The recommended daily allowance

Lars and the Real Girl

Gus: Pretend that she's real? I'm just not gonna do it.
Dagmar: She is real.
Gus: Well...
Dagmar: She's right out there.
Gus: Right, right, I get that, but I'm just not gonna, you know...
Dagmar: You won't be able to change his mind, anyway. Bianca's in town for a reason.
Gus: But - but...
Dagmar: It's not really a choice.
Karin: Okay. Okay, all right, we'll do it, whatever it takes.
Gus: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And everyone's gonna laugh at him.
Dagmar: And you.

From Roger Ebert's review:

There are so many ways "Lars and the Real Girl" could have gone wrong that one of the film's fascinations is how adroitly it sidesteps them. Its weapon is absolute sincerity. It is about who Lars is, and how he relates to this substitute for human friendship, and that is all it's about. It has a kind of purity to it.

[...]

How this all finally works out is deeply satisfying. Only after the movie is over do you realize what a balancing act it was, what risks it took, what rewards it contains. A character says at one point that she has grown to like Bianca. So, heaven help us, have we.

Bring tissues.

"Well, if that's divine love, I know all about it."

Last night, Mr. M-mv's skills were required on one of those mysterious (some might say, insidious) critical network outages I first mentioned here. Knowing he might be tapping away on his assorted keys (laptops, Blackberry) and murmuring Yoda-like wisdom to help-desk staffers, consultants, and colleagues for a while, I curled up with Simon Schama's Power of Art.

One word: rockin'!

From Amazon:

Watching Simon Schama's Power of Art is like taking an Ivy League course in art appreciation, with the folksy but knowledgeable Schama as guide and interpreter. A collection of hour-long films on eight seminal artists and their groundbreaking works, which originally aired on British television, this boxed set is as entertaining as it is enlightening, with Schama doing for Western art what, say, Steve Irwin did for Australian natural history. Eight artists are featured--Caravaggio, Bernini, Rembrandt, David, Turner, Van Gogh, Picasso, and Rothko--and each portrait of the artist weaves biography and historical context to help explain the true power of his works.

I watched the first two episodes, Caravaggio and Bernini, before storms and sleep-fuzzies sent me to bed.

This morning, while enjoying a mug of coffee in bed, I described the series to Mr. M-mv. Caravaggio he knew, so I spent a little time describing Bernini, an artist less familiar to him.

"He made stone seem flesh. In one statue, for example, when the god grips the nymph's thigh, her skin actually yields to his touch."

Mr. M-mv was quiet.

I went on to describe Bernini's most famous sculpture, "The Ecstasy of St. Theresa."

"... a spiritual awakening made, well, very physical," I concluded.

Mr. M-mv remained silent.

Accustomed to his periodic stillness in the face of my chatter, I added, "Well, anyway, I was thinking about watching another episode tonight. Would you like to join me?"

"Sure," he said, humor crinkling the soft skin around his eyes. "We should watch the Bernini."

Let me close with... the power of art.

Heh, heh, heh.

For more information, check out the BBC Arts website for the program.

The recommended daily allowance

Roadside Picnic (Arkady & Boris Strugatsky)

p. 20 (Red, a stalker)
That's it. We were in the Zone! I felt a chill. Each time I feel that chill. And I never know if that's the Zone greeting me or my stalker's nerves acting up. Each time I think that when I get back I'll ask if others have the same feeling or not, and each time I forget.

p. 101 (Valentine, a scientist)
Or how about this hypothetical definition. Reason is a complex type of instinct that has not yet formed completely. This implies that instinctual behavior is always purposeful and natural. A million years from now our instinct will have matured and we will stop making the mistakes that are probably integral to reason. And then, if something should change in the universe, we will all become extinct--precisely because we will have forgotten how to make mistakes, that is, to try various approaches not stipulated by an inflexible program of permitted alternatives.

p. 110 (Noonan, a businessman)
They're afraid, too, he thought, getting back into the car. The highbrows are also scared. And that's the way it should be. They should be more afraid than all of us regular folk put together. We don't understand a thing, and they understand how much they don't. They look into the bottomless pit and know that it's inevitable, they must go down into it. Their hearts catch, but they must go down, and descend they do, but how, and what will they find at the bottom, and most important, will they be able to climb out? Meanwhile, we mere mortals look the other way, so to speak. Listen, maybe that's how it should be. Let it all run its course, and we'll just get by on our own. He was right: humanity's most heroic deed was surviving and intending to survive.

p. 145 (Red)
But how can I give up stalking when I have a family to feed? Get a job? I don't want to work for you, your work makes me puke, do you understand? This is the way I figure it" if a man works with you, he is always for one of you, he is a slave and nothing else. And I always wanted to be myself, on my own, so that I could spit at you all, at your boredom and despair.
________________

You can also read the sci-fi novel online. From the introduction:

Good science fiction is good fiction.

This assertion is one which must be made again, and over again, until the general reader and the "serious" critic cease to associate science fiction solely with girls in brass brassieres being rescued from the advances of bug-eyed monsters by zap-gun-toting heroes in space armor. There is as much of a spectrum of excellence in science fiction as there is in any other field. Mickey Spillane is not Dorothy Sayers or Ngaio Marsh. Hopalong Cassidy is not Shane or True Grit. And the best of science fiction is quite as good as the best of any literature.

Ayup.

Bits and bobs

From Alan Lightman's essay "Prisoner of the Wired World" (which appears in the collection A Sense of the Mysterious):

The artificial world of the television screen, the computer monitor, and the cell phone has become so familiar that we often substitute it for real experience. Many new technologies encourage us to hold at a distance the world of immediate, face-to-face contract. Electronic mail, although very useful in some respects, is fundamentally impersonal and anonymous. The sociologist Sherry Turkle, in her book Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet, discusses how people in "multiuser domains" (MUDs) have created entire artificial communities in cyberspace, escaping for hours at a time their small rooms and meager closets, the relationships or loneliness of their real lives. This increasingly large part of the population refers to real life as "RL," in contrast with "VR," standing for virtual reality.

