From Divinity to Demonization

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090911/ap_on_sc/us_sci_gender_confusion

So, in the link at the top of this blog entry, Caster Semenya, a South African athlete, was accused of not being female, and tested for XY genes. She also showed no signs of ovaries, and therefore doesn't have periods. She was raised, however, as a girl by her family. So she is a hermaphrodite, named after Hermaphroditus.

In mythology, Hermaphroditus was the son of Hermes and Aphrodite, whom the Naiad Salmacis desired so greatly that she prayed she might become one with him. Although this wish was granted, Hermaphroditus cursed the pool of Salmacis so that any who bathed in it would suffer the same condition. So in this case, it is a curse. A different tradition, however, found in Plato, propose that the human race originally consisted of hermaphrodites and that the desire to be one flesh once more motivated human courtship. According to this line of thought, hermaphrodites reflect the primordial union of man and woman and therefore partake more fully of the Good.

The term "hermaphrodite" has been replaced by newer, "more sensitive", and certainly more transient ones such as "intersex", whose exterior appears as a very mannish female. The only fiction I know of which features intersexuality,Middlesex by Geoffrey Eugenides, does a little to remove the perception of monstrosity, but nonetheless credits the character's condition to the sins of the fathers.

She must be suffering severe psychological trauma from this revelation, and the cruelest blow is this: if she had not competed and won, the testing never would have occurred, and she could have lived her life as a very butch female. Now she's banned from her sport and known to the world as a genetic freak. The reason given for such tests (beyond the obvious physical check) is that male testosterone gives a competitor an advantage, but with the mix of doping, legitimate enhancements, rigorous training, and natural ability in track & field, the successful competitor have already removed themselves from ordinary human beings. I doubt she would be allowed to compete in the men's competition without complaint, yet she is barred from the women's competition; this is a clear case of black-and-white thinking failing to reflect reality. Outside of the world of sports, gender is assigned usually on external features, not genetic tests, and it seems grossly unfair to ruin someone's life in this manner.

TV Review: Little Mosque on the Prairie

Although the current state at the cabin at Lake Tahoe is a dearth of channels, my TV-watching habits for series (as well as webcomic-reading) can be described as short-term addiction. This tendency also appears when I read books in a series. I watch a lot of episodes at once, and then lose interest; if it is sufficiently compelling, I may return. So it has been with the CBC series Little Mosque on the Prairie. I watched Season 1 a while ago, and then lost interest, but I have been watching many episodes recently, and now have reached another lull.

For those of you unfamiliar with the series, I could just post the Wikipedia link. That, however, would be lazy. The series' viewpoint character is a Toronto lawyer who decides to become an imam (more like a rabbi than a priest) for the Muslim community of the small western Canadian town of Mercy. Presumably the creator of the series used this (standard literary) structure in order that she could have an outsider thrust into the midst of key religious disputes. One must admit it makes more sens than the ordinary child who becomes the key to the salvation of the universe. The Muslim and non-Muslim characters span the entire political range, although it is true that the show privileges the Muslim characters. I can forgive this imbalance, since the other movie and TV roles for Muslim characters and actors of Middle Eastern descent are very frequently terrorists.

It's a very Canadian show, eschewing the Manichaean dichotomy of culture warriors and favoring the portrayal of individuals with personal motivations for faith or lack thereof. Each week there is a crisis that pits at least one character's Islamic beliefs or cultural tendencies from the Islamic part of the world against "western" traditions. The first season is especially interesting in that regard, since specific concepts needed to be introduced; the third season is closer to a soap opera, if soap operas were rigidly episodic and chaste to the point of no kissing. The westernization of the Muslim characters has angered many Muslim watchers, but I doubt the show would be able to spread its message of goodwill and ecumenical harmony if it showed the most rigid segments of the Muslim population.

I'm certainly not a follower of the Prophet, and perhaps I think this way because my formative political experience was the fall of the Berlin Wall rather than 9/11 or the Cold War, but this series does a good job of introducing Islam in a setting which will not frighten westerners.

Speed Spectator Movie Review: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

I finally watched The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, although it had been one of the movies I rescued from the “caretaker’s cottage”. I assume it belonged to my brother or his wife when they lived there. First of all, I must admit that I did not grow up watching westerns other than some episodes of Paladin which the Reno stations played early in the morning. I also visited the Bonanza Ranch before it went bankrupt and became another real estate development. My taste in fiction of the American West runs more towards Laura Ingalls Wilder and Brett Harte than John Wayne and Lee Marvin.

The plot and pacing of Valance is excellent and well thought-out, although probably insufferably tedious to Generation ADHD. The title of the film is chosen carefully to provoke interest, accurately reflect the hero antagonist of the film, and conceal the twist ending. The dénouement of the movie shows a satisfying subversion of the ‘sudden ability syndrome‘, a curious plot-related disease in which the hero suddenly develops a specific and necessary ability to save the day. Contemporary movies intended for children are the frequent victims of this, and fuel the narcissism of the current generation - but that’s a rant for another day.

Valance observes the majority of the Western clichés, including the drunken Mexican, the drunken sheriff (in this case, the same person as the former), the stubborn newsman, the ‘happy Negro’, the funny-talking immigrant, and the color-coded hats, but the mere naming of the villain as Liberty Valance suggests a certain degree of self-aware subversion. The character of Liberty Valance does not seem to be sufficiently clever to understand irony, and the depth of Donovan’s (Wayne's) character is limited to a tedious repetition of ‘pilgrim’ as a synonym for ‘fellow’ and a dogged insistence on the necessity and utility of firearms. It may be a generational difference, but I do not understand the appeal of John Wayne and cannot perceive his charisma.

This was an interesting movie to watch, but it was a bit like a mediocre Agatha Christie: the plot is satisfying, but the actors are chess pieces rather than living players.

Recent Reading: The Lightning Thief

I read The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan partly because I knew a movie of the book was being made and I wanted to check how solid the mythology was. I like Harry Potter, but the distortions of Latin get on my nerves. Rowling clearly knows enough Latin to get it almost right. Imagine my joy, then, when I discovered an exclamation in Homeric Greek in The Lightning Thief! The first book of the Percy Jackson series reminded me a bit of John Christopher's initial offering in the The White Mountains trilogy due to a careful balance of a full story within a projected series.

The Latin and Greek in the book is grammatical and colloquial. The book follows the standard literary convention that only obscenities remain untranslated, although I doubt the intended audience would realize quite how offensive the phrase 'eis korakas' truly is in Ancient Greek. Riordan extends his untranslated expletives beyond the vocative (the lazy man's foreign language) and even includes the plural imperative of a deponent verb. For those of you who lack the ars grammatica, that means he used a verb form which is passive in form, but active in meaning; that's a level of detail which many grade school Latin students would miss.

The reason for the movement of the world of Greek mythology to the United States is well presented, even if it does show the usual bias towards New York. Riordan has solved creatively the problem of a limited (and previously killed) roster of Classical monsters. The monsters themselves are true to the traditional mythology, and dwell in the appropriately iconic cities and regions. The choice of the entrance to the Underworld is a little surprising, although there is a certain logic to it.

The trio of heroes (an apt term for this subcreated world) fill the Harry Potter mode of main character, best friend, and opposite gender friend/potential love interest, but the character interaction placed between the desperate attempts to avoid assassination (this is a children's fantasy, after all) rings true and explores a lesser known dynamic between two gods, or rather their children. The Lightning Thief compromises as little as possible the occasionally sordid interactions between the Olympian gods - this is a relief from the bowdlerization of many other tales.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and I can endorse it as a Classics major and occasional fantasy fan.

Prête à Portmanteau

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090812/ap_on_re_eu/eu_france_burquini_banned

So this 'Carole', a convert to Islam, wanted to go for a swim, but also wanted to remain modest. So she bought a burquini, a burqa-bikini portmanteau, and tried to go swimming. But French laws about wearing 'possible street clothes' while swimming prohibited her.

This seems to me typical French ideological overreaction, combined with the usual legislative blindness and resistance to future complications. Any gym or pool I have ever entered has hygienic requirements, usually mandating that one bring a change of clothes and shower both before and after using the pool. The problem here could easily be solved by Carole and other similarly inclined women changing from their non-revealing street clothes to their non-revealing burquini, which presumably has a design intended for la plage et la piscine (although, if I were a woman, I'd hesitate to wear it in a known undertow area). If you've seen photos of 19th century bathing suits, the burquini design doesn't seem at all outrageous, and has an absence of hideous carny stripes to recommend it. After all, the bad on nude swimmers is at its heart a matter of modesty rather than hygiene – swimming trunks or a bikini aren't going to keep a filthy person from polluting the pool, as various “accidents” in our client associations' pools have demonstrated this summer.

Bible Reading: Suffocating Debt

<sup>In Matthew 18:23-34, Jesus tells the parable of the unforgiving debtor. The servile debtor, who owes the equivalent of millions of dollars, appeals to his master to commute the sentence of slavery, and the king yields. When the debtor is departing from the manor, he encounters a fellow servant who owes him the equivalent of twenty bucks. This man pleads in the same way as the debtor had done, but the debtor is unforgiving, chokes him, and throws the other man in prison. When the other servants witness this, they report the debtor's actions to the master, who orders the debtor to be handed over to the torturers until he repays his debt in full. As usual, the parable refers the divine consequences of human interactions. Then, Jesus caps his parable by saying, "My heavenly father will do this to you, if each one of you does not have mercy on your brother from your hearts." (Personal translation, from the Vulgate).



