Weekly Links - Christmas Edition

I know, I know, it's not weekly at all. But, Christmas!

Okay, here's my list of good reading for what's left of your weekend - and I've been saving links the whole time I've been on holiday, so this particular link entry is particularly full of goodness!

It IS still Christmas, for two more days, so I'll start with the seasonal links:

-"Christmas Can Be Creative!" - fun (mostly easy!) group-oriented ideas for the last few days of Christmas.

-"The Party Has Just Begun" - I'm a bit late linking to this one, but it's good for the last few days of Christmas this year, and it's also so resource-full that it's a good one to bookmark for when the season rolls around again.

-"Every Shepherd Soul" and the Invisible Mission of the Son - a good meditation on a mostly-forgotten hymn.

-"The Slaying Song Tonight" - Unlike the rest of the links on the list, this one isn't informational. It's a piece of holiday flash fiction by Lars Walker, one of my favorite authors. Flash fiction often requires at least two readings, because the ending can change your perception of the beginning so much. That's certainly so in this case.

-"Christmas Traditions Without Kids" - Another good one to bookmark. So many holiday activities are planned around children, but not everyone is a parent, and Lisa has lots of good thoughts on how to celebrate with your loved ones if that's the case for you.


Now, moving on to the more general interest links:

-"Making Home" - Jessica Brown is one of my new favorite authors (I might have had a sneak peek at her upcoming book project), and I thought this meditation of hers was really beautiful.

-"You Don't Need a Date Night" - for all of us who love just living ordinary life with our spouses!

-"Why Is English So Weirdly Different From Other Languages?" - my fellow etymology nerds will love this one. (Especially when you read here that etymology isn't really a big deal in languages that aren't as weird as ours!)

-"King Lear: The Syntax and Scansion of Insanity" - Another good one for English nerds - esp. if you're into not just etymology, but also literature.

-"The Secret to My Productivity, Or: Thoughts About Luxury and Privilege" - a lot of home truths here.

-"Writing Wednesday: Are Short Stories Worth It?" - Yes - but only if you sincerely like them!

-"7 Reasons to Join the Liturgy of Life Reading Group 2016" - Another one from Erica and, yes, I might have personal reasons for thinking this looks like a great reading group, but even aside from those: Folks, this looks like a great reading group!



Happy Christmas, dear ones!

-Jessica Snell

Weekly Links: Broken Christians, Building the City, and more!

"Broken Christians":

Sure, everyone outside the church is just as ugly, just as sinning, just as broken, but the church, the bride of Jesus, is supposed to be perfect and beautiful. Or so says the world. But that’s not what Jesus says. Jesus loves the church, loves his bride, whatever the world says about her. And he is not surprised and disgusted by her brokenness. In fact, if he was, we would think he was a bad husband, which he’s not. So there you are. In everything, the reflection is always back to Christ, who is beautiful, and perfect, who loves his bride, even though she is broken down and left bereft by the wayside. He picks her up and takes care of her.

"What Is ECUSA Spending on Lawsuits?": Speaking of broken . . .

"Being a Go-Getter Is No Fun":

 Why should you do more work for the same reward, while your less capable coworker coasts along with lower expectations and work?

"The Shield Failed, the City Endures":

 It is easy to list the errors of the Christian Empire and, thank God, the Empire is not returning. We have learned much since  that time in 1453, but we have learned the lessons in part because the City saved the texts, the education, and the vocabulary that allow us to reject some of what that City did. We stand on the intellectual foundations of Constantinople behind the long intellectual walls she defended, constructed, and preserved. That City of words has never fallen and can never fall as long as one modern Christian endures.

"What Shakespeare Plays Originally Sounded Like":  Very Northern!


"Well-Planned, Hard, Sweat-Inducing Prayer and Work":

Prayer is the first and most important thing you are called to do. “You can do more than pray after you have prayed, but you cannot do more than pray until you have prayed,” John Bunyan writes.“Pray often, for prayer is a shield to the soul, a sacrifice to God, and a scourge to Satan.”

Finally, a video. I already thought Sia's "Chandelier" was a sad and haunting song, but this cover of it is just amazing:

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!

Weekend Links: Pentecost Crafts, the Schwa, and more!

Some good reading for your weekend:

"Pentecost Crafts, Songs, Activities, And More!": some fun ideas for celebrating this week's feast with kids.

