Weekly Links, a little late!

"Progress":

One of the earliest lessons of having a special-needs child was learning to recognize his progress not by comparing him to typically-developing children of the same age, but by comparing him to his own earlier self.

"Where to Start Your Story":

One of the first things I think about when I sit down to actually plot a book is where I'm going to start. As a general rule, the best place to start your story is always wherever things get interesting. BUT (and here's where it gets cool), "where things get interesting" can vary enormously depending on your audience/genre.

"Dirty Clothes, Complaints and Contentment":

Benedict has a way of pulling the rug out from under me. I’ll feel like I’m doing alright with life (I mean I’m not setting the bar all that high, but no one is getting hurt, we are all fed and bathed and dressed at least) and then I sit down and read something like this. Now true, this is a rule of life written 1,500 years ago for monks, totally different from my life. But it gets me thinking.

"The Audacity of Cinderella":

The unflinching purity of this film is so rare that it made me uncomfortable at first, and then it made me ache, because I’m so starved for sincerity.

"The day I bought steak with my food stamps":

And they hated us anyway. Oh, man. They told us everything I had been saying to myself: freeloaders. Not willing to work. What’s wrong with America today. Culture of dependency. And all the while, we went around the house with winter jackets and three pairs of socks on, because we couldn’t afford to turn the heat above 60 degrees when it was below zero out. My kids never got a new toy, never got new clothes. They learned never to ask for a popsicle or a box of crayons. We cobbled together a bizarre school curriculum out of whatever books were 25 cents at the thrift store. My husband’s glasses were taped together at the nose, we had no auto or health insurance, and I chose my driving routes according to how many hills I could coast down, to save gas. We prioritized bills according to how threatening they were.

"The Winter of His Disbelief":

Nor­mally we would start the tour here, ski­ing the three miles of road to the sum­mer trail­head and our first mea­sure­ment course, but this year we drove the three miles instead of ski­ing them, and parked the car at road’s end. We saun­tered to the snow course at North Lake, ele­va­tion 9,300′. In a nor­mal year, we’d expect to mea­sure the equiv­a­lent of 10 inches of SWE at North Lake, but not only was the course free of snow, the meadow grasses were begin­ning to sprout, and the dis­mal real­ity of the bleak snow­pack started set­ting in . . .

"What's Going on with Family Christian Stores?":

Yes. The guy who owns the company, and who wants to buy the company from himself, also wants to be a creditor, so he gets paid before others. What a guy.

Weekly Links: Writing, the Drought, Word Nerdery, and more!

"Things I Can Say About MFA Writing Programs Now That I No Longer Teach in One":

After eight years of teaching at the graduate level, I grew increasingly intolerant of writing designed to make the writer look smart, clever, or edgy. I know this work when I see it; I've written a fair amount of it myself. But writing that's motivated by the desire to give the reader a pleasurable experience really is best.

"The Scorching of California": So, this is properly terrifying . . .

"9 Things You Should Really Know About Anglicanism":  Useful info here.

"10 Words We've Forgotten How to Pronounce":  fellow word nerds, click here!

"That Way We're All Writing Now": Oh, and here, too.

"A Brief Defense of Infant Baptism": as someone who is still coming to grips with the practice, I found this helpful.

"Not Angry: At Least Not for Long": on a hard virtue.

"Introverts and Extroverts Brains Really Are Different, According to Science": more personality fun!


Finally, on the very important practice of nosing and tasting whisky ("and this tells you . . . absolutely nothing").  Enjoy the accent!

Visiting Mission San Juan Capistrano

While Shirley was here, teaching us about praying using the Anglican rosary, I was over at her blog, talking about visiting Mission San Juan Capistrano (and sharing some pretty pictures!).  Come on over to Under An English Sky to read all about it!

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Weekend Links: Austen, Autism, and more!

Some good reading for your weekend:

"Simple Girl: The Improbable Solace of 'Mansfield Park'":

Usually, though, the most arresting scenes in Austen are revelatory, when, for instance, the elegant Mr. Elliot is shown to be cold and self-interested, or Mr. Darcy is exposed as the mysterious savior of the Bennet family. Mansfield Park is weirder. Its best moments are not thunderclaps of discovered malfeasance or heroism, but subtle thickenings in the dynamics of the story, small shifts which are easy to overlook, but in fact are such carefully layered moments as to be eerie, even sublime. One doesn’t often turn to Austen for a chill up the spine, but in Mansfield Park, her Georgian clarity is commingled with dread. In a number of these key moments, particularly those in the three scenes I think of as “the theatricals,” something repellent, even demonic, distends the novel’s porcelain skin.

