I saw the Fellowship of the Ring yesterday and it was sooooooo awesome! The casting, costumes, sets all exceeded my expecations. The black riders are so much scarier that even my imagination. I think the sound effects helped a lot with that. Speaking of fright--some scenes had me so scared I jumped a few feet out of my seat more than once.

I expected to be annoyed by the imposition of Arwen where she hadn't appeared in the book, but I thought her role actually worked fine. I would have preferred less time with Saruman and his orc contingent, mostly because they are so gross. I realize the director was trying to build tension about the imminence of war with these half-rotted skanky beasts, but please, these guys made me really nauseated.

Instead, it would have been nice to have some of the restful in-between scenes back. They don't add anything to the plot, but they keep you from becoming exhausted from all the intensity and stress.

Elijah Wood made an awesome Frodo, young and determined yet so vulnerable. The camera work and special effects that made the halflings appear so tiny and fragile were seamless and really added to the pathos of Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin.

My favorite character was Legolas. He was so even keel, yet more alert than the others, faster in battle and amazing with a bow. Rohan was always my favorite realm in the books, but the film's depiction of Legolas gave me new appreciation for how cool elves are.

The past few days I've had some really strange e-mail communications with a guy I knew from high school. I'd mentioned that Joel and I are interested in liturgical worship, and he said he'd never heard of it. I guess this is pretty typical among Baptists.

When I explained what it is and what we like about it, his response was really bizarre. Mostly it was a long stream-of-consciousness rant about how hymns are too hard to sing (like all praise songs are easy? Ever sing the "verses" of "Our God is an Awesome God"?), that traditions make dead churches, that weekly communion is too boring. Another thing he said that really struck me as odd was this: "a 12-15 minute music format progressing from maybe one up-beat song to a final, slow song before the message involves too great a mood change in a short period of time. So we do not really achieve the Biblical goal we aim at. We provide emotional change in the music faster than people are capable of opening up their hearts to the Lord."

I don't get this at all. What "Biblical goal" could he be talking about? This sounds to me like emotional manipulation using music. I agree that there need to be seasons of joyfulness and quiet meditiation in a service, but using music as the only schtick to let this happen seems very shallow. I tried to explain that in liturgy, there is an emotional ebb and flow of the overall service that is part of our response to God calling us, forgiving and comforting us, speaking to us, feeding us and sending us.

Well, I sensed that we were kind of talking past each other, so I explained in great detail what a liturgical service is like. This time I think he got a better sense of what I was talking about. I found it kind of sad, however, that he thinks his congregation is too stupid to do anything other than settle for what they have now. Because many in the congregation come from non-church backgrounds or only have an 8th grade education, he seems to imply that the best thing for them is elementary-school-level worship. How disheartening! And also, how seemingly false. Liturgy is the primary style of worship in most of the third world, despite low literacy levels. My understanding is that liturgy has a framework and rhythm that is not difficult to grasp.

Well, I wasn't really trying to "convert" him to my point of view, just explain where I'm coming from and be understood. I just find his situation sad and don't really know how to respond at this point in the conversation. How do you talk to someone who's convinced that the pragmatic thing--dumbing down--is the only alternative?

Thought I'd pass along a Christmas poem a friend sent me:

The Nativity of Christ
Robert Southwell

Behold the father is his daughter’s son,
The bird that built the nest is hatched therein,
The old of years an hour hath not outrun,
Eternal life to live doth now begin,
The Word is dumb, the mirth of heaven doth weep,
Might feeble is, and force doth faintly creep.

O dying souls, behold your living spring;
O dazzled eyes, behold your sun of grace;
Dull ears, attend what word this Word doth bring;
Up, heavy hearts, with joy your joy embrace.
From death, from dark, from deafness, from despairs,
This life, this light this Word, this joy repairs.

