All posts by Phil

Coffee, Tea, Drinks, Writing

What We Eat Vs. Food Culture

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Nicholas Hune-Brown describes how foodie trends don’t reflect most of what Americans actually eat.

The gap between the food we cook and the food we talk about has never been larger. Culturally, it’s the same gap that exists between The Americans—the brainy FX spy show that seems to have nearly as many internet recappers as viewers—and shows like the immensely popular and rarely discussed NCIS. Breathless blog posts about the latest food trends can feel like certain corners of music criticism, pre-poptimism, when writers would obsess over the latest postrock band that was using really interesting time signatures while ignoring the vast majority of music people listened to on the radio. The food at Allrecipes is the massively popular, not-worth-talking-about mainstream.

This is another example of how the culture of media people or the culture of the places where most news writers work chafes with middle and small town America. I don’t think it has to be an uncomfortable chaffing, but writers should be aware of it. Food writers may love to write about what’s new and different and extol new theories of nutrition and flavor, but eating has many ties to traditions, personal comforts, family, and even ceremony. We don’t cook for critics; we cook to bless the people at our table (sometimes that just ourselves). And around the holidays, our family traditions (or a specific rejection of them) are like a fuming stew pot, filling the air with expectations. If food writers don’t share our traditions and comforts, if they have deliberately rejected them for personal or professional reasons, then they’re going to push us away from their table to some degree. We may still appreciate what they have to say, but when it comes to actually eating, well, we may ignore them more often than not. (via ArtsJournal)

Authors, Non-fiction, Religion

Luther Documentary Kickstarter

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On October 31, 1517, Dr. Martin Luther posted ninety-five theses on the door of the Wittenberg church, intending to invite debate on the doctrine of indulgences and its implication. Next year is the 500th anniversary of that decision.

LUTHER Official Teaser Trailer from Stephen McCaskell on Vimeo.

Now, the makers of the film Through the Eyes of Spurgeon are raising money to fund their production of a documentary on Luther.

Non-fiction

Tocqueville on the Tyranny of the Majority

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And if you want a refutation of the wisdom of crowds—the “theory of equality applied to intelligence,” Tocqueville scoffs—look no further. As someone who believes that “freedom of the intellect is a sacred thing,” as Tocqueville does, “when I feel the hand of power weigh upon my brow, it scarcely matters who my oppressor is, and I am not more inclined to submit to the yoke because a million arms are prepared to place it around my neck.”

That same majoritarian tyranny explains why America’s elected officials are so mediocre. To win votes, they have to flatter public opinion with the obsequiousness of Louis XIV’s most sycophantic courtiers. Andrew Jackson is Tocqueville’s Exhibit A. He “is the slave of the majority,” Tocqueville sneers; “he obeys its wishes and desires and heeds its half-divulged instincts; or rather, he divines what the majority wants, anticipating its desires before it knows what they are in order to place himself at its head.” Like most politicians, he cares only about reelection, so that “his own individual interest supplants the general interest in his mind.” His (ultimately successful) vendetta against the Second Bank of the United States is a perfect example. Even though it inestimably benefits the nation by ensuring its monetary stability, Jackson happily attacks it, accusing its directors of being an aristocracy in the making, opposed to the democratic majority—and, incidentally, to Jackson as well. But of course, Jackson’s Democrats, the party that stands for the infinite expansion of the power of the people, have a permanent majority over the rival Federalists, who could win election only when the country needed to navigate the perils of the Founding, a unique emergency that prompted the Federalist Party’s superior men to accept public office.

From Myron Magnet’s essay, “The End of Democracy in America” on Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America and The Old Regime and the French Revolution. (via Prufrock)

Publishing, Writing

Cutting Corners with Other People’s Ideas

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Some Christian publishers are taking the expensive step of using plagiarism software during their editing process to guard against intentional and unintentional plagiarism, according to World Magazine. Emily Belz writes:

Most publishers think authorial self-preservation, strict contracts prohibiting plagiarism, and a good team of editors will result in a plagiarism-free book. But when plagiarism is unintentional—a missed citation or a miscopied note from a research assistant or just sloppiness—those checks can be insufficient.

