Words, words, words

Polonius:  What do you read, my lord?
Hamlet:  Words, words, words.

                                                                      Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2

I love the English language.  I like the sounds of all languages, but I love English especially.  Perhaps that's why I'm overly sensitive to bad language.  I don't mean foul language, necessarily.  Though I believe foul language should be mostly avoided, it can be effective in its proper time and place. 

The bad language I'm talking about is lazy, dumb or essentially meaningless language.  One example in the United States is the use of the word 'like':  And I was like, wuz up?  And he's like, nothing, just chill'n.  So I'm like, well, ain't you gonna, like, clean the bathroom or something?  I've like, so had it with his lazy butt, like, you know!

The same goes with the word 'go.'  She goes, 'I'm pregnant.'  And I go, 'What?'  And she's like, 'For real.'

And there are the overused or vague expressions like Think outside the box, A game changer, I need closure / to move on, A win-win situation, Emotional intelligence, I need to find myself, A woman's right to choose, etc.

Regarding the lines from Hamlet above, Polonius is a wind bag who spouts inane clichés end to end and he's one of the characters in the play trying to manipulate Hamlet.  Hamlet knows what they're up to and throws it back in their faces, though they in turn don't catch on to what he's up to.  Instead, they simply think he's mad (as in insane).

The longer I live in Poland and the more I understand the language, I can hear that Polish speakers also have their irritating verbal tics.  I estimate that with some Polish speakers, over half of their words are meaningless filler.  I'm sure it's the same the world over.

Gifts and responsibilities

I have a gift for writing.  Before I go further I want to clarify what I mean.  If writing were baseball and the likes of William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, Mark Twain, William Faulkner and John Steinbeck were in the big leagues (they'd be the 1927 Yankees, Murderers' Row), I'd be in the lower minor leagues.  We're talking on a rookie league team in Nowhere, Idaho (and those players are at least paid).

But I've been told by enough people over the years that I have a talent, or gift, for writing. 

Now such gifts come from God and we each possess some gift or other.  We are responsible to God to use these gifts for his greater glory.  In that regard I'm rather like the wicked and slothful servant in Jesus' Parable of the Talents who buries the money his master entrusted him with rather than work to increase it.  I am obligated to improve my writing ability so that I can use if more effectively.  God have mercy on my soul.

I've discovered over the years that I've written my best poetry while living in Poland.  Maybe it's because my ears are not awash in English daily.  Maybe it's because as an English teacher I focus on the language more carefully.  Whatever the reason, nearly all my best poetry (such as it is) has been written over here.

Muse or swarm of gnats?

I think most writers will tell you that writing is often more of an affliction than anything.  An idea or a line will come into my head and won't leave me alone.  Then I'm distracted for hours or even over a period of days while I work out the poem, story or blog posting.  I miss half of what people around me say or worse I have to get away and be alone.  Many a poem has been worked out during long walks in the forest near here.

An example of this happened on Sunday, June 16th.  The Gospel reading for mass that day was Luke 7:36-8:3, where Jesus is visiting a Pharisee and a woman with a sinful reputation enters and washes Jesus' feet with tears and kisses, dries them with her hair and then anoints them with ointment from an alabaster jar.  Jesus tells her that her sins are forgiven, though this is mainly for the benefit of the Pharisee and his other guests.  The woman had clearly encountered Jesus previously and he had forgiven her on that occasion.  Now, free of her sins her heart is full of joy.  Glory to God!  I love this story and it suggested a poem that wouldn't give me peace all afternoon of that day. 

Here is the result.

The Woman with the Alabaster Jar

                                     Thou gavest me no kiss: but this woman since the time
                                     I came in hath not ceased to kiss my feet.      Luke 7:45

Her dirty reputation was no concern
To her, nor the scandal she created
For the Pharisee and all his guests.
She once was good as dead.  Now elated,
Light as a feather, free as one reprieved,
With the pure obsession of a lover,
With costly oil and tears of adoration
Kissed the precious feet of her Savior.