"The Reason for the Divorce*": I can't spoil this one by quoting any of it. It would give it away. But, rest assured: this one is funny, not sad (and doesn't really have anything to do with divorce).

"The Schwa Is the Laziest Sound in All of Human Speech":

Some languages are syllable-timed, like Spanish, where each syllable is roughly the same length, giving the impression of a steady "machine-gun" rhythm. English is a stress-timed language, meaning that the rhythmic impression is based on the regular timing of stress peaks, not syllables. If you want to speed up in Spanish, you shorten the length of all the syllables. If you want to speed up in English, you close the distance between stressed syllables. How? By greatly reducing the unstressed syllables. What vowel do unstressed syllables tend to get? Schwa.

"The Biggest News at BEA?":

Just got back from a week in New York, seeing all the books and publishers and figuring out what direction the industry is moving. There was a great spirit at Book Expo this year — none of the angst and worry that has dogged the show the past few years. They tried something new this time at the Javits Center — opened up the floor to the public on Saturday, sold tickets at $20 a pop, publicized a ton of author signings, and watched 10,000 people buy their way into the show. (For the record, it was apparently all teen girls, looking to get their YA and romance novels signed, or to catch a glimpse of a celebrity like Cary Elwes signing copies of his latest tome.) But the biggest topic of conversation? The dispute between Amazon and Hachette. No question. 

"What if Your Child is Gay?":

Every child, whether gay or straight, is oriented toward sin, and so are you. If your child or grandchild says he or she is gay, you shouldn’t act shocked, as though you are surprised your child might be tempted toward sin . . .

Weekend Links! - Christmas, New Year's, and more!

"Why Busy Parents Should Always Go to Midnight Mass":

Now that I got that first, pious reason out of the way, I have to admit the real reason: it really is the most convenient. Think about it: Christmas eve and Christmas day are already packed with activities, the kids are already buggy, and my husband and I are already up late doing last-minute preparations, and already nobody gets much sleep. As long as it's the craziest 48 hours of the year anyway, might as well go whole hog and add a van trip into town in the middle of the night. I'll tell you what's difficult: finding time the evening before, when we're supposed to be wrapping presents, or the morning of, when everyone's hopped up on chocolate and candy canes and doesn't want to be torn away from their new toys. We've tried the vigil Mass and Christmas morning Mass, and they are not a walk in the park!

"Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert: A Review of Rosaria Butterfield’s Book":

So often, especially concerning sex, Christians talk as if we are asking people to nip a little here, tuck a little there. But to follow Christ is to die. To be fair, Christ gives us back a new life, an eternal life that can’t be compared to what we lost. But having borne two children in the last six years, I can tell you, birth is messy, and painful, and the best sound you can hope to hear in your newborn is a loud, terrified cry. New birth in Christ is no less terrifying and miraculous.

"Clutter Interrupted’s New Year’s Goals"  - I love reading about New Year's resolutions, and this is a particular fun and thorough post on the subject. (And there's a podcast to go with!)

"The Herod in Each of Us":

We see Him as a threat to all things that could bring happiness. Tiny Baby. Gentleness incarnate. And we rage. And we struggle. And yes, we kill. We destroy peace. We destroy joy. We slaughter childlike faith. All because we think we know better. We are so afraid of relinquishing our own wills, that we miss the one thing that will give us genuine peace. 

"Word of the Day: twelve":

One of the sad losses as Western man moved from liturgical time to secular time has been the festal season. We have shopping periods, with no special beginning or end, stretching farther and farther out away from Christmas Day or Easter, losing all connection to the feast, and bringing in their wake not festivity but weariness and ennui.

Weekend Links: Mary, Christmas Songs, Synonyms, and more!

"Unspeakable Joy":

Pregnant Mary mirrors for us what the Church will become. She is the model disciple already: waiting for God’s Word with a prepared heart, receiving and believing God’s Word, and in faith obeying and yielding to God. Then she carries Christ inside of her, literally having Him ‘formed in her,’ a picture that the Apostle Paul will use in his letter to the Galatians years later: “My little children for whom I am again in the anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in you.” (4:19) The Church carries Christ, and like Mary, brings witness of His life in us, demonstrating Him to everyone.

Yet death is looming throughout this story.

