MOMMENTARY |
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Sunday, November 28, 2004 ( 8:19 PM ) Elinor Dashwood Did this happen to any of you this morning? Just as Father was about to light the first candle on our Advent wreath, he paused while somebody read an extremely strange and interminable monologue, delivered as if the words of Isaiah, but much more like the transcript of Isaiah Goes On Oprah. It was all about how tired he was of being a prophet, but that God hadn't accepted his resignation yet. Son #3 summed it up in a few words: "Isaiah fan fiction." Very odd. # Thursday, November 25, 2004 ( 2:13 PM ) Elinor Dashwood Hoot of the day, seen on the back of a pickup truck with the license plate MEDEVAL, being driven by a guy with a shaggy beard and a long rope of grey-blond hair: It Takes A Viking To Raze A Village Love it! # Wednesday, November 24, 2004 ( 8:18 AM ) Elinor Dashwood Cacciadelia was watching "Lady and the Tramp" the other day when Eve was with us, preparing her talk on marriage and masculinity. The conjunction prompted me to think, as I have before, that L & the T is practically the animated version of George Gilder's Men and Marriage. Lady is a nice girl from a stable home, who takes seriously her responsibility to her loving owners and their new baby. Tramp is a charming vagabond who acknowledges no ties. He isn't altogether without merit - he has courage and ingenuity, and sufficient native chivalry to rescue Lady when she ends up on the wrong side of the tracks and is being chased by savage dogs. He gives her a taste of the roaming life, describing in highly-colored detail the life of the wayfarer, and urges her to slip the leash and take up with him. She answers wistfully, "It sounds wonderful, but - who will take care of the baby?" He admits defeat, but while he's taking her home she is picked up by the dogcatcher and taken to the pound. Here she runs into Tramp's cronies and, before she is identified and claimed, hears all about his devastating ways with the ladies. Once chained to the doghouse back home, mortified and angry, she sends him off with a flea (probably literally) in his ear. When she sees a rat climbing into the baby's room, however, he responds valiantly to her cry for help and kills the rat, unfortunately knocking over the bassinet and winding up in the hands of the dogcatcher himself. It all ends well - Lady shows her owners the dead rat and they realize that, far from attacking the baby, Tramp saved him, and in their gratitude they rescue him and adopt him. It's all there - the good girl, the rough diamond, the call to put a previously undirected courage and energy at the service of domesticity, and the triumph of family life and orderly love. I don't often have occasion to praise the Disney people, but this is one of their films that I like. # Sunday, November 21, 2004 ( 7:32 AM ) Elinor Dashwood It isn't often that I approve of changes in the culture, but it does happen occasionally. From Cacciaguida, a link to a section of Cafe Press which sells patriotic gear. When I was young enough to have worn something like this (not that ever did), the usual style among right-wing females leaned heavily toward an Anita Bryant - Phyllis Schlafly - Pat Nixon aesthetic, which was very suitable to these excellent women, but was nonetheless distinctly matronly. I must not be understood to be lending my countenance to spaghetti straps, but I'm happy to see bumptious patriotism turning up in a format that appeals to the young. # Wednesday, November 17, 2004 ( 1:45 PM ) Elinor Dashwood An interesting question turned up in my email this morning, from an old acquaintance: "Roger Kimball in The Rape of the Masters quotes from one of John Julius Norwich's Christmas Crackers, which in turn quotes the remarks of John Alexander Smith, Waynflete Professor of Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy, upon opening his series of lectures at Oxford in 1914: Gentlemen, you are now about to embark upon a course of studies which will occupy you for two years. Together, they form a noble adventure. But I would like to remind you of an important point. Some of you, when you go down from the University, will go into the Church, or to the Bar, or to the House of Commons, or to the Home Civil Service, or the Indian or Colonial Services, or into various professions. Some may go into the Army, some into industry and commerce; some may become country gentlemen. A few --I hope a very few-- will become teachers or dons. Let me make this clear to you. Except for those in the last category, nothing that you will learn in the course of your studies will be of the slightest possible use to you in after life --save only this-- that if you work hard and intelligently you should be able to detect when a man is talking rot, and that, in my view, is the main, if not the sole, purpose of education. Could this be said of a Yale education?" I can't, of course, speak about the professions he mentions. In my own walk of life - mother and homeschooler - I can affirm that I have used every scrap of my Yale education, constantly and repeatedly. When I was a small child and the youngest of