Gift better than himself God doth not know;
Gift better than his God no man can see,
This gift doth here the giver given bestow;
Gift to this gift let each receiver be.
God is my gift, himself he freely gave me;
God’s gift am I, and none but God shall have me.

Man altered was by sin from man to beast;
Beast’s food is hay, hay is all mortal flesh.
Now God is flesh and lies in manger pressed
As hay, the brutest sinner to refresh.
O happy field wherein this fodder grew,
Whose taste doth us from beasts to men renew.

Alas, I have to post something quickly or risk a blank Blog. Horrors!

On the train this morning, I read an excellent article from the latest Re:Generation Quarterly by Read Mercer Schuchardt on the cultural victory of Hugh Hefner. I agree that Christians do too little to combat porn and its attendant philosophy. As a woman, I'm disheartened to see the ways in which femininity is disdained for a kind of new perverse masculine womanhood. Porn culture has done a lot to help that along. Here's a quote that I think is right-on:
In Hugh Hefner's world, meanwhile, equality for females has come to mean synonymity with males. Unisex clothing is male. Equal pay for equal work is: male (inasmuch it assumes the irrelevance of childbirth, and certainly of childbearing). Thanks largely to Hefner's pioneering spirit, men have won every battle in the modern war of the sexes. Where women are free to be equal, they are free to be equal to men. Just go shopping at the Gap. [I can't! My body is too womanly instead of boyish! --LWG] Or pick up any woman's magazine published in the last few decades. In it you will find an article, essay or questionnaire demonstrating or demanding that women should have more sex than they are currently having. Is there an escape, a way out, a means by which a woman can choose not to have her social norms and sexual drives dictated by porn culture?
Here's another kicker..."Porn culture demands of women precisely what real women don't need or want: skinny bodies, huge fake breasts, no babies and men who are unwilling to commit to anything more than a quick shag."

What I'd like to see is a new feminism that doesn't try to turn women into men. Anyone with me?

Germs seem to have me in a headlock today, so the only joyful noise I'm making this Lord's day is a lovely bark of lungs trying hard to clear themselves of gunk. I'd forgotten that expectorant syrup makes you cough more. Somehow this is good. Go figure.

I have some catching up to do here. In the past week I have seen the Harry Potter film and finished The Sparrow. Both are worthy of comment.

Joel and I read the first four Potter books with great relish. They work within so many traditions--fantasy, coming of age, fairy tales, and of course boarding school tales. I was relieved to hear that the cast and director for the film were British. I shudder at the thought of the likes of Spielberg getting his hands on the script. So much of the story's flavor appeals to me because it is about being a kid in Britain, where boarding schools have a long tradition of excellence. I think the film is excellently cast, except for Dumbledore, who I've always pictured as being like my father-in-law, except with white hair. They cast a too-ancient Gandolf-type. But I guess that's the archetype of great leadership (think Moses in The Ten Commandments).

I also thought the sets and costumes where fantastic. At Hogwarts, the kids wear grey uniforms with ties and scarves in their house colors. Over the uniforms, they wear open black robes, just like the undergrads at Oxford on exam days. It's a nice touch that's more academic than witchy, and seems in keeping with Rowling's treatment of magic as a kind of science that must be studied and practiced. The uniforms for their magical sport quiddich are based on polo uniforms--it's brilliant because this is also a game that requires riding skill. Hogwarts school itself is full of wonderful Gothic architecture. I think that does a lot to dispell some of the sense that this magic is in any way demonic. How could that happen in a place that looks so church-like with valuted ceilings and cloister walks?

I was only disappointed that so much had to be cut out to make this fit into an "acceptable time frame." Many of the characters are underdeveloped as a result. The Dursleys scenes are cut down to almost nothing. Harry's rivalry with his nemesis Malfoy are only hinted at. Harry's sense of alienation, which makes him such a sympathetic character, is also drastically downplayed. My husband commented after the movie that if we hadn't read the book, the movie probably would not have made much sense.