"Musings on Christmas Songs":

With the Christmas season upon us, it is impossible to go anywhere without being inundated with Christmas songs. I have also noticed that different places will play a different selection of Christmas songs which got me thinking that most Christmas songs can be placed into one of four basic categories.

"Grammar Lesson of the Day: Bury the Thesaurus":

The thing is, very few words are really synonymous with one another. This makes English especially baffling for non-native speakers. English is phenomenally rich in words, from the Germanic foundations, from the Viking variants, from the French by way of the Norman Conquest; words borrowed or invented from Latin and Greek from the Renaissance to this day; we even borrow ways of making new words. No language has as many words as English does. No language is even close.

"Let Us Keep the Feast: Advent and Christmas":

Although my Catholic roots have given me a fondness for the liturgical calendar, I didn’t get quite enough training to really know how to live it out. Maybe it just wasn’t taught, or maybe I simply wasn’t paying attention. But I’ve longed for ways to help myself and my family focus on Jesus in special ways throughout the year, and particularly in the four weeks before Christmas.

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

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.

What makes foul language foul?

I read an interesting blog entry today, over at 777 Peppermint Place, about foul language. The author, Linda Yezak, has a really good point, I think, about semantic drift: the English language changes with each generation, and what used to be "foul language" becomes normal speech, acceptable in front of any audience.

She has a poll on the bottom of the entry, because she does a lot of editing, and is wondering which words she should be red-lining as possibly offensive to Christian readers. I voted, and then wrote this comment:

. . . the words you mentioned don’t necessarily bother me. I put foul language in two categories: profanity and vulgarity. Profanity (using sacred words, usually one of God’s names, as swears) bothers me greatly. Vulgarity doesn’t bother me much at all, though its overuse does. I mean, the great difference between “bowel movement” and “sh**” is that one is fancy and one is common. It’s not a value difference, it’s a class difference. (It’s interesting, btw, to study our words for bodily functions and see which derive from French – i.e., came over with the aristocratic Normans – and which have Saxon origins – i.e., became lower-class words when the Saxons became a conquered people.)

I think it’s wrong to use foul language in order to offend someone. It’s wrong to cuss someone out. I think it’s wrong to use the name of Jesus to curse. I think it’s sad if you use vulgarities because you don’t have a rich enough vocabulary to use anything else. But I think that it’s appropriate to use it sometimes (e.g., when you hit your thumb with a hammer? it’s appropriate to say something less than pleasant!).

But I might be wrong! The problem with words is that you can't be sure that your understand of their meaning is the same understanding held by the person you're talking to. Maybe when you say "sh**", you're thinking, "this situation is as disgusting to me as a bowel movement" - in other words, you're making an analogy. But perhaps the person who hears it doesn't think of the literal meaning of the word, perhaps when they hear you they think about the social meaning - about how using that kind of language means that you're someone who doesn't care about the strictures of polite society, you're someone who doesn't care about the rules, you're a scofflaw, a care-for-nothing.

You've got to think about connotation, not just denotation. That's what makes it such an interesting subject: language has layers. There's the dictionary meaning, and there's the meaning-in-context.

What do you think?

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Links! Butterfly effect, maternal guilt, a Christmas blog carnival, and more!

You remember the "butterfly effect" in chaos theory that was made famous by Jurassic Park? Here's a real-life case involving the Japanese tsunami and a turbine plant out in the boonies in Pennsylvania. I think I actually laughed out loud when I got to the "IT WILL BE TRUE for this test floor" bit.

I laughed even harder and longer when I read Simcha Fisher's "Maternal Guilt Cheat Sheet". A sampling:

THE OFFENCE:

You accidentally let slip a comment which implies that not every moment of childrearing is a profound and ecstatic dance of bliss, a sentiment which will undoubtably set the pro-life movement back forty years and do irreparable harm to your children’s souls, causing the boys to become pimps and the girls to become bitter, tank top-wearing Riot Grrrls who listen to Terry Gross and tattoo “I [heart] the culture of death” on their lower backs.

THE SOLUTION:

Remind yourself that, in order for your words to do any harm, your kids would actually have to be listening to you. Whew!

Anyone else notice that zombies are showing up a lot in popular culture these days? I'd actually been wondering why that was, and this is the first article I've seen that offers a plausible theory. (Warning: slightly gory picture at the top of article - easy to scroll past, but don't open it while little kids are reading over your shoulder.) I do wonder, though, if even though some of it is about the economy, as the writer suggests, if more of it doesn't have to do with our culture having no coherent idea of what the afterlife is like. (Suggestion to culture: convert to Christianity! En masse!)

