Category Archive: Miscellaneous
More Wet Shaving
In case the Andy Crouch article I mentioned a couple entries ago wasn’t enough to persuade you to switch to wet shaving, here is a whole page of articles and photos by J. Mark Bertrand on that subject. Essense of Lime shaving cream? That phrase by itself makes me want to drop my Gillette shaving gel and my Mach 3 razor.
From what I’ve read so far about wet shaving, it appears that past generations knew how to get a good shave (hence the line from the commercial: “Shaves as close as a blade”). One stream of development abandoned that approach in order to “improve” a shave by speeding things up (e.g., electric razors) or adding unnecessary but allegedly better elements (e.g., multiple blade razors). Another stream of development, almost completely hidden from public view, maintained the older approach but worked on making little improvements.
I wonder how often something like that happens. Are there other areas where a technological mindset took over, offering constant new “improvements,” whereas the old way was actually better?
I can think of one. Book publishing, for one. Hardback books with sewn signatures are better than cheap paperbacks or most of the hardbacks sold today. (It took me a long time to find a one-volume Lord of the Rings with sewn signatures so that I can have it and read and reread it for a long time.)
Any others?
Recent Articles
Two articles I enjoyed today:
* Andy Crouch, in “The Best a Man Can Get,” meditates on wet shaving. (See this blog, too.) In spite of Gillette’s development of ever more complex razors and in defiance of Gillette’s money-making scheme of selling cheap razors and extremely overpriced blades, many men are returning to the use of rich shaving creams, lather brushes, and safety razors with double-edged blades. His article almost persuades me to join him.
* Agnieszka Tennant’s “A Velveteen Apologetic” considers bunnies and the goodness of God.
Computer?
I’m shopping for a new computer and monitor. Dell‘s deals are attractive, and it’s nice to be able to “build” your own computer online. On the other hand, several Amazon reviews complain about Dell’s service. On the third hand, however, Dell is considerably cheaper than anything else I saw in town today.
So … if you were buying a computer and wanted to get a good computer, mainly for internet and word processing and not for games, and a good flat screen and flat-bodied 17″ monitor for less than $700, what would you look for? HP? Compaq? EMachines? Or what?
As for switching to a Mac, as some of you might recommend, I’m not sure I’m ready to take that step. Besides, the Macs I’ve seen cost more than $700.
Recommendations? And while you’re at it, any recommendations for Laser All-in-One printers, that is, printers that also fax, scan, and photocopy?
Secrets
Wise advice from Patera Silk to his student Horn:
There are more important things to learn than swordfighting, Horn. Whom to fight, for example. One of them is to keep secrets. Someone who holds in confidence only those secrets he has been told not to reveal can never be trusted. Surely you understand that. — Gene Wolfe, Litany of the Long Sun, p. 282.Â
Sleep
In 2006, Books and Culture plans to focus on this question: “How can followers of Christ be a counterculture for the common good?” To that end, they’ve asked a number of writers to contribute articles answering this question.
The first response is Lauren Winner‘s “Sleep Therapy.” While I don’t agree with everything she says — not least what she says about the death penalty — her response is worth reading. Her answer to the question: Sleep more. Sound strange?
Consider:
The unarguable demands that our bodies make for sleep are a good reminder that we are mere creatures, not the Creator. For it is God and God alone who “neither slumbers nor sleeps.”Â
And
to sleep, long and soundly, is to place our trust not in our own strength and hard work, but in him without whom we labor in vain.Â
It’s an article worth meditating on. Or sleeping on perhaps. It’s also a reminder (as if I needed it) that I need to go to bed earlier.
Bledsoe Blogs
I’m delighted to be able to welcome Rich Bledsoe to the world of blogging. Rich is the former pastor of Tree of Life Presbyterian Church in Boulder, Colorado. I’ve known Rich, first online and then in person, for a few years and have always found his thinking stimulating and profitable. I’m glad to have it in this format. Welcome, Rich!
Trinity Fest
After a week and a half away, Moriah and I are back home again.