From "'Best Church' preaches satire" (Chicago Sun-Times, May 25, 2008):

Original hymns such as "When God and Satan Fight," apocalyptic proclamations and frequent cash collections (they don't sell tickets) round out the smartly staged sacrilege that changes from week to week.

"Our ultimate goal is to blur the lines between satire and reality and create an actual living, breathing, satirical community to create a home for atheists and agnostics and the otherwise religiously disenfranchised," says Best Church creator, director and piano player Mike Descoteaux.

To visit "the only website designed by God Himself," click here if you have free will; or click here if it's your destiny.

And from "Reading your way to a Y chromosome" (which first appeared at Salon.com but was reprinted in the Chicago Sun-Times on May 19, 2008):

What isn't manly? Well, women, naturally. Books by female authors occupy three slots on the list of 100 titles -- the same number as biographies of Teddy Roosevelt. Of these, we have Mary Shelley and Harper Lee, both famous for two things -- producing a single work of fiction and having the provenance of that work consistently (if unfairly) questioned -- and Ayn Rand, who is to traditionally female attributes like empathy and interpersonal relationships what Grover Norquist is to functioning government.

A thousand words for... Painted Lady

A thousand words for... All-American

"My friends, this is not going to be a 'music appreciation' course."

Regular M-mv readers may remember that I received a large box of goodies from The Teaching Company last May. Regular readers, particularly those in M-mv's "best and perfect audience," also realize that I am wont to, well, stockpile.

Heh, heh, heh.

Yeah, it's no exaggeration to suggest that here in the little house in the tiny woods on the prairie we have enough books, CDs, DVDs, courses, software, etc. stockpiled to keep us busy for more than two decades of reading, thinking, and learning.

I know, I know. Well, we all have our vices.

Anyway.

It took me a year, but I finally got around to listening to one of those Mother's Day 2007 treasures: How to Listen to and Understand Great Music by Robert Greenberg. The kids and I listened to the first eight lectures while ferrying Master M-mv to and from the local college.

Here are some highlights:

Lecture One: Music as Mirror
■ I know we want to pedestalize our composers; we want to believe that they never lowered themselves to think about filthy lucre when the muse sang to their hearts. Well, that's wrong. A composer has to eat, make the rent, and pay the cable bill, just like the rest of us. I would assure that poor composers do not choose to be poor. There is nothing romantic or Bohemian about it; poverty, if you'll excuse me, sucks.

Lecture Two: Sources—The Ancient World and the Early Church
■ Now look, I know what these questioners mean. They hear, in Bach's music, order, logic, control, a disciplined rightness that they associate with arithmetical sums and algebraic equations, but saying Bach's music is like arithmetic is like saying that a human being is nothing but five dollars worth of chemicals; add some water and stir. This may be true, but it is reductionism at its trivializing worst because we are rather more than the sum of our chemical parts. We are also about love and wit, about intelligence and stupidity, about wisdom, imagination, spirit, awareness, and about soul. These are the essence of what we are, no matter how unquantifiable these elements might be. Bach's music is not like arithmetic. Bach's music is like Bach.

■ Now look, I don't want to be overly morbid here, but I would encourage all of us to put a snippet of music on our tombstones. What could possibly say more about us than our choice of music?

[Note: Greenberg is discussing the Epitaph of Seikilos — a skolion, or drinking song. It reads, "As long as you live, be lighthearted; let nothing trouble you; life is only too short, and time takes its toll."]

Yes, indeed, my friends, it is short—there's just so much room to carve a piece of music on a tombstone—but it is magnificent. And strictly speaking for myself, I love the idea that someone chose to be memorialized by a drinking song.

Lecture Five: The Renaissance Mass
■ Imitation masses based on secular songs? Forgive me, I've lived in the San Francisco Bay area for thirty years, but at moments of extreme stress or excitement, I slip into the patois of my native southern New Jersey. "Imitation masses based on popular songs" What are you guys thinking about, what are you thinking? Are you thinking at all? Popular songs in church?"

Lecture Six: The Madrigal
■ If we want to say something musically that's not been said before, we have to come up with a musical vocabulary that no one's heard before. But in coming up with a vocabulary that no one's heard before, we run the very real risk of confusing and losing our listeners. What we're describing here is the dilemma of any modern artist who must balance originality against coherence. It was a dilemma faced by the madrigalists, and this is where and why many of them were genuinely experimental artists.

■ A moment's reflection on why it's great to be a wealthy amateur. Wealthy amateurs do not have to work for a patron. Wealthy amateurs do not have to work for money. Yes, wealthy amateurs do not even have to work. The wealthy amateur can think thoughts the rest of us only dream about.

Lecture Seven: Introduction to the Baroque
■ Nowhere is the Baroque duality of exuberance and control, of surface complexity and structural logic, more apparent than in the music of the age. At its core—if I might make a gross but not inaccurate generalization—at its core, Baroque music is about expressive exuberance and surface extravagance, carefully tempered and controlled by rhythm, a systemic approach to harmony, and symmetrical, or what we call "cyclical" musical forms.

Chapbook entry

The Ten-Year Nap (Meg Wolitzer)

A fan of Wolitzer's previous novels -- The Wife and The Position -- I expected to enjoy this book. And I did.

Imagine many of the questions raised by the decent "mommy wars" non-fiction of the last couple of years probed in fiction. Imagine that fiction well written... sad, annoying, sometimes funny, and mostly true. There. You have The Ten-Year Nap.

For those who follow my recommendations, note that Nap is more "comfortable" than [Rachel] Cusk's Arlington Park [recommended here]; more accessible, too. For example, not all of Nap's mothers are financially cut out for SAHMotherhood. That's also where Wolitzer's fictional mothers depart from, say, the mothers in The Nanny Diaries or even the mothers to whom Hirshman directs her polemic, Get to Work [which is, at this writing, bargain-priced at $4.99]. In other words, Wolitzer's mothers are women we know; even women we may be.

Simply put, I thought it was a terrific novel.