I'll come back to The Sparrow later because I'm getting too tired to continue. Darned germs. :-(

If you thought Dickens was bad with goofy names, go check this site with the names of actual physicians that match their specialties well: http://educ.ahsl.arizona.edu/mla/doctor.htm.

I came across it while doing reseach at work. Who says medical publishing can't be fun?

Well, my kitten just threw me for a loop.

I was rubbing the plump, fluffy, black tummy of my 3-month-old kitten when I noticed that he has teats! My SIL had his gender identified by a vet, and he's beginning to get what look like boy parts, so this was something of a shock. I checked out my clearly male dog Nicky--no teats. But Keats has 6. Hmmm...off we went to search the answer on the Internet.

His parts matched the pictures of boy kitties. But one site gave us the answer: boy cats do indeed have teats, just like boy humans. They just never become anything but pink bumps. Mystery solved! No need to change the poor guy's name to something feminine--a very good thing because he actually comes when you call, and usually obeys when you say "Keats, no." I think living with a dog is making him think like a dog, instead of being incorrigibly feline and above obeying stupid humans. ;-)

Time to go calligraphy the place cards for turkey day. We will have a full house with 7 guests.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Earlier this week, I went to the Thomas Eakins exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The best time to go is apparently on a weekday afternoon, if you can squeak in between school groups.

One of the reasons Eakins is such a convincing realist was his dedication to "getting it right." He would paint several studies, and even sculpt clay models to perfect the composition and perspective. I was especially impressed with a painting he did of a rower on the Schuylkill River, in which the front of the boat is coming straight at the viewer. Next to it in the exhibit is Eakin's study for the painting, and elaborate grid of lines he used to formulate the perspective.

Eakins also did many of his paintings from photographs--typically combining figures from several pictures into the final painting. The result is incredibly natural poses.

Eakins' emphasis on the human figure as the basis of art got him into trouble, however. He brought in a man to model nude for a class with both male and female students and got kicked out of the PA Academy of Fine Arts. He formed a rival school with likeminded artists and he and his students were in a lot of nudie photos they later painted from. After seeing this exhibit, you'll be intimately acquainted with Eakins. Hee hee.

I just finished the first volume of Susan Howatch's The Wheel of Fortune (It has nothing to do with the game show, but rather a notion of the philosopher Boethius). It's the tenth book of Howatch's I've read, after the six Starbridge books, the two healing centre books and Sins of the Fathers.

Published in 1984, prior to the Starbridge series, The Wheel of Fortune has many of the element that made the Starbridge books so great: psychologically complex characters so full of self-delusion they make bad choices, yet once you understand how they tick, you can't help but root for them and hope they can sort out their messes.

The focus of this novel is a wealthy Welsh/English landowning family. They're struggling with the aftermath of scandal and downright evil in the grandparents' generation. One of Howatch's great themes comes out here as in most of her other novels: "the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children." Yet this is not because of God's vindictiveness, but the natural consequence of evil in family dynamics. It's powerful because it rings so true emotionally. We see this in our own world: "When the parents go off the rails, it's the children that suffer most," one of the characters says.

But there's also a beauty to how the generations are innerconnected. This quote in particular brought that home to me:

"When I was two," she said, "my father died in the Boer War. I have no memory of him. I thought later, How sad I can't remember him, can't grieve as I should--for of course to me he wasn't a hero, he was just someone who'd gone away and left us, and I resented him for being killed and then I felt guilty that I resented him, and what with all the resentment and the guilt I never thought that the grief would come, I thought I'd never hear his echo in time, and indeed I forgot all about grieving, but gradually, as I grew up, other people would talk to me about him, and I thought, Why do they do this, what makes them speak now after so many years, and then suddenly I realized it was because of me, because I was the echo for those people, and for them the past wan't lost far away down the straight line after all but coming back towards them in a curve. It was as if he was still alive, for when they looked at me they saw him, and when I understood this, when I understood he was present in me, then I knew him, then he became real to me, then the resentment died and the guilt fell away and at last, years after his death, I was able to grieve."