We left on August 4th and drove as far as Cranbrook, BC, where we stayed at the Singing Pines Bed and Breakfast. Travelling with a baby takes a lot longer than travelling alone, we’ve discovered, and we didn’t arrive until 1:00 AM. We left again in the morning, after a delicious breakfast, so we didn’t have much of a chance to enjoy the setting. Still, the B&B was far better than a motel for about the same price.
On the 5th, we arrived in Moscow, where we stayed with our friends Gary and Pat Greenfield. Ostensibly, we were in town for Trinity Fest, but our main goal was to visit with friends and family (Moriah’s parents and brothers were up for the first part of the week) and relax and we certainly accomplished that goal.
We didn’t dance, but we were able to watch part of the ball on Saturday night before heading down to Bucer’s for the rest of the evening (something we did most nights we were in Moscow). We saw a lot of people on Sunday in church, but we didn’t see the performance of Handel’s Israel in Egypt that night. Instead, we had a great meal (and wonderful beer!) with Chris and Nery Morris.
On Monday, the conference started. The focus was on the American War of Independence. We attended, I think, three of the main lectures. Steve Wilkins’ first talk was particularly interesting and I would have liked to have heard the rest of his talks, but other things kept us from attending.
The one lecture we heard by Peter Lillback, however, raised some questions in our minds, especially when he referred positively to “Americanism” and seemed to have no problem with Paul Revere’s involvement in Freemasonry. (I’m told he addressed the masonic issue in another lecture which I didn’t hear.)
On Wednesday, we attended and greatly enjoyed Josh Appel’s talk on Gerard Manley Hopkins. I’ve long loved Hopkins, and this talk reminded me that I really do have to read more poetry.
Even more enjoyable than the lectures were the other features of the festival. On Monday night, we took part in the St. Brigid’s Feast, named after the hospitable nun who wished there were a sea of beer in heaven so that she could host even larger meals. After the feast, we walked over to the park nearby to see A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with Toby Sumpter doing an excellent job in the role of Bottom.
On Tuesday night, there was a street festival downtown. (Overheard from one little girl the next day: “I had nine snowcones and eight cotton candies!”) The concerts by Darryl Brann, Doug Wilson and his ad hoc band, and Eric Engerbretson (who invited the audience to name any year in the last five decades and then played a top-ten song from whatever year they named) were a highlight of the festival for us.
On Wednesday night, we attended the concert by Cherish the Ladies: great Celtic music by a number of very talented performers.
We had planned to head home again that Friday, but as the conference drew to a close we realized that a conference is a conference and a vacation is a vacation. They aren’t the same thing. So we decided to stay a few days longer in Moscow. Instead, of returning on Friday, we spent the weekend in Moscow, hanging out with friends and spending lots of time together, before finally leaving on Monday.
Monday night we stayed at the Delphine Lodge near Invermere, BC, originally built as a hotel in 1899 and now operated as a bed and breakfast. The floors were extremely creaky, but the hosts were friendly, the bed was comfortable, and the breakfast was great.
We drove all day Tuesday, stopping for a little while in Lake Louise (which Moriah had never seen before) and in Jasper (for supper). But coming up Highway 40 between Grand Cache and Grande Prairie, we hit some of the worst fog we’ve ever seen. We had to crawl along, trying to keep our eyes on the white line on the side of the road and hoping that there were no animals on the road ahead of us. Finally, the Lord brought us out of the fog and we arrived home sometime after midnight.
It was great to see you, Mom and Dad Phillips and Boone and Lindsay, and it was wonderful to be able to see so many good friends. We miss you already. Now we’re adjusting to being home and I’m scrambling to get ready for Sunday.
Gilead and the Shroud
First, I saw Peter Leithart’s review of Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead. Then, I saw the same book reviewed in Books and Culture. It’s almost enough to make me drop what I’m reading now and rush out to get a copy!
By the way, for all you Shroud of Turin buffs (are there such people?), the current issue of Books and Culture also contains Nathan Wilson‘s “Father Brown Fakes the Shroud,” which describes how he managed to create something very much like the Shroud. Very interesting.
Say Cheese!
The latest issue of Credenda is on cheese. Life is good!
Giving a Dam
One of the great pleasures (for me, at least) of Colin Dexter’s novels is that Inspector Morse is a stickler (albeit inconsistent) for good grammar, spelling, and so forth. And here’s something I learned from the final Morse novel, The Remorseful Day, pp. 10-11:
“Not disturbing you?”