Quoteworthy
p. 16
Amy quietly appreciated her child, not during the precocious moments, for those seemed prepackaged for anecdote and narcissistic gratification, but during the small, almost unnoticeable ones.

p. 54
Perhaps Penny wasn't judging her at all, wasn't trying to calculate how Amy possibly filled her nonworking days. Almost no one came out and directly criticized other women for choosing not to go back to work, but Amy knew how it appeared. She no longer had the excuse of a having a young child at home to use as a human shield against all the questions about what she "did," which was the first thing anyone ever asked when they met you at a dinner party.

p. 57
Maybe the idea of the supposed tension between working and nonworking mothers had been put out in the world just to cause divisiveness. Happiness didn't seem to be determined primarily by whether or not you worked....

p. 70
Some mothers felt secretly pious about motherhood; they were sure their childless friends could never reach anything approximating the gorgeousness of family bedlam: the intensity of teaching a child to read, the drama contained in a tantrum... Life with children was bigger than life without them, these mothers were convinced, and so the childless women could seem austere and prissy, though this could never, ever be said aloud, for it was judgmental and certainly unfair.

p. 93
Ever since prep school Jill had found herself in the swimmy light of academic fluorescence, wandering serenely up to the reserve room at the library to spend a few hours with the handout that the instructor had left for the students. She liked to sit and study with absolute stillness, like a dog listening for its master. Every part of her body would be attentive, even her wrists, she thought, her spleen.

p. 100
Was education meaningless if you didn't do something with it, or was it justifiable, in and of itself, bolstering you for the world that lay ahead, whatever it turned out to be?

p. 103
He was optimistic, she realized. His parents were living; he did have a mother who had killed herself. A parent who commits suicide, people said, leaves the door open for the child to do the same thing someday too, as if following the parent into oblivion.

p. 109
Probably Amy was right, and there were all kinds of women pocketed away in their homes, including smart ones who read demanding books and were invested in what happened in the world and were also kind of a kick to be around. But Jill wasn't looking for new friends. "I'm too old," she said.

p. 113
Vapor swirled in the headlights. They sat in their cold cars, yawning but happy; everyone felt that they had been nourished by it, that their lives here were not entirely mall-dominated or at all empty, as some people in the city assumed.

p. 136
There had been a time in the world when art was art and craft was craft, and everyone knew the difference. Art could be spotted right away, because the real thing was rare and gave off a particular sheen—and also because the artist could usually be found lurking nearby, anxious to know what you thought about "the work." But craft was all over the place, splayed out on folding tables at country fairs, or on drop-sheeted floors of houses and apartments where children were in residence. With art, you might be said to have a good eye; with craft, mostly what you needed were hands.

p. 151
Shelly was someone for whom motherhood was everything: the other women all knew this about her, though until now they had understood only abstractly. At breakfast sometimes she spoke ardently about her three children, and she was often carrying around a hot-button nonfiction sociological book with a motherhood theme.

p. 170
In the night, just before husbands called out to wives during sleep and children called out to mothers, the women were often already awake. They lay suspended in bed, and so when the moment came, they didn't even have to judder to attention before dropping a light female hand onto a trembling male back, or skittering down the hall toward a dreaming child.

p. 228
Watching another family up close was always alarming; their ways seemed tribal and unfamiliar and somehow wrong....

p. 258
"... Work changed everything. For me, work is anti-death."

p. 323
It seemed to her now ... that work did not make you interesting; interesting work made you interesting.

p. 353
But the city had always seemed both crazily inhuman and human. How could people live like that, on top of one another, always running, so competitive, always looking to the next thing? And how could people live any other way, so separate and alone in their individual houses and delineated, proud plots of land? It seemed that everywhere you went, people quickly adapted to the way they had to live, and called it Life.

The publisher provided this review copy.

Certain snobberies

Certain Girls (Jennifer Weiner)

It was all very Heathcliff and Cathy on the moors, very Meggie and Father Ralph on Drogheda. Teenagers ate it up, and Lyla Dare, intergalactic ass-kicker, remained a guilty pleasure for a number of grown women who should have been old enough to know better, women who should have, according to the critics, been occupying their minds with some improving piece of literature but preferred Lyla's adventures. (p. 163-64)

Jennifer Weiner's latest novel, Certain Girls, continues the story of Candace Shapiro, the plus-sized protagonist of Good in Bed. The story toggles between Candace's point of view and that of her now thirteen-year-old daughter, Joy, to describe marriage, motherhood, and all of the messiness that is family relationships.

Although I was considerably less invested in Joy's narrative than Cannie's, I enjoyed my afternoon with the book, and when, some weeks later, I saw it mentioned in one or another woman's magazine as a great beach read, I mentally concurred: Weiner's books would make wonderful beach and poolside fare.
___________________

Back in October 2005, I quoted a bit from Debra Pickett's review (Sun-Times, October 2, 2005) of Weiner's then recent novel, Goodnight Nobody:

Weiner is a strong writer, with an eye for detail and a well-honed wit that manages to be cutting without seeming bitchy. Since her first novel, however, she has also seemed a bit lazy as a writer, content to churn out a pink-covered book each year without attempting to do something that would transcend the cliches of genre.

This is the sort of criticism that Weiner herself frequently derides as intellectual snobbery or condescension towards young women writers. But is it really snobbery to suggest that there is a difference between pleasant diversions -- books that get read because, alas, you cannot take your television to the beach or on a plane -- and true literary fiction? [Emphasis added.]

See, I don't think it is. I don't think it's snobbery to differentiate between a pleasant diversion (which, in my reading life, is precisely what Weiner's work is) and true literary fiction (like, say, a Joyce Carol Oates novel).

Earlier in 2005, I had swallowed whole both Good in Bed and In Her Shoes in one Sunday afternoon. In late October, I gulped Goodnight Nobody down. Well written? Yes. Entertaining? Oh, sure. True literary fiction? Nope. But so what? I think it is intellectual snobbery to suggest that every reading experience should be, as Weiner would lightly mock, "some improving piece of literature."