Facing down the editing of the first book I intend to query, I've been trying to give myself a crash course in grammar. My education in English grammar could charitably be called eclectic and I really wanted a more complete - and functional - understanding of the topic. And look! Here's a free online class in grammar! I think I've found what I need, and I'm passing on the link just in case someone else out there is realizing that not only is she an English nerd, she's an ignorant English nerd. (No? Just me?)

Kerry is thinking of organizing a Nativity blog festival (for Advent and Christmas and Epiphany) and wants to know if anyone's interested. Go tell her you are so we can do it! I'm sleepy enough right now that I think my contribution will be, "Let's all be quiet with our eyes closed and spend the holy season praying quietly," but surely someone has a better idea and if the blog carnival goes forward I'll just be able to happily copy those of you with more energy. :)

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Links! pronoun use, kitsch and how Harry Potter should have ended

Here's an article from Scientific American about what the pronouns we use can tell us about ourselves. Seriously. With statistics and everything. Even the researcher behind the project never thought that researching pronoun use would lead to any discoveries but . . . well, read the article. The pronouns we use most frequently are actually incredibly revealing.

I know a lot of you also enjoy podcasts, so let me recommend this one from the Scriptorium, discussing kitsch and camp, and whether or not we can still afford to be silly in the digital age.

The brilliant folks at How It Should Have Ended now have a video for how Harry Potter should have ended. I have to say: their solution is quite clever and even plausible for the character involved:

But my favorite part (now that you've watched it, right?) is Voldemort's "I'm pointing my wand at you as hard as I can!" :D Yep! That was certainly the one part that was a lot sillier in the movie (where you didn't have any narration to explain what was going on) than it was in the book (where you did).

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Semantic Drift: "Prevent"

There are some old words that no one uses anymore that I love, but there are even more old words that everyone uses, but uses without the old meanings, and I miss those old meanings.

"Prevent" is a great word that has come to mean only "stop from happening". But it used to mean something more like "came before" or "went around in front of".

You can see it in the King James version of the Bible, in verses like Psalm 79:8: O remember not against us former iniquities: let thy tender mercies speedily prevent us: for we are brought very low.

The Psalmist is not asking God's mercies to stop him, but rather to go before him. When it comes to etymology, "pre" is obviously "before" and I'm guessing that "vent" means "come" (like the Spanish "venir").

Isn't that a great word? I know there's no real fighting against semantic drift - well, no really fighting-and-winning - but I am tempted when it comes to this word.

Especially because it seems like it would be such a useful word in prayer - just see how many times it's used in the older translations of the Psalms! How many times a day do I want the Lord to prevent me? As many times a day as there are times in a day.

Lord, prevent me as I go. Go before me. Let me abide in your footsteps, moving behind you as you go.

It's a good word.

Peace of Christ to you,

Jessica Snell

Book 11 of 15: Our Village by Mary Russell Mitford

I must make this one quick, because I haven't even picked my 12th book yet, and the daylight hours are waning. And my children are outside in princess dresses (except Gamgee) and flip-flops, digging in the dirt, with snot running down their faces (we're starting into the second week of the fever/snot/aches/but-thank-God-no-puke flu) and frankly, it just doesn't feel like a blogging day.

I read "Our Village" by Mary Russell Mitford. It's a series of sketches of English village life from the 1820s and 1830s, and so charmingly written that Queen Victoria herself eventually gave Mitford a small pension to support her in her declining years. Lots and lots of landscape description, which is helpful for me because my heroine in my WIP is about to reach the shores of Dover and I don't know nearly enough about English botany. And lots of lovely little portraits of her neighbors, like this of the village's alehouse owner:

