Holidays

David Kopel “has a post”:http://www.volokh.com/archives/archive_2005_11_20-2005_11_26.shtml#1132694542 about the origins of the Thanksgiving hymn “We Gather Together”:http://www.centrofriend.it/thanksgiving/we_gather_together.htm. (Originally Dutch: a “Nederlandtsch Gedenckclanck,” which is a phrase I could say all day.) It put me in mind of the stuff I learned when growing up in Ireland. Much of it was pretty thin gruel, like the execrable “Christ be beside me”:http://www.know-britain.com/hymns/christ_be_beside_me.html. But there were a few standouts — mostly leftovers from the pre-Vactican II fire-and-brimstone era. Chief among these was “God of Mercy and Compassion”:http://romaaeterna.web.infoseek.co.jp/romanhmn/rh216.html. Nothing like hearing a bunch of eight-year-olds cheerily singing lyrics like “See our saviour bleeding, dying / On the cross of Calvary / To that cross my sins have nailed him / Yet he bleeds and dies for me.” Clonk! Clonk! Clonk! Do you hear those nails going in? Do you?

To offset this, though, when I was in fifth class our teacher, Mr Buckley, read us Frank O’Connor’s small masterpiece, “First Confession,” which put a more humane face on the whole thing. My view of religion was never quite the same afterward.

Then, to crown my misfortunes, I had to make my first confession and communion. It was an old woman called Ryan who prepared us for these. She was about the one age with Gran; she was well-to-do, lived in a big house on Montenotte, wore a black cloak and bonnet, and came every day to school at three o’clock when we should have been going home, and talked to us of hell. She may have mentioned the other place as well, but that could only have been by accident, for hell had the first place in her heart.

She lit a candle, took out a new half-crown, and offered it to the first boy who would hold one finger — only one finger! — in the flame for five minutes by the school clock. Being always very ambitious I was tempted to volunteer, but I thought it might look greedy. Then she asked were we afraid of holding one finger — only one finger! — in a little candle flame for five minutes and not afraid of burning all over in roasting hot furnaces for all eternity. “All eternity! Just think of that! A whole lifetime goes by and it’s nothing, not even a drop in the ocean of your sufferings.” The woman was really interesting about hell, but my attention was all fixed on the half-crown. At the end of the lesson she put it back in her purse. It was a great disappointment; a religious woman like that, you wouldn’t think she’d bother about a thing like a half-crown.

You can “read the whole thing”:http://hrsbstaff.ednet.ns.ca/brownle/first_confession_by_frank_o.htm in the space of a few minutes. Vintage publish “a good edition”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0394710487/kieranhealysw-20/ of O’Connor’s short stories.

Wow, there is some serious pumpkin-carving talent out there.

Anyone see any interesting costumes this year? One of my students had two “ears” on her head and pasted a “left click” and “right click” sign on her shirt. I thought that was cute.

I printed out a bunch of signs saying ebay, PayPal, some emails, some instructions to enter your password, and some login screens. I put those on my clothes and also had a plastic fish in my hand. What was I?

Brian Leiter is on sabbatical and seems to be enjoying a stint in London, most of the time, anyway. Welcome to our city, Professor Leiter, I hope you have fun while you’re here.

Oh, and by the way, you’re right both about the belly-buttons and the buffoon, but try to have closer to the correct change in supermarkets, it’ll make your life so much easier.

Shana Tova!

Almost three years to the day after the last bomb attack in Bali, suicide bombers have struck again. (This is a good article about the aftermath.) Our family just got back from Bali last week. My heart goes out to the victims and their families, and also to the Balinese people more generally: they are all victims of these cowardly attacks. Bali’s economy, so dependent on tourism, was only now beginning to make a full recovery from the 2002 bombing; everyone I spoke to said that things were better, but not back up to pre-bombing levels. This second blow may cripple Bali for a long time. Hotels and expensive clubs like Ku De Ta have armed guards who check vehicles, but nothing can make a beachfront seafood restaurant, or a cafe on a heavily trafficked street, safe against a suicide bomber. What will happen to these families? [click to continue…]

Dervala has the most beautiful, true and hair-raisingly universal (if you’re Irish) essay on the Leaving Cert, the quintessentially Irish right of passage, the Murder Machine, or, as I knew it at the time, The High Jump. I did the Leaving the same year Dervala did, and I could have written this piece myself. Except that I couldn’t. It’s just so well-written it feels like that, capturing hauntingly what it was to be 17 and have your dreams channelled through the points system and your entire life blocked off by an enormous obstacle/national obsession. And the sheer finality of it all:

“For two years we consumed seven subjects. Over a June fortnight, we regurgitated this knowledge into thirty hours worth of essays and proofs. The first day, we might dispatch Yeats, Scott Fitzgerald, George Eliot, and Shakespeare for good, and then choose from a list of titles the last original essay composition we would ever write. The next day, we would think about calculus, trigonometry, and quadratic equations—intensely, for six hours, and for the very last time.”