Jane Smiley disagrees, though. In a review for the Philadelphia Inquirer, she writes:

Weiner is a talented and accomplished novelist, with real stylistic flair, excellent and sometimes laugh-out-loud wit, and good insight into her characters. In her latest novel, she seems boxed in by her chosen genre, and it's a shame, because she's got the intelligence and the ambition to address larger questions than the psychological ups and downs of her nice Jewish characters. For whatever reason, though, she doesn't dare.

I'm not sure that Weiner doesn't dare. (In fact, I'm not sure there is anything else in Smiley's review worth quoting.) But I am sure about the rest -- the wit, warmth, skill, and insight apparent in Weiner's writing.

That said, perhaps Weiner might find me guilty of condescension because, like Pickett and Smiley, I have wondered what Weiner might do if she were to attempt something... more, something... bigger.

Look, it would be difficult to make a case of intellectual snobbery against me. This entry and this alone would undermine any such argument. And although others decry the novel's pink cover, I think it's pointless to bemoan marketing decisions.

In other words, I have no beef with Weiner's oeuvre -- quite the contrary, in fact, as evidenced by the multiple posts about her work here on M-mv. I am just indulging in a bit of literary armchair-quarterbacking, a bit of musing about the future work of talented writer whose work I've enjoyed.

Just sign me,

A grown woman who should be old enough to know better, a woman who should have, according to the critics, been occupying my mind with some improving piece of literature but preferred Cannie's adventures.

Other reviews
"Cannie's back, in 'Certain Girls'"
(Chicago Tribune, May 21, 2008)

"With 'Certain Girls,' Weiner returns to popular character"
(Cape Cod Times, May 4, 2008)
___________________

The publisher provided this review copy.

From the archives (3.29.2007):When other homeschoolers "fail"

Elsewhere, the idea of inept or failing homeschoolers is being discussed, particularly the comparison between traditionally schooled and homeschooled students, standards for homeschoolers, and the failure of some homeschooling families to deliver a certain type of education.

My response, slightly edited, follows.

Illinois law mentions providing an education in English comparable to that of same-aged peers in public schools. That's about it. Oh, and it lists the number of days required, too, I think.

There's a word or two, probably not terribly kind, for people like me, but I'll risk hearing the criticism again. Here goes: One of the reasons I homeschool is that I'm not terribly interested in what everyone else is doing -- how woefully underprepared Suzy Homeschool's kids are, how inarticulate Peggy Publicschool's kids are, etc.

Really. Not. Interested.

I'm concerned about the progress of three kids, for now. Hey, look at that. They all live here.

I've mentioned over the last seven years that I am most decidedly not a homeschooling evangelist -- I do not think home education is the answer to all that ails our public school classrooms. Part of the reason that I won't evangelize or play the role of plump homeschooling mom-cheerleader is that I'm not on-board with the homeschool "party line" -- that is, that simply because the kids are homeschooled, they are better prepared than their traditionally schooled peers.

What. Bosh.

Why, there are huge gaps in the consistency, rigor, and quality of education being provided to the children of the posters on the sole homeschooling message board I visit, let alone across the ever-expanding ranks of homeschoolers in this country. I can only speak to the studies of, oh, yeah, three students, and I can do so using both conventional standards (e.g., test scores and awards) and less conventional (e.g., reading lists, perhaps, or their conduct).

That's all I'm going to do, then -- speak to their experience, no one else's.

The fact that we homeschool is among the very last things that we share with people. As a matter of fact, if I can avoid revealing it, let alone discussing it, I will. As I've said here and elsewhere many, many times before, I'm not interested in educating the public about homeschooling, I'm bored by idle and small chatter, and I loathe the pigeonhole into which my family is filed once folks learn we homeschool. Sorry. None of the stereotypes apply here, and I'd rather not have my children labor under the smallmindedness of others, so I don't advertise how they are educated.

I let their clear speech, many conventional achievements (work, academic awards and prizes, sports-oriented successes, etc.), and their good natures speak to their intelligence and scholastic preparation. That should be more than enough. If my oldest is any indication, it is. It really is.

And I just don't worry about what everyone else is doing.

Homeschooled students are already bound by the standards of state law. I do not believe homeschools should be suject to regulation beyond that which a private school would be subjected. Period. No matter how the students are prepared.

The discussion began with a number of questions, among them, How do I feel when I meet homeschoolers whose kids are obviously not on a par with public schooled students of the same age/grade? Um, the same way I feel when I meet the parents of public or private schooled or, for that matter, homeschooled students whose kids are not as articulate, interested, adjusted, etc. as my own -- "Wow. Thank goodness I don't have to spend much time with these people." What else am I supposed to think? Really? I'm not a people person even in the best of circumstances. (That appears to be a nature thing, by the way. The children are the kindest, most gracious humans I have ever met.) In the worst (e.g., in the company of parents whose children make me cringe with more than curmudgeonly bad humor), I just seek the nearest exit.

Related aside: When I started homeschooling, what, a decade ago now, one of my sentences was that I had no intention of sacrificing my children on the altar of public education while I labored (volunteered, fund-raised, etc.) for the neighborhood schools like a Missy Goodcitizen. Well, ten years later, I would add that I have no intention of sacrificing them on the altar of homeschooling stereotypes and myths, either.

You do your thing; I'll do mine. Let's see how that all works out, then, eh?
_____________________

For more of M-mv's thoughts on education and parenting, see the posts collected here.

A thousand words for... I love blue jays!

Fine Art Friday:The recommended daily allowance

Last summer, I recommended Who the #$&% Is Jackson Pollock? Those of you who enjoyed that will likely appreciate today's RDA:

In My Kid Could Paint That, Amir Bar-Lev sets out to settle the controversy surrounding the work of child-artist Marla Olmstead.

The controversy
"A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl"
(NYT, September 28, 2004)

"New Questions About Child Prodigy"
("60 Minutes," February 23, 2005)

"Prodigy Schmodigy"
(LA Weekly, July 19, 2006)

"At Sundance, Art and Journalistic Ethics on Trial"
(NYT, January 25, 2007)

"My Kid Could Paint That"
(Slate, October 5, 2007)

Of course, the documentary raises more questions than it settles. Apparently, the Olmsteads thought so, too: Following the release of My Kid Could Paint That, they appeared on "Good Morning, America" and "CNN Nightline" to malign the film. I haven't seen footage of their rebuttal, but the way they are portrayed by Bar-Lev puzzles me. They seem so sincerely confused about the media maelstrom centered on how -- and by whom, exactly -- the paintings are produced. Well, what did you think would happen?!?

