Quote of the day

Indy: "He's got a two-day head start on you, which is more than he needs. Brody's got friends in every town and village from here to the Sudan. He speaks a dozen languages, knows every local custom. He'll blend in, disappear; you'll never see him again. With any luck, he's got the Grail already."

Brody: "Does anyone here speak English? How about ancient Greek?"

Barbarism

No sooner had I entered the English School [at Oxford] than I went to George Gordon's discussion class. And there I made a new friend. ...His name was Nevill Coghill. I soon had the shcok of discovering that he--clearly the most intelligent and best-informed man in that class--was a Christian and a thorough-going supernaturalist. There were other traits that I liked but found (for I was still very much a modern) oddly archaic; chivalry, honor, courtesy, "freedom," and "gentillesse." One could imagine him fighting a duel. He spoke much "ribaldry" but never "villeinye."

Barfield was beginning to overthrow my chronological snobbery; Coghill gave it another blow. Had something really dropped out of our lives? Was the archaic simply the civilized, and the modern simply the barbaric?

--C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy

Peaches

Today I shall extol the excellencies of Weatherford peaches. The farmer's market we stopped at on the way home from Texas was in Weatherford; if ever you happen to pass by that way, I can recommend stopping, too.

I don't have a picture of Weatherford peaches, but here's a detail of their courthouse.

And these are some scarecrows I made friends with at the farmer's market.


In bins quite close to the aboveshown scarecrows, we bought peaches, sunny spheres of sweetness. Aristotle said the sphere is the most perfect shape, and in this case, he's not far wrong. A boxy peach would just be wrong.

These peaches inside are the color of crystallized honey, only brighter. Picture a peridot. Leave it about that tone, but instead of green, color it more like sandstone. Now make it juicy. That's what these peaches are like. And the heart around the pit has these ruby threads coming out from it, like rich embroidery. (Yes...the peach has a stone at its heart, I must confess.)

The taste is as nectar, fully its proper peachiness, but sweeter than usual. But it still has that acidic bite which reminds one that, however close to the Form of the Peach one has ascended, yet Weatherford Peaches are still mortal.

And tonight for dessert this most perfect fruit was sliced and endowed with whipped cream. Yum!

Texas, from whose bourne a traveller returns

I am a tired puella. I have driven and ridden 1500 miles in the past five days. You see, I went to an uncle's [first cousin twice removed's husband's] funeral, which was Saturday. I discovered this fact Thursday morning.

So I got up, cancelled appointments, went to Beall's, redid my schedule, helped my boss entirely redo my department, worked at church, came home, and packed. That night we drove to Grandma and Granddad's.

Next day we got up distressingly early and drove to Fort Worth. We checked in, unpacked, and went to the funeral home. We meant to go to Auny Ruby's, but by the time we ate, it was past nine at night, and that was just not happening. Dinner was at the Black Eyed Pea, and it was really, really good. I'm sad the one closed in Albuquerque.

Saturday morning we got up early and went to the funeral. It was a very Christian burial: for which I was grateful. Their church put on a nice reception afterward, and Emily and I were allowed to go explore downtown Granbury for about half an hour, take pictures in front of the courthouse, and visit bookstores and antique shops before we went to Aunt Ruby's for the afternoon.

We got to know an entire branch of the family that we hadn't seen for a while--Heather and Jeff's branch, including their siblings, Andy the brother-in-law, parents, and step-grandma.

They, being quite grown up, had stocked up well on wine, and a funny exchange came when their mother, Aunt Sue, accidentally spilled some on the kitchen floor.

Andy: "There are some cultures that would put you to death for that."
Me: "What cultures?"
Andy: "Fraternities."

Well, then. I had been thinking more of the ones that poured a libation before each meal to appease the gods. So I said so. (After all, there wasn't much to do but talk!)

The sister: "She's appeasing the linoleum gods!"

We really need to write a story involving linoleum gods. I mean, that is just...talk about an idol made with hands... yeah.

Yeah. So then we made the film, had chicken casserole, and went back to the hotel.

We got up Sunday morning, didn't get to go to church :-(, and drove back to Portales. We stopped at Weatherford: they had a really good farmer's market and a courthouse, at which we took pictures. We also stopped at Lubbock and went school-clothes shopping because Penney's was having a particularly good sale.

And then today we came home. We stopped at Santa Rosa for lunch and further courthouse photography. :-)

And that's why I'm a tired puella.

Potting Heather

The soror and I have discovered the thrills of amateur movie-making. It's thrilling, all right. Her camera (blessings upon its digital head) has a video function: only thirty seconds' worth, and no sound, but a decent enough video. It's not unlike the early season of Hitman, only quieter.

We are currently visiting relatives, including grown-up cousins we haven't seen for, oh, seventeen years. We were at an aunt's house all afternoon, with only ourselves to amuse one another.

It happened, all in the best tradition of silent films. ::insert impressive music::

The first video sequence was--lame. Lame even according to my standards. I hope it is banished to the wilds of cyberspace, from which no coherent data returns.

