It’s been years since I regularly attended church, but just to show you how ingrained one’s upbringing is, I’ll tell you that I was actually considering this morning whether I should give anything up for Lent. This all got started because the other day I was looking things up about Shrove Tuesday, a liturgical occasion that I probably hadn’t thought about since, literally, high school. I looked it up to see what it had to do with Mardi Gras, and when I found out that eating pancakes is something one does to mark Shrove Tuesday (because you’re eating up eggs, sugar, and fat, all those things you won’t be eating during the period of abstinence), I decided I’d treat myself to pancakes to mark the day.
With Mardi Gras, you’re throwing beads, eating King Cake, and possibly toasting the occasion with libations. I have to admit that when I hear the word “pancakes,” I don’t immediately think, “Wow—the decadence!” Shrove Tuesday is a devout person’s version of kicking up one’s heels. I sometimes made pancakes at home (not for devotional reasons, but on random occasions) and was always trying to replicate the ones my mother made when I was little. I never succeeded in doing so. Hers were thin, more like crepes than the big, thick ones restaurants serve, and she made them small, no more than four or five inches in diameter. They were delicious in an unassuming way, sort of sweet and savory. No one else’s tasted like hers, although other peoples’ presentation was often more impressive.
I have gotten closer to her way of making them over time, but mine are too soggy, and there’s still something missing flavor-wise. It seems to me that everybody else makes enormous pancakes but relies on toppings for most of the razzmatazz and flavor. My mom’s weren’t like that: you could eat them alone and they would still taste good. I remember eating them with a little bit of butter (actually margarine) or grape jelly and considering them a treat. I wish I had asked her how she did it, but I’m not sure even she would have been able to tell me. Probably, it had to do as much with the ingredients and the skillet she used as with any technique involved. (I do know she used Calumet Baking Powder.)
Well, the gist of it is, I went out for pancakes yesterday, ended up at First Watch eating carrot cake and pecan flavored pancakes, and once again thought to myself, once it was over, “Not bad, but not like Mom’s.” The pancakes were huge, and I couldn’t quite finish them, so I rolled out of the restaurant feeling that I had definitely lived up to my “Fat Tuesday” obligations. Having gotten into the Shrove Tuesday mode, I woke up this morning thinking about whether I might get any benefit from celebrating Lent, and if so, what I might want to give up for it. Then it occurred to me, all at once: Mary! You’re living in your car! You live like a nun, you don’t even have a pillow to lay your head on, you eat hard-boiled eggs, almonds, and salad (admittedly with some potato chips and fries thrown in), and your money goes toward the basics of living. Getting a roof over your head is the main luxury you’re looking forward to at the moment. What could you possibly deprive yourself of that circumstances haven’t taken away from you already?
When you’re raised as a Catholic, you have that “But I could always try a little harder to be good” ethic impressed on you from the get-go, and while I think this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, you do have a responsibility to yourself to say when enough is enough. A person can only be so good before starting to float off into the ether or sail off to heaven in a magic ship like Perceval did. If that sounds good to you, go right ahead, but I’ve spent much of my life trying to learn to embrace earthly life, not leave it behind. Catholicism, as I learned it, probably emphasized the next life a little too strongly. I can see that in the Middle Ages, when life was tough all over, this might have played well and even have given people a lifeline. But I think we’re at point in the 21st century when we have to say to ourselves, “This is where we are. If we don’t like it, how do we go about making the world better?”
So in short, I’m not giving anything up for Lent. I, personally, have had enough character building experiences and in fact probably have extra character to give away, should you be in need of some. It seems eminently more practical to try to hang onto the things I’ve got, though a good Lenten exercise might be to keep in mind that all of us, no matter where we’re situated, have something to say about the kind of world we’re creating. No matter who you are, no matter where you are, your actions affect the world we’re living in, and we can only make this life better if we decide that we want to.
Wednesday, February 26, 2020
Wednesday, February 19, 2020
Is Spring Fever Still PC?
It’s only been a little over two weeks since the groundhog saw its shadow (or didn’t see it—I don’t know which it was this time). Technically, we should be in the depths of winter, and in years past we would have been. Ten years ago we had a cold, dark February that seemed to go on and on, and since I had just gotten back from a vacation in SoCal at the beginning of the month, it seemed even worse by contrast. We’ve had barely any snow this year, and it hasn’t been notably cold, but since our winters seem to be skewing late in recent years, there’s still time for it. I’ve realized that I don’t really mind winter weather that much, except that I don’t enjoy driving in it. It’s the lack of winter that worries me.