We plan to watch the bonus features on the DVD this evening. According to the Amazon review (which includes images of Marla's work), "Back to Binghamton" in particular provides "some startling new material which will help shed light on the questions the film raises."

My kids and I did paint that.
Last summer, the Misses M-mv and I dabbled in some Pollock-inspired paintings. The entire process was captured on film, so there will be no questions about the veracity of our artistic vision and execution.

Apparently, Little Marla receives $25,000 and more for her works.

The Misses M-mv and I have no such demands. Make your best offer on our drizzles, drips, and dashes.

You can preview them here.

And if you'd like to see how they look in a museum, here's a peek.

Going once....

Speaking of ants...

I took the above image just after lunch. Yeah, I know! How cool is that? More sychronicity.

For four springs, we have watched the peonies in our side yards unfurl their petals, but first we have spent some weeks being alternately fascinated and repulsed by the ants the peonies' heavy, un-bloomed heads attract. According to the Heartland Peony Society, the flurry of activity is a natural and temporary one.

From their site:

It is believed that peonies produce small amounts of nectar and other ant attractants to encourage ants to help in opening the dense double flower buds found in many peonies. The ants may be found covering certain varieties and avoiding others, this is totally normal.

Once the buds have opened the ants will disappear - also normal.

Some people think ants are required to open the flowers, but this does not to appear to be true.

It seems a debatable question whether ants are beneficial or harmful. I think they are neutral.

Should you spray a pesticide to get rid of the ants? That is a definite no. Since the ants are not harmful and some pesticide residues are harmful, why endanger yourself, the plants or the peony's pollinator (good insects) with poisonous sprays?

Just don't spray.

Instead just enjoy the unique interaction of ants and peonies; an evolutionary effect thousands of years in the making and posing no problems in the long run.

Enjoy is probably too strong a verb, but we certainly remain interested.

A thousand (plus) words for... Well, he tried.

I was away as dusk fell last night. That was, of course, when the indigo bunting decided to visit us again. Apparently, Mr. M-mv had only one thought after admiring the beautiful blue friend: It was to capture an image for me.

The resulting photograph isn't clear, but I adore it because it says, "I love you. What interests you is important to me."

I recently observed to Donna that marriage is a lot like birdwatching: The results of both are half luck and half hard work.

And I should know. Mr. M-mv and I celebrated our twenty-second wedding anniversary a couple of days ago. As I've said before, I am thankful for an enduring marriage -- thankful for my good luck and his hard work.

Heh, heh, heh.

I wish you all beautiful birds and enduring relationships.

The Misses M-mv bookended me on the couch as we watched NOVA "Lord of the Ants" last night. Mr. M-mv served us oatmeal (me) and popcorn (them) and popped in to watch with us as his project allowed.

We learned about Edward O. Wilson's career -- and the boyhood adventures from which that career was born. The many illustrations he prepared for The Ants reinforced Miss M-mv(i)'s interest in scientific illustration; his boyhood adventures outdoors reminded us all why we moved to the little house in the tiny woods on the prairie.

This morning, I poked around the web companion for the program and read with interest the transcript of a conversation between Wilson and NOVA's Peter Tyson. "How can you love an ant?" jests Tyson. Wilson responds with a story about a conference of damselfly specialists and enthusiasts.

This may be laughable to a person you picked off the street. But these people are talking about animals that are 300 million years old and all that time have been vital parts of the environment. And they're beautiful—most of them are iridescent blue or green. I'll tell you, for me it beats the hell out of NASCAR!

And for me and the Misses? This informative program beat the hell out of anything else flickering in the Great American Campfire last night.

Recently ordered: Naturalist (Edward O. Wilson).

Added a little later
It's that ol' synchronicity again, I think. I mean, is David P. Barash poking at Wilson in this Chronicle piece?

In his conversation with Tyson, Wilson said:

Because we're tribal. It's always been a great survival value for people to believe they belong to a superior tribe. That's just in human relationships. Spirit, patriotism, courage under fire, all these things have been generated almost certainly by group competition, tribe against tribe—an idea, incidentally, first spelled out in some detail by Darwin in Descent of Man. This is where intelligence and courage and altruism and high-quality people come from, he said—the exigencies of tribal conflict. And the tribes that win have what we call the "nobler" qualities in them.

That's an interesting area of theory I'm working in right now. I don't want to go into it, but it's a very hot issue, exactly where altruism and what we call "noble" qualities of humans come from. But it appears to me that much of it occurs from tribal identification and the belief that your tribe is above other tribes. And I think that part of our contempt for the life that supports us is an extension of such tribalism.

I was wondering if Barash is getting his digs in here:

Devotees of group selection (some of whom evidence an almost religious zeal, perhaps because they have been wandering in the biological wilderness since the mid-1960s) have seized on these results as demonstrating how human moral psychology may well have been shaped by an urge to benefit one's group, even at substantial personal expense.

Eggcorns and mondegreens and malapropisms! Oh, my!

From "Beware the Eggcorn" (The Editorial Eye):

Eggcorns can be an insidious problem for writers and editors. We're likely to know that one should toe the line, and not tow the line, and that the correct medical term is pustule, and not pus jewel. However, if we're not familiar with an idiom or phrase, an eggcorn can make eminent sense, especially if it replaces an archaic or obscure word with a more familiar one. Thus, "just grew like Topsy" (which refers to the Uncle Tom's Cabin character, Topsy, who "jus' grew") changes into "just grew like top seed." Fewer and fewer people are familiar with the original referent, so it's not surprising that Topsy would be replaced with top seed, which grows very well.

