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Sleeping with the fishes

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Photo by Faucon

Honestly, I never meant to kill them all.

I’m talking about fish, of course.

If you’re new to this blog, you may not know that I occasionally report on my fish keeping adventures. I don’t own fish myself. But for reasons I won’t bore you with, the library I manage has a fish tank, and I care for it.

There are challenges. For one thing, the local water is highly alkaline, resistant to any pH altering treatment, so a lot of fish just don’t like it, and express their disapproval through dying.

But over the years I’ve found a couple of species that do well. One is the Harlequin Rasbora, and the other, discovered more recently, has been the Tiger Barb. Both varieties seemed to do fine with the water (does their orange coloring have anything to do with it? Probably not), and I do my part by keeping the aquarium clean and the fish food coming.

But on Tuesday morning I goofed up. One of the frustrations of keeping fish is measuring out fish food. The containers come with little sliding apertures, and you open them as far as you consider prudent, then pour. Sometimes you get a lot less than you expected, and you have to shake the container. Sometimes you get a lot more than you intended.

That was what happened Tuesday. I immediately grabbed the net and and tried to fish the food out. But apparently I didn’t get enough.

Because the Tiger Barbs did what Tiger Barbs do (apparently the Rasboras are more prudent), and ate themselves to death. At the end of the day, I’d already flushed one Barb, and another was looking peaked.

This morning every single Tiger Barb was belly up. Every single one. Leaving the Rasboras (all of them) and the one other fish that was there when I came, which I’ve never actually identified, to survive.

I’ll get some more Tiger Barbs. They seem to do pretty well, when I’m on my game.

I’m just working on what level of shame and guilt I should feel.

I mean, I sometimes went fishing when I was a kid, and killed fish on purpose.

Religion

Educational news

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The big news in the publishing world today is that our friend Hunter Baker, author of The End of Secularism, will be the author of one of the volumes in a forthcoming series from Crossway Books.

JACKSON, Tenn. – January 24, 2012– Union University President David S. Dockery has been named the editor of a new series of books designed for Christian students and others on college and university campuses.

In “Reclaiming the Christian Intellectual Tradition: A Guide for Students,” published by Crossway, Dockery and other experts argue that vibrant, world-changing Christianity is not anti-intellectual but assumes a long tradition of vigorous Christian thinking and a commitment to the integration of faith and scholarship….

Four other books in the series will also be released in 2012, including “The Liberal Arts: A Student’s Guide,” by Gene C. Fant Jr., Union’s vice president for academic administration, in May, and “Political Thought: A Student’s Guide,” by Hunter Baker, associate dean of arts and sciences at Union, in July.

Good luck with the book, Hunter. It sounds like a much-needed contribution.

I feel the need to comment on a recent news story that hasn’t gotten (I think) as much attention as it deserves.

As I grow older, a particular experience becomes more and more common (and no, I’m not talking about anything having to do with the bathroom). An announcement is made, in a rather low-key way, about some grand theory which was all the rage when I was younger, often one that was used, hammer-wise, to pound on Christians, given as “proof” that we are moral luddites motivated by pure hate. The news item now tells us that new research indicates that the wonderful, world-changing theory has, in fact, not borne the weight of either experience or further research. Take this story from The Washington Post:

For decades, the prevailing wisdom in education was that high self-esteem would lead to high achievement. The theory led to an avalanche of daily affirmations, awards ceremonies and attendance certificates — but few, if any, academic gains.

Now, an increasing number of teachers are weaning themselves from what some call empty praise. Drawing on psychology and brain research, these educators aim to articulate a more precise, and scientific, vocabulary for praise that will push children to work through mistakes and take on more challenging assignments….

You know, just once I’d like an apology from the people who called us names. But I don’t expect that to happen. It might damage the apologizers’ self-esteem, after all.

Blogs, Socials, Goofing

A blog post, and a cautionary tale

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Author Sarah A. Hoyt was kind enough to let me guest post on her blog, According to Hoyt. You can read the piece here. Thanks, Sarah.

A friend forwarded this YouTube video to me. The idea is, “How would Shakespeare have told the story of the Three Little Pigs.”

I don’t love it, frankly, because I don’t think the comedian uses the words as well as he might, and this is the kind of thing you’ve got to absolutely nail (at least for my taste).

But I got to wondering, how do they tell the story of the Three Little Pigs nowadays? Surely its traditional lesson—that you ought to take trouble to construct strong defenses, to protect yourself from enemies—is unacceptable in today’s educational environment. I imagine the contemporary version would go something like this.

There were three little pigs whose mother sent them out to make their fortunes in the world. When they’d come to a new part of the forest, they decided to build themselves houses. The first little pig built his house out of straw. The second pig built his house out of sticks. But the third pig built his house out of bricks. Continue reading A blog post, and a cautionary tale →

Music

Morten Lauridsen, a Great Living Composer

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Terry Teachout writes about a composer whom Dana Gioia says: “one of the few living composers whom I would call great.”

Says Mr. Lauridsen: “There are too many things out there that are away from goodness. We need to focus on those things that ennoble us, that enrich us.” The musical language in which he embodies this simple belief is conservative in the best and most creative sense of the word. His sacred music is unabashedly, even fearlessly tonal, and his chiming harmonies serve as underpinning for gently swaying melodic lines that leave no doubt of his love for medieval plainchant. Nothing about his music is “experimental”: It is direct, heartfelt and as sweetly austere as the luminous sound of church bells at night.