Morse made no direct reply, but his resigned look would have been sufficiently eloquent for most people.
Most people.
He opened the door widely — perforce needed so to do — in order to accommodate his unexpected visitor within the comparatively narrow entrance.
“I am disturbing you.”
“No, no! It’s just that …”
“Look, matey!” (Chief Superintendant Strange cocked an ear towards the lounge.) “I don’t give a dam if I’m disturbing you; pity about disturbing old Schubert, though.”
For the dozenth time in their acquaintance, Morse found himself quietly re-appraising the man who first beached and then readjusted his vast bulk in an armchair, with a series of expository grunts.
Morse had long known better than to ask Strange whether he wanted a drink, alcoholic or non-alcoholic. If Strange wanted a drink, of either variety, he would ask for it, immediately and unambiguously. But Morse did allow himself one question:
“You know you just said you didn’t give a dam. Do you know how you spell ‘dam’?”
“You spell it ‘d – a – m.'” Tiny Indian coin –” that’s what a dam is. Surely you knew that?”
For the thirteenth time in their acquaintance …
Did you know that? I didn’t. But I do now.
[Update, 7/31/18: This etymology may not be correct, it turns out.]
Fashion
In a discussion of medieval literature and its often annoying tendency to copy all the things the rhetoric textbooks said to do, which was the fashion of the day, C. S. Lewis writes this:
[S]urely to be indulgent to mere fashion in other periods, and merciless to it in our own, is the first step we can make out of the prison of the Zeitgeist (The Allegory of Love, pp. 90-91).Â
Love
It seems to us natural that love should be the commonest theme of serious imaginative literature: but a glance at classical antiquity or at the Dark Ages at once shows us that what we took for “nature” is really a special state of affairs, which will probably have an end, and which certainly had a beginning in eleventh-century Provence. It seems — or it seemed to us lately — a natural thing that love (under certain conditions) should be regarded as a noble and ennobling passion: it is only if we imagine ourselves trying to explain this doctrine to Aristotle, Virgil, St Paul, or the author of Beowulf, that we become aware how far from natural it is. Even our code of etiquette, with its rule that women always have precedence, is a legacy from courtly love, and is felt to be far from natural in modern Japan or India.
Many of the features of this sentiment, as it was known to the Troubadours, have indeed disappeared; but this must not blind us to the fact that the most momentous and the most revolutionary elements in it have made the background of European literature for eight hundred years. French poets, in the eleventh century, discovered or invented, or were the first to express, that romantic species of passion which English poets were still writing about in the nineteenth. They effected a change which has left no corner of our ethics, our imagination, or our daily life untouched, and they erected impassible barriers between us and the classical past or the Oriental present. Compared with this revolution the Renaissance is a mere ripple on the surface of literature. — C. S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love: A Study in Medieval Tradition, pp. 3-4 (paragraph break added for clarity).
In the course of his book, Lewis traces the doctrine of courtly love as it was presented in the Middle Ages. Courtly love, Lewis points out, was always adulterous (Lancelot’s love of Guinevere) or illicit in some way (e.g., Troilus’s pursuit of Criseyde). The medieval poets didn’t celebrate married love. After all, in a marriage there’s no more honouring of the wife (or so one would believe from what writers of the time say): the wife is now subject to the husband and there’s no longer any “romantic adoration” of the wife.
Lewis argues that the change in love poetry happened at the end of the medieval period and is fully effected only in the poetry of Edmund Spenser, whose Fairie Queene celebrates chastity and presents married love as the highest and truest love.
I don’t know if Lewis’s history is entirely accurate and I’ll leave it to the historians of medieval thought to debate. I do note that if Spenser and the late medievals began to praise romantic love between husband and wife, they weren’t creating something new (as Lewis sometimes suggests); rather, they were returning to something as old as the Song of Songs.
Still, the history of love (and of allegorical love poetry) which Lewis traces is very interesting, not least because it shows us (as Lewis insists in the quotation above) that the way we think today isn’t simply “natural,” but flows from a lot of other factors in the past, factors which have shaped us without our knowing it.