I was interested simply because it was about Afghanistan. Ever since I’ve read The Kite Runner, my heart has been turned toward the Afghani people. Chasing Freedom has several domestic scenes from Meena’s life in Kabul. Just getting a visual of a (surely recreated) Kabul street and neighborhood was valuable for me.
The story focuses on two women. Meena Gardizi, an young Afghani woman
who is seeking asylum from the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, arrives in New York only to be held in a detention center which looks much like prison. Libby,
the attorney who takes the pro bono case in order to pad her resumé, is introduced as a big-shot lawyer who eventually realizes that she’s not good enough. The softening-of-the-lawyer theme reminded me of Regarding Henry.
Watch Libby’s hairstyle as the movie progresses. The big draw in this
movie was Layla Alizaba in the role of Meena. She played a wide range of emotions with understated intensity and created a very sympathetic character.
While I enjoyed the movie, the plot lacked contour. Later I noticed that it was a made for television movie; that made sense.
Our family is always looking for the message, the point, the telos if you will, of the movie. Obviously the producer believes America should have a different system for checking and detaining immigrants. This movie about immigration and asylum portrays the INS in a poor light, typical jail-keepers. While it plays on the emotions, we need to think clearly. It could be a great springboard for discussing the pros and cons of our current immigration policy.
We also want to continue throughout the day
expressing gratefulness for the innumerable
manifestations of God’s grace.
It’s as if God is placing sticky-notes in our lives
as daily reminders of His presence and provision.
They’re everywhere.
How alert and perceptive of them are you?
Are you a thankful observer of the
countless indications
of His provision,
His presence,
His kindness,
and His grace?
C. J. Mahaney in Humility: True Greatness
So, although the conditions are unfavorable, now is the moment to squeeze my eyes shut, pinch my nostrils together and jump off the diving board into the pool of economics. I gathered relevant books which have sat unread for too many years. I’m reading by rotation: a chapter of Hazlitt, a chapter of Maybury
The Curse of Machinery The title is misleading. Hazlitt believes machinery is a downright blessing and refutes the fallacy that “machines on net balance create unemployment” with undisguised derision for technophobes. I was very uncomfortable with this chapter. I wanted to take the esteemed Mr. Hazlitt by the hand back to the first page of this book where he says, “the good economist looks also at the longer and indirect consequences.” Neil Postman demonstrates the indirect consequences of technology in Technopoly
Spread-the-Work Schemes The maddening inefficiency of labor laws, driven by union demands for the exclusive right to perform certain jobs, lowers production and raises costs.
Disbanding Troops and Bureaucrats Hazlitt again reminds us to look at both sides now. In theory – cough cough – when soldiers are sent home, taxes go down and citizens have more money to spend in the market.
The Fetish of Full Employment It is easy to keep all citizens employed with make-work jobs if efficiency and cost are not considered. Do we really want full employment? Hazlitt is hammering a first principle of economics: maximized production is the objective. His phrase “part of the population supported in idleness by undisguised relief” arrested me.
Who’s Protected by Tariffs? Hazlitt calls tariffs “artificial obstacles to trade and transportation”, noting the war language used, e.g. an invasion of foreign products, in arguments against free trade.
The Drive for Exports Key sentence: “Collectively considered, the real reason a country needs exports is to pay for its imports.” Here’s another great one: “A nation cannot grow rich by giving goods away.” Topic like export subsidies and foreign economic aid are too complex for my pea brain. If we loan money, why do we not expect it to be repaid? Why do we keep loaning it?
Hazlitt argues for using the same principles in foreign trade that we would in domestic trade.
Here is my question: Isn’t what is good for the individual (economically) good for the nation? By that I mean, if spending less than you earn is sound policy for one family, isn’t it sound policy for our country? Is that too simplistic, too artless a view? I’m glad for the impetus to work through these questions, but I must confess that this is making my son’s algebra lesson on rational expressions enticing!
Fly kites with your children,
cultivate your philosophies;
give women your tenderness
and men your energy.
And at every moment, valiant, sincere,
at every moment of all your days,
give yourself wholly!
Say: “I shape always
with equal care
my clay or my gold.”
And at midday when the sun burns brightest,
like a good workman–like a good workman!
And at evenfall
play with your children, feel yourself lightened;
and at night’s coming
sleep wholly.
Give yourself wholly
until you fall motionless
in the final moment;
and when death comes,
give yourself wholly!
~ from Like A River Glorious
They who trust Him wholly, find Him wholly true
Happy Birthday Curt, the great man who began as this young boy.
I want to honor my in-laws as we celebrate another year of Curt’s life. They played a huge role in shaping and forming him. Curt wrote the words better than I could, so I will share them with you. Here is an excerpt of a note he wrote them in 2006.
I am not sure how old I was, but I guess I was five or so
when bedtime prayers took a twist, and a new activity was initiated. Before ‘Now I lay me down to sleep…’ and
blessings were petitioned for every creature I could think of; I was now
required to learn to recite the Ten Commandments.
This seemed like a good idea. Since God was God, I accepted the argument
that we ought to know how He wanted us to live.
Call me weird, but no one has ever been able to convince me otherwise. There
I was, lying in bed, repeating every word my father or mother said first. I finally, bit by bit, one command after
another, nailed all ten!
