Shannon Costello

I use my bread machine to make calzone or pizza dough.  The paddle attachments mix and knead while the machine itself provides a great environment for the dough to rise.  

One hour before dinner time I opened the bread machine to discover that I had forgotten to put the paddles in.  There was a small yeasty lake on the lower slopes of a dry, floury mountain, but there was no dough in sight.  

Monday I ventured alone into D. C.  

I was going to take the red line of the metro to the Tenleytown-AU stop and then take a bus to the American University campus.  

I am afraid of buses, mostly because I can’t figure them out.  Once in Mexico I needed to take a bus back to where I lived.  I was blundering around Montemorelos, Mexico looking for the bus stop when - fortunately - somebody gave me a ride.  If they hadn’t I’d probably still be looking.  Recently I had a bad dream in which I was trying to figure out a bus schedule in my home town in NY and failing miserably. So I figured I had better prepare if I wanted to conquer my fears.  I printed out the bus schedule, a map of the bus route studied a map of the area.  

It wasn’t enough.  

I was unable to locate the correct stop after exiting the metro, even though I found 4 or 5 other stops close by.  I did not understand that the route labels on the map were just that, and not stop markers, which do not generally appear on the map.  (They aren’t needed, as there are stops every couple tenths of a mile.  I learned that on the mile walk to campus.  Previously I had assumed there were only as many stops as there were headings on the schedule.)  

In addition to not understanding the bus map, I failed to locate myself correctly on the map.  I think. The metro stop in question is near Tenley Circle, where three streets come together.  That was two too many for me.  

The metro trip planner told me to take the N2 bus “toward Farragut.”  The buses are labeled in a similar manner.  However, the schedules typically give a direction.  I was not prepared for this.  In addition, I was focused on one small part of the bus route.  The directions on the schedule (eastbound-westbound) are based on the main road of the route, which I believed did not concern me.  End result:  I was puzzled as to why I was supposed to go east when I knew I needed to go west.  

As I left campus I saw the correct bus at an appropriate stop, just on the other side of the road. Unfortunately the signal forbade me to cross.  When it finally changed it was too late, the bus was already pulling away from the stop.  

And that, my friends, is how Shannon got her exercise for the day. 

Maria von Trap - the real one, not Julie Andrews - wrote about her family’s struggle to “make it” as a singing group in the US.  Their somber clothing led to some criticism that Maria did not understand, presumably leading her to march into a bookstore and unintentionally frighten off the clerk with her (completely serious) announcement that she was looking for a book on sex appeal.  

If you are going to be popular, appearance matters.  I’m catching on that this is a factor in the Obama movement.  For many people he looks, sounds, and acts “right”.  That’s why he and his family were on the cover of People and why his recent trip abroad resulted in huge cheering crowds.   

Sometimes I think about Benazir Bhutto and Ingrid Betancourt.   I think of Bhutto visiting her father’s tomb shortly before her assassination, and I wish she had remained in exile.  Videos of Ingrid Betancourt reuniting with her children after six years of captivity in the jungle brought me to tears.  I feel relieved that she is back in France.  Will she run for president of Colombia again?  I bet she does even while I hope she doesn’t.  

I identify with them because they are women, but I can’t relate to their sacrifices as politicians.  Notice that I can’t bring myself to term them sacrifices for the sake of their country.  That’s a difficulty I have:  if they aren’t noble patriots, must they be power-hungry politicians?  Realistically, I suppose the answer for any politician is yes. 

It’s sort of not fair to run down a politician as power-hungry, I end up implying that I’m superior because I do not chase after power.  But of course I do, in my own way.  Since most of us crave power this doesn’t even give us a convenient way to differentiate between candidates.  

“And if they were confronted with the authority of Scripture, they would maintain that something else must be meant by the words.”  

We have heard that before!  It plunges me into confusion just to think of it.  However, Augustine has his opponents down.  They ” are strangely deceived and rave in the incurable madness of impiety.”  What a fabulous line to use the next time you are involved in a theological debate!  