A note on the new photo behind the blog title - it shows the steeple of the Holy Trinity Church in Jędrzejów, Poland, about 10 miles from where I live.

Jędrzejów - pronounced yend-JAY-oof

French snapshots

 

My previous post about my week in Paris twenty years ago got me thinking more about France.  I want to look at some individuals who are French or at least in some way connected to France that have particularly impressed me.

Julia Child

Julia Child (née McWilliams) was an American born in Pasadena, California, but who did more to popularize French cooking in America than anybody else. 

Many people don't know that she worked for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the predecessor to the CIA, during World War II.  She first worked in Washington D.C. but was later posted to Ceylon and then to China.  Her main duties were the registering, cataloguing and channeling of great volumes of highly classified communications.  For a time she assisted the developers of a shark repellant needed to ensure that sharks wouldn't accidentally detonate mines targeting German U-boats. 

In Ceylon, Julia met fellow OSS member Paul Child and they were later married.  After the war, Paul worked for the United States Foreign Service and the couple were posted to Paris in 1948.

It was in Paris that Julia fell in love with French cuisine.  She attended Le Cordon Bleu cooking school in Paris and eventually collaborated with Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle on writing a French cookbook that would appeal to Americans.  The result was the best-selling Mastering the Art of French Cooking in 1961.  She would of course go on to author more successful cookbooks as well as host popular TV cooking programs.

I have her book From Julia Child's Kitchen which I highly recommend.  My wife and I have only attempted a handful of the recipes in this 677-page volume, but everything we've tried has been a delicious success.  Child had a knack for simplifying the complexities of good cooking.  I also recommend her book My Life in France which chronicles her love for France and its cuisine and, maybe most importantly, the love she and her husband Paul shared.

Hilaire Belloc

Hilaire Belloc was born to a French father and English mother in France in 1870.  He spent most of his boyhood in the county of West Sussex, England - a place he loved deeply for the rest of his life.  He returned to France in 1891 to voluntarily serve a term of military service in the French army, in an artillery regiment.  He become a naturalized British subject in 1902 but retained his French citizenship as well. 

He was a physically robust man and along with the great amount of marching done while serving in the army, he was an inveterate walker nearly his entire life.  While courting his future wife Elodie, the financially strapped Hilaire walked most of the way from the Midwest of the U.S. to her home in northern California, paying for his lodging at farmhouses along the way by sketching the owners and reciting poetry.

Belloc was a prolific writer of poetry, travelogues, books and essays covering topics such as Catholic apologetics, history, politics, economics and biographies.  His poetry alone ranges from deeply felt Christian faith to humorous poetry in the spirit of Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll (a couple of titles here should suffice to give you their tone: 'Jim, Who Ran Away from His Nurse, and Was Eaten by a Lion' or 'Rebecca, Who Slammed Doors for Fun and Perished Miserably.'  Though, of course, I recommend you read the actual poems.)

Belloc had the penetrating clarity of thought typical of French writers (and, like a good Frenchman, preferred wine to beer) with the pungent humor and good sense of the best English writers (and, though he preferred wine, he did like beer, too).

I have his book The Path To Rome in which he relates a solo walking pilgrimage he undertook from Toul, in eastern France, across southeastern France, across the Alps and the Apennines mountains, and then southward across northern Italy to Rome.  As well as describing the different places, people and adventures he encountered along the way, Hilaire reflects on politics, language, human nature and religion (the man had strong opinions!).  The book contains 77 of his own line drawings that he made during his journey.  I've read the book 3 times now and each time I didn't want the book to end.

 

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Although he is best known for his children's book The Little Prince, I admire Saint-Exupéry more for his life as an aviator and the books he wrote about his flying experiences.

While serving in the French Army in the early 1920's, he took private flying lessons and later was transferred to the French Air Force.  After his military service he was a pioneer in international postal flight.  Planes in those days had few instruments and pilots flew in bad weather or at night by a combination of sight, feel, experience and nerve.  Saint-Exupéry flew for the French postal service in Saharan Africa and in Argentina and survived a number of crashes.

