'm a Tool fan. Bang your head--but intelligently so.

*Along the river this afternoon, a homeless man, talking to himself/no one and performing various martial-arts moves, challenged Scruffy to a fight. The man adopted an aggressive pose, which Scruffy did not like. This is the first time in nine months of fairly-regular encounters with the homeless that anything like this has happened.

Happier things now:

*I just recently finished Alain Robbe-Grillet's most recent novel, Repetition, and a couple of nights ago I began Nicholson Baker's first novel, The Mezzanine. Though very different in their subject and manner, each indulges in a meticulousness of description that, I admit, I'm a sucker for. Robbe-Grillet is a favorite writer of mine from way back, and Repetition is reminiscent of his earlier work (one small complaint though: the "interrogation" of the nude 13-year-old girl was more than a little difficult for this father of two girls to take). Baker, though, is new to me, and in this novel he reminds me of a less-lexicorric David Foster Wallace. The Mezzanine is the longest escalator ride you'll ever take and, so far, I don't mind at all.

I know some smart people. Some links to some of them follow.

Over at Musings from the Hinterland, R. Sherman asks a simple question of those who want their kids to see more religion in schools: send your kids to religious schools.

To hear A.J. over at Bittersweet Life tell it, his and Lindsay's son Aidan has been all but offering trenchant critiques of C. S. Lewis ever since he made his appearance a wee bit before he was supposed to. Case in point: this Mother's Day interview Aidan graciously granted.

Fearful Syzygy of Delights for the Ingenious, in between bites of hummus and Deleuze, offers up Georg Büchner's take on the job of the poet.

Erin of Mannequin Hands gets crafty. Cool op-art pic, by the way.

Over at When Her Name You Write You Blot, Raminagrobis has posted excellent post after excellent post on such things as the idea of "empty rhetoric", a commentary on commentary, and a reading of Browning's The Ring and the Book that pulls the above concerns together.

Well. If you made it this far down, you have stamina or nothing better to do or something. But don't thank me for something you chose to do.

Read More...

Summary only...

"Poet's glasses"

The end is nearly in sight: some more papers to read, and today is graduation. I'll be back tomorrow.

But in the meantime, here is something more worthwhile than just about anything I could post: Over at Watermark, SB makes considerable hay out of a commenter's half-flippant, half-serious image of "poet's glasses" as an aid in the creative process. It's as eloquent and accessible a description of how a writer Does It as I've run across.

The more you look, the more you see. Or, as Robert Frost once said, "How many things have to happen to you before something occurs to you?"

Read More...

Summary only...

Books whose covers have already been judged

Pay me no mind--I'm still away in Finals Week Land.

But in the meantime, here's a Phrase for the Day: Anthropodermic bibliopegy. (Hat tip: Crooked Timber)

Read More...

Summary only...

Semi-Open Thread: In which the Meridian seeks the attributes of The Perfect Pop Song

Finals Week begins today; and, seeing as I have yet to figure out when else to schedule final exams and due dates for final projects, I'll be pretty much only a visitor to the blogosphere for the next week.

In the meantime . . .

Some of my favorite blogs have a feature called Open Thread, in which commenters can post on whatever topic they choose. Being the anal-retentive control-freak academic that I am, though, we can't just talk about anything; we have to have Purposes and Goals and Learning Outcomes. Really. So, this thread is not so Open.

I have found myself thinking about this now off and on for the past month: What are the attributes of The Perfect Pop Song? I have some ideas about that, which I'll get to as I talk about my nominees below. Pre-emptive strike: The list below glaringly omits certain groups/"sounds" that could just as easily be here. The ones listed are just the ones that first came to mind. The idea is not to identify THE perfect pop song but to identify the qualities that a contender for the title should have. In other words: a Perfect Pop Song taxonomy.

Please note as well that, while I like very much the songs I've listed, they aren't necessarily my favorite songs. Neither do the ones you list have to be. So: no flaming of my/others' choices--except as regards the taxonomy itself. We'll be adults and agree to disagree as regards tastes. I hope you'll also supply links to evidence to bolster your claim--at least lyrics, if not video.