An occasional mild winter seems like a reprieve, but a pattern of mild winters several years in a row is worrisome even for someone who loves summer. I sometimes wonder what our world will look like even 20 or 30 years from now. While catastrophic war is always a possibility, the catastrophe that scares me the most has to do with changes in our climate. Of course, many things that happen in nature are outside of our control and could also result in catastrophe, but the lack of urgency about things we could be doing to slow climate change is something I’m afraid we’ll rue sooner than we think.
What’s supposed to happen here in Kentucky is that we suffer through our Vitamin D deficiencies and complain about how dark it is for at least four months and then suddenly leap back to life again sometime in March. It may be early, it may be late—and an early spring is almost always interrupted by more winter weather—but you don’t have to feel guilty about welcoming the first signs of spring once you’ve paid your dues with a proper Kentucky winter. So it is with that preamble that I tell you that I felt a difference in the light this afternoon, that it seemed stronger and warmer, and coupled with the fact that it was still broad daylight when I was on my way to dinner, I felt unseasonably early stirrings of what I can only describe as spring fever. I felt kind of good, and then I felt bad about Feeling Good.
People around here practice a sort of “sympathetic weather magic,” which means you’ll sometimes see someone wearing shorts and a T-shirt at even the barest hint of a crocus blooming or a piece of blue sky appearing. I’m surprised I didn’t see anyone doing that today. It’s quite cold at night still, and for all I know, we could have the blizzard of the century a month from now, but this afternoon there was a distinct feeling that spring is coming on, and it’s not something you really want to say no to, no matter what. Even a mild Kentucky winter is damp and chilly and causes you to feel ready for any spring you can get, though you’re perhaps not as starved for it as you would feel under normal circumstances.
At the grocery store, they seem to have skipped directly from Valentine’s Day to Easter (if there are shamrocks about, I didn’t see any, though that may have been in a different aisle). They’ve even been dropping different songs into the playlist at Kroger after seemingly playing the same loop forever, which is probably a coincidence but has somehow become associated in my mind with an impending change of season. Not only that, but the floral department was a raft of color and bloom this evening, a gorgeous thing to behold, even if it’s only cut flowers.
So here I am, sadly enjoying these harbingers of spring, and not only that, I took pictures of the flowers at the store so that I could go on looking at them in case Old Man Winter suddenly comes back with a vengeance. Things have come to a pitiful state when you feel bad about enjoying the first stirrings of spring, so I’ll try not to let my happiness drag on any further than a few minutes. I’ve also been feeling the effects of pollen, already circulating as per usual, so this smidgen of spring is not an unalloyed pleasure. A burst of spring flowers, a stuffy nose. A chilly overnight, a dose of sunshine. Things could be worse.
An occasional mild winter seems like a reprieve, but a pattern of mild winters several years in a row is worrisome even for someone who loves summer. I sometimes wonder what our world will look like even 20 or 30 years from now. While catastrophic war is always a possibility, the catastrophe that scares me the most has to do with changes in our climate. Of course, many things that happen in nature are outside of our control and could also result in catastrophe, but the lack of urgency about things we could be doing to slow climate change is something I’m afraid we’ll rue sooner than we think.
What’s supposed to happen here in Kentucky is that we suffer through our Vitamin D deficiencies and complain about how dark it is for at least four months and then suddenly leap back to life again sometime in March. It may be early, it may be late—and an early spring is almost always interrupted by more winter weather—but you don’t have to feel guilty about welcoming the first signs of spring once you’ve paid your dues with a proper Kentucky winter. So it is with that preamble that I tell you that I felt a difference in the light this afternoon, that it seemed stronger and warmer, and coupled with the fact that it was still broad daylight when I was on my way to dinner, I felt unseasonably early stirrings of what I can only describe as spring fever. I felt kind of good, and then I felt bad about Feeling Good.
People around here practice a sort of “sympathetic weather magic,” which means you’ll sometimes see someone wearing shorts and a T-shirt at even the barest hint of a crocus blooming or a piece of blue sky appearing. I’m surprised I didn’t see anyone doing that today. It’s quite cold at night still, and for all I know, we could have the blizzard of the century a month from now, but this afternoon there was a distinct feeling that spring is coming on, and it’s not something you really want to say no to, no matter what. Even a mild Kentucky winter is damp and chilly and causes you to feel ready for any spring you can get, though you’re perhaps not as starved for it as you would feel under normal circumstances.