In his 40s, he flew again for the French Air Force during the Second World War, flying reconnaissance missions.  On July 31st, 1944, while flying a reconnaissance mission from the island of Corsica in the Mediterranean Sea, his P-38 aircraft disappeared.  A portion of his flying suit was discovered by a fisherman off the south coast of France in 1998, with the remains of his P-38 discovered two years later.

My favorite books by Saint-Exupéry are Wind, Sand and Stars (it's in this book where he describes spending a night in the Sahara Desert after crashing, and seeing the stars hanging as in three dimensions in the clear desert air - one of the most beautiful passages I've ever read), Night Flight (some very dramatic accounts of early night flying) and Flight to Arras (where he meditates on the collapse of France during the German invasion in May-June 1940 and the necessary spiritual rejuvenation of France).

 

Saint Thérèse of Lisieux - The Little Flower

Born Marie-Françoise-Thérèse Martin in 1873 in Alençon, France to devoutly Catholic, middle-class parents, Saint Thérèse has become one of the most popular saints in the Catholic Church.  Her mother Zélie died of breast cancer when Thérèse was only 4 years old.  All four of her surviving older sisters (her parents lost a total of 4 children) became nuns and little Thérèse eventually followed. 

They were a comfortably provincial family and though Thérèse was a lively and intelligent girl, there was no sign of any future greatness.  And in fact, by earthly standards of greatness, Thérèse didn't accomplish much of anything.

Thérèse wanted to be a missionary in far off lands to win souls to Christ and more than anything she wanted to be a saint who, from heaven, would assist those on earth in getting into heaven too.  Ill health meant she couldn't become a missionary, but she corresponded with various missionaries and prayed fervently for their success.

While in the Carmelite monastery in Lisieux, Thérèse had to learn to deal with the everyday annoyances that come with living in close proximity to other women.  She set about dealing with these annoyances and with the cold unfriendliness of a few of the other nuns by being loving and cheerful and accepting criticism from others in silence.

Her experiences in the monastery made her realize how small and insignificant she was, but she learned that it was this very littleness that required her to lean on God for help.  She referred to herself as God's 'little flower.'  She learned to live her daily life in what she called 'the little way,' the daily giving of herself to God through love and acts of kindness to those around her. 

Thérèse became terminally ill with tuberculosis.  It was at this time that she undertook writing her spiritual autobiography under the orders of Mother Agnes, the head of her monastery.  She died at the age of 24 in 1897. 

Her autobiography, The Story of a Soul, has been translated into many languages and has affected the lives of countless thousands of people, including mine.  She couldn't become a missionary in the ordinary sense, but her writing has reached people all over the world, bringing the Good News of Jesus Christ and showing ordinary people that they can offer up their simple, everyday actions to God.

After her death, miracles were attributed to her intercession and she was formally canonized as a saint on May 17th, 1925.

Love proves itself by deeds, so how am I to show my love? Great deeds are forbidden me. The only way I can prove my love is by scattering flowers and these flowers are every little sacrifice, every glance and word, and the doing of the least actions for love.          

                                                                                                                 -Saint Thérèse of Lisieux

 

Making omelettes

Twenty years ago this week I visited Paris for 5 nights.  I timed my visit to coincide with Bastille Day (or, La Fête Nationale - The National Festival) on July 14th. 

This French holiday commemorates the Storming of the Bastille on July 14th 1789, a key event at the beginning of the French Revolution.  The revolutionaries attacked the Bastille fortress-prison in order to get ammunition and gunpowder.  The prison was also known to hold political prisoners, although it only held 7 prisoners at the time of the attack.

The French Revolution is a complicated story.  I think most people are aware that the French monarchy was out of touch with the common people and had shamefully neglected the country.  Perhaps few tears should be shed over the corrupt aristocracy losing their heads.  But the Revolution degenerated into a Reign of Terror, an orgy of bloodletting from which nobody was safe.