Note that the Eye references Mark Liberman's excellent Language Log (older posts here), which I've recommended to M-mv readers in the past. It amazes me that in my now four-year-old recommendation of the site, I included a passage from an entry in which Liberman advises readers, "If you're not interested in English syntax, you'll want to return to our discussions of eggcorns, ghits and coffee." [Emphasis added.]

What's with me and eggcorns, eh?

Speaking of old entries...

I think I first mentioned Raymond Chandler's The Long Goodbye in this Bloomsday entry. Like the Language Log recommendation, the entry is also nearly four years old.

(Aside: It is remarkable to me that M-mv will be five years old in October.)

Well, The Long Goodbye is Chicago's fourteenth One Book, One Chicago selection. I've decided to (re)read along with my adopted home-city's book club. Let me invite you to join us.

From The Long Goodbye:

I'm a licensed private investigator and have been for quite a while. I'm a lone wolf, unmarried, getting middle-aged, and not rich. I've been in jail more than once and I don't do divorce business. I like liquor and women and chess and a few other things. The cops don't like me too well, but I know a couple I get along with. I'm a native son, born in Santa Rosa, both parents dead, no brothers or sisters, and when I get knocked off in a dark alley sometime, if it happens, as it could to anyone in my business, and to plenty of people in any business or no business at all these days, nobody will feel that the bottom has dropped out of his or her life.

Three thousand words for... goofily joyous

Backyard birding

For those who enjoy this sort of thing, here is our current backyard list. I've boldfaced the birds we saw just yesterday.

American Crow
American Goldfinch
American Robin
Baltimore Oriole
Black-and-White Warbler
Black-capped Chickadee
Blue Jay
Brown Creeper
Brown-headed Cowbird
Brown Thrasher
Canada Goose
Cedar Waxwing
Chipping Sparrow
Common Grackle
Cooper's Hawk
Dark-eyed Junco
Dark-eyed Junco (Oregon)
Downy Woodpecker
Eastern Screech Owl
European Starling
Fox Sparrow
Golden-crowned Kinglet
Gray Catbird
Great Horned Owl
Hairy Woodpecker
House Sparrow
House Wren
House Finch
Indigo Bunting
Mourning Dove
Northern Cardinal
Northern Flicker
Purple Finch
Red-bellied Woodpecker
Red-breasted Nuthatch
Rose-breasted Grosbeak
Ruby-Throated Hummingbird
Veery
White-crowned Sparrow
White-throated Sparrow
White-breasted Nuthatch
Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker

Birding resources we love:

Field Guide to the Birds of North America (National Geographic)
The Sibley Guide to Birds (David Allen Sibley (National Audubon Society))
Common Birds and Their Songs (Lang Elliott)
Birds of Illinois (Sheryl Devore, et al)
Birds of Chicago (Chris C. Fischer)
Birds of Illinois Field Guide (Stan Tekiela)
Bushnell Falcon 10x50 Wide Angle Binoculars
Audubon Bird Call Whistle
Moleskine Reporter, Large Plain

Sancti-Mom-ious

As the winter swim season drew to a close, my least favorite mother on the team (and this is a label of some distinction, this designation "my least favorite") took time from her busy schedule of gossiping, berating, belittling, and, oh, yeah, gossiping some more to let me know — again — what a bad idea homeschooling is.

After all, she smugly offered, how will they stay in shape after swim team is over? And when will they socialize?

At the moment that she expressed her concern for my girls' physical fitness and social lives, her own daughter, fully thirty-pounds overweight if she's an ounce, was in the process of surreptitiously pinching the girl in front of her — again! — while scratching an itch deep in her nose with her nail-bitten forefinger. Yes, again.

Yeah, I replied, shaking my head. It's a regular worry.

Odious, sancti-Mom-ious dolt.

Over the last nearly nineteen years, I've heard all manner of sancti-Mom-my from other women:

My child doesn't eat... fast food, soda, sweets, preservatives, etc.

My child doesn't watch television.

My child doesn't read that.

My child was born potty-trained.

My child has always slept through the night.

My child this....

My child that....

My child wouldn't dream of....

My child couldn't possibly....

And so it goes.
______________________

Because there is such a gap between my oldest and my two youngest, I am often among mothers with much less time spent in the parenting gig. Their sancti-Mom-ious tone is, of course, most despicable since, more often than not, they don't know what the feck they're talking about. Unfortunately, it's socially unacceptable to sigh and suggest, "Hey! Why don't you spend a little more time working the kinks out of your whole 'parenting vision' before you inflict your half-baked philosophy on the rest of us, you sancti-Mom-ious dolt?" Since I am supposed to model for my children the sorts of behavior I'd like them to exhibit, however, I refrain.

But the words tickle my lips.

It's not as if homeschooling is without its sancti-Mommies, by the way. In fact, some bring sancti-Mom-my to new heights (or depths), what, with their lists and their schoolrooms and their posters and their what-have-you.

My child scored a 32 on the ACT when she was eleven.

My child doesn't read twaddle. (Typing that ridiculous word makes me mildly ill.)

My child is in fifth grade. We don't always have enough time for physics, advanced calculus, and oboe lessons. Should we give up sleeping or eating?

My child completed Henle Latin. He's six. What now?

Or, alternately...

My child is ten and still can't read (or do math or write a clear sentence or whatever), but that's all right because we're at peace with the universe.

My child is behind in everything, but life keeps getting in the way, and life is, after all, the best teacher, right?

My child this....

My child that....

My child wouldn't dream of....

My child couldn't possibly....

It's enough to make a thinking person scream: Stop the sancti-Mom-my now!
_____________________

I took my kids to Steak-n-Shake for dinner tonight. My husband is working late and cooking seemed too much of an effort on this beautiful Friday night. I drove our aging van to the lake, and we watched the heron make several lonely criss-crosses over the gray, wind-tossed water. My son and I read the Sun-Times, and my daughters read #20 and #11 in the Animorphs series. We checked the local television listings to see if "Mythbusters" will be on this evening and licked the salt from our fingertips before slurping the last of our shakes.

We stopped at Home Depot to exchange the garage door remote and then drove home in companionable silence.