Landlord Sims, the master of the revels, and our very good new neighbour, is a portly, bustling man of five-and-forty, or thereabout, with a hale, jovial visage, a merry eye, a pleasant smile, and a general air of good-fellowship.  This last qualification, whilst it serves greatly to recommend his ale, is apt to mislead superficial observers, who generally account him a sort of slenderer Boniface, and imagine that, like that renowned hero of the spiggot, Master Sims eats, drinks and sleeps on his on anno domini. They were never more mistaken in their lives; no soberer man than Master Sims within twenty miles! Except for the good of the house, he no more thinks of drinking beer than a grocer of eating figs. To be sure when the jug lags he will take a hearty pull, just by way of example, and to set the good ale a going. But, in general, he trusts to subtler and more delicate modes of quickening its circulation. A good song, a good story, a merry jest, a hearty laugh, and a most winning habit of assentation; these are his implements. There is not a better companion, or a more judicious listener, in the county. His pliability is astonishing. he shall say yes to twenty different opinions on the same subject, within the hour; and so honest and cordial does his agreement seem, that no one of his customers, whether drunk or sober, ever dreams of doubting his sincerity.

I really enjoyed this one. It was pleasant to read and, for me, great research. My copy is also illustrated with paintings, some from famous artists like Constable and some watercolors done especially for this book. If you're an Anglophile, you'll enjoy it.

More on the 15/15 project here.

peace of Christ to you,

Jessica Snell

learning Spanish

I'm really not starting from scratch, and that's nice. But inside there is a growing sense of awe as my small efforts at studying another language reveal how much I don't know. I'm beginning to get that delicious feeling that you get when you enter a new library and gaze at the shelves, and realize that this is just the first room and there are stacks and stacks and stacks of books that you could read that you've never read before. That undiscovered-country, whole-new-world feel.  (Um, to totally mix my metaphors. Sorry.)

I'm slowly reading through "El Leon, La Bruja y El Ropero"*. I know it's a bit lame to read, as my first attempt to finish a novel in Spanish, a book that was actually written in English, but I figured if I chose something I was super-familiar with, my familiarity with the story would carry me over the gaps in my vocabulary, and it would actually be a very efficient way to learn new words. So far, so good.

I'm reading lots of Spanish picture books to the kids. And I've got a workbook on Spanish verb tenses, so that I can regain the knowledge I had when I passed the AP test back in high school.

But do you know what's really drawing me on? Stuff like this:

Yep. Spanish music. I've found about four songs that I really, really like, and I'm learning the lyrics. Listening to Spanish music is making me fall in love with the language. Listening to Shakira's older stuff reminds me (don't laugh!) of reading John Donne. Not because it's as deep as his stuff, but because both Shakira (in Spanish) and Donne (in English) had a masterful grasp of the strengths and weaknesses of their language - their media - and exploited those strengths. I can especially hear it when I listen to one of Shakira's songs in the original Spanish, and then listen to the English translation. The music's still good in English, but you miss the rhythm of the words.

So, eventually, I want to get to where I can appreciate Spanish literature, and to where I can readily understand Spanish conversation. But for now, I'm really grateful for Spanish music, because it's showing me how this language I'm trying to learn is supposed to sound (something I wouldn't get if I all I heard was my own halting reading of "Huevos verdes con jamón"**). And it's making me excited about learning it, and given the mountain of work that lies in front of me if I'm going to get anything like competent in this - well, I'll take all the motivation I can get. 

I have lots of the "this will be a useful skill" motivation, but the music makes it fun.

peace of Christ to you, 

Jessica Snell

p.s. I am not recommending all of Shakira's stuff, btw. I'm sure you can use your own good judgement there. But a lot of her older stuff is really good. And I apologize for the cheesiness of the embedded music video - it's one of the cleaner music videos I've ever seen, but I know that's not saying much! And if you're curious about why he's saying "Ave Maria", well, as I'm translating it, it sounds like he's taking advantage of the fact that he's in love with a girl named Maria, but someone who knows Spanish better than I do told me he's saying he'll say a Hail Mary when he wins his love's heart. Either way, I love the enthusiasm of this song; it so perfectly captures that newly-in-love, young, excited feeling.

p.p.s. Also, as I'm teaching my five-year-old to read English, I am more and more in awe of anyone who learns English as a second language. Spanish, in contrast, is remarkably easy to read. It's so consistent phonetically.  But English! I knew English was supposed to be a hard language to learn to read, but now that I'm actually teaching someone to read it, I'm beginning to understand that on a whole new level.  And I'm teaching someone to read in English whose first language is English! Gracious. I guess that's what happens when your language is the bastard child of Latin and German.  It's strong and interesting, but it sure doesn't have the simple elegance of a Romance language.

*"The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe"

** "Green Eggs and Ham"