I'm sorry to have to take a hiatus from South Wales while I read a book for a book club (Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow). I'd especially been enjoying the "visit" to Rhossili Downs, a place I'd spent a week while studying abroad in 1990. We'll see if I can be disciplined and wait to read volume 2.

I've had calliope music running through my head for hours and hours. For some strange reason, my heart is in the land of carousels. My favorite is in a backwater amusement park in central PA, Knoebel's Grove. The magnificent carousel there dates from the early 1900s, with some of the most beautifully hand-carved, bejeweled horses I've ever been astride. My dad's company held its company picnic there every August, and as company kids, we got enough free tickets to ride rides all day. My day was not complete without at least 10 go-rounds on the carousel.

The teens always took the outside horses and competed for the elusive brass ring. I preferred a steed that went up and down. I picked my mount very carefully, never content with a plain brown horse. I wanted the midnight black horse with medieval armour and the most lush real-horsehair tail, or a cream-colored pony with delicate grey hooves, or one of countless other "favorites." The brassy, quasi-military, old-timey music seemed of another world altogether, from a time before tv, when the simple pleasures were magic. What was it like to be a little girl in 1910?

My favorite part of the movie "Mary Poppins" is when the carousel horses carry Mary, Bert, Michael and Jane bouncing off into the countryside. What a lark! If I had three wishes, I'd probably waste one of them to gain such a steed.

If you're ever in central PA in the summer, you've got to visit Knoebels. Even going back as an adult, I find it hasn't lost its innocent power. Tucked in the woods, dotted with picnic groves (they actually let you bring your own food), scattered with fun rides (and cheap!! $15 worth of tickets will last two adults all day), and full of kitschy eateries with all manner of tempting junk, it is, according to my husband, home of two of the BEST wooden roller coasters.

Bulb planting is not for the faithless. Up to my elbows in the dirt yesterday afternoon, I contemplated this while pushing past cracklingly dry leaves to find earth. How is it that my bags of oniony little bulbs thrive in the midst of death? It's a mystery that they can gather strength and sustenance from the snow that will pack them in, the Canadian blasts that will howl overhead. When the ground is still cold, they'll send up shoots and tiny blossoms, the first sign of new life, heaved up from under the snow.

When you're childless, you cling to such metaphors. Sometimes it's hard to believe that the end result of being in this dark place will be new life springing up, like a soft, baby-pink tulip.

God is here in the dark, pulling roots and stems from the bulb--potentiality. Though it cannot be perceived, He works, pulls, shapes, molds, forms, while I wait for spring.

Lone xylophone, I realize, is a kind of odd name for a blog, and merits explanation...

My sophomore through senior years of high school, I played mallet percussion, an experience that put me in an even more freakish subset of band freaks: girl percussionists. I didn't play something delicate and feminine like a flute or clarinet, but a huge instrument that had to be strapped to my body. I carried sticks and hit things.

Being a girl percussionist is not for wussies. I got to wear a 40-pound marching xylophone through blazing heat, rain, and snow on football fields and several-mile parades in hilly towns. (I only fainted once, during a two mile parade in 98 degree heat in a wool uniform. Fortunately, a parent caught my instrument before I was impaled on the harness.)

My band director decided that the percussion harnesses were ugly, so we had to wear them under our uniforms. It's amazing I ever got a date, wandering around football games with lumpy shoulders, bolts bulging at unnatural places on my chest and a steel bar sticking out by my groin. Of course, with the instrument attached I could do some serious damage if I turned around too fast--and did knock the wind out of a trombonist...

I'll save some of my crazy band days stories for future posts. Suffice it to say, my experiences shaped my imagination in unique ways, and I can hear beauty in hitting things, see dignity in the lumpy but strong.

Now I've been lured into this self-indulgent abyss. Christe eleison.