{bits & pieces}
The weekly “little of this, little of that” feature here at Like Mother, Like Daughter!
(This will all look and work better if you click on the actual post and do not remain on the main page.)
Our week has been glorious. I went up to the library to get a book and was made so happy by the unfurling leaves, the blue sky, and the bright copula of the church. Spring at last…
… Until today, when our baby, Bridget, graduates from Thomas More College. We are going to have to pull off that New England thing where you try to look seasonal but are actually braced against the cold rain and mud. Ah well…
Things have been busy around here (as they must be when you not only live near your child’s college, but your husband teaches there as well!). But I couldn’t let another week go by without a bits & pieces, could I?
Here’s my quick (not great!) snap of Bridget just before defending her senior thesis, on the role of story in apprehending the truth:
And here some of the students are after last night’s dinner with family under the tent. As we walked away I thought of how different the sounds are coming from behind us from those of probably most colleges. Real music — loud, yes, but not from any amplification! This isn’t music that a corporation has deemed “what kids want” but what they themselves have internalized from the past — folk tunes and old songs that tell of an un-ironic world of love, loss, and maybe a little drunkenness! But not of nihilism or the sadness of a loss of hope. The sounds themselves are “in tune” with reality, not a clashing synthesized battle with it.
I think the music most of all expresses what I want for everyone’s children. There are few, very few places where you can find it. One place should be our own home — another our church (not folk tunes about getting a little drunk, obviously! but the chant of worship) — and another should be the school. Music forms the soul — what good is it to learn important facts or even lofty philosophy if the music we hear and make doesn’t participate in beauty? (How many of us think of music as something we make?)
On to our links!
I assume you know that at least some of the links that I post here, I have in mind for you to share with your inquiring offspring — at least I know that my kids would have liked to have seen interesting articles or videos, and then would have been more open to me handing them a book that explored the subject further.
Here’s an article on why water is slippery.
The most Brit thing you will read today: Letters to the editor that decry the identification of a phrase as being written in iambic pentameter.
J. R. R. Tolkien and the Birmingham Oratory.
And then most of the time I just want to share what I’ve been reading in case you have something to say about it all…
The retirement home founded by Giuseppe Verdi.
A group of monks fleeing Communism in Hungary helped found the University of Dallas.
Love, love, love the books of the Provensens. The obituary for Alice. “When she won the Carle Honors award from the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Massachusetts, she told an interviewer, ‘Let’s face it, it’s not a jab in the eye with a stick.'”
Hannah Arendt on propaganda and the lies that we are made to tell: “Arendt and others recognized, writes Levy, that ‘being made to repeat an obvious lie makes it clear that you’re powerless.'”
The importance of imagination to faith. Some good points. I maintain that it is through the sort of childhood and family life that we remember here at Like Mother, Like Daughter, that children’s imaginations are formed — that the process is a natural one when a beneficial environment and necessary qualities are present. (This essay is along the lines of Bridget’s thesis, actually.)
An overview of the studies on same-sex parenting and what it means to children. I don’t actually think that we should base arguments about human nature on studies. There are some things that it’s for the innovators to prove — the burden’s on them, not on us, given that they are the ones who are overturning what everyone everywhere has always thought. However, since ideology is gaining power, it’s worthwhile to know what the studies say.
From Doug Mainwaring, a raw look at the loss at the heart of adoption.
This is funny, in a bittersweet way — happy Mother’s Day!
This weekend, Mutu has 20% off with this code (you can read about this exercise program in Deirdre’s review).
From the archives:
I got an email from a reader who was, among other things, lamenting the occasional rudeness of her 12-year-old daughter. I have a post for that.
When you first get married, you set up your housekeeping, and you hardly know what that means — that you are building your home!
Today is the feast of Mary, Queen of the Apostles. She is their queen without herself being an apostle (though surely she, as the “highest honor of our race” ought to have been made the first Pope if women were to be priests!). Hans Urs von Balthasar says that this is because she has “other, and greater, powers.” Maybe think about that today!
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