Music for a busy morning

"Tell Me What You Know"

Celebrating the Semicolon

Louis Menand, an English professor at Harvard and a staff writer at The New Yorker, pronounced the subway poster’s use of the semicolon to be “impeccable.”

Lynne Truss, author of “Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation,” called it a “lovely example” of proper punctuation.

Geoffrey Nunberg, a professor of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, praised the “burgeoning of punctuational literacy in unlikely places.”

Allan M. Siegal, a longtime arbiter of New York Times style before retiring, opined, “The semicolon is correct, though I’d have used a colon, which I think would be a bit more sophisticated in that sentence.”

The linguist Noam Chomsky sniffed, “I suppose Bush would claim it’s the effect of No Child Left Behind.”

Celebrating the Semicolon in a Most Unlikely Location, from today's NYT.

Sunday morning

All this term I've been working on two projects. The first is a story for my fiction writing class; the second a paper for philosophy. The first is about someone dealing with an unexpected death; the second is about happiness. How strange, now, to find the concerns of my academic life bleeding over into the real world.

Thank you all for your kind words and thoughts. You bless me.

In this regard, therefore, whatever you see happening that falls short of your hopes--though to your opinion it is a topsy-turvy confusion, for the things themselves it is a right ordering.

--Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy

Wednesday evening

Freshman year I spent ten hours a week in the same classroom with her. We talked music and English, philosophy and art, and theater. She smiled a lot. Laughed. Told me my hair looked cute when I got it cut and teased me about my serious approach to school.

One day in theater class we watched a film about the Atlantic slave trade and the middle passage. Mid-way through the class period she left the room, sobbing. "I'm sorry," she said later. "I'm sorry. I just . . . couldn't."

I saw her a few times last term. We passed each other on the way to classes and I waylaid her with a hug. She was planning a trip to another school for her ASL major. She told me German was easy to learn. We smiled and wished each other luck and said goodbye, drifting apart through the crowds of students.

Three weeks ago, she was in a car accident. They said she'd be back next fall. I thought she was getting better; or least not any worse.

For three weeks I've been following her progress, waiting for her to wake up and respond and smile. But then today, this afternoon, she died. And now it's my turn weep.

I miss you.

Acknowledgements and discoveries

Have you ever started writing something, sure that you knew exactly what you were going to say and pretty much how you were going to say it, and then discovered you were wrong? Completely and utterly wrong?

It is a curious feeling. Not entirely unpleasant, but certainly baffling. It makes me wonder:

Where do I go from here?

***

I just finished Donald Miller's book Through Painted Deserts. At the end of the book, he lists all the people (names and names and more names) who helped him through the writing process. Common enough, right? Except that in the middle of everything he also lists all the music he listened to while writing.

I should start including an acknowledgments page with all of my papers: "I ate Breyer's Triple Chocolate ice cream," I could begin. "I drank multiple cups of Earl Grey tea, snacked on Fig Newtons and chocolate-mint cookies, curled up in my grandma's handmade afghans, wore Treasures Sleepwear Pajamas, and listened to Sarah Groves, Chris Rice, Stacey Kent, Katie Sawicki, and Madelaine Peyroux . . . all while writing this paper. Thank you. Thank you very much."

And all in one week(end)?

"I call that . . . dissipation."*

So, nine episodes of House, three books and a few hours of homework later, I'm heading into midterms.

It's the beginning of the end.

Less than six weeks till the end of term; seven weeks till my birthday; and just a little over a month until I head for Germany.

*You know, if you haven't seen Wives and Daughters, you really should.

Civility

W.V. Quine, arguably the most important philosopher of the twentieth century, once said that philosophers want to be right, but ordinary people want to have been right. Just so, or, at least, this is how philosophers—and public intellectuals generally—ought to behave. Once a person chooses to speak in the public square, he should welcome criticism of his views, even the sharpest criticism. If the criticisms are unjustified, he will in no way be harmed by them, and at least he’ll learn why certain arguments against his views fail. If, on the other hand, the criticisms are justified, then he will have been saved from error and learned something important. The wise man never takes offense when people tell me him what he has said is wrong, even when they do so quite bluntly. . . . On the contrary, he is grateful to such people and considers himself in their debt. Reprove a wise man, and he will love you. Give instruction to a wise man, and he will be wiser still (Prov. 9:8–9). This, I think, should be the attitude of everyone involved in public life.

HT: Robert T. Miller, First Things

[Henry York] stood in his doorway and assessed his room. His bed was almost completely hidden beneath chunks of plaster, big and small, while the floor looked like a cross between a beach and gravel driveway. Dust was everywhere--all over his lamp, the walls, the inside of his doors, and even the floor a few feet outside his bedroom doors. He really had no idea how he was going to clean the mess up, but at the moment he didn't care. He was staring at his wall. p. 16

So N.D. Wilson just reminded me all over again why it is that I like to read really well-written children's books: because they're smart, funny, and wholly engaging. Henry York and his 100 cupboards enlivened my long wait at Olive Garden last evening and the car ride to church this morning. When I got home I procrastinated on homework so that I could finish the last few pages. It's a rollicking read-alone; I bet it's even better read aloud.