Personals column
This'll be in the personal update department.
Reading: Carl Becker's just amazingly well-written The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth Century Philosophers, which is all the more amazing for 1. being sparklingly written by the dullest single looking academic in the last hundred years or so, and for 2. being astoundingly frank about the reality and costs of expelling God from the academy--a not-yet-common admission in spirituality-friendly, self-analysis-obsessed postmodern times, let alone in the 50s or whenever this book was written. I guess his theme demanded it: the book is about the era when the intelligentsia departed Christianity...i.e., during the run-up to the American Revolution.
Still reading Randall Collins's gigantic The Sociology of Philosophies, which is a portrayal of how ideas evolve in complex relationship with the evolution of the societies around them. My kinda theory.
Have sent out 7,412 job applications this past ten days. What a soul-sucking endeavor that is. Props to anyone who keeps from self-destructive behavior or socialistic sympathies during a bout of unemployment, because they both come quite, quite naturally.
A certain female daughter in my household pointed out that we did not seem to believe in taking a break. Point well taken. When my kids get up today...I'll try to take them any cool free place I can think of. Regrettably, Dawn's pulling an overtime shift, upon which we are counting financially, but not part of her long-term plan for the use of her days off.
We are slowly but surely having the house painted, appliances repaired, attic floored, foundation shored up, etc. Will have to get an electrician who needs money in here to do a lot of tedious minor things. We're doing some of this ourselves, more than we can in the time allotted, really, but only hiring out what we must; to hire out at all is weird--Dawn and I have never "employed" contractors in this way before.
It reminds me of Zambia, where the other expatriate women got mad at Dawn because, when the serf that came with the house moved back to her rural village, we didn't get (another) maid. Our response was, do we look like amputees? I think we can do our own dishes. 'But you can do so much more (sc. for God) if you have a yard man and a maid and a nurse (i.e., a governness for the kids). Perhaps. But we certainly have found in Dallas that parenting in full view of others is working (sometimes pretty hard) for God, too.
Next post: beautiful things.
Reading: Carl Becker's just amazingly well-written The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth Century Philosophers, which is all the more amazing for 1. being sparklingly written by the dullest single looking academic in the last hundred years or so, and for 2. being astoundingly frank about the reality and costs of expelling God from the academy--a not-yet-common admission in spirituality-friendly, self-analysis-obsessed postmodern times, let alone in the 50s or whenever this book was written. I guess his theme demanded it: the book is about the era when the intelligentsia departed Christianity...i.e., during the run-up to the American Revolution.
Still reading Randall Collins's gigantic The Sociology of Philosophies, which is a portrayal of how ideas evolve in complex relationship with the evolution of the societies around them. My kinda theory.
Have sent out 7,412 job applications this past ten days. What a soul-sucking endeavor that is. Props to anyone who keeps from self-destructive behavior or socialistic sympathies during a bout of unemployment, because they both come quite, quite naturally.
A certain female daughter in my household pointed out that we did not seem to believe in taking a break. Point well taken. When my kids get up today...I'll try to take them any cool free place I can think of. Regrettably, Dawn's pulling an overtime shift, upon which we are counting financially, but not part of her long-term plan for the use of her days off.
We are slowly but surely having the house painted, appliances repaired, attic floored, foundation shored up, etc. Will have to get an electrician who needs money in here to do a lot of tedious minor things. We're doing some of this ourselves, more than we can in the time allotted, really, but only hiring out what we must; to hire out at all is weird--Dawn and I have never "employed" contractors in this way before.
It reminds me of Zambia, where the other expatriate women got mad at Dawn because, when the serf that came with the house moved back to her rural village, we didn't get (another) maid. Our response was, do we look like amputees? I think we can do our own dishes. 'But you can do so much more (sc. for God) if you have a yard man and a maid and a nurse (i.e., a governness for the kids). Perhaps. But we certainly have found in Dallas that parenting in full view of others is working (sometimes pretty hard) for God, too.
Next post: beautiful things.
posted by Mark at 7:56 AM
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