Fiction, Reviews

What the Night Knows, by Dean Koontz

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I’m a fan of Dean Koontz, so when I say that I wasn’t entirely pleased with What the Night Knows, you must understand that I’m not saying it was a bad read, or that it bored me. It’s a professionally constructed story, with appealing characters and gripping terror. But there were things that disappointed me about it.

As in so many Koontz stories, the action is sparked by a bigger-than-life villain. This one is Alton Turner Blackwood, a gigantic, deformed sexual sadist who has an extra advantage—he’s dead. He can possess inanimate objects or people, and he uses them to commit horrific sex murders against entire families. He especially craves young, innocent females.

Years ago police detective John Calvino, then a teenaged boy, walked in on Blackwood just after he had murdered Calvino’s family. Calvino shot him to death. But somehow Blackwood’s evil spirit endures, and he is determined to recreate his last string of murders, on precisely the same timetable, finishing up with Calvino and his wife and three children. Continue reading What the Night Knows, by Dean Koontz →

Blogs, Socials, Fiction, Reviews

Apparently I have hidden depths

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Our friend Grim at the Grim’s Hall blog has the honor of posting the first blog review of Troll Valley. And what he has to say about it is extremely intriguing:

There is a wider lesson to her example.  A family home is like a broader human community in that it has rules that establish a way of life, and under that way of life a community is possible.  We see in the early chapters how the traditions of Norwegian families at Yuletide sustained a broad community through hard work.  It is at that feast that the mother first uses her power to force a change in the rules, in her interest and against the interests of others.  It is by forcing continual alterations of the rules of life that she destroys the community within the house, so that finally no one can live with her at all.

Each of these rules is meant to represent moral progress, but each of them destroys the living community in which human kindness is possible.  

Grim sees the book as a drama of modern ideas of societal reform in conflict with the old traditions, and traditional relationships, that actually bind society together.

I find this fascinating, because I honestly didn’t have that in mind when I wrote. I was thinking of politics vs. religion, not politics vs. tradition. But now that he mentions it, I can see that the lesson is there. What I did was try to represent factually the kind of changes that were going on in the first couple decades of the 20th Century, and the “lesson” grew kind of organically from the events.

This all pleases me immensely. I like being smarter than I intended.

Fiction

Different Magic

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Aaron Armstrong asks, “Why are we okay with allowing our kids to watch The Chronicles of Narnia, but not okay with The Princess and the Frog?“ I have not seen The Princess and the Frog, but my little family did in the theater for a birthday party. My sweet wife said she was surprised at how evil the bad guy was, not like other Disney villains. As Aaron points out, Dr. Facilier isn’t a funny, magically bad man. He uses tarot cards and voodoo and has demons as sidekicks. It’s too close the real evil, meaning the occult, for a kids movie.

Of course, on the other hand, I can understand how secular writers would look at all magical stuff, regardless the labels, as fantasy and fair game.

Uncategorized

Link sausage, Jan. 18, 2012

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Anthony Esolen has written one of the best articles I’ve read in a long time about culture in general, and art in particular, for Crisis Magazine. What Makes Norman Rockwell Possible?

And that sense of wonder, especially at what is but small or homely or unregarded, is everywhere to be found in Rockwell’s paintings. For the Christian world, properly understood, is the only real haven for man, because in it we learn not only that man is made in the image of God, but that God so loved the world that He gave us His only begotten Son, born of a virgin and laid in a manger. Every man we meet bears within himself the mysteries of Christmas, and Good Friday, and Easter, whether he is aware of it or not, and we find these mysteries most clearly manifest in the meek and the lowly.

On some level I believe that Norman Rockwell understood this. Some critics try to shore up his reputation by pointing to the “serious” political paintings he executed: the small black girl escorted to school in the midst of National Guardsmen, or the man standing up in a town meeting to exercise his freedom of speech. I don’t wish to deny the success of those works. I think they are very good. But Rockwell’s heart lay elsewhere.

Today is the day Wikipedia blacked itself out to protest the SOPA legislation. I am not taking a strong line on the subject, but I believe those who say it’s a bad law, destructive of freedom (most of them seem to be, these days). On the other hand, I’m a copyright holder myself, and favor intellectual property rights in general. As I believe many people protesting SOPA are.

Somebody on Facebook linked to a Twitter discussion where people were panicking–“THEY SHUT WIKIPEDIA DOWN? HOW WILL WE LIVE?” “HOW CAN THE GOVERNMENT DO THAT?”

I suppose these people’s problem is that Wikipedia is their only source of information about the world, and they couldn’t check the news on Wikipedia.

Reading

Why Read Stuff? I Mean, For Real?

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Victor Davis Hanson writes on reading:

But you object that at least our current economy of expression cuts out wasted words and clauses, a sort of slimmed-down, electronic communication? Perhaps, but it also turns almost everything into instant bland hot cereal, as if we should gulp down oatmeal at every meal and survive well enough without the bother of salad, main course, and dessert. Each day our vocabulary shrinks, our thought patterns stagnate — if they are not renewed through fresh literature or intelligent conversation. Unfortunately these days, those who read are few and silent; those who don’t, numerous and heard. In this drought, Dante’s Inferno and William Prescott’s History of the Conquest of Mexico provide needed storms of new words, complex syntax, and fresh ideas.

(via Books, Inq.)

In response, D.G. Myers writes about reading fiction specifically, saying it makes a man full. Not his stomach, we’re talking about making the man himself full. Get a snack if you’re hungry. (via Dave Lull)