The LC marks you for life. I still dream every few months that I’m repeating it, especially when the weather starts to get warm and over-achievers’ happy little thoughts are inexplicably tinged with guilt.

Speaking of the weird things people do when summer finally comes to Belgium, two friends recently went to a community fair in one of Brussels’ rougher communes; Schaerbeek. Instead of jam stalls and face painting, they found tables full of rifles for purchase by all comers. Not Very European! And for family entertainment – one man was covered in heavy padding and put in an enclosure while another goaded a german shepherd with a stick and set him on the first man. Everyone clapped.

The fairs in the city are much nicer, though – and on a Sunday here you can’t walk half a mile without encountering one. Or a tiny, hidden park, or a humbly gorgeous art nouveau facade in an un-prepossessing street. I’m starting to think that Brussels, not Paris, is the true city of the flaneur.

For those of us in the U.S., today is “Memorial Day”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorial_Day. America has a fine tradition of military service and sacrifice. The best way to respect and honor it is to reflect on what it means to serve and perhaps die for your country, and to think about the value of the cause, the power of the reasons, and the strength of the evidence you would need before asking someone — someone like your brother, or friend, or neighbor — to take on that burden. That so many are willing to serve is a testament to the character of ordinary people in the United States. That these people have, in recent years, shouldered the burden of service for the sake of a badly planned war begun in the name of an ill-defined cause, on the thinnest of pretexts, and with the most flimsy sort of evidence, is an indictment of the country’s political class.

_Update_: I’ve added a little more below the fold. _Update 2_: And a little more.

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“China Mieville”:http://www.socialistreview.org.uk/article.php?articlenumber=9150, on whom there will be more in this blog in the New Year, tells us how the Socialists saved (will save) Christmas.

Via “About Last Night”:http://www.artsjournal.com/aboutlastnight/ , SF author John Scalzi presents us with the “ten worst Christmas specials ever”:http://www.scalzi.com/whatever/003030.html. Starting with Dorothy Parker and gang.

bq. An Algonquin Round Table Christmas (1927)

bq. Alexander Woolcott, Franklin Pierce Adams, George Kaufman, Robert Benchley and Dorothy Parker were the stars of this 1927 NBC Red radio network special, one of the earliest Christmas specials ever performed. Unfortunately the principals, lured to the table for an unusual evening gathering by the promise of free drinks and pirogies, appeared unaware they were live and on the air, avoiding witty seasonal banter to concentrate on trashing absent Round Tabler Edna Ferber’s latest novel, Mother Knows Best, and complaining, in progressively drunken fashion, about their lack of sex lives. Seasonal material of a sort finally appears in the 23rd minute when Dorothy Parker, already on her fifth drink, can be heard to remark, “one more of these and I’ll be sliding down Santa’s chimney.” The feed was cut shortly thereafter. NBC Red’s 1928 holiday special “Christmas with the Fitzgeralds” was similarly unsuccessful.

Ayn Rand’s ‘A Selfish Christmas,’ the lost Star Trek special (‘A Most Illogical Holiday’) and the David Cronenberg Canadian Christmas special (‘The virus causes Santa to develop both a large, tooth-bearing orifice in his belly and a lustful hunger for human flesh, which he sates by graphically devouring Canadian celebrities Bryan Adams, Dan Ackroyd and Gordie Howe on national television’) also excel.

Who would’ve thought that discussing pumpkin pie would be such a popular topic among Timberites (and others as well). Here, I offer an alternative European perspective as there were eight of us around the table last night (with not an American in sight although some later joined us for socializing): three Italians, two Germans, one German/French, one Dutch and one Hungarian. First of all, I’m proud to say that you couldn’t have had a more traditional Thanksgiving meal including a mashed potato/sweet potato dish, bean casserole, cranberry relish, cranberry jello salad, squash, stuffing, plenty of gravy and, of course, a beautiful and delicious turkey. Other than the dinner rolls, ice cream and whipped cream everything was homemade. But let me fast forward to the dessert portion of the evening.

