driving down thunder hill road

i wonder

if i’m passing by my future self,

which will be running

down this same road

an hour from now

and then i imagine

all my past and future selves

running and driving

all at the same time

up and down this same road

I had some trouble with this work because of a long lapse between my reading of the first and second halves of the novel.

Cooper has his own lapses, however, which place a severe strain on my credulity.  The plot only makes sense because Lionel, implausibly, does not recognize his father, whom he has not seen in 15 years, since he was ten.  Lionel disappears with Ralph at one point, without explanation to the girl he has just married.  This is immediately after the death of a mutual relation.  The deserted bride is left to discover her grandmother’s body all by herself.  

Cooper was greatly concerned with the historical nature of this novel- his descriptions of the opening battles of the Revolutionary War were carefully researched.  In that sense I am sure he did what he wanted to do.  Lionel is a Boston-born loyalist, a major in the British army.  I thought Cooper could have profitably exploited that tension a great deal more than he did.  

Question:  Is the language inconsistent in the following quote (pg 403):  ”…proceed with thy tale; you confine it to friends”?   

I am glad I read the book.  I still hope to get through all of Cooper’s novels some day and this story was entertaining enough.  The book made me laugh in spots.  I especially enjoyed Captain Polwarth’s devotion to food.  But I’m afraid I also laughed a bit at Cooper’s expense when I thought about what Mark Twain could have written about this novel.  (Think “Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offences.”)  The story plods doggedly along, the characters always speaking the same way, whether in crisis or the drawing room.  

I’m very sorry to be (perhaps) pretentiously critical of a great American author, but I can see why this is one of his more obscure novels.  

Previous tries: never attempted

Little-known fact: pizza dough is about as tough to handle as pie crust

Results (short version): Domestic tragedy

Results (longer version):

1)  pepperoni on floor between counter and refrigerator

2)  pizza landscape resembling aftermath of major earthquake, with sauce boiling along major fault-lines

3) permanently stained pizza stone

4)  tears

5)  cereal for dinner

“There are persons who can move their ears, either one at a time, or both together.  There are some who, without moving the head, can bring the hair down upon the forehead, and move the whole scalp backwards and forwards at pleasure…Some have such command of their bowels, that they can break wind continuously at pleasure, so as to produce the effect of singing.”  

Believe it or not, it is only later that modesty hinders Augustine from expressing all the thoughts that occur to him…

Despite rumors of the Bradley effect and Obama’s warning that Democrats could still “snatch defeat from the jaws of victory,”  McCain’s higher-risk campaign stuck it’s neck out too far.  

Error # 1:  Demeanor.  Contrast Obama’s calm demeanor with McCain.  ”The fundamentals of the economy are sound.” and “I know how to get Osama…”  

Error # 2:  VP Pick.  I was initially delighted because of her stance on abortion, but her or her campaign’s failure to present her as qualified for the job have made her a laughingstock outside of conservative  circles.   (Note focus on presentation- she has more years in elected office than Obama.  And Reagan was an actor!)  

Error # 3:  Coolness.  Well, it isn’t really so much error as fact.  McCain’s mavericky coolness cannot match up to Obama’s star-power coolness.  

I’m mostly resigned to an Obama win, but I do feel a bit bitter that anything substantive didn’t seem matter too much.  But I suppose that’s politics…

I do that kind of thing all the time.  Doesn’t everybody?  

I try to make at least one meal every week that I know will make good leftovers.  Of course leftovers can be problematic in a family of two.  One can only eat chile so many times before one gets sick of it.  And there seems to be a magic point- say after a  week in the refrigerator- beyond which something deep within me simply refuses to touch leftovers.

I look forward to reading the Washington Post every Sunday afternoon, particularly Outlook (op-ed).   The paper seems to be widely condemned among conservatives for being too liberal (Oh, you read the Washington Compost, do you?) but I think the paper makes an effort to be reasonable, which is more than I can say for certain right-wing radio talk show hosts.

But I’m not writing here to knock the conservative media.   There is a really cool writing technique, which I’m sure I’ve used lots, of ending a piece by repetition- catching up a thread of something one has mentioned earlier.  Perhaps one refers back to the introduction, or an interesting example.  End result:  conclusion with a punch.  I like it!

But just this Sunday I suddenly felt I’d seen that type of ending in Outlook a few too many times.

The leftovers are starting to stink.

Actually, my real life experience with jumping horses consists of driving past a farm and not being able to watch because, of course, I’m driving.  Frustrating.

Well, at the Grand Prix I finally got to watch, and watch, and watch.

It’s neat watching large, heavy animals leap over fences.  Occasionally they would knock down a rail, or clip it so it wobbled ominously.  But sometimes they just soared right over and an admiring murmer would go up from the spectators.

I liked seeing the light glint off their horse shoes as they galloped around the field.  My experience of horses is 99.9% books, so there’s almost an “aha” moment when I see that, yes, horses actually do wear horse shoes.

I even enjoyed the lack of emotion in the whole event.  Maybe the English style of riding catches something from the sort of British, upper-class self control one reads of in novels.  The riding jackets and pack of fox hounds (but no fox!) reminded me of that.  I didn’t see any rider look anything but calm and in command, even on the victory gallop at the end.

This book focuses on what happens to the body and to the soul in the first death (here on earth) and the second death (eternal punishment).  

...this Latin word “moritur” [to die] cannot be declined by the grammarians according to the rule followed by similar words….But “mortuus”, though in form an adjective, is used as perfect participle, as if that were to be declined which cannot be declined; and thus it has suitably come to pass that, as the thing itself cannot in point of fact be declined, so neither can the word significant of the act be declined.  Yet, by the aid of our Redeemer’s grace, we may manage at least to decline the second.

Incredible as it may seem, I think it’s true:  Augustine made a pun!  

Augustine takes a topic and beats it to death, by which I mean that he covers it very thoroughly.  This can make him seem repetitive at times.  But then, I think that’s what good communicators do.

He is very careful to define death.  He covers at length what God meant by saying “on the day you eat of it you shall surely die”.  And he has another go at Plato.  

I like the bit about how the first death, a justly deserved punishment, while it must still be suffered by God’s people, is used by God for them as a deliverance.  That’s typical of God, to take something awful and use it in a positive way.  

This is where Augustine can come in handy.  I get very caught up in the moment:  I’m sure my current stress level has a lot to do with the start of the teaching year and the class I will be taking starting tomorrow.  The class will be over in December, the school year in July.  My perspective is too narrow.  

Augustine is thinking about time, among other things.  Time is finite, God is infinite.  He comprehends eternity, I don’t.  I think I’m always trying to define it as an extension of time, which I conceive linearly.  Augustine asserts that our existence is not an ever-repeating cycle, as the Platonists suggest.  Not only are we not repeating our lives over and over again, but we are created consciously and specifically- none of us were a surprise to God.  

Augustine helps me see myself as a part of something that is much larger than I and perfectly comprehensible to a God who is managing it all perfectly.