Enough with the caveats; on with the search!

The Beach Boys, "I Get Around." Those harmonies in the chorus actually seem to drive the song; the lyrics are about cruisin' the town looking for hip kids . . . whether or not "my buddies and me" themselves are actually hip. How much more "pop" can you get?

The Cars, "Let's Go." Structurally aerodynamic and air-tight. Nothing is extraneous in it; even the two brief instrumental breaks are the same "solo." And the chorus is irresistible.

Fountains of Wayne, "Stacy's Mom" (scroll down a bit for a link to the video). Maybe the ultimate in confession-songs: every male during his adolescence, I suspect, had a crush on at least one of his friends' mothers--but who would admit that sort of thing out loud? It oh so delicately straddles the line between serious and goofy, just like all crushes do. And, as with the Cars, there's nothing musically extraneous in this song: all works toward what Poe would have called a singular effect.

Have fun. I'll see you back "here" at the end of the week.

Read More...

Summary only...

On justice and (bitter, bitter) irony

(Cross-posted at Sine.qua.non)

School work has kept me away from "here" for a while; and, being that finals week is next week, it will some more; but I did want to add my two cents' worth to the commentary on the Moussaoui verdict.

I first of all confess to being a bit slow of study about some things--hence my puzzlement about why, not just with regard to the Moussaoui trial but also also 9/11-related cases in Europe, the U.S. has not permitted the really big fish it has in custody to testify in court in support of the prosecution's case. And, in the particular case of Moussaoui, I'd always thought the government's case was, to be charitable, weak: this man, despicable as he is, is to be put to death because, IF he had told what he had known, the government COULD HAVE prevented the 9/11 attacks? The defense (court-appointed attorneys working on behalf of a man who didn't want them working on behalf of him, by the way) made mincemeat of that argument just by calling attention to the information the government already had before 9/11 and yet did nothing about. I kept thinking, This is the best we can do with regard to bringing to justice those responsible for these heinous acts?

Then I read something by someone of quicker study than I, and all becomes a bit clearer to me.

Via Kevin Drum, Mark Kleiman over at Reality-Based Community provides a quick summary of Michael Isikoff's appearance on Hardball on May 3. Go and read, as they say.

Our nation wants to feel secure, which is as it should be. That sense of security will arise from at least two places: a competent government that holds itself accountable for past errors and shows its willingness to invest time, energy and money in getting things right--in every sense of the term "right"; the finding and prosecution (or, seeing as this has been called a "war," killing) of those responsible for planning and committing acts of terror. I'll leave the "competent government" part alone for now and concentrate on the latter: because we have tortured, or have had other nations torture, the men who really SHOULD be on trial for 9/11, our government has deprived us of a very large measure of the very justice it has promised all of us--and, obviously, the government deprives itself of the opportunity to offer us unmistakable evidence that it is seeking justice.

I agree with the verdict, and I agree with those who say that Moussaoui was wrong, that America DID win this one. But I would argue as well that the jury's verdict was also an finding against how our government has handled the (legal) prosecution of the war on terror. As with the prosecution of the continuing war in Iraq, administrative sanctioning of torture, extreme rendition, secret prisons, and all the rest have effectively disarmed our nation of one of our most important weapons: our system of justice.

So, to summarize: some few people somewhere are deriving satisfaction from beating the shit out of some prisoners in the name of or on behalf of the United States of America, but even whatever information they might gain from those prisoners can never be used in courts of law--except to prosecute those who conducted or sanctioned the torture in the first place. Meanwhile, in public we are asked to put to death a man whose importance to the 9/11 plot, from what I could tell, existed more in his own mind than in anyone else's, his knowledge of that plot notwithstanding.

In the matter of 9/11, our government has emasculated itself and our nation, swiftly and without anesthesia or suturing or, most ominously, disinfectant or antibiotics--and all in the quest for that cheap justice called vengeance . . . which now has deprived all of us of a far more legitimate justice we now can no longer have. Ever. As awful as the events of that day were, what I have just written grieves me even more.

Technorati tags:
9/11, Moussaoui, Torture, Justice, Law

Read More...

Summary only...