After a walk out to the beach to make some room for the pies, we started a general discussion comparing European vs American pastries. Several people around the table thought that American desserts are just too sweet. This may explain why most people only took a small slice of my pecan pie (oh, and I cheated, I didn’t make the crust). However, I was happy to note that people were quite excited about the pumpkin pie (pictured here without the important whipped cream component). I relied on canned pumpkin pure, but used a special recipe that adds vanilla ice cream to the filling making it extra fluffy and yummy. To the skeptics who in the comments to Belle’s post wondered whether people just said they liked the pie versus actually enjoyed it, I can report that my guests were quite honest regarding their preferences. Everyone got to take food when they left and people did not seem to have any qualms about expressing their preferences (thus I got to keep quite a few peanutbutter bars given that several of those in attendance have not yet developed a taste for peanut butter). I should add that my friend’s Alsatian apple tart was a really big hit as well (and as suggested earlier, it was not as sweet as the other desserts). One more point about desserts: I never use vanilla extract, I use vanilla sugar instead. I think it works much better (the former seems to have an artificial taste I don’t like). Substituting one packet for one teaspoon seems to work well.

The evening ended with us reminiscing about European 70s music (that may require a separate post sometime) and playing around with the various toys on my coffee table (coffee table books are so passé, try putting some Rubik games out sometime). Of course, after that amount of food no need to get so technical as to introduce elaborate puzzles. I brought out my vintage Schwarzer Peter card deck my grandmother and I used to play with when I was five. There is a reason I used to play with it when I was five. After a few minutes of playing we started wondering how many PhDs it takes to figure out the quickest way to end the game (well, you know, without actually just calling it quits). (Keep reinventing the rules and working with the other players so someone can win.) What a fun evening, and of course, no need to cook for the next several days.

I just wanted to wish people a Happy New Year. I am not going to say anything profound, just post text from an email that was forwarded to me a few days ago (below the fold). Of course, depending on your perspective, some of those lines could be considered pretty profound.

Otherwise, you can head over to the Unsealed Room to read up on the amusing circumstances of Madonna’s/Esther’s[1] visit to Israel (e.g. please, no Jewish photographers, wouldn’t want Jews to violate the High Holy Days).

fn1. I’d just like to add that I’m really glad she went with the English spelling so as not to upset my Google rankings.:)

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Hello from a motel in “Little Rock, Arkansas”:http://www.littlerock.com/, which turns out to have free ethernet. (The motel, not the city.) Today’s route ran from near “Salem, SC”:http://www.sciway.net/city/salem.html, up “I-85”:http://www.ncroads.com/interst/ih085.htm to “Spartanburg, SC”:http://www.cityofspartanburg.org/ where I picked up “I-26”:http://www.ncdot.org/projects/I26Connector/ to “Asheville, NC”:http://www.asheville.com/, where you hit “I-40”:http://www.interstate-guide.com/i-040.html. The drive across the “Smokies”:http://www.nps.gov/grsm/ was beautiful, though there were some brutally heavy rainstorms. Then I drove across the whole of Tennessee, lengthways. The first city was “Knoxville”:http://www.knoxville.org/. I swear the smug looking guy in the fancy sportscar who cut me off around there “looked familiar”:http://www.instapundit.com. The longer it went on, the flatter and less interesting Tennessee became, and the more I was forced to resort to strategies like singing in the car in order to keep myself awake. Well, to be honest maybe I didn’t need that much provocation. Here’s “forty seconds’ worth of video”:http://www.kieranhealy.org/trip/day1.mov from a day’s worth of driving. Tomorrow: On to “Amarillo”:http://www.amarillonet.com/! I wonder if we have any readers in Amarillo.

Easter in Australia is a four-day public holiday, and coincides with school holidays, so it’s a good time to organise get-togethers. There are events for nearly everyone from poodle-fanciers to petrolheads (even, I believe, some major religious celebrations). For most of the past thirty years, I’ve gone to the National Folk Festival (held in Canberra since the early 90s). This always gets me into the kind of utopian mood where you think that the troubles of the world would be over if only we would all be like brothers and sisters to each other[1]. And lately, it always seems to coincide with particularly bloody events in the real world, making me very reluctant to get out of this mood and back to reality.

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Last weekend when I realized the NCAA Final Four championships were being played on the first night of Passover, I couldn’t help but wonder whether Elijah would be interested in watching basketball.

I see now that others are pondering similarly important questions with respect to this week’s holidays. The Head Heeb wonders what would be a good Jewish substitute for the Easter Bunny. I think my vote would be to let it be so we don’t add to the ways in which these holidays can be commercialized. But if I want to play along, I’ll say I think we should have little personified matzah. They could have facial features and arms and legs. It would resemble SpongeBob SquarePants. I think it could be cute.