This parable could be applied to certain recent events, and almost certainly has, but that's not my interest here. When I was in Confirmation Class (which I took very seriously, unlike some of my fellow students), we had to memorize, understand, and paraphrase the Our Father, Nicene Creed, and various instruments of faith of the Episcopal Church to the best of our ability. In the process of studying the Our Father, I had an insight which was deep for my early teenage psyche: "forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive the trespasses of others". This segment of the Our Father was not a statement of desire for the Heavenly Father, nor a straightforward request for sustenance, be it material or spiritual; rather, it required explicit action on the part of individuals. It was the first time I understood my individual role as a member of the body of Christ. I also think that this act of human forgiveness, and the difficulty which many people experience in doing it, drives home what an incredible deal Christians have received.



It's worth noting that the language of the Our Father does not deny the seriousness of the trespasses; "forgiveness" in secular parlance has come to mean, in certain times and places, a diminution of the gravity of the offense, or even pretending the offense never occurred. If that is the way someone understands "forgiveness", it is small wonder they are loathe to forgive! Christians who are unable to forgive the peccadilloes of their fellow men, while accepting divine forgiveness for themselves, are worse than Pharisees, although the attitude is similar; at least the Pharisees placed the same (absolute) price on their sins as the same sins of the Judaean peasants. The other reason, I suspect, that this phrase receives such prominence, is that the Christian who cannot forgive others out of love also cannot understand the greater love which prompts God to forgive him.

That's my testimony and understanding. Feel free to elucidate, critique, dispute, as long as it's civil.</sup>

Movie Review: The City of Ember

On Thursday night, I watched The City of Ember, based on the book of the same name by Jeanne DuPrau. I have long held a love of post-apocalyptic movies which do not involve leatherdaddies and large amounts of hairspray, ever since I read John Christopher's The White Mountains and The Sword of the Spirit trilogies, or perhaps it was early exposure to Spartacus and the Sun Beneath the Sea. I will confess, I have not read the book, which is contrary to my usual movie-watching policy.

At first, I wasn't sure the DVD was working properly, because this is the only movie I've seen with so many scenes in the pitch black that don't involve people dying horribly. The architectural geography of the actual city of Ember triggered some visual memories in me, which I could not identify until I checked the next day and realized the author was French; I had been reminded of the more nightmarish architecture of The City of Lost Children. The leads of the film were well-cast, although the dim lighting (for once justified by plot relevance) made reading their faces difficult at times. Some other reviews have faulted the film for a lack of action; while the sacrifice of certain scenes from the book appear to have reduced the action quotient, I was pleased to watch a film where the intelligence and mystery-solving sections of the book were not sacrificed for action scenes. Enough confrontations occur in the dark or dim already!

The mole and the giant mutant beetle were absurd (although moles are indeed creepy, if you look closely at them), and how everybody in these underground cities avoids rickets baffles me. I assume dwarves in fantasy books have a racial immunity. The Assignment Day, although it is common for such survivalist dystopias, seems slightly ridiculous in its system of random assignments. Lois Lowry's The Giver, which I re-read today (yes, the whole thing) in order to have some points of comparison, contains speeches that indicate careful thought on the matter of individual assignments; perhaps the book The City of Ember contains such scenes which were cut from the movie.

I thoroughly enjoyed the movie, but the location of Ember is the draw, so perhaps it's not so bad that there will be no movie sequels.

Birthday Float

This year, my birthday fell on a Wednesday. For most people, this would be an inauspicious time, but I had submitted payroll the day before, and had taken care of the imminent bills, so it seemed a good time to enjoy myself. The weather was less than optimal, despite previously glorious days, so I suspect my dear cousin Zachary or his lovely girlfriend brought the chilly weather with them. My original plan was a boat trip on the lake, since Katie had never visited Lake Tahoe, but that plan hit several logistical logs, so I chose to float down the Truckee River instead. I led my party to the wrong side of the river, where once long ago there was a launching point, so we had to return to the northern bank. The river seemed crowded, although it must be even more so on holidays such as the 4th. The boats on the river contained the expected mix of families and drunken yahoos. I had forgotten how far downstream the River Ranch was, if your craft is drifting glacially. The river was higher than I had anticipated, so many of the shallow parts, which in past years had provided me with formidable obstacles, were drowned. The point of such a trip is relaxation, so relatively little occurred that is worth noting. As we were emerging from the downstream side of one of the wooden bridges that spans the Truckee, two juvenile delinquents dumped a bucket of slightly rancid water on our items stored in the stern of the boat, as well as Zachary. Zachary grabbed the nearest projectiles at hand and hurled them at the brats; he hit both of them, but no adults were nearby, so it's doubtful they learned a lesson.

After we had finished our float, we went to the Blue Agave for a late lunch and a margarita pitcher.

The Dog That Came In From The Road

I shall not speak of work today, not because of privacy issues, but because little of interest occurred in the workplace. When Dad and I had stopped at the Dollar Hill 7-11, he for certain unmentionables, I for a coffee that I might proceed straightway to the tasks at hand (namely payroll) once I had arrived at the office, a Husky, big, shaggy, and silent, wandered into the store and casually inspected his surroundings and lay down. We marvelled at this, but the clerk seemed non-chalant. It turned out that the dog was more the store dog than the companion of any particular employee. Such behavior seems to be in the nature of Huskies, who prefer to roam at will and are large enough to spare their owners worry over bear encounters. I heard a tale recently, in which a female Husky left her house each morning, walked north to meet up with her "boyfriends", went south again past her house, and returned when evening was nigh. I suppose each breed has its own predilections.

Saturday Morning Hike

On Saturday morning I went on a hike in Meeks Bay with my brother and Olive, his 7-month-old half-lab, half-heeler. Dad and I had tried to reach the first stream of the trail earlier this summer before his feet gave out, and it's a trail we know well from taking the late springer spaniel along it - he, of course, found the destination incredibly exciting. Olive, however, had not yet grasped the idea of an outdoor activity which did not involve throwing anything, so she bounced along the trail, stopping only to stare at us with genial confusion - this behavior explains, if not excuses, the lack of pictures with this post. When strangers were near, she displayed the peculiar attitude of youngsters, in which bravery extends to a point just before the moment contact. When we reached the stream, which was low from summer evaporation, Olive was more interested in splashing than drinking.

The Meeks Bay trail lies between a waterlogged meadow on the left and a series of stony ridges on the right, leading up to the aptly named Desolation Wilderness. The meadow is a favorite spot for bears seeking berries. On either side of the trail grew clusters of wildflowers, purple and white and blue and yellow, but the soil is not fertile, since it is primarily composed of granite sand, and the clusters were farly widely spaced. Most of the water which finds its way into the valley comes from a cluster of lakes high above, descending via the stream which was our destination.

Recent Reading: Finding Oz

When I was a child, I read with avidity the Oz books; when I was in college, I read some excellent fiction on the meaning of the Oz books (inevitably, one of them imposed a heavy nad anachronistic homosexual content) and even found some of the non-Oz materials penned by L. Frank Baum (the less said about Alan Moore's Lost Girls, the better) but until recently I had never read a biography of Baum which explored the possible sources from his personal life which may have contributed to the elements in the Wizard of Oz. Schwartz approaches Baum's life as a story itself - an appropriate choice given the way Baum himself understood life - but also elucidates Baum's connections to radical feminism, Theosophism, oil monopolies, snake oil salesmanship, manifest destiny and Native American genocide. Some of these themes appear only in the book, whereas other reminders of Baum's life appear only in the movie. And for the record, I have never found the "all a dream" ending of the movie satisfying. After I had finished the book, I understood the nineteenth-century context and the personal drive of the author of the great American fairytale.

Berchakap di-kelantan

(I apologize for any errors - feel free to correct me)
Hari satu saya berjalan kapal terbang ka-Kentucky di-negeri USA tempat saya berchakap di-sini bahasa Latin chuma sahaja dengan banyak pengajar dari kampong2. Rupa-nya hari di-sini benar panas. Dudok saya sekalian di-rumah tempat dudok musim sekolah orang murid. Orang perempuan kelantan berchakap benar chantek!

Royaneh 2009

I went up to Royaneh on Wednesday of the first week (Troop 14 spends two weeks at camp). The heat and dust were still familiar. The camp programme now included many new badges, most of which do not have the activity level of traditional “camp” badges - Entrepeneurship, Salesmanship, and Theater were among these. Fourteeners who remember about candy and soda probably realize that some boys already understand Entrepeneurship quite well! The new Trading Post is spacious and has a deck which is eminently suitable for loitering.

On Thursday, the night was bitterly cold, which was either unfortunate or character-building, depending on whether you were a Scout in the Wilderness Survival class or a proponent of the tough-it-out school. It was also skit night, and the troop used one of the skits from Wednesday‘s campfire. Its dark humor worked slightly better in the more intimate setting of Pioneers (the site where the troop stays while at camp) than in the Ralph W Benson Amphitheater.


On Friday, there were the usual panics about unfinished badges, exacerbated by sloth and estival distraction. Some were agape at the notion that Bruce and I required some level of evidence before signing notes. The most notable thing, however, occurred at the Friday (camp-wide) campfire. When the camp staff began to wheel Jumbo on stage, the big screen on which the photos of the week’s activities are projected, they dropped it, and then in the process of fixing it, they dropped poor Jumbo again. the slide show occurred, but I credit its barely perceptible haste to the time lost through Jumbo’s failure to fly.