The Roman Catholic hierarchy in France was seen as complicit with the aristocracy in neglecting the country.  The Church was the largest landowner in France and imposed a 10% tithe on the general population.  It's also a fact that the general level of education and training of priests at the parish level was poor. 

But many of the so-called Enlightenment thinkers supporting the Revolution hated Christianity and encouraged a ferocious attack on the Church.  Churches were desecrated and looted, monasteries and convents attacked, nuns raped and forced into prostitution, and many priests, religious and faithful lay people were martyred through beheading, shooting or torture and starvation on prison ships.

There's an old proverb that goes, You've got to crack a few eggs to make an omelette.  One definition of this expression I've found is that 'in order to achieve something it is necessary or inevitable that something be destroyed.'

This proverb is often used to justify the destructiveness of revolutions like those in France and Russia.  My own view of the French (and Russian) Revolution is negative.  However, some people I greatly respect, such as the great Christian writer G. K. Chesterton, have commented positively on the French Revolution.  So there you go.

Some gargoyles on the Notre Dame Cathedral. 

The domed building on the hilltop in the distance

is the Sacré-Cœur Basilica on Montmartre. 

The hotel I stayed at in July 1993 was a few minutes'

walk from there.

My first ever visit to Paris was a day trip in October 1991.  The photos I took on that first visit were more interesting and it's from those you see in this post.

I have many memories of my week in Paris in July 1993.  I spent a lot of time walking around the residential areas of Paris not visited by tourists.  Paris is a city of parks and tree-lined streets and cafés and small shops.  It's a lovely city.  Of course I spent time in the museums and well-known tourist sites.  The Paris metro system is very convenient.

Parisians have a reputation for being arrogant and unwelcoming to foreign visitors.  Unfortunately, I found that to be generally true.  I had studied French in high school and had taken a couple of evening courses in French (at the Air Force base where I was stationed in England at that time).  But my French was terrible and most Parisians I encountered were not encouraging.  One exception was at a pizzeria somewhere off the beaten tourist path.  I had been taking a long walk through some pretty neighborhoods and got hungry.  I walked into a pizzeria that was completely empty of customers.  Maybe it was the time of day, I don't know.  The place was run by some north Africans, probably Algerian.  I tried to use my limited French.  They smiled and were very pleasant and the older man (father or uncle to the other two men apparently) even complimented me on my French.

(Many French people regard Parisians as rude and uppity, just like Americans think of New Yorkers.  This was confirmed directly to me years later by a French woman who taught English for one year in Katowice.  Cécile's desk was next to mine in the teachers' room.  She had a friendly personality and a quiet sense of humor.  She had studied American literature at university and liked America.  She was from somewhere in rural France where her parents owned a cattle ranch - I wish I could remember where.)
 
On the morning of July 14th there is a large military parade in Paris (the largest military parade in Europe).  While I was watching the parade, a French woman asked me the time.  We of course had learned to say the time in French class and I had no problems with it.  But when that woman asked me the time my tongue froze and I ended up sticking my hand out to show her the watch on my wrist.  I felt like an idiot.

Another memory I have is the evening of July 14th when I went to watch the fireworks display near the Eiffel Tower.  The day had been hot and I had drunk quite a lot of water.  Suddenly, I had to pee really badly.  I searched and searched and could not find a public toilet that wasn't locked up.  So as the fireworks exploded overhead I walked quickly to the nearest metro station.  In the station I fidgeted and leaned on one leg and then the other.  A train finally arrived and I took it to the Champs-Élysées, where I rushed into a MacDonald's to use their toilet.  What a relief that was!  While in Paris I purposely avoided fast-food outlets like MacDonald's, but after using their remarkably clean toilet I did buy a lemon aid.

I could go on and on with my memories of that trip, like watching Jaws on TV in my hotel room one night.  The movie was dubbed in French and I remember the scene of the bikini-clad woman running up the beach screaming Mon Dieu!  Mon Dieu!