Earlier today, my son and I hung a new bird feeder, and my daughters and I set up a science experiment (which, as regular M-mv readers know, stands a much better chance of failing than succeeding, but that's all right — we'll roll with it), read aloud from our astronomy book, discussed Twelfth Night, and practiced piano. In the afternoon, the girls played outside, Boy-boy installed software on his new computer, and I read a book. There was other stuff; there always is — math, spelling, Latin, and the rest. But that was the gist of it.

It was a good day.

And that's not sancti-Mom-my. That's confidence and contentment.

You either have it.

Or you don't.

My observation is that sancti-Mom-my masks a decided lack of confidence and contentment.

Or a wealth of stupidity.

Or both.

Heh, heh, heh.

A thousand words for... Ouch!

Click to enlarge

After a whirlwind courtship, the blue jays have determined that, yes, they will take us -- or our towering pines, anyway -- up on our offer of a spring wedding. It's a bit of a shotgun affair: As you can see, they're assembling a nest already.

Those of you who know how much I adore corvids will understand how delighted I was to find that these noisy, blue friends had chosen our yard for their nest. Maybe we'll espy the fledglings.

"Why is it that the work of this earnest but artless writer continues to enjoy such astonishing popularity?"

It's a good question. In this article, Jonathan Yardley admits, "As a teenager, even into my early 20s, there wasn't a writer dead or alive whose work I treasured more than John Steinbeck's."

Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath was my first "grown up" novel. I followed it up with East of Eden... and then swallowed everything of his whole. I reread Steinbeck in my mid-twenties and thought that, yes, he held up. Like Yardley, I treasured Steinbeck.

But does Steinbeck hold up when one is a bona fide grown-up? I'd like to argue that a book like The Winter of Our Discontent does (it was, after all, once on my "Regularly reread" list), but now I'm not so sure. I was reading a passage the other day, and, yes, it did seem... strained. Dated. A little -- as I used to chide my writing students -- clunky.

Concludes Yardley:

For myself, Steinbeck is most comfortably lodged in a past that is now half a century gone. I no longer can read him -- too often, for me, reading his prose is like scraping one's fingernails on a blackboard -- but he was important to me once and that should not be forgotten. Not many books of our youth survive unscathed into what passes for our maturity, and many other books await that maturity before we are ready to appreciate and understand them. For me, Steinbeck eventually gave way to William Faulkner, but I decline, now, to thumb my nose at my old friend as I bid him farewell. [Emphasis added.]

Which authors and books were important to you once but have not arrived unscathed in what passes for your maturity?

Worth repeating:A lifetime of excellence

Elsewhere, last year, I responded to a poll about homeschooling mistakes. Mine? Well...

In the beginning (and that was twelve years ago)...
I'd work the day. In other words, I'd parent, teach, and write/edit on Monday, and it was good. And I'd parent, teach, and write/edit on Tuesday, and it was good. And I'd parent and teach on Wednesday, and it was good enough. And I'd write and edit on Thursday, and it met the deadline.

You get the idea. For those first couple of months, although I had an unwavering commitment to and clearly articulated philosophy about the family-centered learning project, I was working day-to-day. "That was good. That was good. That was pretty good. That was good. That wasn't, but there's tomorrow." This was my fundamental mistake.

Superficially, no, there's not much wrong with it, but when I finally read Marva Collins for the first time about a year into our homeschooling adventure, I realized I was going about our days all wrong.

Collins writes:

Many of us can be excellent for a day, but we find a lifetime of excellence to be just a bit difficult. Good teachers leave their egos and problems at the door each morning. They become so immersed in the children they teach that they forget time, problems, who they are, or what they can't do. They believe that they exist for their students. They hear with their hearts, they see with their souls, and they teach with their conscience.

I realized with an unsettling all-at-onceness that I didn't want to be good (or good enough) for a day. I wanted to be excellent most of the time. And so far? I wasn't even close.

And it is utterly doable. It really is. If I refuse to lower my expectations but raise them, instead. And then exceed them. If I refuse to whine or complain or yield to more self-indulgence than the occasional bookstore coup. If I teach. Lead. Coach. Motivate. Inspire. Give my students the best that I have to offer every. single. day. My goal, then, became a lifetime of excellence, not a day or two here and there. A lifetime.

And it all began with raised expectations -- for me and for my students.

And don't for a minute think that this means we marched through the aisles of Jewel chanting Latin declensions (although we did that -- just twice, though). Or that the children are all bound for Harvard (they're not). Or that we drill endlessly or read only leatherbound Great Books. Anyone who reads my M-mv entries knows none of that is what we're about here.

But we do arrive at every morning seeking the moments of learning, discussion, synthesis. We're never (well, rarely) "off." Each and every day is about learning more, doing more, thinking more, writing more, drawing more, discussing more, connecting more -- all with a clarity of expression that approaches excellence. Every. Day.

If I let myself or my students "off the hook" too often for trite things, when the big events arrive, we'll be un(der)prepared -- mentally, spiritually, organizationally. So while bird by bird is an sound approach for dispensing with projects, it will not help one live each day with excellence. Do you see the difference? Each day is a fresh page, sure, but I'd prefer that the pages that preface it represent my best work at that time.

Excellent for a day is pretty easy. Excellence over the course of lifetime? Difficult. But doable.

Just. Do. It.

Follow up
After making that post, someone inquired: "How do you make each day an excellent learning day and keep up with your deadlines?"

Simply put, by fitting the work into the interstices that parenting and teaching permit. And that often means going to bed late and getting up early. My current gig does not require any 9-5 contact with clients or sources, so I haven't had to deal with distractions of that nature since, hmmm, late 2002, I think. (More about that near the bottom of this post.) I write about fitting it all in here: It all begins with me.

And here, too: Fine Art Friday (with its related and long aside).

And in a series of posts in which I worked through Linda Hirshman's polemic about women and work, I discuss how I squeeze it all in (and how important my work as a writer and editor is to me):
Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV

I was also asked, "Did you cut back on your writing/editing after reading Marva Collins?"