At the grocery store, they seem to have skipped directly from Valentine’s Day to Easter (if there are shamrocks about, I didn’t see any, though that may have been in a different aisle). They’ve even been dropping different songs into the playlist at Kroger after seemingly playing the same loop forever, which is probably a coincidence but has somehow become associated in my mind with an impending change of season. Not only that, but the floral department was a raft of color and bloom this evening, a gorgeous thing to behold, even if it’s only cut flowers.
So here I am, sadly enjoying these harbingers of spring, and not only that, I took pictures of the flowers at the store so that I could go on looking at them in case Old Man Winter suddenly comes back with a vengeance. Things have come to a pitiful state when you feel bad about enjoying the first stirrings of spring, so I’ll try not to let my happiness drag on any further than a few minutes. I’ve also been feeling the effects of pollen, already circulating as per usual, so this smidgen of spring is not an unalloyed pleasure. A burst of spring flowers, a stuffy nose. A chilly overnight, a dose of sunshine. Things could be worse.
Wednesday, February 12, 2020
Blue-Eyed Hero
Following the death of actor Kirk Douglas at age 103 last week, a slew of news stories appeared summarizing his life and achievements in the movie industry. I actually didn’t know very much about Mr. Douglas, but he does earn a place on this blog for his portrayal of Ulysses in the 1954 film of that name directed by Mario Camerini. It was my first introduction to Homer on film, and while in many ways it may have been less faithful to the spirit of the Greeks than other adaptations I’ve seen, it was, at the same time, one of the most entertaining versions of “The Odyssey” on record.
I don’t really remember a time when I didn’t have some familiarity with the gods and goddesses of ancient Greece and Rome. I read “The Iliad” when I was a teenager and followed it up immediately with “The Odyssey” but wouldn’t be truthful if I said I got a lot out of it. I remember having a book in junior high school with retellings of the stories of Greek and/or Roman mythology that was more accessible than Homer, Ovid, or Virgil in their original forms if also somewhat simplistic—but even at that stage I was already familiar with the stories. In the same way I absorbed fairy tales, seemingly without effort and from a variety of sources, I came to know ancient mythology without being able to say how it happened.
Even in junior high school, though, I was struck by the fatalism evident in many of myths, which—unlike fairy tales—sometimes ended unhappily. Why did Persephone have to keep going back to the Underworld just because she’d eaten some seeds, I wondered. Why did Daphne have to change her very being just because Apollo wouldn’t leave her in peace? Why couldn’t Icarus have listened to his father and flown a little further from the sun? There didn’t seem to be any answers to these questions except “that’s the way it was,” a sobering fatalism mixed up with all those wonderfully inventive characters and stories.
It wasn’t until I read some of the Greek tragedies that I realized that Odysseus was not always portrayed as the sympathetic, godlike hero I first knew who wandered for many years, enduring many hardships, only to return in triumph at last to his beloved home and family. The Odysseus who was instrumental in sacrificing Iphigenia at Aulis bears little relation to the hale and hearty Ulysses Mr. Douglas portrayed on screen in the 1950s, and to be honest, the big-screen Ulysses is the way I preferred him. He was glorious on screen, fearlessly brawling and maneuvering his way from one adventure to another, maintaining a sense of humor, courage, and elan no matter what happened, and looking good while doing it.
The versions of the myths I heard as a child emphasized the heroic qualities of the characters, while the “adult” versions revealed cruelty, ruthlessness, misogyny, and more. When you see Mr. Douglas’s Ulysses up on the screen, you know that he is truly a hero, that he deserves to defeat his enemies, and that his homecoming is a just reward. Well, who wouldn’t prefer to see him in that light? In Euripides, one finds it difficult to drum up any enthusiasm for the Greek cause because you know the human cost of purchasing the winds favorable to their venture. The Trojan War seems cursed from the outset, and the Greek leaders, including Odysseus, come across as a pack of savages.
While the “adult” versions of the myths make us extremely thoughtful about such things as war, peace, family psychodrama, and expediency, the more playful versions give us heroes and adventures we can follow by proxy. I’m not sure that one type is really that much more superior to the other—there’s plenty of room for multiple retellings of these stories, and there are many different ways to approach mythology. I have to thank Mr. Douglas for giving me my first and most visceral image of Ulysses, even if it is somewhat larger than life, since that is the one I will probably always cherish. I will admit to preferring my heroes to be heroic, even if it doesn’t always happen that way.