The breakfast of the first Saturday is always slightly odd, since the camp staff is bidding adieu to the Scouts, even though our troop does not leave. I was rather surprised that our camp task was not to clean Big Egypt, since that’s a favorite task to assign to Troop 14. Big Egypt is the shower house/bathroom between the dining hall and Pioneers, which earned its moniker because the old Big Egypt before its reconstruction once had a trough called the Little Nile - I shall be silent on the composition of that river. The troop split into rough age cohorts: the older Scouts went to the JLT (Junior Leadership Training), while the younger Scouts descended to the parade field to practice Colors. After a game of football to shed some excess energy, the younger group marched up to Scanlon Ridge, where they did some orienteering and the folly of claiming knowledge was shown quite dramatically. A group of Scouts later went down to Roman Plunge (aka the old Canoe Base) for an old-fashioned swim. I am told that there was a Siren from the camp staff down there. Then came the inevitable game of Capture the Flag. The campfire started late, so both I and another were cut from the program, and the Sherlock Holmes never even entered into consideration - it would be nice to find something equally engaging, but slightly shorter.


On Sunday, the Scouts signed up for merit badges and went on cairn hikes. The opening camp campfire (which I had not seen the previous Sunday) had undergone improvements and revisions.


On Monday, the day was unexceptional, and the troop campfire started late, as usual for this session, but the performances therein were superb. The quality of the skits was erratic, but the musical offerings by patrol members were excellent. I’m not sure the contents of House of the Rising Sun are appropriate for a Scout campfire, but the execution was nearly perfect.
I left on Tuesday.

An Attempt At Malay Composition

Saya dudok di-rumah yang besar di-tepi mata ayer yang besar lagi tawar(1) nama-nya Tahoe. Dia di-antara gunong Sierra Nevada. Rumah di-atas kebun senang (2) tempat saya lari ka-sana ka-mana masa saya budak. Dahulu lari, sekarang ta’ senang. Kerja di-negeri nama-nya Tahoe City. Sa-malam keluar dengan bapa ka-pekan ka-kedai tempat beli makan minum (3) beli buah pisang roti sa-keping sa-peti susu. Sudah pulang rumah, simpan.
(1) “lake”- “big freshwater spring” is the closest I could do
(2) “vacation resort”
(3) “grocery store” – ‘pasar’ seemed too broad.

Sic Semper Tyrannis (No, I Don’t Know How To Say It In Korean)

I have been following with the interest the events of the tense succession crisis in North Korea. Kim Jong Il, “the Dear Leader”, has appointed his younger son, Kim Jong Un, as “the Brilliant Comrade”, passing over the elder son, whose name I do not recall seeing. I do know, however, that there is speculation that the elder son was passed over for the dubious honor of leadership of North Korea because he attempted to enter Japanese Disneyland with a fake passport. Such disgraceful behavior is reminiscent of the Athenian suitor for the daughter of the tyrant in Corinth, who drunkenly danced away his chance at her hand and then brazenly claimed he had no regrets. Kim Jong Un’s title as “Comrade”, rather than “Leader”, does not have a precedent in the previous transfer of power; in that case, the government announced the change without any previous suggestion of the ailing health or recent demise of “the Great Leader”. The elevation of “Comrade” to the meaning of “Crown Prince” (the final blow to a title founded in radical egalitarianism) suggests that the Dear Leader is still alive, but incapacitated. How much true power the Brilliant Comrade will wield if and when he becomes the Brilliant Leader is a vexing question, in light of the nuclear tests and the characteristics of the third generations of Kim tyrants. I should pause to explain that my Classical training has taught me to use “tyrant” as a technical political term (rather than a near generic term of political abuse), which indicates a “bad” monarchy, one which has no cultural or historical legitimacy in the country in which it establishes itself. In general, the Greek tyrannies began with an ambitious man who rallied his countrymen under the banner of improving their condition, who overthrew the current government, and who (if fortunate enough to avoid assassination) passed his rule onto his son. Most Greek tyrannies collapsed in the second generation; those which survived did so because they had transformed into pseudo-monarchies. These states remained pseudo-monarchies because they lacked the clear line of succession which (most) monarchies possessed. The third generation was the last for the tyrannical dynasties. Even the Syracusan tyranny, which approached most closely the ideal of monarchy, fell in the third generation, only to be re-established about a century later, and those latter tyrants claimed a descent from the former in imitation of monarchy.


The presence of two brothers in the rising generation is not reassuring. Even in monarchies which had a clear succession, there was often much tension between the Crown Prince and his younger brothers, such as the sons of William the Conqueror, or the Emperor Vespasian; in monarchies which lacked this tradition, such as the Ottoman Empire and the empire of the Mongol Horde, fratricide was a common occurance. A few occurances of happy balance have existed, such as the harmony between Emperor Charles V and his brother, but for the most part history and legend record conflicts such as that of Romulus and Remus, Caracalla and Geta, and the sons of Solomon, allegedly the “wisest” king of all history. Even if the brothers themselves do not seek to quarrel, the internal parties of the state (and they always exist) now have the opportunity to support their own candidate and undermine that of their rival, whereas a lone son can be a puppet in equal measure, but does not provide the same opportunity.


In this age, inimical to the establishment of new pseudo-monarchies and not exactly friendly to the existing established monarchies, I would not expect that the Kim tyranny will survive a third generation. How much the eventual collapse will damage the world, given North Korea’s posturing, remains to be seen.

Canoe Training 2009

On Saturday, June 7, the troop went on its annual Canoe Training outing. This was a single day outing, unlike previous years.. Originally, we had been scheduled to go on the Canoe Training this weekend, and the Whitewater Trip earlier, which everybody loves, but sufficient volume at Cash Creek is dependent on the release of water from Clear Lake, and that release is dependent on the irrigation schedule of the Valley; apparently the water flow of California is entirely artificial (Charlie Johnck, hydrologist, might be able to enlighten me). After a great deal of schedule changes, including the cancellation of the earlier date due to rain, we ended up back on the original date, but we could only get one day. I will say, however, that the ranger at Tam-O-Rancho is a lot more personable than the old ranger at Royaneh.


We had no staff, so The World’s Best Patrol Leader (I can’t use real names, obviously) took point and sent two Scouts up the (unconventional) trail to scout - unfortunately, at one of the young men had a rather impulsive character and neither returned in a timely fashion. The troop went down to the lake by the usual way and found the “scouts” already there. This lake is small and artificial, created by an permanent earthen dam. There were more weeds than usual, part of which we removed my by hand.


The dock was on the far side of the lake; its square components were tied together in a straight line, with the exception of the final one, whose placement on the side provided a larger platform on which to take the first step from the bank. Some of the older guys marched counter-clockwise along the banks of the lake in order to paddle the dock across. At first, the boys made headway, but it became clear that something was restraining the rather awkwardly shaped dock-boat. It was clear also that the crew of this “craft” was not composed of crew members. Eventually, the anchor was located, although half sank when a certain person detached it. The new placement of the dock almost blocked the shallow basin from the deeper part of the lake.


Once the set up had been completed, the Old Man administered the swim tests and deliberately if not maliciously mangled some names, while I climbed into the lookout post. Only one boy expressed reluctance, and fortunately he tried and won in the end; to spend the entire day on the shore while all the other boys were in the canoes would be extremely boring and frustrating!


Although I had to do paperwork for the Court of Honor (is it that hard to mark down who is present?), an enlightening experience in distinguishing Goofuses and Gallants and the inconvenience of senary percentages, the boys were busy on the lake. The halving (or greater) of the time for practicing strokes and steering diminished the final competence of the candidates for the merit badge. A significant winnowing factor, as usual, was the swamping and righting of a canoe. It is remarkably difficult to swamp your own canoe deliberately (probably a self-preservation trait), but once you achieve the intentional sabotage, the operation of righting the craft presents grave difficulties. There is no support form below, so the only power comes from sufficient upper body strength, which is an absolute division: either it is enough, or it is not. Many Fourteeners have failed in their first year of Canoe Training, only to succeed in the second.


Since all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, there was a half-hour of free time on the water, during which it seemed that half the canoes were sunk (this doesn’t mean they went to the bottom of the lake, since they were still buoyant). The troop dads provided a feast of grilled hot dogs and chips, in addition to largely ignored fruit) before we changed and marched back to the cars.

Aphaeresis and (Co-)Efficients

As Mr. Hawkins and the lovely Misses Tew and Ung are aware, I have been attempting to learn some Malay. The initial chapters presented no serious difficulties beyond those which any language book for beginners contain, but two features of the language struck me once I had reached Chapter V. The first, and lesser, of these features is the occasional, and occasionally rather extreme, aphaeresis of words beginning with a schwa or h and a schwa when the previous word ends in a vowel. Elision is the disappearance of a vowel before a following word which begins with a vowel; aphaeresis is the opposite effect. The reduction of hendak to ‘nak and helai to lai after a final vowel is understandable, since the schwa is never the stressed syllable in a two-syllable Malay word, and I presume that the occasional example of (pseudo-)aphaeresis before a final consonant is the result of linguistic analogy. The alternate forms present a minor difficulty to the learners who has not digested the full vocabulary and its linguistic isotopes, but the very preface of my book warns that Malay is not a book language at heart.

If I may digress for a moment to engage in linguistic geekery, the production of ’nak rather than *’ndak from the aphaeresis of hendak should not surprise; the pre-nasalized voiced plosive nd seems to require in Malay an epenthetic schwa in order to be pronounced; thus the elimination of that schwa requires a reduction of the pre-nasalized voiced plosive to either a (voiced) nasal, n, or a voiced plosive, d. Languages, such as Welsh, which face this question, appear to favor the nasal.