Does anyone care about when angels were created?  Augustine reasons that since the heavens and the earth were created in the beginning, nothing could have been created before.  Since angels were created, and were around during creation, they must have been created when God said, “let there be light.”  Augustine prefers to equate angels with light, actually.  An interpretation of Genesis I had never considered.  

Speaking of creating things, I was shocked to find Augustine discussing creation issues- though not the same ones we discuss, or in the same way, of course.  For example, is the earth created or eternal?  

Though I tend to assume he was up on just about anything there was to be up on, Augustine was not a mathematician.  I’m curious about how contemporary mathematicians of Augustine’s would have viewed his descriptions of certain numbers.  Six was a perfect number because it is “made up of its own parts” meaning that it is equal to the sum of its factors, excluding six.  And seven is perfect because it is the sum of the first odd number, three, and the first even number, four.   Curious!

On the other hand, he was an impressive logician.  In response to the suggestion that he might be deceived in believing in his own existence he said:  ”For if I am deceived, I am.  For he who is not, cannot be deceived; and if I am deceived, by this same token I am.  And since I am if I am deceived, how am I deceived in believing that I am?”  I hadn’t realized that Augustine sort of stole a march on Descartes!  

It’s funny to see a fifth century picture of a person who is sometimes intensively debating a matter of relatively low import, occasionally right on, and sometimes a little too caught up with weird mental gymnastics, numerical or otherwise.  

Or wait, is that a mirror…?

Unlike City of God write-ups, I can do this briefly.

 I think I more than met my goals for the year, which were to do a really great job keeping in touch with the parents of my students and to get better at using games in the classroom.  However, I ran into the unexpected, and it is that which frames my mental picture of this year.  Three classes of 27 students each (that’s bigger than I’ve experienced before) exposed the weaknesses in my classroom management skills.  But after all, it is knowing my weaknesses that lets me frame my goals for next year…  

Not One Less
I think about this movie every time I see chalk. It was shown to a bunch of foreign language teachers visiting the American Film Institute Silver Theatre for a professional development session. Heat-warming story veils criticism of government. A thirteen-year-old girl agrees to substitute teach for a month at an impossibly poor rural elementary school. Dirt floors, rickety rude furniture, and one box of chalk. Use only one piece a day and you should have enough, the teacher tells Minzhi Wei before his departure. And if you put the chair at the foot of the bed it will be big enough to sleep you and a few of your students. She actually starts to develop as a teacher- we see the use of roll call as a classroom management technique. And her tenacity in chasing down the student who is taken away to work in the big city is incredible and even plausible. A happy ending, but not easily attained. In Chinese, but with subtitles.

La Antena
Maybe the closest story I can compare this to is the fable of the girl whose father at first fails to appreciate her statement that she loves him more than she loves salt. Salt was to that story what words are to this one. We went to see this movie during the DC Filmfest. It is about the power of words as well as a critique of the media- not to mention a tribute to silent film. The big media baron has taken the voices of the city’s inhabitants and now he is after their words. The director did all kinds of fun things with words, which appeared in the air since people could not talk. The bad guy crushes words in his fist or smacks them away in anger. Shouted words are bigger. Powerful scenes include the one where words are streaming away from the people and feeding into a machine that pulverizes them and turns them into the ubiquitous t.v. food. Unusual film. In Spanish, with subtitles.

To Catch a Thief
If I tell you this is a Carey Grant & Grace Kelly film by Alfred Hitchcock, you don’t need me to tell you it was good. What stood out to me were the smart-alecky lines the two leads kept throwing at each other. I also enjoyed the humor. Oh, and the Hitchcock cameo was delightfully easy to spot! I was sorry that I didn’t understand French, since there was little enough that subtitles were not deemed necessary. It’s like reading a Brontë novel- you know what’s going on, but it’s so frustrating to be shut out of even a tiny part. I’d like to watch this one again sometime.