seven, my somewhat exhausted parents generally referred my questions about history, theology, ethics, and such matters to my teacher in school. I vowed I wouldn't put off my children's questions so, or with the far more odious "You wouldn't understand." (Most such vows are very properly forgotten long before adulthood, because they involve things like never enforcing bedtimes or the requirement of eating vegetables.) I've kept this vow, and in the course of answering my children's questions I've employed everything I ever learned about classics, literature, music, art, history, political science, economics, mathematics, biology, architecture, geology, and paleontology. As to knowing when a man is talking rot, I must not, like Elizabeth Bennet, decide on my own performance; if, however, there is a much higher proportion of rot talked than I'm forever observing, then the world is in a deplorable state. # Tuesday, November 16, 2004 ( 10:14 AM ) Elinor Dashwood I'm prepared to support the claims of the manufacturers of machine-washable and -dryable sock wools. These yarns, which are generally 75% wool and 25% nylon, state on the labels that they can be washed and dried without shrinking or felting. I've taken a very bad fit of knitting baby socks lately, and have used most of the generally available wools. Last night I washed them on Warm and dried them on Medium. I have no idea how hot Medium is on our dryer, but Warm on our washer is tepid - baby's bathwater rather than grown'ups' shower temperature. The socks came through very well, a touch fuzzier than they went in, but reassuringly soft. Of course, baby socks could really be knit in pure wool; the only reason the nylon is in there is to improve the wear on toes and heels, and that isn't a question with a small baby. # Sunday, November 14, 2004 ( 9:03 PM ) Elinor Dashwood Today seems to be the day for partly misreading book titles. Cacciaguida did it here. On the way out to Mass this morning I caught sight of Eli Zaretsky's Secrets of the Soul, and thought it said Secrets of the South. I realized my mistake in a moment, of course: there are hardly any secrets in the South except, perhaps, in those regions where the secret is where one has hidden the still from the revenuers. In the South everybody tells anecdotes right and left that a New Yorker or a Down Easter would tell only to his analyst, or to God. "Law, will I ever forget the time Great-Aunt Louisa Creech got into the brandy, thinking it was her tonic - Granddaddy'd had to pour what was left of the brandy into an old tonic bottle because Uncle Wilkie'd got drunk on mash one night and tried to shoot the cork out of the brandy bottle, well, Uncle Wilkie hadn't never been quite right since he was thrown from his horse, but most of the time he was just as good as gold, if you could keep him away from the mash - well, Great-Aunt Louisa was reading the Book of Revelations and sipping the brandy, thinking it was her tonic, when old Miss Lorna Lee Jones came to the door collecting for the Baptist Minister's Rest Home. Now, Great-Aunt Louisa'd had two or three glasses of the tonic that was really brandy, because the first dose had done her so much good, when Granddaddy's pointer, Millie, came up on the porch and sat down by old Miss Lorna Lee, who was still standing at the door. Well, I suppose Great-Aunt Louisa must've thought old Miss Jones was the woman wailin' in the wilderness, and the dog was the Beast, because she up and snatched Granddaddy's twenty-two and fired it at poor old Millie right through the screen door. Nearly got her, too, but Millie high-tailed it up the street and didn't come home all night, and there was old Miss Lorna shrieking on the porch, and they had to lay her down on the sofa in the front room and give her a dose of tonic, too." # Saturday, November 13, 2004 ( 11:48 AM ) Elinor Dashwood Bummer. Well, half bummer and half not. Jonathan Lee has his orders, and he's going to Camp Pendleton for his MOS (military occupational specialty) training. The bad part is that he goes direct from MCT (Marine combat training) when he finishes next week, and doesn't come home first. The good part is that he's back to AAV (amphibious assult vehicles - are you getting as tired of initials as I am?), which was the MOS he originally wanted. He thinks it possible he might get home for Christmas, but says Thanksgiving is almost out of the question. That's pretty good, too: over the years I've been coming round to the Southern view that Thanksgiving is a Yankee holiday, and I don't care nearly as much about that as I do about Christmas. # Wednesday, November 10, 2004 ( 10:39 AM ) Elinor Dashwood These past few days have been fun, albeit tiring. Cacciaguida returned home Sunday, bringing Eve with him for a working visit. Around four-thirty in the afternoon the Mormons turned up. Generally Cacc takes calls like this, and gives these missionaries of interplanetary colonization very short shrift. I was by myself this time, except for some of the children, and as preparations were well in hand I stuck around on the porch and talked to them. I don't think I did so very badly, considering that apologetics