The other feature of Malay which struck me was the use of classifiers, which the author of my little blue-and-yellow book chooses to call coefficients. I am familiar with the concept, since Chinese possesses ‘classifiers’ and (Ancient) Middle Egyptian uses a similar system. Chinese places a classifier, which limits the possible meanings of the following monosyllabic or disyllabic word, between the numeral and the head word. Thus, the words for ‘deer’ and ‘road’, which are homonyms, are distinguished in speech by their respective classifiers. Middle Egyptian uses classifiers in the opposite way; since hieroglyphic writing only provides the consonants and omits the semantic content of the vowels, the homonyms are a visual kind (I would greatly appreciate it if anybody could provide me with the appropriate word for this phenomenon) and the scribes distinguished the senses by adding a visible but silent classifier. My experience with these languages aided me in understanding the concept of classifiers or co-efficients in Malay, but this conceptual knowledge is less useful than I would like in the practical application, especially since no dictionary of a language which uses classifiers seems to indicate the appropriate one(s) in their entries. This may be a practice akin to languages which use stress not marking this in their dictionary entries. An additional difficulty which I am experiencing in learning Malay is determining when to use a classifier and when to refrain. I trust that practice will give me a better sense of the presence or absence of this feature, although any practical advice would be received with gratitude.

A Little Malay Composition

Sahaya beli chawan kopi di-kedai Vicki terlebeh dahulu dari pada sahaya masok pejabat sahaya dengan adek laki-laki sahaya. Robb dengan Trisha suka minum kopi-kah?

Ada kapada adek laki-laki sahaya dua ekor anjing. Ada anjing jantun tinggi yang besar. Dia lari ka-sana ka-mari di-antara pokok kayu hutan gunong Sierra Nevada. Ada anak anjing betina yang hitam.

Candlelight Concert for the Secours

On Monday, May 31st, I attended a Candlelight Concert celebrating the music ministry of Michael and Catherine Secour. Mrs. Secour was my instructor in the Children’s Choir when I was growing up in the (Episcopal, not Catholic) parish of St Mary the Virgin, and Mr. Secour was my instructor for the Youth Choir until my voice broke unseasonably early. The attendance for this musical festschrift was overwhelming, and underscored how much the ministry of the Secours had meant to so many people.


The program opened with an adaptation of Our Church’s One Foundation adapted for the 10th anniversary of the Secours’ ministry, thirteen years ago. I always experience mixed feelings about adaptations. The change of words to beloved hymns in order to reflect a secular occasion could be seen to violate propriety, yet such changes often indicate affection for the tune as well as the addressee. The tradition of applying new words to a well-known tune is an ancient tradition, whose use ranges from the cheekily disrespectful Carmina Burana (literally, “beer songs”) to the anti-Arian cathedral sit-in of St Ambrose. The third song was a similar adaptation of Psalm 95.


The song between these two was Tomorrow shall be my Dancing Day, sung by the Youth and Adult Choirs. It is a pleasant enough carol, but its rhythm seems a bit jerky and disjointed to me. This slight discomfort perhaps stems from my aural training in modern music, which favors a smoother melody, but it is also possible that this carol was composed with dancing in mind.
The fourth song was an anthem sung by the Children’s Choir. Whenever the Children’s Choir sings, the words are few and repeated many times. It would be an error to overwhelm the wee babes who compose the Children’s Choir with unnecessary complexities, but one of the advantages of this method (and here I speak as an alumnus) is the increase in memorization skills which a short melody with simple lyrics provide.


The fifth song was For the Beauty of the Earth, sung by the Youth and Adult Choirs. This is my favorite piece out of all that I have sung or heard at St Mary’s, and the one which traditionally Mr. Secour drafted the Thanksgiving returnees to sing - I do hope that whoever replaces him maintains that tradition! Much of what I feel in my heart about this song is ineffable - I genuinely mean this - and so this description is much shorter than one might expect for a song I hold in such affection.


The sixth song was Britten’s Festival Te Deum, with which I am not familiar. The performance was beautiful, but did not pull anything from the wellspring of my memory. UI should mention, however, that Margaret fille was the soloist.


The seventh song was ’Tis a Gift to be Simple, sung by the Children’s Choir. It was considerably more complex than most of the piece which they perform; the Shaker composers, however, were brilliant in their composition because they remembered the plebeian origin of singing and eschewed the complexity which so bewilders and intimidates many who wish to sing for joy rather than jingling coins. This song was a favorite when I attended “hymn-sing” at Cathedral School for Boys. “Hymn-sing” is a topic I may address in a later post.


The eighth song was Pie Jesu from Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s Requiem, which the Youth and Adult Choirs sung; the soloists were Margaret fille and Laura Secour. I have a hard time associating the producer of Cats and the Phantom of the Opera with the composition of a religious work. The ninth song also came from Requiem, and what impressed me most about that performance is how a skilled composer can take lyrics of only a few lines and stretch them over a significant period without dulling their impact by repetition.


The tenth song was Duet from Bach’s Cantata 78, sung by the Youth Choir and the Altos of the Adult Choir, which I half-remembered singing, although it seems likely that I sang it in English - my memory could be faulty here. The performance in case, however, was in German. Memorization of foreign lyrics is significantly harder than memorization of foreign speech, so a successful performance in a foreign language gives me much pleasure.


The eleventh and twelfth songs, both of which the Adult Choir sang, were, respectively, Bairstow’s I sat down under his shadow and Brahms’ How lovely are thy dwellings from A German Requiem, although the language of the latter was English rather than German. Neither of these selections was well-known to me. The final song was a hymn, Ye Holy Angels Bright, (allegedly) sung by everyone, although the Secours had chosen it.


The reception was so crowded that one could barely move and the ambient heat of the room was noticeable if someone were observant. The most notable event for me, however, was the boy who came up to me and introduced himself to me as the boy who had visited the troop the previous week and been so taken with it that he now has plans for joining the troop and coming to summer camp - the world in which I grew up is small and extremely interconnected.

The Third (Phrase About the Son of) Man

This morning, I attended church at Saint James Episcopal for the first time in quite some time. My absence on previous Sabbaths had not been out of sloth, but for various unavoidable causes; it seemed wise, nonetheless, during the life changes, that I assure the congregation that my absence in the next few months did not imply any lack of devotion to the institution.

I was listening to the service, I reached a revelation about something that has irked me for a long time, and irked me more than the sudden onset of scratchy throat this morning right before the first hymn began. The church at which I grew up, Saint Mary the Virgin Episcopal, which is neither Catholic nor attached to its neighboring building, Saint Vincent de Paul, used the following text during Eucharist: "Christ has died; Christ is risen; Christ will come again". My current church, on the other hand (in addition to many other modifications of the liturgy), uses this: "Christ has died; Christ is risen; Christ is with us all". I have been meaning for years to ask one of the clergy about this change, but I always forget; now, however, I think that I understand.

It seems to me that the change in the third phrase stems from the ignorance of the masses of grammatical distinction that are subtle yet useful and an attendant miscomprehension of the intended theology of this part of the liturgy. The first phrase is indisputable among Christians (unless you happen to be some sort of neo-Docetist
- http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05070c.htm ),
but the difficulty arises (pun intended) in the English speakers' comprehension of the second phrase: "Christ is risen". Modern English congregants doubtless consider this a simple past, even if the phrase uses the dreaded passive. A speaker of Romance tongue, however, might analyze this phrase differently by distinguishing between "Christ has risen" and "Christ is risen". The former is the description of a past action without any necessary inference about the present, but the latter is the description of a present state dependent on a past action. The distinction between these two concepts largely determines the choice of "avoir" ("to have") or "etre" ("to be") as the complementary verb with a composite perfect in French; even in Latin, where the form of the two concepts is identical, a careful writer who wishes to make the distinction would use distinct "primary sequence" or "secondary sequence" for the verbal forms which follow in the subordinate clause.

Since "Christ is risen" is a description of a present state dependent on a past action, the tripartite temporal symmetry of the statement remains, and past, present, and future each recieve a sentence which they can call their own. "Christ is risen" is a statement about the present, not the past; the risen Christ has present power. The elimination within the English language of the distinction between the "avoir" and "etre" forms has prevented the less grammatically aware congregants from understanding this distinction, and the text comes to lack a Christological statement about the present. I cannot fault anybody for finding this lack unsatisfactory, especially on this day of Pentecost, because the essence of the Christian faith, as I see it, is the not the hope of future salvation, but the presence of Christ in this world right now through the members of his body. The replacement of "Christ is risen" with "Christ is with us all" places the weight of two-thirds of the tripartite division of time (present and future) upon one-third of the weakened tricolon; that one-third, moreover, deprives the statement of its element of future hope, and introduces a participatory element that the first two sentences, as well as the original third, lack. The orignal statement was explicitly and solely Christ-centered, and the results of the statement for believers implicit.

Parks and Propositions

On Thursday, there was an article in the Chronicle (which I still read in the old way, in a café with a coffee) which said that the continuing state budget crisis might force many of the state parks to close their gates. The connection of this unprecedented action with the abject failure of the propositions on the recent ballot is clear enough, but these closures would cripple the outdoor activities of many Scout troops and districts.

On the one hand, I understand why the park service needs money, but I have learned the history of propositions in California and no longer can regard their current use as a substitute for responsible government action as acceptable or worthy of my support. The propositions and initiatives, as originally conceived, were an emergency measure for times of crisis, and had they remained restricted to such times, their use in the current crisis would conscionable. The transformation of the proposition and the initiative into substitutes for governance has not only allowed the government in Sacramento to evade responsibility, but also deprived Californians of a valuable tool by dulling the blade so that the axe is useless when it is most needed. In nineteenth century Portugal, one of the factors in the stall of the national economy (other than the exponential imbecility of the monarchy - read Royal Babylon: The Alarming History of European Royalty for more information) was the cumulative effect of pious gifts to the church; a third of the land in the entire country was the property of the church, the world’s longest-lived legal person . A similar process happens when pressure groups incite well-meaning citizens to vote for propositions and initiatives that create mandatory uses and set-asides; the individual propositions may or may not add up to an extensive sum, but the cumulative effect is to diminish steadily the amount of flexibility that the state government can practice.