I saw this kind of unintentional plagiarism or sloppiness while editing a set a workbooks a few years ago. Usually I was verifying a quotation to see if the attribution was correct, and some of them had incorrect or odd punctuation, so I tried to find an adequately sourced quotation in order to correct what my manuscript. A couple times I found the quotation and surrounded text were all quoted from another work and improperly attributed.

Professor Collin Garbarino gives World this explanation for this persistent problem. “We’ve got some pastors writing books on topics that they only superficially understand. If you haven’t mastered the subject matter, you’re going to have to rely on someone else for your ideas. If you’re under a deadline, you might cut corners.”

Uncategorized

Imitating God as a Gardener

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Garden
Pete Peterson shares some thoughts he learned from Norman Wirzba on a theology of eating. A gardener with many animals, Peterson asks, “If we are the Body of Christ, are we not also called to be gardeners and caretakers of the New Creation?”

He writes:

Each morning when I wake, I am the celebrant in a liturgy that leads me through the sacrament of Creation. I process through garden aisles. I pastor the beans, and the grape vines, and the apple trees, and, yes, even the chickens and ducks. They sing praises in crows and quacks. They make offerings of eggs, or fruit, or even simple beauty. They come forward to partake of the food I offer, and I leave them with a blessing.

Authors

Who Has Influenced Eugene Peterson: Pastors or Artists?

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Those were the days
“I think the people who have influenced me most as a pastor,” Eugene Peterson said, “haven’t been the theologians – they’ve been the artists.” Jeffrey Overstreet interviewed Peterson for Seattle Pacific University back in 2011.

From artists I learned never to look at just the surface of a person, but to look for the interior life, to consider what I know of their past. An exterior is never just an exterior. In our culture, we’re trained to focus on the exterior, for instance, through advertising and publicity. Being present to a person long enough to start sensing that they’re never just themselves, they’re their parents, their grandparents, their kids, their neighbors – all of that becomes part of their story. Artists help me do that, because they are attuned to the interior life.

I think it’s interesting that Karl Barth, the theologian who has influenced me most, was mostly influenced by Mozart. Mozart was a theme in his life. I think he learned a lot about writing theology by listening to Mozart.

Fiction, Writing

Grammar Nazis and Adaptations

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A ‘ground-breaking’ study was released this month stating that personality, more than any other factor, influenced the way people reacted to typos and grammar errors.

“In other words,” Russell Working writes, “if you are annoyed by grocers offering a discount on banana’s, you probably trample the neighbor’s flowerbeds for fun and kick your pet skunk when you have a bad day at work.”

Close your mouth; it isn’t that shocking.

More book adaptions are coming to screens near you. After stating he would not, Neil Gaiman has announced that he will be adapting Good Omens, the novel he co-authored with the late Terry Pratchett, for television. Gaiman had been respecting his friend’s wishes, saying they had agreed to only work on Good Omens material together, but Sian Cain explains, Pratchett left a posthumous letter, asking Gaiman to “write an adaptation by himself, with his blessing. ‘At that point, I think I said, “You bastard, yes,”‘ Gaiman recalled, to cheers.”

Cain continues:

Multiple attempts to adapt Good Omens have fizzled out in the past: in 2002, the director Terry Gilliam was lined up to helm an adaptation starring Johnny Depp and Robin Williams in the two lead roles. In an interview with Empire in 2013, Gaiman revealed this adaptation had fallen through because Gilliam’s pitch to Hollywood for financing came just months after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. “[Terry] said, ‘Hilarious movie about the Antichrist and the end of the world,’ and they said, ‘Please go away, you’re scaring us.’”

Also, screenwriter Terry Rossio is working on adapting Pratchett’s Mort, and daughter Rhianna Pratchett is working a script of Wee Free Men, both for the big screen.

Fiction

Primer, Watching a Time-Travel Movie Cold

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I watched the 2004 movie Primer with barely any knowledge of it, which may be the best way to watch it. Shane Carruth wrote, directed, and stared in this detailed sci-fi story about four entrepreneurs who hope to make some kind of breakthrough on one of their garage-lab projects. When Abe discovers that a box they made does something unexpected, he tells Aaron and the two decide to pursue it. The scene below gives you a taste of the movie’s style while showing Abe and Aaron conducting their first experiment.