"Children with Autism Have Extra Synapses in Brain":

Children and adolescents with autism have a surplus of synapses in the brain, and this excess is due to a slowdown in a normal brain “pruning” process during development, according to a study by neuroscientists at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC). Because synapses are the points where neurons connect and communicate with each other, the excessive synapses may have profound effects on how the brain functions.

"I love you, California!":

I like living in a place that is bigger than me. Obviously most places other than a broom closet fit that qualification, but California is so much bigger than me: I will never master it. I will never visit everywhere I want to go. I will never know it by heart or discover all its secrets. It will always be wild and mysterious and grand, and somehow just out of my reach.

"Royals Round-Up, August 22, 2014: I have an unreasonable love for the Fug Girls' regular round-up of royals. Especially when they do Prince George's dialogue. Like so: "Give me that butterfly now, Daddy, please, it's time for me TO EAT IT. THANK YOU."


Hope you have a lovely weekend!

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Weekend Links: Facepalm Jesus, purity, talking about race, and more!

Here's some reading for your weekend!

"Coffee with Facepalm Jesus Calling":

An earlier generation asked What Would Jesus Do? But these days, people are increasingly comfortable with skipping the hypothetical, shifting out of the subjunctive, and just telling us What Jesus Would Say, in their opinions. If he were really here, that is: if he were talking, if he were blogging, or meme-ing, or cartooning, or writing devotionals.

"Let the Battle for Purity Begin":

As a young priest in the 1970s, I served for a decade in campus ministry settings. In those years, the first fruits of the sexual revolution were already apparent. Pope Francis’s image of the Church as a “field hospital” in the midst of such wreckage would describe it well.

"On Being White (And Talking About It) – Part 1":

I have seen my students do one of two things when confronted with a glaring disparity in the real world to their beliefs about human equality – they either (1) become very uncomfortable and frustrated that their parents didn’t teach them the truth, or (2) become very self-righteous, sure that equality is real, and that anyone experiencing inequality must be morally at fault for their own situation.

And Part II can be found here.

"Murder in Los Angeles":

The Homicide Report addresses two questions every newspaper covering a major metropolis should answer: who was killed last night, and why? But most newspapers don’t do this because the logic of most newsrooms is that not all murders are sexy, grisly, or surprising enough to be written about. The Homicide Report operates on the inverse principal: Every murder gets a story because murder is inherently worthy of our attention

"Today Thomas Ken, Bishop of Bath, Died (1711)": I'm linking to this one because it contains the full text of Bishop Ken's sublime "Evening Hymn". I've long loved the version in our hymnal, and I was delighted to learn that not only does it have more verses, but that there's a matching "Morning Hymn" to go with it!

"What I’m learning about choice and gratitude from not skipping songs on my iPod":

Not having a choice about which song I listen to makes me calculate finding pleasure in songs differently. Instead of actively working to perfectly assemble the music so that it will make me happy, I derive happiness from whatever is in front of me. The switch in mindsets in the same switch you make when you go from being a shopper making a purchase to being a recipient receiving a gift. One involves feeling powerful, deciding which among a variety of items will best please you; the other involves receptivity, seeking what is good in whatever you have been given.

7 Quick Takes

1. A Facebook friend posted a video filled with things Southern women say*, and remarked that it hadn't occurred to her before that most of those sayings were Southern - that not everyone 'round the country uses them.

Which has me pondering what I say that's particularly Californian. (Other than "like" and "the 5".)

All I came up with is that we're pretty media-centered out here, and our speech is often filled with movie quotations, internet memes and online acronyms.

But I don't know. That might be universally American these days. What do you think? Do other areas of the country communicate through RiffTrax quotations and say things like "brb" as if they were actual words?

("Enjoy my back.")

2. On the other hand, all those might not be a sign that I'm Californian. They might just be a sign that I'm a bit of a geek.

3. The other sign that I'm a geek - visible in quick take #1 - is that I insist on using "quotation" instead of "quote" to indicate the noun. "Quote" is a verb, people!