The second sequence was great. First we asked our cousin, Heather, if she would be the heroine. "What do I have to do?" "You have to let me mug you and rifle through your purse--but it can be my purse--and your brother Jeff can rescue you." Heather agreed.

Jeff, hearing his name at the other end of the room, said, "What are we doing?"

"HE VOLUNTEERED! HE SAID 'WE'!" put in his brother-in-law. And Jeff most amiably did.

There was a lovely potting shed in the back yard, with a convenient corner for Heather to get mugged around. The trouble was, what should the sister whack her over the head with? So we all trooped outside. Ah! A pot!

We took our stations. I stood near the fence, camera at the ready. The sister lurked with her pot. Jeff stood off to stage right, ready to rush to the rescue. Heather stood behind the corner.

"GO!" I shouted. She came. She was potted. The sister sniped her purse (which was her own purse borrowed by Heather for the purpose). Jeff rushed up. Jeff snatched the purse, picked up his sister, and left the wrathful would-be-mugger purseless and expostulating.

We did one take, and it was beautiful. I named it, "Potting Heather."

Further brilliance of Tolkien

Tolkien just got even smarter than I had realized.

I was reading one of my Old English grammars this afternoon, and discovered that their poetry wasn’t based merely on half-lines and alliteration, but also has “feet,” of a sort. That is, there are five patterns (conveniently labeled A through E) into which the syllables of the half-line must fall. Therefore, I decided I had to investigate the Song of the Mounds of Mundburg. It scans.

I append the first two lines. Slashes are stressed, x’s unstressed syllables. They're in the right order, and it worked when I typed it, but when Blogspot publishes this post, it messes up my spacing. Sorry--I know it's miserable to try and decipher.

Type B Type C
x / x x / x x / / x
We heard of the horns in the hills ringing
Type C Type C
x / / x x x / / x
The swords shining in the South-kingdom.

The book also states that an additional unstressed syllable, an “anacrusis,” may be placed before lines of Type A and D. I scan down to line four, and behold! It’s a Type A half-line with an anacrusis! I indicated it by parentheses.

Type A Type B
/ x / x x x / x /
Steeds went striding to the Stoningland
Type A Type A
(x) / x x / x / x / x
(As) wind in the morning. War was kindled.

Tolkien even made his sentence lengths within the poem like those in Old English. Some, like lines 1 and 2, are an even number of lines long. (In other words, OE wasn’t big on enjambments.) Other sentences are a line and a half, with a second, half-line-long sentence in the gap, like lines three and four of Mundburg, and like line 11 of Beowulf. (“That was a good king!” I’d append the OE, because it’s charmingly comprehensible to modern ears, except Blogspot isn’t really set up to deal with odd characters like the thorn and ash. I expect it could be done, but I don’t know how to do it.)

Line five starts off with a rousing Type E, which involves a secondary accent on the first syllable of “Theoden.” I indicated that with a backslash.

Type E Type A
/ \ x x / / x / x
There Theoden fell, Thengling mighty,
Type B Type C
x x / x / x / / x
To his golden halls and green pastures,

That’s about as far as I got, but I thought my discovery was so cool I had to share. :-)

The Battle of the Pelennor

I was reading Return of the King this afternoon, and I was really impressed by the lament Tolkien wrote for the fallen Rohirrim at the battle of the Pelennor, which he called the Song of the Mounds of Mundberg. It is a remarkable technical achievement, straight in the tradition of the Old English poets.

The meter is as Old English poetry, with two heavy stresses, a pause in the middle of the line, and two more stresses. Three of the stresses alliterate in each line, and generally the fourth alliterates with something somewhere in the line. The word choice is heavily reminiscent of Old English, appositive-heavy, adjective-rich. The "-ing" suffix is like the Norse "-son," like "Peterson."

I would that I could write like this, for my story would be much the better for it!

We heard of the horns in the hills ringing,
the swords shining in the South-kingdom.
Steeds went striding to the Stoningland
as wind in the morning. War was kindled.
There Theoden fell, Thengling mighty,
to his golden halls and green pastures
in the Northern fields never returning,
high lord of the host. Harding and Guthlaf,
Dunhere and Deorwine, doughty Grimbold,
Herefara and Heubrand, Horn and Fastred,
fought and fell there in a far country:
in the Mounds of Mundberg under mould they lie
with their league-fellows, lords of Gondor.
Neither Hirluin the Fair to the hills by the sea,
Nor Forlong the old to the flowering vales
ever, to Arnach, to his own country
returned in triumph; nor the tall bowmen,
Derufin and Fuilin, to their dark waters,
meres of Morthond under mountain-shadows.
Death in the morning and at day's ending
lords took and lowly. Long now they sleep
under grass in Gondor by the Great River.
Grey now as tears, gleaming silver,
red then it rolled, roaring water:
foam dyed with blood flamed at sunset;
as beacons mountains burned at evening;
red fell the dew in Rammas Echor.