I don’t really remember a time when I didn’t have some familiarity with the gods and goddesses of ancient Greece and Rome. I read “The Iliad” when I was a teenager and followed it up immediately with “The Odyssey” but wouldn’t be truthful if I said I got a lot out of it. I remember having a book in junior high school with retellings of the stories of Greek and/or Roman mythology that was more accessible than Homer, Ovid, or Virgil in their original forms if also somewhat simplistic—but even at that stage I was already familiar with the stories. In the same way I absorbed fairy tales, seemingly without effort and from a variety of sources, I came to know ancient mythology without being able to say how it happened.
Even in junior high school, though, I was struck by the fatalism evident in many of myths, which—unlike fairy tales—sometimes ended unhappily. Why did Persephone have to keep going back to the Underworld just because she’d eaten some seeds, I wondered. Why did Daphne have to change her very being just because Apollo wouldn’t leave her in peace? Why couldn’t Icarus have listened to his father and flown a little further from the sun? There didn’t seem to be any answers to these questions except “that’s the way it was,” a sobering fatalism mixed up with all those wonderfully inventive characters and stories.
It wasn’t until I read some of the Greek tragedies that I realized that Odysseus was not always portrayed as the sympathetic, godlike hero I first knew who wandered for many years, enduring many hardships, only to return in triumph at last to his beloved home and family. The Odysseus who was instrumental in sacrificing Iphigenia at Aulis bears little relation to the hale and hearty Ulysses Mr. Douglas portrayed on screen in the 1950s, and to be honest, the big-screen Ulysses is the way I preferred him. He was glorious on screen, fearlessly brawling and maneuvering his way from one adventure to another, maintaining a sense of humor, courage, and elan no matter what happened, and looking good while doing it.
The versions of the myths I heard as a child emphasized the heroic qualities of the characters, while the “adult” versions revealed cruelty, ruthlessness, misogyny, and more. When you see Mr. Douglas’s Ulysses up on the screen, you know that he is truly a hero, that he deserves to defeat his enemies, and that his homecoming is a just reward. Well, who wouldn’t prefer to see him in that light? In Euripides, one finds it difficult to drum up any enthusiasm for the Greek cause because you know the human cost of purchasing the winds favorable to their venture. The Trojan War seems cursed from the outset, and the Greek leaders, including Odysseus, come across as a pack of savages.
While the “adult” versions of the myths make us extremely thoughtful about such things as war, peace, family psychodrama, and expediency, the more playful versions give us heroes and adventures we can follow by proxy. I’m not sure that one type is really that much more superior to the other—there’s plenty of room for multiple retellings of these stories, and there are many different ways to approach mythology. I have to thank Mr. Douglas for giving me my first and most visceral image of Ulysses, even if it is somewhat larger than life, since that is the one I will probably always cherish. I will admit to preferring my heroes to be heroic, even if it doesn’t always happen that way.
Wednesday, February 5, 2020
Sending Love to Iowa
I logged onto my iPad yesterday morning wondering how the Iowa caucuses had gone and spent a lively couple of hours reading news articles about how it all went down. I, along with most people, I guess, was expecting to see results first thing, and when I read about the app problem that prevented results from getting through, I figured it would be sometime in the afternoon, at the longest, before we heard anything. Election glitches are nothing new.
In the meantime, I read the news while trying to steer as clear as I could of pundits talking about “what’s broken” and “what a big mess everything is.” Admittedly, I was impatient to find out who had won, but I had the advantage of not having been tuned in the evening before when the caucuses were actually taking place, so I didn’t experience the anxiety and confusion that had unfolded in Iowa in real time. Apparently, nerves were worn to a frazzle (and no wonder) all around as people had to rely on trying to call in their results the old-fashioned way, only to be met with long wait times and hang-ups.
I read words like “debacle” and “disaster” and saw opinions expressed about how we were seeing the beginning of the end of the caucus process in Iowa, and I have to admit: my feelings were rather different. Granted, I was at a remove from it all in time and space, but as I looked at the photos and watched the videos of Iowans taking part in one of our country’s most important participatory processes, that of choosing the person who may be our next president, I was, more than anything, moved.