isn't my long suit. They wanted to know if I had ever read the Book of Mormon. I said I had, but had not been especially impressed with it. They then looked all earnest and asked if I had really prayed and asked God to give me insight about it. I replied that I was accustomed to make use of what powers God gave me for the analysis of any literature, and I hadn't thought much of this one. (I didn't give them my real opinion of the Book of Mormon, which is that it bears a close resemblance to what the result might be if a rather clever high school student attempted to forge a newly-discovered book of the Bible.) I didn't regard modern compositions as canonical. "Oh, but it isn't modern," they told me quickly. I replied that 1820-something is modern when it comes to Scripture. In any case, being a Catholic, I did not quarrel with the Church's determination that the canon of Scripture was closed after Revelation. They assured me that if I would read the Book of Mormon and ask God to guide me, I would feel the truth of it. There was no question of feeling the truth, I said; you know truth, you don't feel it, and my guide of truth was the teaching of the Church and the Holy Father. They then advanced the assertion that the - how did they put it? - more or less that authority had perished after the death of the last apostle, because Peter was crucified upside down. I corrected them: the first pope was so executed because he said he was unworthy to die as his Master had died, and that the apostolic succession remains intact, running back unbroken from the most recently ordained priest to the hands of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Then they got all sorrowful and said it was a pity I wouldn't ask God to turn my heart. I told them, without heat, that I was constantly asking God any number of things, but that so far He had replied to none of these that I ought to quit being a Catholic and become a Mormon. They assured me that that wasn't what they were trying to do. Then what, I asked, were we talking about? At this point - you've got to give them points for persistence - they took another tack. If I was a Catholic, I would be glad to know that they, too, took the sacrament. "Which sacrament? There are seven." Well, communion. We had communion in common. "What," I asked, "did they think it was? Did they believe it was the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, exactly the same as if He were standing visibly before them and they could touch His hand? Or was it a symbol?" Well, everything in the church is a symbol. "Not in the Church. The Blessed Sacrament is the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ, so the sacrament they take has really no connection with Holy Communion." Then they got all sad and regretful again and wished I would pray, and that we could speak again when we could have a calmer conversation. I did not reply that this was as calm as I get when people less than half my age attempt to patronize me, but only told them that I didn't wish to waste their time. They then left, still sorrowing over the lost sheep, and I went back indoors to meet my goggling offspring, who wondered why I had not shut the door on them. I'm not sure I know why I didn't. As a rule I try to be polite but brief with missionaries of Christian churches, but I have no such scruples about the representatives of other and weirder theologies. All I regret, however, is that I didn't think to try to hang onto them until the arrival of two Catholic apologists before whom I am as a child. Still, Cacc and Eve didn't turn up until eight or thereabouts, and it would have been exhausting to have gone over and over the sixth chapter of St. John for three more hours, especially as I had dinner arrangements to complete. It was great fun having Eve here, and attending the dinner which opened the conference at which she was to speak. I had a chance to talk for a few minutes with Maggie Gallagher, an old acquaintance from college days and thereafter, and to meet a father of five (the oldest is seven!) and encourage him in the family's early days of homeschooling. All this was tiring, however, and I'm glad to have had a few good nights' sleep after it. # Saturday, November 06, 2004 ( 8:45 PM ) Elinor Dashwood Whoo-ee, I'm happy! Since Cacciaguida is out of town, the youngest two and I slacked and went to the vigil at a nearer parish. What a blessing! The concelebrant and guest homilist was Fr. Matthew Habiger, who preached a kickass sermon about contraception and divorce. I raced up to him afterward, dead-heating with another ecstatic matron, to congratulate and thank him for a splendid and courageous sermon. On Tuesday he'll be speaking on youth and purity at another local parish. I'm so glad we heard him. # ( 2:11 PM ) Elinor Dashwood Look lak dat Joan Baez gul done bin fo'gettin' to take huh meddicayshum. From Mark Shea, and, in his own words, "The weirdest display of liberal racism I've ever heard of." Read it and blow your circuits. # ( 1:23 PM ) Elinor Dashwood If you want to see the ultimate in snide clueless liberal sour grapes, read this editorial from London's Daily Telegraph. Since