The more immediate effect the closure would have on my way of life would be the sudden and catastrophic deprivation of camping and hiking sites for Troop 14 (my troop) and other troops around the Bay Area. I am sure that we will find new venues or new activities if the closure should happen, but the focus within Troop 14 on camping and hiking (since some troops have a different focus, and I do not presume to know the activities of all other troops in the Bay Area) makes it an area of particular concern.

The effects of closing the parks would be in the main undesirable. Modern buildings, unlike the sturdy stone structures of my academic background, are not designed to weather well without maintenance, and many years of repairing the troop’s traditional campsite at summer camp has taught me that it is more expensive to repair delayed maintenance than to maintain the structure in a regular manner. The population of the parks, too, would change. The absence of both rangers and visitors would encourage an influx of homeless (which might not be altogether bad, if they consumed some of the ubiquitous mule deer and provided a predatory niche whose lack has encouraged the explosive overpopulation) and pot-growers. I should be clear here: my concern in this essay is not the legality or legitimacy of the weed farmers, but rather the displacement of the native flora. I may blog on my thoughts on homeless and potheads on a separate occasion.

I find it exceedingly difficult to write conclusions, and this is my blog, so I feel no obligation to do so.

Malay Exercises 8-9

Ex. 8
1. Rendah tembok puteh itu The white wall is low.
2. Meja panjang itu rendah The long table is low.
3. Bilek itu kechil The room is small
4. Rumah ini tinggi The house is high
5. Bakul hijau itu kosong The green basket is empty
6. Manis buah merah itu The red fruit is sweet
7. Panjang-lah tali itu The rope is long
8. Buku hitam itu besar The black book is big.
9. Daun kechil itu hijau The small leaves are green.
10. Kosong mangkok ini The cup is empty.
11. Bakul yang besar lagi elok A large fine basket
12. Bakul besar itu elok The large basket is fine

Ex. 9
1. The tall house is large Besar rumah tinggi itu.
2. Green fruit is sour. Masam buah hijau
3. Small green leaves Daun hijau lagi kechil
4. The black book is small. Buku hitam itu kechil.
5. A large clean courtyard Halaman yang besar lagi berseh
6. The blue flowers are pretty. Bunga biru itu chantek
7. The long string is white. Tali panjang itu puteh.
8. The white cup is small Mangkok puteh itu kechil
9. The houses were small and low. Rumah itu kechil lagi rendah.
10. Small low houses rumah kechil yang rendah
11. A long thin hand Tangan panjang yang lengan
12. This cord is blue. Biru-lah tali ini

Malay Exercises 4-7

Ex. 4
1. Tulang panjang long bones
2. Kerusi tinggi a high chair
3. Mangkok puteh a white bowl
4. Bilek kotor a dirty room
5. Halaman besar a big courtyard
6. Piring berseh a clean platter
7. Sekolah kechil (“kechik“) a small school
8. Hidong panjang a long nose
9. Suara lembut a soft voice
10. Rambut hitam black hair
11. Bibir merah red lips
12. Buah masam sour fruit
13. Bumbong tinggi a high roof
14. Tembok rendah a low wall
15. Daun hijau green leaves
16. Bunga biru a blue flower
17. Gambar elok a beautiful picture
18. Leher panjang a long neck
19. Muka chantek a pretty face
20. Dahi tinggi a high brow
21. Tangan kotor dirty hands
22. Papan hitam a black board
23. Mangkok kechil a small bowl
24. Kuku pendek a short nail
25. Bakul penoh a full basket
26. Kayu hitam black wood
27. Pinggan puteh a full plate - a white plate
28. Janggut panjang a long beard
29. Lantai hijau a green floor
30. Chawan merah a red tea-cup
31. Buku ini this is a book
32. Rumah kosong an empty house
33. Meja ini this table
34. Kulit itu that hide
35. Papan itu that hand - plank

Ex. 5
1. A white plank papan puteh
2. Empty bowls mangkok kosong
3. White hands papan puteh - tangan
4. Clean nails kuku berseh
5. A short cord tali pendek
6. Big baskets bakul besar
7. Hard wood kayu keras
8. A small picture gambar kechil
9. Large leaves daun besar
10. A clean school sekolah berseh
11. Large books buku besar
12. Blue plates pinggan hijau - biru
13. A short beard janggut pendek
14. Green fruit buah hijau
15. Clean floors. lantai berseh
16. High walls tembok tinggi
17. Long roofs bumbong panjang
18. White planks papan puteh
19. A high house rumah tinggi
20. A large rock batu besar
21. Sweet fruit buah manis
22. Pretty flowers bunga chantek
23. A thin arm lengan kurus
24. Low benches bangku rendah
25. Fat cheeks pipi gemok
26. Small rooms bilek kechil
27. Empty baskets bakul penoh - kosong
28. Dirty floors lantai kotor
29. A small mouth mulut kechil
30. A red bowl mangkok merah
31. This face muka ini
32. Those faces muka itu
33. That head kepala itu
34. These tables meja itu
35. Those eyes mata itu
Ex. 6
1. Bangku tinggi high benches
2. Rendah tembok itu That wall is high
3. Kotor-lah bilek ini The room is dirty
4. Sekolah besar a large school, the school is large
5. Rumah kechil a small house, the house is small
6. Berseh rumah itu The house is clean
7. Panjang-lah tali ini The cord is long, this is a long cord
8. Bunga chantek pretty flowers, the flowers are pretty
9. Mulut besar a big mouth, the mouth is big
10. Kotor pinggan itu the plate is dirty
11. Masam buah ini the fruit is sourt
12. Bumbong rendah low roof, the roof is low

Ex. 7
1. White flowers bunga puteh
2. The fruit is sour masam-lah buah itu
3. The roof is high bumbong tinggi
4. Fine houses rumah elok
5. The picture was large besar gambar itu
6. Dirty hands kotor tangan itu
7. The book is blue biru buku itu
8. A clean floor lantai berseh
9. The basket was empty kosong-lah bakul itu
10. A long arm lengan panjang
11. The chair is low rendah-lah bangku-itu
12. Red fruit buah merah

Phoenix Preserve

Recently I read this article
(http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090515/ap_on_re_as/as_indonesia_bird_beach_3)
on the maleo, a bird native to Sulawesi, which put me in mind of the mythical phoenix. The maleo is mostly black, but has prominent pink plumage, yellow facial skin, and red-orange beak color. Both of these colors would lend themselves to the idea of flame, especially in climes where the birds are generally less particolored than in tropic lands. Even the black back of the maleo could be attached to the idea of flame, by way of ash.


The female maleo lays her remarkably large egg in volcanic sand or soil and wanders off. This is not a species where a hen and her brood troop gamely through the forest! When the egg hatches, the young maleo is ready to fly and forage. A full-grown bird emerging from the hot sands would indeed appear to be self-generating. There's no particular association of the maleo with spices, such as the frankincense with which (according to Herodotus) the phoenix immolates himself, but spices came from a wide area of the ancient world, and I am not arguing that the legend of the phoenix reflects biology with full accuracy (see Pliny the Elder for particularly egregious examples). I am, however, convinced that reports of this remarkable bird contributed to the myth of the phoenix.

JROTC Spared?

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/05/12/BAH317IIES.DTL&feed=rss.bayarea

I certainly hope that Mr. Yee is right and that JROTC is spared. The sort of students who often sign up for this could use the discipline and collegiality a military program can provide. And if you are a kid from a broken home in a bad neighborhood, what's wrong with seeking a career in the military? My grandfather joined for the job. On the PE credit question, though, I can understand the hesitation. The amount of exercise in comparative military and civilian programs may be equivalent, but I do not know how the individual components compare. Any exercise, however, would be welcome, in the current obesity epidemic.

Good Turn 2009

This weekend, the troop traveled up to our summer camp to make repairs. Our usual ambition was curtailed by the lack of our resident volunteer contractor, since the council had moved the date of the activity well after the troop had worked out its own calendar. Although our troop started the tradition of the “Good Turn” as a practical and peculiar measure, the meme has flowered and spread. This is good for the camp, but does not seem so good for the ranger, whose burden, once relieved by the small scale effort, was restored unto him by its wider application. I accompanied the party which headed out to clear the fire road, a path which I find little time to walk when I serve at camp in the summer. It was a pleasant task, but fatal to much vegetation!


At the campfire, the quality was what I have come to expect, although I would value rehearsal and better acting over new material. The MC ran out of material early, and we received a drum recital. I was surprised that nobody had noticed that the Sherlock Holmes book was available, since those stories are always popular at camp. Sunday breakfast was fancier than I had anticipated, and the Scout’s Own as very short, but I admire the courage of the young man who shared his thoughts at the non-denominational “service”.

Egyptians and Astronauts

One of the blessings of living in San Francisco is the presumption of literacy, but the literacy which some possess is not what others would consider "respectable". My habit of studying Ancient Egyptian in public has highlighted this local characteristic. It would be presumptuous to expect that many citizens would display much archaeological acumen, but the sight of hieroglyphs seems to draw the "ancient astronaut" crowd.

My quarrel with this sort is not that extrahuman life exists, but that aliens must have helped the ancient civilizations, which afterwards deified them. The deification of illustrious or notorious humans as their deeds become increasingly remote from the present of the incipient worshipper has happened (the technical term is 'euhemerism'), most notably in Egypt, where the Pharaoh already possessed divine characteristics. The suggestion, however, that the Sumerians and the Egyptians received extraterrestrial aid denigrates the ingenuity of the men and women who lived at the dawn of civilization. The requirement of external help is a remnant of racial attitudes which are no longer acceptable,; since it would be impossible for non-white tribes to accomplish such mighty deeds unaided, but white aid is chronologically impossible, aliens must have helped the savages of yore.

Presentation of the aliens as a "more rational" explanation for the deeds of gods in whom no-one (including yours truly) believes is really a re-mythologizing and displacing in time those very gods. The shift from numinous or divine forces to extraterrestrial ones occurred in the late nineteenth century and early to mid-twentieth century, the very era when technological progress was replacing (and in some cases threatening) the theological establishment. The fundamental characteristics, however, of contemporary systems of human thought do not change instantly, and just as the sixteenth century reformers replaced a Papal absolutism with a Biblical one, so too the congregants of technology replaced the unknown, watching God of Heaven Above with new watchers who had superior technology rather than supernatural potency. The aliens may not demand incense and burnt sacrifice, but belief in them is no dfferent than belief in elves and brownies, and the aid the (allegedly) gave no more than a modern version of the myth of Prometheus, with the added satisfaction of confirming the superiority of modern man.

Book Review: The Know-It-All and A Year of Living Biblically

I fear I have delayed too long to remember sufficiently well the details of Jacobs' books, which I received as a present from my sister-in-law of recent vintage; nonetheless, I shall essay to convey my general impressions of both so that others might ascertain whether they would derive pleasure from their reading.

The first of the set, entitled The Know-It-All, details Mr. Jacobs' quest to read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica, an endeavor with which I can empathize, although I would prefer to pursue other avenues of knowledge. One of the victims of electronic cataloguing is the serendipitous juxtaposition of two sources which, if one inspected both, prove the have a wholly unanticipated and mutually enlightening effect; even a perusal of the encyclopedia can produce a mild form of this epiphany. One of the faults Jacobs developed this project was the unwanted and occasionally unwarranted intrusion of trivia in the flow of quotidian conversation, to which effect, I fear, I am not immune. His initial noxious habit, however, soon came under his control . Several of his acquaintances erroneously assumed that Jacobs' goal was the retention of of every entry in the Encyclopedia Britannica, but in truth it was more an experiment in non-prejudicial accumulation of knowledge, in which the reader must accept the system imposed by others. The result of the experiment are more profound than the substantial accumulation of knowledge, but I shall trust that the reader will discover so himself.

The second book, A Year of Living Biblically, in which Jacobs undertakes to love for a full year by following the Bible as literally as possible, caused more fundamental changes to Jacobs' character. The interval of this experiment was longer than a year, due to the preparations necessary to undertake the task. Jacobs chose to place emphasis on different commandments every day, although certain hazards prompted him to discreetly drop or minimize commandments liable to result in arrest or assault. He spent much time interviewing religious leaders of varying degrees and types of fundamentalism (for this category is not as monolithic as some would prefer to think), excepting those proximity might prove hazardous to a child of Abraham. His visit to the much-maligned snake-handling community was enlightening, although it seems that he failed to take into account the impossibility of experiment and Chistian experience. Ul;timately, he was transformed by his religious experiment \, which makes this book and its predecessor as close to novels as narratives based on blogs can approach.

Training for the Mister Babel Competition

My strength has always been languages, ancient or modern (although I did drop and run from the Russian orals), but it took me a while to formulate the most effective plan for acquiring new ones and resuscitating old ones. Ever since I went into business with Aidan, I've thought that I needed to learn Spanish as a business skill (he certainly won't), but was too preoccupied with amending my dearth of business courses.

When I was a little kid at Cathedral, I did learn some Spanish, albeit in a disorganized fashion, but when I received a choice, I chose to take French instead; in those days, not everywhere offered Chinese. I have forgotten much.

Some of you may have noticed my abortive attempts to jump start language acquisition. This was the case before I got a new public library card and discovered the foreign language CDs. I concede that these might not be the highest-rated programs, but I can't justify the expense of buying the more extensive programs such as Rosetta.

So here's the plan as it stands: I will learn to speak Spanish as a business skill, at a micro and macro business level. I will learn to speak Mandarin Chinese, because China is one of the big economies, and it might be useful in Berkeley and San Francisco. I have studied some Sanskrit, but learning Hindi, while potentially fun, is not a priority since Indians who are businessmen (no, teledrones don't count) already speak English, and frequently do so better than some of the riff-raff littering American cities. So what's language Number 3? That would be Russian - one of the sources of labor at Tahoe; last summer I surprised one of our Russian employees by spelling her name in Cyrillic! French, sadly, does not pass the expediency test, since I also need to review my Latin and Greek.

New Digs

I fear I may have confused some people at church today, so I wanted to avoid that situation in a broader context. I am moving to a cottage at Tahoe because my brother has moved to his new house with his wife, but it's a bit more complicated than that. Aidan and I own a property maintenance business at Tahoe: we provide maintenance and supply and manage the summer recreation staff for the homeowners' associations. On one of these properties is a cottage, in which one of the owners of the company may dwell. Aidan has been living there with Kacie, but they have bought a new house and moved into it; so now I am living there when I am at Tahoe - working. When I am in San Francisco, I will still be the smartest man at 8th Avenue.

Evie's Waltz: Come Already Down

Evie's Waltz, the newest play by Carter W. Lewis examines the intersection between the stresses of society and family. The dialogue is sharp and dark, and the final reveal is well-hidden, but its performance within sight of the Obama presidency somewhat tempers the bite it would have if there were more years of neo-conservative rule anticipated. An angle involving the dark secrets which the relentlessly chipper father holds is a cliché , but the jaded mother's response is refreshing and it does provide a red herring before the final reveal. The overall experience was intellectually stimulating, but perhaps the alumni reception which I had attended previously that afternoon was buoying my spirit too much for me descend to the level of grimness necessary to appreciate on an emotional level modern playwrights; perhaps I did not require catharsis. I heartily encourage all who have not seen Evie's Waltz to do so, but it would be prudent to avoid an excess of joy prior to the experience.

The Wordy Shipmates, by Sarah Vowell

I'd been meaning to read this book, and picked it up down in the Mission: my original goal had been to visit Borderlands Books, inspect the Abyssinians, and purchase a few really cheap old paperbacks (I don't care about bent spines), but Borderlands was closed for the day, or perhaps only lunch. So I proceeded farther south to Blue Dog Books and picked up a copy of this book.

The Wordy Shipmates represents a break from Vowell's usual genre, autobiographical adventures, although the research involved its share of driving around New England. The style, however, preserves her usual liveliness and sense of humor.

What struck me most about her description of the Puritans was the way in which their values were antithetical to contemporary American culture, and particularly conservative Christian culture. The Puritans were Calvinists, and thus believed in predestination, the doctrine which states that God has already decided whether who will rejoice in heaven and who will suffer eternal torments; what the individual does affects nothing, and a Christian follows the law of God because he (the Puritans were very male-oriented) loved God. Here is the knife in the wound: the individual does not know whether he is saved until he is hauled before the Great Judgement Seat, and it is more likely than he is already damned. Calvin himself doubted his salvation. Contemporary conservative Christians, by comparison, believe that believing in Jesus as Lord and Savior is the ticket to the Pearly Gates.

This assurance of salvation leads to the next contrast between Puritans and contemporary conservative Christians: the Puritans feared and distrusted personal revelation.; the behavior and decision-making process of our lame duck leader would be abhorrent to them. In contemporary conservative culture, however, personal revelation of the Lord's will is an acceptable practice. Puritan culture insisted that the leaders of the community interpret the will of the God for the whole.

The desire for assurance, however, found an outlet in signs and portents in every day life. Some contemporary Christians condemn reading the horoscope in the newspaper as condoning divination'; the Puritans could see the struggle between a snake and a mouse on the commons as an indicator of the future. This searching for security in public fora extended to individuals' public actions as well. A successful harvest confirmed God's favor on the individual - despite the cherished Calvinist doctrine of predestination. This equation of salvation with prosperity may have assuaged the fears of the prosperous, but it redoubled the doubts of those in dire economic straits, who already bore grave uncertainty of salvation. It is possible that the correlation of physical deprivation and spiritual damnation contributed to the capitalist character of American society. Compare this to the poor woman in southern Missouri who has virtually nothing but knows that she'll cross the Jordan when the chariot come to take her home.

The Puritan leaders, unlike much of contemporary America, valued the intellect, and wrote their own books since they had brought so few. The shunning of the intellect among contemporary conservative Christians would have appalled them, especially since they founded the two primary institutions of "elitist" education which the radio pundits so despise to educate the leaders of Puritan society. These institutions perforce included instructions in Greek and Latin, even though the latter was the language of the hated Antichrist, known to his followers as the Pope. The ridiculus mus process known as "dumbing down" was not an option for the Puritan preacher or statesmen.

That last distinction surprised me when I read it. The Puritans , despite their strong theological views, made a distinction between the church and the state and tried (with varying degrees of success ) to keep them separate. The difference between their view and that of Jefferson was that the Puritans were trying to keep the state from controlled the church, while Jefferson was trying to keep the church from controlling the state. The Puritan preachers were not allowed to hold political office, nor were the political office- holders allowed to be preachers; nor was this an empty distinction, although the impressive theological depth of any prominent Puritan leader placed them in good stead when arguing with the preacher. When Governor Winston lost the election to his rival, several men sheepishly admitted that their votes had been swayed by preacher John Cotton, an antagonist of Winston; thus it was not thought quite appropriate to vote according to pastoral decree.

Richmond Police Scandal

I was reading a link from a friend's homepage about the suspension and (alleged) quitting of a white Richmond police officer over a photo in which he was hugging a Klansman (in reality a Hispanic fellow officer) at a Halloween party. What bothers me most about this incident is that the party perceived to be at fault was the white officer alone, when both the Hispanic cop and the police department should also share the blame.

According to the article, Richmond has a relatively high level of racial tension. This alone suggests that the Hispanic cop's choice of costume reflected poor judgment, and a reputation for being liberal and wearing it ironically just compounds it. His membership in a minority group does not exempt him; perhaps he's not white, but it is always possible for a black man to take offense at a Klan outfit.

The police department also should not escape censure. The article mentioned that the colleagues of the Hispanic cop laughed at costume precisely because he was known (to them) to be liberal. This statement implies he was wearing his costume somewhere that could be construed as an official police area. Policemen are public officials in both senses of the term, and although some rules may flex when policemen are off-duty, the general public will percieve them as police officers even out of uniform, in the same way as religious leaders and teachers cannot divest themselves fully of their public role. A group of off-duty police officers, therefore, among whom one is dressed as a member of a well-known and instantly recognizable racist organization, appears to approve, or at least be tolerant towards racism, especially in a community with a mixture of races and a relatively high level of racial tension.

In short, the Hispanic cop should have shown better personal and professional judgment and the department should not have allowed him to wear this costume in a context in which many policemen were involved.

La Exploración para el Acontecimiento del Alimento

El sábado en la ocho menos cuarto fui a las escaleras en la esquina de Broadway y de Lyon para encontrar con a la Tropa Catorce para la primera parte de la Exploración para el Acontecimiento del Alimento. Los grupos fueron a sus vecindades en la nueve y cuarto, pero Bruce y yo permanecíamos en la esquina para supervisar progreso. En la onze cada uno volvió y terminamos el acontecimiento. El domingo, después de que hubiera atendido al servicio linguístico chino en San Jaime, en la tres de la tarde debo haberme encontrado con mi amigo para leer al Griego, pero ella era atrasada. La encontré en la tres y cinco de la tarde y leímos el primer libro del Iliad por una hora en un café en Clement.

Book review: Superdove: How the Pigeon Took Manhattan, Courtney Humphries

Book review: Superdove: How the Pigeon Took Manhattan … and the World, Courtney Humphries

Most of us think of the rock dove (aka the pigeon) as merely an urban pest, on par with rats and Woody Allen; this book fleshes out the history of the pigeon. In religion, the rock dove has fallen from the status of a divine bird in the walled cities of Sumer to the feathered equivalent of a noxious weed. Many factors contributed to this descent; including the careful word selection of the Bard and the decline of doves as a food source. The biological history of the rock dove involves an unusual course of domestication, in which the rock dove’s homing ability negated the need for secure pens and inderctly allowed them to survive better than other feral species. I don’t want to spoil any more of this book, insofar as science books have spoilers, so I will say this: reading Superdove has made me appreciate to a much greater degree this inevitable avian companion of mankind.

Afghan Exhibit, Asian Art Museum

Today, after Scouting for Food, during which the boys found a faster, more efficient way of covering the territory - good for them!), I went to the Asian Art Museum to see the Afghan treasures exhibit with my dad (who had been willing, available, and nearby when I had asked). We went by car, instead of by bus, as we had planned. At the front desk, we ran into Deb, Damon’s lovely wife, although this was not a surprise, as she works at the front desk. I waved at her. We headed to the Afghan exhibit. It was a smallish, visitor-friendly size. The first section of the exhibit demonstrated the synthesis of Greek and Indian sculptural traditions, with numerous examples of jewelry and figurines, much of it gold. The second section augmented these elements with glass drinking vessels and an ingenious mechanical device which created the illusion of fish swimming in a very shallow pool. The third section displayed the fragments of an ornate chair, complete with computer reconstruction of the object. The fourth section addressed the contents and occupants of a tomb of a rich nomad and his women. This section had by far the greatest quantity of gold jewelry.

The exhibit runs through January.

Book Review: A Handmaid's Tale

A Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood

I’d been meaning to read this for years, but was put off by ignoramuses who assumed that I couldn’t appreciate anything serious because I also read “fluffy” science fiction. Finally, it came up as a choice for my monthly book group. So I read it at last, although I don’t wholly regret the delay: nothing sucks the enjoyment of a novel like the autopsy of an English class, presuming that one has the capacity to enjoy literature.

A Handmaid’s Tale presents a fable rather than a straightforward future dystopia; the difference between the two is that a fable stretches the effect and obscures the details of the cause. The milieu of the novel is an extension and exaggeration of the policies of the Moral Majority, the evangelical conversative movement of the 1980’s. The protagonist is Offred, the eponymous “handmaid”, a survivor from the previous regime. Both the current society and the past one are exaggerations, to an extent that would be comic in another setting. I am uncertain, however, how much Offred’s perception of the past society has been contaminated by her present circumstances. These present circumstances consist of an oppressive patriarchy in a world,(or at least the “Republic of Gilead”) rendered increasingly sterile by chemicals and radiation, in which the remaining potentially fertile women serve as “handmaids” to the wives of Commanders, a structure borrowed from the Book of Genesis. Perhaps the effect was more chilling at the time, or perhaps it is more dependant on gender than such dystopian classics as 1984 and A Clockwork Orange, but I did not receive quite the same level of oppressive fear as I did from those works; it still reaches impressive levels of oppression. There are elements, such as the color coding explicitly outlined in the beginning of the book, which could have benefited from expansion. The penultimate chapter was suitably Orwellian, and the last chapter drew more inspiration from the twenty-first chapter of A Clockwork Orange. The last chapter of A Handmaid’s Tale feels forced, even though the collapse of the Republic of Gilead is implicit in the other chapters.

Saturday At the Legion

Although I was greatly fatigued by the festivities the night before, I nonetheless attended the California Classical Association, North (CCA-No.) event at the Palace of the Legion of Honor. The place has a wonderful; the weather wasn’t so wonderful. The current special exhibit is one in honor of James Simon, a Berlin Jewish collector form the days of Kaiser Wilhelm who helped to found the museum on Museum Island in Berlin. Simon, like many collectors of his period, had a range of interests in which his wealth allowed him to indulge. His collection included Egyptian, medieval, Oriental, and modern arts (I.e., Renoir) materials. He also died before the Nazis ruined the Jewish subculture of old Berlin. I was glad to see Miriam Bernstein, now retired, from whom I had taken Egyptology courses along the very attractive Nicole Rau. One of the biggest surprises happened while I was sitting in the auditorium. Suddenly a voice started speaking Latin to me. I turned around , and it was Gertrudis Bataviensis, whom I met at Conventiculum MMCVI (that’s Latin immersion camp to you, whippersnapper!). I learned that Gertrudis was a colleague of my classmate Andrea from San Francisco State!

Halloween Party in Cole Valley

I went to the Carleton Alumni Halloween party in Cole Valley. Believe it or not, I‘ve never been much for Halloween parties, and nowadays I‘m guaranteed to miss any Christmas parties beyond that of my own company, so I made my way down there through the Panhandle. I met up with old friends, and met new ones. Anne Buffington (as Peter Pan/woodsy Maid Marian) was there with a guy named Chrysalis (Prince) from her Marin commune. Shilpa Kamat was there too, with her friends Nim and Sadia. So was Trevor Peace. Lien Ly ’04 Marcus Ly’s little sister, was there in a bumblebee costume - thank goodness her school on Mare Island isn‘t actually funded by Vallejo. The biggest surprise to me was the presence of Emily Johnson ‘06 (a Brite-Lite), whom I met a couple of years ago when I went to Carleton and attended the folk dance reunion. I also met “Bud” (a woman!), whose Velma costume I quite admired, and Cheer (a Fairy Godmother).

Gospel Chorus: Not My Father's Hymnody

Monday, October 20:
In gospel chorus, the instructor (the choirmaster in that church for me will always be Michael Secour) informed us that each of us would have the opportunity to compose a verse of the one of the songs and that each of us would sing that verse in performance while the others provided the chorus. This announcement filled me with trepidation. Although I have trod the stage before (once in a dress), being a bass (moved to tenor due to paucity) has not prepared me for front-and-center cantation. I remained skeptical and anxious throughout the practice until I received the sheet music for the piece. I must admit, the worry of composing took some of my mind away from learning the song. The analytic part of my mind has a tendency to overwhelm the part following my line. Then I discovered the part which I had been analyzing in order to have a template for the portion I was going to have to make up was not the verse: it was the chorus! The words to the verse were “ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ah ah”. After a brief demonstration of how the melody went (at least I didn’t have to try matching a tenor line on my own!), we received fifteen minutes to work on our verse. The lines in mine were shorter and (perhaps) less intellectual than those of some others, but I prefer shorter lines in song composition (I have composed lyrics before, for both poems and songs, just not under such a deadline) and longer lines in prayer composition. I’m still finessing the lyrics, but I do feel less apprehensive about a step-up role.

Thursday, September 17th

Thursday, September 17^th:

I took the 1 downtown, intending to study at the Mechanics’ Library for my class that evening. The first problem I worked on was a “spot the mistakes” type, the sort of newspaper puzzle I skip because I know I’ll never find all (however many) errors and just end up frustrated. I skipped to the algebraic and balance-sheet problems before returning.

I could feel my mind growing dull, so I finished up the problem on which I was working and hurried over to the Commonwealth Club to hear Christopher Buckley speak on his new book, Supreme Courtship. He is extraordinarily well-spoken, although I do wonder if he sometimes finds it hard to avoid the shadow of his father – he quoted him thrice in the course of his speech. The protagonist and antagonist of the novel inadvertently resemble Obama and Palin – the Palin analogy, in particular, couldn’t have been deliberate. I didn’t stay for the signing – I was being cautious with my available funds, especially since my bank was being particularly unhelpful with an ID problem – and returned to my studies.

I bought some analysis paper at Patrick & Co., because I did not want to have to type up everything for my homework. I ended up staring at it. I realized that I knew its use in theory, but I am so digitized that I’d never actually used special accounting paper despite spending a good deal of my time doing the very same tasks for which the paper was designed!

Later on, as I was walking to the Embarcadero Tully’s to use their wi-fi (the Mechanics’ Library has a one-hour limit), I came across a most extraordinary sign at the corner of Market and Front. A small plaque, embedded in the paving at the Market side of the corner, did not mark the scene of some sordid deed along the Barbary Trail, but asserted loudly and aggressively that the owners of the building also owned (part of?) the corner. I know that businesses often block off sections of sidewalk for construction purposes, but this proprietary claim seemed unduly aggressive.

After the class, which was interrupted by many questions about the current financial debacle, had ended, I traipsed back to the bus stop, where I met Addie, who attends Grace. We had a nice talk about Proposition H and legalizing gay marriage.

Journal Entry: August 25th, 2008

On Monday, I woke in my apartment in San Francisco. I did not go to Kaju, however, since Mom lured me over to her place (where I was going next anyway) with a fruit smoothie. I packed up all of Amy’s belongings which I could find, including some items I was reluctant to send back – the PanTech Duo and the Kensington Saddlebag in particular. I made note of these brands that I might purchase them later without the emotional attachment. I was particularly fond of the Saddlebag, because it was a satchel/backpack designed with the needs of laptop owner in mind. heading downtown to renew my me. Then I walked down to the bank to sort out certain matters. I had to return after leaving because I had forgotten my second item of business there. Then I took the bus downtown to sort out my memberships in the Commonwealth Club and the Mechanic’s Institute. On the bus, there was a dispute between an angry black man and an an angry Italian man. But it was the 1 California, not the 38 Geary, so there was no profanity or serious threat of violence.

I went to the Mechanics Institute first: I entered the lobby, which still retains its molding from an era in which buildings were designed ornately, instead of unadorned functionalty. The exterior decoration of the sealed former mail chute particularly pleased me.I jocularly saluted the doorman, and took the elevator to the fifth floor, where the membership office turned out to be closed for lunch, even though the sign on the door suggested that membership secretary ought to have been back.

I went back down, crossed the street, and ascended the escalator to the Commonwealth Club desk. This was more complicated than one might have expected, since the escalator which usually provided a descent was cordoned off and not working. I explained my problem to the woman behind the desk. When she saw my address, she asked me whether I had grown up in that neighborhood (she had). I said that I had lived in Presidio Heights. She’d gone to Convent, and turned out to Catherine Morris, younger sister of Michael Morris ’89, the class above me at Cathedral. The last time I could have ever seen her (if ever) was when her brothers were in school with me; she would have been nine at most, so it was no wonder I didn’t recognize her. It was extremely refreshing to have a conversation with someone with whom I shared a background. I also registered for the Pinker lecture on September 12^th. Although Pinker is a famous linguist, there is a distinct possibility that his writing skill exceeds that of his speaking. I can forgive that, if he’s less of a pompous ass than the late Steven Jay Gould.

I returned to the Mechanic’s Institute, but the door was still shut. By this time’s I’d been hungry for a while, so I decided to go to Lori’s Diner (right next to my dentist’s office!). The till was malfunctioning at Lori’s, so everything was being done manually. The principal waitress, a (justifiably, in this case) cross middle-aged woman from New Jersey, was frustrated with the inability of many patrons to pay with anything other than a credit card. I, of course, had some cash on me. My waitress was Yoana from Guatemala, although the first time I saw her tag, I thought her name was Yoana Guatemala. She was shorter and considerably younger and cuter than Ms New Jersey, although nowhere near as diminutive as the wife of my cousin’s brother and their tiny but precocious children.

After lunch, I first went to Border’s on Powell. I browsed for a while, searching in vain for anything by Naomi Kritzer (I still haven’t found the book she was writing when I last talked with her) and ended up buying Bryson’s Thunderbolt Kid. Then I returned to the Mechanic’s Institute, whose office was finally open. The woman behind .the desk kindly waivcd the replacement fee when she learned the previous one was stolen.

I returned by bus to my apartment, where I took an afternoon nap (because I could) after a brief stop and drink at Kaju to say hello. Then I walked over to my parents’ place, where Dad was recovering from his epidural he had received that morning. I mowed the lawn, but there was little I could do beyond basic maintenance, since it had been ruined by many weeks of workmen repairing and renovating the house. The brown rectangular patch marked quite clearly where the lumber had been placed. I later accompanied Mom to the nursery to carry plants and potting soil to Mom’s car. Mom and I went out for pizza at Georgio’s since Dad was not feeling well enough to go out, but we brought some back for him. Then I returned to my apartment and watched Comedy Central.

On Duty

The notion of Duty has fallen into disrepute among certain circles, who accuse it of being a hollow shell, an exterior manifestation of nothingness within. I am willing to concede that these individuals are not deliberately malicious, nor willfully blind to opinions other than their own. If they are, then this writing is futile, but if they are not, I hope that this response will enable them to understand more thoroughly the beliefs of others.

It is true that the performance of duty, the evidence available to skeptics’ eyes, is an external phenomenon. Performance, by its nature, must be exterior; even those engaged in prayer or meditation betray outwardly some little sign of their inward reverie. Even if the performance of duty demands an inconvenience incommensurate with mere appearance of dutifulness, some might say that there is an intestine void.

When someone states that to do something is their duty, it is not the external which receives emphasis, but rather the internal. Duty is a stronger word than job, which implies external coercion; if someone feels something is their duty, that is an internal impulse which finds an external release. If someone fails to fulfill whatever they believe to be their duty, that individual will feel guilty, an internal sensation.

Now it is true that on occasion, someone acts in ways that he or she does not feel inside at that time. Even this situation is not without value, if the external performance of duty is habitual. An action repeated many times becomes more fluid and more automatic, which again need not be a bad result if one takes the opportunity to internalize the reasons previously expressed with external actions. Indeed, the less one has to think about the action, the more one can focus on one’s own intention and will to action.

These are my thoughts and feelings on the matter. I am not a professional debater or philosopher, so dispute them if you like, but do not presume that your point of view is the only valid one.

Book Review: The Twelve Christ Chose

The Twelve Christ Chose, by Asbury Smith, 1958

I borrowed this book from the library of Saint James Episcopal, my parish church; its collection is miscellaneous and occasionally strays from selections one would expect in a Christian library, but often such a profusion allows the discovery of a rare tree of knowledge. The Twelve Christ Chose, by Asbury Smith, is one of those. Smith is an Methodist minister of his era; as such, he is more Protestant than many contemporary Episcopalians, yet does not display the reflexive hostility to any Catholic vestiges that contemporary Baptists might. His style is lucid, although non-native English speakers may suffer from some of his assumptions of vocabulary knowledge. It is no surprise that the model for his writing is the popular sermon, but the meat of the argument is generally sparing of Biblical quotes; in some cases, this dearth of direct Scripture is attributable to the scant material which the New Testament provides on the lesser-known apostles. He presents the apocryphal and historical material in a thorough but somewhat dry manner, perhaps enhanced in its original form by the inflections of the human voice.

The structure of the overall book is straightforward, and could serve as a textbook example of what I learned in school about essay composition, although the body of the book is much thicker than anything I have composed. Smith may well have composed, or at least revised, the introduction and conclusion after the completion of the series of sermons. The body of the book is divided into chapters, each one assigned to an apostle. Simon Peter naturally takes precedence in this series, but every one of the Twelve receives thorough and serious consideration. Each chapter opens with the collect for the appropriate saint on his feast day. Although these prayers are thematically linked with the chapter which follows, the archaic language may render them opaque to an audience unaccustomed to such formal and grammatically sinuous language. The material in the chapter weaves together several threads: the frequency and Biblical characterization of the apostle; the historical and social setting from which he came, which is assumed historical knowledge on the part of the Evangelists, but is now often obsolete; apocryphal sources and sources from ecclesiastical history, especially in the cases of the apostles about which very little is said in Scripture itself. It is worth noting that apocryphal in this context does not indicate falsehood or heresy, but rather material which is not part of the canon. Polycarp and Clement are excluded from the epistles for reasons of chronology, not of fidelity.

Dr. Smith’s intention in composing this series was the restoration of relevance to both clergy and laity of apostles who had faded, for the most part, into spectral visual companions of Christ. His thesis, that Christ chose the Twelve as his first followers and his successors in His ministry, suggests that the Twelve were chosen as individuals to whom we could compare ourselves and on whom we could model or avoid modeling ourselves. The secondary reliance on apocryphal texts and tales may cause discomfort to some, but this reliance is never weighted heavier than Scriputre when Scripture is available, and the audience would be wise to remember that the apocryphal tales are Christian tales intended for fellow Christians.

Dr. Smith presents an engaging and thought-provoking read, but I would caution against a too hasty reading of the material that allows omission or diminution of provocative and valuable details and examples. It might be suitable as a series of Bible-based discussions, and thus not far from its original genre. The collects at the beginning of each chapter, however, would require previous examination in order that a discussion group could understand the thematic significance of the collect.