I was moved by the excitement I could see in people’s faces, by the conscientiousness with which they patiently navigated the ins and outs of the system, by the diversity of the Iowans themselves—including one precinct with largely Muslim constituents—and by the very public nature of the process itself. Nothing hidden or secret there, just people very openly and matter-of-factly sorting themselves into groups to support their preferred candidates. You could actually see democracy at work, right in front of your eyes. I don’t remember the last time I was so touched by anything having to do with politics, but I didn’t have a single sarcastic thought while I was watching the people of Iowa caucus. What I was really thinking was “This is what democracy is all about, and how wonderful for the people of Iowa to get to lead the way.”
From this you will see that I am sharply at odds with the people who keep moaning about what a disaster it all was. The only disaster I saw was in the app that didn’t work, and with the paper ballots completed by the participants, there seems to be no way the outcome will be in doubt once it’s known. I was actually wishing our state had a caucus, because to me there was something fundamentally satisfying about watching people show up with their friends and neighbors and then publicly sort themselves, declaring their candidate preference in front of one and all. There was something sort of New England town hall-ish about it all, democracy with a small d, right down there at the grass roots level. I was (if you don’t mind if I express an old-fashioned thought) just plain proud.
I think it’s wise for the officials in Iowa to take their time about checking the results to make sure that it’s all done properly. While it’s frustrating, it will not prevent everyone from moving on to the next contest. If anything good can be said to come out of it, it is perhaps the fact that the problem with the app was discovered in time to prevent another state, possibly without the easy visibility of the caucus system, from finding itself in similar circumstances with inadequate backup.
Personally, I think it would be a shame if Iowa gave up its caucuses over a piece of software. You guys just keep on keepin’ on, no matter what the experts say. There’s too much genuine joy and excitement in the system you’ve got, and if you can get Wordplay (as cynical as I am sometimes) to say so, you must be doing something really special.
In the meantime, I read the news while trying to steer as clear as I could of pundits talking about “what’s broken” and “what a big mess everything is.” Admittedly, I was impatient to find out who had won, but I had the advantage of not having been tuned in the evening before when the caucuses were actually taking place, so I didn’t experience the anxiety and confusion that had unfolded in Iowa in real time. Apparently, nerves were worn to a frazzle (and no wonder) all around as people had to rely on trying to call in their results the old-fashioned way, only to be met with long wait times and hang-ups.
I read words like “debacle” and “disaster” and saw opinions expressed about how we were seeing the beginning of the end of the caucus process in Iowa, and I have to admit: my feelings were rather different. Granted, I was at a remove from it all in time and space, but as I looked at the photos and watched the videos of Iowans taking part in one of our country’s most important participatory processes, that of choosing the person who may be our next president, I was, more than anything, moved.
I was moved by the excitement I could see in people’s faces, by the conscientiousness with which they patiently navigated the ins and outs of the system, by the diversity of the Iowans themselves—including one precinct with largely Muslim constituents—and by the very public nature of the process itself. Nothing hidden or secret there, just people very openly and matter-of-factly sorting themselves into groups to support their preferred candidates. You could actually see democracy at work, right in front of your eyes. I don’t remember the last time I was so touched by anything having to do with politics, but I didn’t have a single sarcastic thought while I was watching the people of Iowa caucus. What I was really thinking was “This is what democracy is all about, and how wonderful for the people of Iowa to get to lead the way.”
From this you will see that I am sharply at odds with the people who keep moaning about what a disaster it all was. The only disaster I saw was in the app that didn’t work, and with the paper ballots completed by the participants, there seems to be no way the outcome will be in doubt once it’s known. I was actually wishing our state had a caucus, because to me there was something fundamentally satisfying about watching people show up with their friends and neighbors and then publicly sort themselves, declaring their candidate preference in front of one and all. There was something sort of New England town hall-ish about it all, democracy with a small d, right down there at the grass roots level. I was (if you don’t mind if I express an old-fashioned thought) just plain proud.
I think it’s wise for the officials in Iowa to take their time about checking the results to make sure that it’s all done properly. While it’s frustrating, it will not prevent everyone from moving on to the next contest. If anything good can be said to come out of it, it is perhaps the fact that the problem with the app was discovered in time to prevent another state, possibly without the easy visibility of the caucus system, from finding itself in similar circumstances with inadequate backup.
Personally, I think it would be a shame if Iowa gave up its caucuses over a piece of software. You guys just keep on keepin’ on, no matter what the experts say. There’s too much genuine joy and excitement in the system you’ve got, and if you can get Wordplay (as cynical as I am sometimes) to say so, you must be doing something really special.
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