Prince Caspian
Movies should not be expected to follow the book exactly, but this one strays so far from the book in plot and character that the end result is a repeat of the first movie. Peter is an arrogant knuckle-head and Narnia is peopled by genius military tacticians. Plug in epic battle scene. If Prince Caspian’s future wife ever happens to see the movie, well, he will have some explaining to do about Susan. I actually liked the idea of showing Susan as increasingly interested in clothes and boys, but the movie lets you down there too by portraying that as a good thing. In its favor, I think what is done is well-done. Great scenery, convincing talking animals, convincing Lucy- even a convincing Aslan. The trees weren’t bad either. Though I would have gotten the one tree to destroy the catapult by throwing its own stones back at it. Miraz was just about perfect and the opening was quite good. Worth seeing, as long as you forget the book.

Teachers, along with students, naturally welcome the end of the academic year. But I find that I have a hard time prying myself away from my classes. “But wait! They must learn about–” This reluctance to stop teaching helps explain why my students are still doing actual graded work as opposed to playing games and watching movies. It makes me feel mean.

I’ve thought a little bit about leadership and mercy lately. Curtana is one of the swords used in the British coronation ceremony. It is the Sword of Mercy, whose blunted tip precludes it from being really useful on the battlefield. In considering the school year as a whole, I wonder if I, as ruler of my classroom, have been merciful often enough.

I am taking a class on Caribbean culture. As part of my homework, I looked through the syllabus for a text to present orally that seemed interesting but was also scheduled for after I middle school ends. During class the professor proceeded to flip through the index cards we had filled out (name, reasons for taking the class, etc.) and to critique our presentation ideas individually- and publicly: too broad, doesn’t fit with the syllabus, etc. The first four or five students had all chosen to talk about musicians that I had never heard of and themes that were not specifically listed in the syllabus. I thought I had misunderstood the assignment. I was scared.

When it was- finally- my turn, I suggested two texts. The professor mentioned a third text, adding that it should also interest me since it was written by a teacher.

So I’ll be presenting a little earlier than I wanted and on an essay that is longer than any of the others. But the professor managed to take the very little bit that he knew about me and use it to give me an assignment that I was comfortable with. And the intensity of my feeling of relief - I could have cried- that it was all so easily and happily settled…well, I felt like I had been shown mercy.

The pope recently spoke at the United Nations in New York, where he proved himself more than capable of intelligent discourse in a secular setting. I admire that. I see American Christianity as having a tendency to immerse itself in its own subculture so much as to make itself nearly incomprehensible to the rest of the country.

Augustine was a Bishop, and yet he paid close attention to the news, noted analysts’ interpretations, and carefully refuted them, often using arguments built from non-Christian thinkers. He was well-read, a condition which can only be attained after a great deal of time has been spent. His education then became a tool for a higher purpose, not just an end in itself. I would like to be like that!

Having finally - finally completed the first part of this massive work, I thought it would be a good idea to attempt to consolidate these books in my mind before proceeding further.

Augustine was writing in a time and culture so far removed from mine it might as well have been a different world. Religion and science and philosophy and politics all seem to be treated on the same level. Thus it wasn’t strange when the fall of Rome was claimed to be a direct result man’s abandonment of the Roman gods in favor of Christianity.

Augustine, not liking that argument so well, moved to refute it. In the process he completely dismantles the religion of the opposition, thoroughly exposing its flaws and contradictions. He points out that Rome had fallen on hard times before Christianity was widespread and shows how the presence of Christians may have mitigated the scope of the disaster. Really he seems to deal with that accusation in short order- but then goes well beyond that and overwhelms the very foundation of his opponents.

Augustine points out that the Roman gods did their worshippers no good whatsoever: they failed to deliver their people from worldly trouble and led them into moral pitfalls, particularly through plays and sacred rites. He casts doubt on the ability of such gods to grant eternal happiness after death.

Not content with that, Augustine goes on to show that a polytheistic situation is pretty hard to delineate clearly without having various gods treading on each other’s toes in divine turf battles. He points out inconsistencies in teachings about the gods and demons. Throughout these arguments he frequently appeals to writers and thinkers with whom his audience would be familiar. And all the time he is moving the reader along to an in-depth exposition of Christianity. In this last book, for example, he speaks of Porphyry’s description of a search for the universal way of deliverance for the soul, pointing out that Porphyry’s language suggests that he believes such a way exists. And in passing Augustine inserts little nuggets in defense of Christianity: Why should it be strange that Jesus, the son of God, should be born miraculously?