That’s the pace of the first quarter–realistic talk from scientific engineers who aren’t spelling anything out for the viewers at home. In this scene, I’m not sure Abe knows what’s going on yet, but he works it out and then tells Aaron everything. They’ve invented a time machine.

Since Abe draws this conclusion first, he experiments with the necessary components to make the box work, to make the box larger, and to survive within it–all before introducing it to Aaron.

That’s when the story goes from a bit tedious to mind-bending. Carruth hasn’t given us a simple lark about time-traveling engineers trying to better their lives or two ordinary guys trying to change the course of history. He’s written a story that pushes into the paradoxes bound to occur when someone breaks time’s linear progression.

For example, if someone could go back in time a day or a week in order to prevent a major crime or gain a windfall in the lottery or stock market, once he goes back to do this he removes his motive for going back. If on Saturday he decides to return to Monday in order to stop a crime and he succeeds, what happens when he returns to Saturday again? Having stopped the crime, he doesn’t have any reason to go back to Monday. So what happens? Are the first days overwritten by the second? What if he had discovered time travel during that week; would revisiting the week delay or prevent the discovery that enabled him to go back in the first place?

What if you began to see it the opposite way, as a way to avoid consequences? What if you could go back in time, punch a jerk who deserves it, and return to the same morning as if (no, because) none of it ever happened? What if you could press a reset button to undo everything you’ve done over the last several days?

Primer is a story about all of that, and while it’s easy to understand the danger presented at the movie’s conclusion, it’s difficult to follow everything occurring up to that point. What happens at the birthday party? Who is the guy following them? Where does the man who looks severely beaten come in? The story pushes into these paradoxes without full explanation, giving rise to explanatory videos like this one as well as webpages dedicated to spelling it all out.

Abe: “I’m not into the whole ‘destiny, there’s-only-one-right-way’ thing.”

Aaron: “Abe, I’m not either, but what’s worse? You know, thinking you’re being paranoid or knowing you should be?”

I enjoyed it overall, but it is dense. One reviewer said that though it’s a short movie, it feels longer due to the many details packed into every minute.

Writing

Good Commonplace Books

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Commonplace Book

A great book of quotations would embarrass certain of your relatives and be banned by lesser school districts. When a writer says something new and real, it can be shocking, like a surprise emission from a bodily orifice. The books of quotations that rarely let you down are commonplace books, those intellectual scrapbooks made for personal use and compiled by a single avid reader.

(via Prufrock)

Fiction

Yearning for Wonder, “Something, Anything”

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If you’re looking for a good Christian movie that would work well as a discussion starter for a thoughtful group, look up Paul Harill’s Something, Anything (which is available on Netflix streaming).

While the trailer gives you the tone of this film, it doesn’t spell out the story. Peggy, the woman whom you see agreeing to be married, hits a wall when her first child is miscarried. The grief overwhelms her, causing her to question herself and her lifestyle. In the trailer, you see one of her friends asking her what she wants. In the movie, that friend recommends she try to have another child and recognize her role as a wife. Life, she says, is about pleasing a husband, raising children, and supporting them so that they can repeat the cycle of marriage and child-rearing. Peggy used to accept that, but now it all rings hollow, and she doesn’t know what to believe.

So we watch a normal, East Tennessee woman leave one life for another, exchanging a self-centered materialistic life for one that may have moments of wonder, like synchronous fireflies in the Smoky Mountains.

One wordless scene appears to capture the entire story of “Something, Anything.” Peggy and her husband, Mark, are preparing to move, and he finds the journal she has been pouring her heart into throughout her spiritual journey. Mark picked it up and began to read a page, when Peggy saw what he was doing. She stands in the doorway, silently open to talking to him about what he read, but he just puts it down and walks out. The two of them were living in completely different worlds at that point, and Mark wasn’t curious enough to ask her about hers. He wanted a comfortable, worldly life; she wanted eternity.

I liked this slow, quiet film, and it will provoke discussion in an attentive group with its references to worldly comforts, Thomas Merton, monastic life, and the Sermon on the Mount.