Believe it or not, no. I actually took on more work. First-born. What can I say? But if you can believe my luck, my key contact was an older man who arrived at work at 6:30 a.m. or earlier each weekday. When we needed to meet, we did so at 6 a.m. We dispensed with our telephone conferences before 7:30 a.m. The rest? Email worked well for us. And I attempted to make email work well enough for anyone else, including writers who were contributing to the newspaper, for example.

When my "boss" on that large project (a weekly publication, quarterly newspaper, and all of the literature associated with an ambitious capital campaign) left, I only lasted another eighteen months with that client. I then took a two-year break -- writing only articles (with, admittedly, mixed results -- I think I only placed eight pieces during that period). A few months after our relocation, though, I scored my current gig, which I love. Collins simply shook me out of complacency. Okay or good isn't really good enough. Not for me, anyway.

Born dying

Many folks think daffodils announce spring's arrival.

I think they're wrong.

Forsythia is the real harbinger.

Ours bloomed in the week before my birthday, and I was reminded all over again that forsythia is a tragically beautiful plant: Even as the blooms open, they wilt. It's as if the effort has exhausted them; as if they were keenly aware that they were born dying.
______________________

I once knew a couple whose backyard abutted a neighbor's deep, lush tangle of forsythia bushes. Every spring, the husband would exclaim over the yellow blooms. Every summer, the wife would demand that he take clippers to "those weeds."

Forsythia as foreshadow. Who knew?

"One cannot be liberated from fetters one has never worn."

Yesterday, the Sun-Times ran an essay by Michael J. Lewis, Falson-Pierson-Stoddard Professor of Art at Williams College. In the wake of the news about a Yale student's "abortion art" project, the piece ran in the WSJ under the headline "Art and (Wo)man at Yale" (April 24, 2008).

Two passages from the essay:

It is often said that great achievement requires in one's formative years two teachers: a stern taskmaster who teaches the rules and an inspirational guru who teaches one to break the rules. But they must come in that order. Childhood training in Bach can prepare one to play free jazz and ballet instruction can prepare one to be a modern dancer, but it does not work the other way around. One cannot be liberated from fetters one has never worn; all one can do is to make pastiches of the liberations of others.

And:

Immaturity, self-importance and a certain confused earnestness will always loom large in student art work. But they will usually grow out of it.

It may be my (pardon the pun) frame of mind today, but Lewis appears to be saying as much about the nature of education as he is about art school, no?

In which a former band geek...

assembles her favorite begging-to-be-performed-by-a-marching-band pieces and mentally choreographs a winning half-time show:

Opening
Slow center number
Conclusion

(This entry might also be titled, "What Youtube is good for.")

The recommended daily allowance

If you enjoyed this post -- and a remarkable number of your did -- you will likely be as fascinated by Helvetica as I was.

Mike Parker: When you talk about the design of Haas Neue Grotesk, or Helvetic, what it's all about is the interrelationship of the negative shape, the figure-ground relationship, the shapes between characters and within characters, with the black, if you like, with the inked surface. And the Swiss pay more attention to the background, so that the counters and the space between characters just hold the letters. I mean you can't imagine anything moving; it is so firm. It not a letter that bent to shape; it's a letter that lives in a powerful matrix of surrounding space. It's... oh, it's brilliant when it's done well.

Advice: Take it. Leave it.

Subtitle: A post for those just beginning their home education journey... to say nothing of those who've lost something along the way:

1. While your family's days should most decidedly not be about scoring in the Xth percentile on state-required exams, winning a regional [insert kiddie contest here] prize, or earning a House & Garden medal for cleanest kitchen counters, it's important to remember that growing children with good hearts and active minds tends to be more easily accomplished when

(a) their environment has some rhythms and rituals and routines (rising and resting at regular intervals; anticipating repetitive activities (like feeding the fish, reading from the book of 365 stories for 365 days, making the bed, and taking turns with the pet chores)); and

(b) their leader (teacher) models the attributes he or she wants to see in her students.

Which is another way of saying, find a daily dance, a workable rhythm to set the day's tempo. Something catchy but neither too fast nor too slow.

2. Focus on the moment you're in. Not on the best handwriting book, most compelling history text, or most brilliant math program. Not on message boards or blogging buddies. (In fact, if you can, try an experiment: Limit yourself to no more than, say, one virtual visit daily.) Not on all the stuff you could be doing. No. On the moment you're in. On what you should be doing. Teaching. Learning. Coaching. Leading. Modeling. So, for example: Your children's minds are wandering? They've got holes-in-the-brain, you say? Where is your mind? Are you focused on them? Yeah, I didn't think so. Now that you are, discover why aren't they focused. Physical needs met? Something big coming up? Time for a walk?

You get the idea.

3. Nine hundred ninety-nine times out of one thousand, a bad day, a spring-feverish morning, a calamitous pre-Christmas afternoon begins with you. That's not an accusation. It's an attitude. If you know it all begins with you, you know you have the power to, if not control the situation, then certainly control your response to it (which is control of the most excellent kind).

3. Don't neglect yourself.
Eat right.
Exercise.
Take vitamins.
Sleep well and for as long as your body needs.
Develop some rituals and routines that enable you to present a fresh face and a clean smile to your children and your students each morning.
Read. Think. Learn.
Take some time for yourself when and where you can get it.
Celebrate your achievements in meaningful ways.
Reflect.
Maintain real relationships. Cut back on the virtual.
Visit a museum.
Roll down a grassy hill. Can you still do a cartwheel?
Leave notes in your partner's jacket pocket.
Revisit a favorite hobby or book or movie from your youth.
Dance.

Remember: Before you are a partner, a parent, a teacher, an [insert occupation here], you are simply you. Ensure that you like who you are.

And take care of yourself.

For other posts of this nature, visit "Thoughts on education and parenting." Note that the 4.22.2005 post "Feed a cold; starve a (spring) fever?" expands on the ideas presented here.

Many thanks to the virtual acquaintance who sent me the link that inspired today's post. And many thanks to those who continue to express their appreciation for my posts and entries.

A thousand words for... underappreciated

Tax rebate checks

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