4. Do non-Californians end their remonstrances with "people!"?

5. Clearly, I need to travel more.

6. If I traveled more, it wouldn't be to dry washes in Utah to capture footage of flash floods. That said, this is still pretty awesome.

7. Finally, here's my cat in a frying pan. I swear it was his idea. And I promise I didn't cook him.

For more Quick Takes, visit Jenn over at Conversion Diary!

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell


*Language warning on the video.

Links: Fires, Female Marines, and more!

"The New Christian Consumerism":

Instead of merely thinking more carefully about things like the production ethics of things we purchase, maybe we should reconsider our list of things we buy. At any given time, we may have items such as tablet computer, smartphone, new car, bigger flatscreen television, new pair of shoes that accomodates each toe separately, new earphones, new trendy jacket, etc. on our list of wants. What if we reconceived our list to include such things as helping someone pay for their car to be repaired, paying money into a scholarship fund for needy families at a local private school or college, giving a Target or Walmart gift card to a young single mother whom you know is having trouble with her bills, assisting a family with the costs of an adoption, and giving a used car to someone who could really use it instead of trading the car in? 

"How Fire Could Change the Face of the West":

The fire debt is finally coming due. In the Southwest, fires are reaching historically exceptional sizes and temperatures. “The fuel structure is ready to support massive, severe fires that the trees have not evolved to cope with,” said forest ecologist Dan Binkley of Colorado State University. “When the extent of the areas burned becomes large, there are no remaining sources of seeds for the next generation.”

"Get Over It! We Are Not All Created Equal":

I understand that there are female servicemembers who have proven themselves to be physically, mentally, and morally capable of leading and executing combat-type operations; as a result, some of these Marines may feel qualified for the chance of taking on the role of 0302. In the end, my main concern is not whether women are capable of conducting combat operations, as we have already proven that we can hold our own in some very difficult combat situations; instead, my main concern is a question of longevity. Can women endure the physical and physiological rigors of sustained combat operations, and are we willing to accept the attrition and medical issues that go along with integration?

"Welcome to the Georgette Heyer Reread":

Her “serious” fiction was not very good, and the very good books were dismissed as popular romances, and continue, at least in the U.S., to be shelved in the romance section. This is disservice to both Heyer and romance readers: many people (particularly men) who would be delighted by Heyer are unfortunately put off by the romance placement and the often unfortunate book covers (I lost count of the male friends who protested, “but it’s a chick book!”). 

"You Get What You Measure":

I guess this is an obvious statement to people with MBAs, but to me, it was revolutionary. I thought about other times that I have measured some aspect of my life, and realized that it almost always yielded results: When we started tracking our debt on a spreadsheet that we updated month-to-month, it went down at a higher rate than before. When I kept a food journal to track what and how much I ate each day, my eating habits improved. When I started noting how long I could run without stopping, my stamina increased significantly. I thought of a handful of other examples as well. In each case, the improvements occurred with little obvious effort on my part. The simple act of measuring this area of my life put it on my mental radar; and having clear numbers forced me take a hard look at reality, rather than letting the truth get lost in the ether of uncertainty.

"Into the Thicklebit": - this one is a new webcomic - about the small, funny moments of life with kids. Very cute and relatable.

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Love of the Local - or how I finally admitted to being an Angeleno

"AngelenA"? Probably more correct, but nobody says that here in the City of the Angels.

Actually, it isn't the city of the angels, it's the city of Mary. Originally it was named after "La Reina de los Angeles." (My friend Jim recently wrote a beautiful and creepy meditation on that name.)

And I've lived here for over twenty years now. That's weird to admit, because I still think of myself as a missionary kid - as the girl who grew up in the sub-Arctic and got only got to visit her home country in the summer.

But even though smelling snow in the air is still enough to bring back a flood of memories, scents that spell home now are jasmine flowers and eucalyptus leaves, arid heat and ocean breeze.

Writing home
The last book I wrote was set here in California, and I loved writing about my adopted home state. The higher my word count got, the more I realized that I love where I live.

It's not an adoring sort of love. I admit that the Los Angeles basin doesn't have the heartbreaking beauty of the New Zealand alps (though you should see the high Sierra) or the comforting green peace of the Oregon coast (though you should walk Carbon Canyon's ridges just after a thunderstorm's cleaned the air).

But it's a love born out of familiarity. In terms of Lewis' "Four Loves", my love for my home is storge, the sort of love you can't help having for someone you've known for years, whether you like him or not.