There's a lot of antagonism between Americans and French people.  We detest the defeatism they've sometimes displayed and their lack of cooperation with our foreign policy at times.  They think we're loud, belligerent and uncultured.  The truth is that both Americans and French are pretty chauvinistic about our own countries.

And frankly I think we both have some right to be so.  Some things about France and the French annoy me.  But all in all I admire and love France.  I think they have a genius for living well.  If somebody offered me a trip to France right now, I'd be packed in 20 minutes.
 

Friendship and other stuff

I've never made friends easily.  In school I typically had one or two good friends at a time.  We moved and changed schools 5 times so I never had one good friend for a long time.  The oldest friend I have now I've known since my junior year in high school.  Our friendship happened by chance.

The first day of school that year, in geology class, the teacher assigned us to seats, two to a table.  I happened to be placed next to James.  Neither of use knew the other.  27 years later, James is still my friend, though now we live thousands of miles apart and I haven't seen him since August of 2000. 

On July 9th, 2008, James' father died of a heart attack.  He called me from Wisconsin that morning just hours before I was to catch a plane to Poland.  James had been to my Dad's funeral in 1989 and I felt bad that I couldn't get to his Dad's funeral.  His Dad was a good, hardworking man and he always made me feel welcome when I went over to their house.

The beauty of modern communications means distant friends are able to keep in touch, even if only sporadically.  The Internet has made it possible for people to meet and chat online.  This very rarely ever results in true friendship, but humans are social creatures and we crave contact with like-minded people.  I'm a fairly regular participant in some online chat forums and I've had some interesting exchanges with a few individuals (whose real names I don't even know!).

 

Other stuff

For baseball fans, July brings the famous "trade deadline" of July 31st.  I won't go into the details of the rules, but it becomes harder for teams to make trades after July 31st.  What the trade deadline means is that teams that feel they have a legitimate chance at making the playoffs in October are looking to pick up a player or two in order to shore up some weaknesses on their rosters (they're called 'buyers').  Teams that have to admit the obvious fact that it isn't going happen for them this season are looking to unload some players with pricey contracts via trades and get some young prospects in return (they're called 'sellers').

In other words, the buyers give up some of their future talent in order to win now.  The sellers are hoping the younger talent they receive in a trade will pay big dividends down the road.

I'm afraid my beloved Milwaukee Brewers fall into the 'sellers' category this year.

The Fountain Overflows

Over the last 5 weeks I've been re-reading Rebecca West's 1150-page opus Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey Through Yugoslavia.  The framework of the book is a travelogue of the extensive visit West and her husband made to Yugoslavia in 1937.  However, as West writes of the various places and people they visited, again and again she digresses for tens of pages on history, art and religion. 

West was incredibly erudite and her digressions are a pleasure to read.  I don't agree with all of her opinions.  She both understood and profoundly misunderstood a lot about Christianity.  But I'm with her passionate arguments for the agreeable over the disagreeable, beauty over ugliness, civility over brutishness - in short, for light over darkness. 

She also had the clear sense to understand that civilization is the result of tremendous effort and that it and life are worth defending with violence when necessary.  Pacifism had sapped the democracies of Europe like a cancer in the 1930s, but this lady was having none of that.

Human history is a tapestry of all peoples and times and so West's historic narratives cover a much wider scope than just Yugoslavia.  Europe in 1937 was threatened by imminent war and the shadows of Mussolini's Italy and Hitler's Germany loom large in West's account.    Yugoslavia was invaded by the Germans in 1941 and so many of the places she visited had already been bombed or looted and burned, and many of the men and women she had visited and befriended had been murdered or imprisoned or were refugees somewhere far from home by the time this book was published in 1942.

Rebecca West

Summer
by Randall Peaslee

In the cooling air of an evening in July,
Beneath a space of blue, magenta clouds sail high.
Swallows, sharp as arrows, swoop, turn, then rise again
In arabesques as swift as light, sweet as rain.