Technology

There's something ironic about losing your USB memory stick.

Bookses

I have finished three books in the last few days: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Dante's Paradise, and Augustine's Confessions. I am a happy camper.

Confessions: read them. Augustine is excellent much of the time. The most peculiar thing (to me) was his frequent flights of allegorical interpretation, which is a thing we just don't do much. At least, I thought that until I was reading some Spurgeon and discovered that's his method, too...

Half-Blood Prince: the minimum reading age for the series--at least, as far as I would let my hypothetical kids read them--just jumped a couple years. It's good. It's not so dark as Order of the Phoenix, and has some really good stuff, but it also has certain content issues. Alas. For the record, I don't approve of sixteen-year-olds "snogging"...

Paradise: Alas, just when it was getting really good, we spend three cantos mostly praising Mary! Jesus may be the Main Point, but He's barely there!

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

It’s a strange movie. It’s not bad, exactly; it has a lot of good content; but it’s strange. It’s a lot like The Wizard of Oz, even to the color scheme. Just so you know, my review does contain spoilers: I couldn’t talk about it sensibly otherwise. Sorry.

Johnny Depp plays Willy Wonka, the owner of the chocolate factory. Remember the part in Pirates where he asked Will Turner how far he’d go for Elizabeth, and Will said he’d die for her, and Depp replied, “oh, good”? That’s sort of how he was for Chocolate Factory, only more so. Kindness to others was not his prevailing virtue. He also has a high voice, effeminate hair, and pale makeup, so I probably wouldn’t have recognized Depp if I hadn’t known it was him. So that was not so great.

Wonka’s factory is run by the Oompa Loompas, a tribe of munchkins who came from the jungle to eat cocoa beans instead of (admittedly disgusting) green caterpillars. Wonka’s jungle travels in which he discovered them were his most manly parts of the movie, but the Oompa Loompa language itself tended towards middle-school humor. They are musical munchkins. Every time someone disappeared from the tour, they put on an elaborate song and dance number (rather like “Ding, Dong, the Witch is Dead,” only with more cultural references). The dances were supposed to be funny. They tended to bewilder me. Or weird me out. I think I just don’t quite get Tim Burton’s sense of humor, which is probably good.

Christopher Lee plays Wonka’s father. He was a being with no existence in the book, but he works in the movie. At least, he adds (moderately obvious and unimaginative) depth and motivation to Wonka’s wonky character. In addition to being a great Saruman and Count Dooku, he’s also a great evil dentist. Seriously! He did well with what he had to work with. There’s a reunion scene at the end. “I haven’t seen bicuspids like this since…WILLY?” “Dad!” “You haven’t flossed since you left?” “Not once.”

On the other hand, the movie did some excellent things. Charlie Bucket’s family is very poor, but they love each other and his parents both work hard, his dad to support the family and his mom to keep the household running. (The casting job on the Bucket family, all seven of them, was phenomenal. Actually, most of the casting was really good.) I was surprised how nonfeminist the movie was, in that and other regards. It was a major theme that Family is Good and Selfishness is Bad—even more so than Harry Potter, actually. Charlie at the end passed up riches beyond his wildest dreams to stay with his family.

It was also a big theme that obeying your parents is good, even if you don’t understand. Charlie had a line to Wonka about how “they love you and want the best for you.” Every one of the frightful four children had parents who spoiled them. The Oompa Loompas knew perfectly well whose fault it was, and sang so.

I loved the way the movie skewered four vices. Everyone had a fitting end for his sins, rather like Dante’s Hell. :-D

The first to go was a glutton, plain and simple. He tried to eat what wasn’t his, fell into the chocolate river and was sucked up into a factory UFO, and that was that.

The second was your feminazi go-conquer-the-world type of girl, with her mother exactly the same. ::shudder:: She was a champion gum-chewer and chewing the wrong gum was her downfall. Wonka actually went to some effort to save her from herself (he generally didn’t), but she, knowing better of course, turned herself into a blueberry.

The third was a prim and spoiled young lady, who insisted on her own way and got sent down the garbage chute for her pains. Her doting father followed her: a squirrel pushed him in.

The fourth boy was a combination math whiz and video game addict. He was not as consistent a character, actually; I think they tried to do more with him than was possible. He was incredible at puzzles, math, and technology, and also liked violent video games. He’s the sort of boy who stomps on pumpkins for no reason but destruction. His dad halfheartedly tried to dissuade him, but was too much of a wimp to give an actual order or enforce it if he did. The Oompa Loompas sang that TV rots your brain, but it was so manifestly not true in this boy’s life, that one fell rather flat. His foul character was certainly bad, but they didn’t denounce it very convincingly. It should also be pointed out that bashing TV using the medium of cinema is perhaps not the most consistent.

The movie was, in short, of ambivalent quality. There were some funny parts, and some good parts, and some gross parts (mostly the caterpillars), and some parts that fell hopelessly flat. At least there was no love story to “fall on its face and skin its nose.”