this organ is colloquially known as the Daily Torygraph, I was inclined to think it must be a parody. It isn't, however. According to its author, Kerry lost because he was such a patrician, because he could not descend into the sweating and the shouting of the arena and fight with his teeth. Oh, please. Kerry lost for the reason the Democrats have been out of the presidency for twenty of the last thirty-two years: because they have abandoned their traditional base and made a devil's bargain with the Left. For all that time they've been trying to force down Americans' throats a repugnant cocktail of defeatist ideas - moral degeneracy, weak foreign policy, and creeping socialism - and we don't like it. Until they throw out the freaks, the flag-burners, and the feminists, and get back to the concerns of ordinary Americans, they're going to go on losing . . . and not because of chiseled profiles and elegant manners. # Thursday, November 04, 2004 ( 11:50 AM ) Elinor Dashwood We won! Thanks to all who stood in line to vote for the President. Democracy is hard on the knees. Now, about 2008. I just don't know what to think about Hillary in a national election. When she first appeared on the scene I took it for granted that all women except diehard feminists detested her as much as I did. Of course, that was 1992, when I also thought my countrymen would never elect a man who had written that fantastically impertinent and self-serving letter to a distinguished officer who had done him a signal service. I'm old enough to remember when the release of the Col. Holmes letter would have ended its author's political career overnight, world without end, amen. The '92 election wised me up really fast about the change that my generation had made in the electorate. Hillary won statewide in New York, which surprised me a little, but not very much, as New York is a rather self-consciously progressive state. My sense of the country is that she'd get her butt kicked soundly, for several reasons ranging from her far-left politics to her abrasive manners. As I say, however, I haven't proved myself a very accurate sybil in such matters. If she does run, my advice to the GOP is to irritate her in public on every possible occasion. Her hold on her temper has never been very tight, and if there's one thing I know Americans can't stand, it's a snarling and contemptuous woman. # Tuesday, November 02, 2004 ( 6:36 PM ) Elinor Dashwood Am I the only person who objects to efforts to increase voter turnout? It seems obvious to me that the vote is best handled by people who care enough about the country to get their kiesters out of the house under their own steam. I'm not talking about people who want to vote but are housebound; I'm talking about apathetic halfwits who would rather watch sitcom reruns than read a newspaper article or go to the library and do a little research. People of that stamp would do much better to stay home and pop another beer than to screw up the system with their random choices. # ( 6:06 PM ) Elinor Dashwood All went smoothly at the poll. I wanted to ask the woman with the Democratic literature whether her little girl knew that the Dem running for Congress from our district opposes a ban on partial-birth abortion. Son #4 dissuaded me. This brings up a thing I've been thinking about for a while. I've been coming to the conclusion that it's not only important to defeat pro-abortion candidates at the polls. It's also necessary to refuse to play along with the Left's implicit claim that they're quite respectable citizens. It isn't respectable to want it to be legal to tear babies apart. # ( 11:38 AM ) Elinor Dashwood Rock-'em-Sock-'em voters and poll-watchers report problems at polling places all over the country, according to Drudge. I anticipate that our precinct will be quite peaceful, but just the same I'm leaving Cacciadelia at home and taking two strapping sons with me. I'll be back with my report later. # Sunday, October 31, 2004 ( 7:20 PM ) Elinor Dashwood We've never been a family which did Halloween. Generally we had an All Saints party to take the young ones to, but there wasn't one this year. Since she is nearly ten and understands a good deal about the Faith, I thought it wouldn't harm Cacciadelia if I took her to the Halloween party which the parish youth group gave for the children this afternoon. She wore her Ste. Therese costume, and there were certainly several other saint costumes there. I commandeered a chair and moved into the lobby so that I was in the light and out of the din. Most of the children were dressed as Disney princesses or ninjas or pirates or those strange Lego characters that look like mechanical insects. One costume, however, floored me. A very pretty little girl of eight or nine was in a micro-mini-skirted halter dress made of stretchy purple Lurex, sparkly tights, and knee-high boots. This tasty getup was topped off with a makeup job which would have drawn admiring glances on Drag Night in a San Francisco nightclub. Once again I address a despairing question to a world gone mad - "What was her mother THINKING of?" # |
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