I know what blooms when. I know we have summer for half the year and squeeze fall, winter, spring down into six short months - and some years only four or five. I know that the sky is boring and smoggy most of the time but that if you catch us on the right day we have a snow-capped mountain view that rivals Denver's. I know that the miles of concrete and asphalt are endless, but not as endless as sea, and you can sit on the beaches here and never tire of the view of grey-green waves pounding the sand.

I love Los Angeles.  It's true that I love it because I know it, but there are worse ways than that to love.

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Links: the Bible, sex, California's gods, and more

"Post-depressed post":

I wrestle with many things I find in the Bible, and I cannot claim to have solved its mysteries (I've written about how I deal with those things elsewhere, and won't address that subject tonight). But when I go to the Bible I come away with the sense that I've encountered something entirely true to life. It is not a happy book about bunnies, nor is it a “realistic” novel by Zola. It contains real pain, real tragedy, and real hope.

"Is It Really Okay to Laugh About Sex?":

I'm not just talking about intercourse. Human sexuality is about so much more than that. It's about the incredibly weird cosmic joke that two things work together only when they're opposites of each other. It's about the baffling irony that innuendo speaks louder than frankness. It's the dance between power and helplessness, and the eye-popping switcheroo when you realize that the balance has silently and profoundly shifted. It's the fearful delight of discovering yet more doors to open. And the blessed defeat when you discover that sometimes, you'll only get what you need once you give up grasping for it so hungrily.

"California's Gods":

In California, there's The 5, The 405, The 10. Each of these freeways has its own quirks, a personality of sorts. They aren't just stretches of pavement but presences, creatures that necessitate the definite article by their very individuality and uniqueness.

"Writing Excuses": new-to-me really great podcast for writers (and probably also for sci-fi/fantasy fans generally, if you like the-man-behind-the-curtain sort of stuff).

"Untangling the Threads of Gluttony":

 As I have been struggling with weight maintenance more than usual this month, I have found myself contemplating the two dominant narratives about weight loss and weight gain, and why neither of them ultimately satisfies.

 "North Carolina, Biden, and Same-Sex Marriage":

What’s at issue is whether the government will recognize such unions as marriages — and then force every citizen and business to do so as well. This isn’t the legalization of something, this is the coercion and compulsion of others to recognize and affirm same-sex unions as marriages.

And, on a not-directly-related note: it looks like our parish church is likely to lose its building soon. Pray for us. What keeps coming to my mind is the verse from Proverbs that says, "It is better to go to a house of mourning than a house of feasting, and the wise take it to heart." I'm so glad to be part of All Saints, Long Beach.

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Chard! Chard and oranges!

I know I'm lucky to live in California, where we have fresh produce even through the winter months. So I'm not complaining. Our CSA baskets are still bountiful and overflowing. My fridge right now is stuffed with fruits and veggies that were grown within a couple hundred miles of where we live. It's great.

It is also overwhelmingly greens and citrus. Chard, kale, tatsoi, and chard. Oranges, satsumas, grapefruits and, yup, more oranges.

We have vitamin C coming out of our ears.

Anyway, in honor of my green and orange winter, I offer a recipe for my current favorite lunch:

A California Winter Stir-fry:
-4 cups (or so) chopped chard
-1 tsp. sesame oil
-2 or 3 Tbs. soy sauce
-1 tsp. chili-garlic sauce
-1 tsp. sugar
-3 egg whites
-1 egg

1) Toss the chard with sesame oil in a big pan, and start cooking the chard on high heat.
2) Add soy sauce, chili-garlic sauce, and sugar. Toss to coat the chard and make sure it's all well-mixed, or you'll get a bite of chili-garlic sauce that'll make your nose run.
3) When the chard is almost as cooked as you like it (I like it still just the tiniest bit crisp), add the egg whites and egg. Cook till the egg is done, continuing to stir.

You'll end up with a sort of sauce in the bottom of the pan - all the juices from the chard and some of the sauce-makings. I pour this on top of the chard when I scoop the mess into my bowl, just to flavor it a bit more. But most of this watery sauce will still end up in the bottom of the bowl when you're done. I just toss it at the end, content that I'm not getting quite all the salt from the soy sauce, and that has to be healthy, right?

And there you have it! Spicy, salty, sweet CSA goodness. Mmmm.


And if you finish all that and you're still hungry? My advice is to have an orange.

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell