The Circle of the Blogful

And I fell asleep, and I dreamed.

And in the dream, my guide showed me a great, luminous screen. Those who sat before it were unable to remove their eyes from it, though they said, I should turn away my face. Those who sat behind it saw an inverted image but were equally devoid of the power of movement. And the images shown were of those who sat, but in the images they were talking to each other.

And my guide said, Here are those who have inverted the good of community, and known their fellows only through the great screen.

And in my terror I awoke. And I said, Such a blog post will this make!

This linguistics stuff? It works.

Or, why I am able to help kids with their Spanish homework when they know more Spanish than I do.

I'm not kidding. The official word at the tutoring center where I work is: if a child comes in specifically for help with Spanish, a tutor proficient in Spanish will be assigned to them. If a child brings in Spanish homework once in a while unexpectedly, well, help them as best you can and ask someone else for help if you can't figure it out.

But what I'm finding is that a knowledge of Spanish isn't the primary requirement for tutoring Spanish (at least the beginning levels). The kids may know more particulars about the language than I do, but I know more about how language works in general. They have the detailed knowledge; I ask the right questions and teach them where to apply it. They have the pieces, and I show them how the puzzle goes together. The system works beautifully.

I find, however, that as satisfying as it is to know how language works... I miss language learning. I miss the joy of actually finding that you can communicate (however haltingly) with someone in their language. It's a profound thing to realise "The reason one would learn a language is to speak with the people." The purpose of language is communication. That's a harder thing to teach than the completion of homework assignments.

Brrrrr

I'm cold.

Ye who read from Manitoba, laugh not.

On my birthday, it was still warm enough to go barefoot (although I suppose we would still have called it cold in Bamenda, being as it was slightly less than 75 degrees). Then it snowed up in the mountains all around us, and we had a cold snap, and now it really feels like December. At least as much as Southern California ever does.

Part of me wants to savour my first experience of winter after two years of more-or-less summer. After all, my fingers haven't gotten numb from cold since 2003. And the rest of me (in the morning, this is the far larger part) wants to curl up shivering in a fleece blanket and hibernate till spring.

Maybe, if we take this slowly enough, I'll be able to make a snowball again by 2010.

Metaphorically Speaking II

'Blogs are the college dorm halls of cyberspace.'

I have an opinion (I think)

I've been on a Lewis kick for two or three months now, due mostly to the once-a-week taped lecture series we've been a part of for Jim's continuing education credits. It's been interesting reading (most of) the Lewisian canon again, all in a short time. Some of the books were so foundational in my intellectual growth that I'd never really caught their distinctive "flavour" before (that is, if every one of the Western great books "sounds like Lewis" to you, you'll never be able to discover what Lewis himself sounded like). I suppose my thinking is still very Lewisian in some respects, but having now read some of the books he had read, I enjoy being able to see Lewis in dialogue with other works-- as opposed to using his works as a context for everything.

When the time came to read Narnia again, I was perhaps unduly influenced by a chance comment from Douglas Gresham, made during a question-and-answer session at Biola a few years ago. He was asked if he had an opinion on the question: in what order ought the Narnia books to be read? Should we preserve the order in which Lewis wrote them, or allow publishers to rearrange the books in chronological order? His expression was classic: slight annoyance mixed with great patience... the sort of expression that says "I will refrain from telling you outright how often I've been asked this question and how insignificant I think it really is." He did, however, express taciturn approval for the chronological re-ordering... perhaps, now that I remember, only to make the point that he didn't approve of preserving everything Lewis did, in the exact order in which Lewis did it, merely because he was Lewis.

So, with that in mind, I decided to read them through chronologically. Why not? And, having done so, I now have an opinion. With no disrespect intended toward Gresham, I prefer the original order. I say this not (as I might once have) out of misplaced reverence for Lewis, but because I think they flow better that way.

In being introduced to the world of Narnia-- especially for the first time-- I would prefer to read four books in a row that establish a continuous story and develop character arcs, than to start with three books that feel disconnected and are all about different characters (even if they are set in the same world). Moreover, the chronological order makes the Narnian world feel much more incomplete. Many of the questions raised by reading The Magician's Nephew and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe back-to-back aren't even partially answered until The Last Battle-- and that's a while to wait. I'd rather read MN and LB back-to-back. (Granted, some of the questions aren't answered at all-- and I suppose there's a debate as to whether that was intentional or not-- but the chronological order seems to make those omissions a lot more obvious.)

I suppose it could be said that I missed Gresham's point, and that the question of order is so piddly that it should just be dropped in favour of actually discussing the works themselves. But what is a blog for, if you can't express potentially insignificant opinions? :-) Let me just reiterate, then, that in whatever order, the Chronicles are worth reading and re-reading...

And can anyone tell me what, exactly, happened to the descendants of King Frank and Queen Helen?

On the linguist at home

"It be fine."

"Sharon speaks pidgin!"

"Truncated future tense! It's a truncated future tense!"

"I make no value judgments. 'There is nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so.' "

Greeting cards

We went to Hallmark a while back to look for cards.

We found cards we weren't looking for.

Did you know that there are Hallmark cards for losing a first tooth? (Is this in lieu of cash under the pillow?)

And-- even better-- for finishing potty training?

Somehow it strikes me that those cards might be appreciated more by the parent who gives them than the child who receives them.

One year ago today...

at approximately 11:00pm, I had the best early birthday present ever.

That said, I'm awfully glad that engagement didn't stay engagement. :-)

Hurrah for marriage!

Midnight murmurings, part II

Having finished the brushing of the teeth and the washing of the hair, I finally slid under the quilt, accidentally nudging my sleeping husband as I did so. (I occasionally take longer than he does to make it to slumberland... ask my former roommates how probable this is.)

As I settled myself, he mumbled one word soporifically under his breath: "Faaaaan."

"Aw, how cute, he must be dreaming," I mused, not without some ill-timed triumph at the thought that I wasn't the ONLY one who mumbled incoherent things in my sleep.

At this point I became vaguely aware of a noise which had been droning for some time. It was the bathroom fan, which I had forgotten to turn off.

How is it that he is more lucid than I am, when he is asleep and I am not?

I turned off the fan and went to bed a chastened soul.

Don't you wish you knew?

"This is my interpretive dance of the Anglican Communion in T. S. Eliotesque style." -who do you think?