I never forgot the gist of the thing. I found out later I had learned a shortened
version, but the basic list would go with me wherever I went. I knew what God did not want me to do, and I
knew as a result what He did want me to do.
The basic list did not include the inherent blessings and
curses attached to the commandments, but my parents had not neglected
them. Their commentary and explanation
impressed upon me the seriousness of disobeying God. I remember telling my mother how Bobby Martin
would show off by folding his eyelids back and displaying a hideous face. She warned me that God had the power to make
Bobby’s eyes stay that way! Whoa! This was my first exposure to the doctrine of
heart hardening, and I have since endeavored to steer clear. Along the way I have broken every one of
God’s holy commandments. But I have not
done so without shame, guilt, and a condemning conscience. Praise God for sorrow that leads to
repentance!
The Law of God continues to grow on me, and in me, thanks to
faithful parents who night after night drummed
it into my spongy brain. My hope is that
my children and my children’s children will love God’s Law with an even greater
fervency. What began for me in the top
bunk of the front bedroom at 10111 Washington
each night before I went to sleep — may it continue throughout all generations.
Happy Birthday Curt! I ought to thank God every day for you. I don’t, but I ought to. I do thank God for you often. You have been one of God’s best gifts to me.
Winter’s Storm on the Avenue, by Guy Carleton Wiggins
Askart.com
Happy Friday.
Earlier this week, Ruthie wondered if I had cabin fever, writing about Helvetica, pornography, and economics in one week. The impish side of me wondered what other weird topics I could throw in the mix. Here it comes: E-prime. My friend Mel is going back to school and mentioned an assignment to write a paper in E-prime. I’d never heard of it, have you?
Here is the definition from Wikipedia:
D. David Bourland Jr. explains, “The name comes from the equation E’ = E – e, where E represents the words of the English language, and e represents the inflected forms of “to be.”
Thus, instead of
E-Prime would express that ditty as:
This is folly to the thirteenth degree! They believe there are no absolutes. (And how would you translate that sentence to E-Prime? In their system of metaphysics they classify nothing as an absolute.) In an attempt to curb my natural tendency towards shrillness, let’s laugh at this absurdity. Can you imagine an E-Prime translation of the Bible?
Jesus: I evaluate myself as the Way, the Truth and the Life.
It isn’t right.
E-Prime advocates are trying to get away from Aristotelian essentialism. No essences (from the Latin esse – ‘to be’) allowed. Dr. Donald E. Simanek writes, “Most poetry cannot be rewritten in E-prime. You can’t utter pseudoprofundities like “I think, therefore I am.”…Throw out “My love is like a red, red rose.” Such constructions encourage vague, imprecise, misleading, ambiguous and foolish writing masquerading as profundity. We’d have to throw out Shakespeare, which I’d consider no great loss.”
Ay-yi-yi!! Does Psalm 2 come to mind? I think writing a paper without using the “to be” forms is a healthy exercise in writing, helpful in learning to show, not tell. But the root of this is far beyond Writing 101.
I am a woman. Not: I classify myself in the female gender.
I am a Christian. Not: In my current metaphysical mindset, I choose the subset Christian.
I am happy. Not; I evaluate myself as happy this morning.
Who are you?
This book is for everyone who wants to know more about Latin,
about the language and about its influence on the culture and history of Europe.
(opening sentence)
is the best, albeit poor in comparison, substitute to having a Latin scholar for a teacher. As I turned the pages of this book, I fondly remembered the narrative of our teacher on the same subject.
If you are striving to learn more than vocabulary, declensions and conjugations, this is the book to round out your understanding of both ancient and medieval culture, a book that will put the Latin you are learning into context. One thing I can assure you: you don’t need to know a speck of Latin to read this book. Every single Latin word is translated for you.
For instance, take Latin pronunciation. I loved when Mr. F. would recite some text of Latin from memory, the mellifluous tones beautiful sounds, even if there was no comprehension of the words. Many students have been taught that since no one knows how it was pronounced, just say a Latin word as if it were an English word. [Screeching nails on the chalkboard!! Can you imagine listening to a choir sing a Latin text as if it were English?] There are a few reliable clues that get us very close to original pronunciation. Loanwords, words taken from Latin into another language, are helpful. Caesar is easy to pronounce in Latin if you just think of the German word Kaiser. When archeology digs uncovered graffiti on the walls of Pompei which had been covered by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, the misspelled words offered clues to the phonetic pronunciation of those words.
Our beloved teacher introduced us to medieval Latin poetry: the pounding trochaic lines in Dies Irae, the lugubrious Stabat Mater, and the playful Carmina Burana. You can learn more about these if you read this book.
If words and dialects fascinate you, if connections between languages are your “love language”, the first chapter is worth the price of the book.
All that fun from one page (p.11) of this book! Here’s more:
I have to sit on my hands. There are so many more wonderful passages about words.
This book is criticized on Amazon for being written at a high school reading level. I see that as a strength, not as a fault. Many of us who desire to teach our children a language which we first need ourselves to learn are easily intimidated. I do have a criticism of A Natural History of Latin. The author’s viewpoint is decidedly secular, and to a point almost anti-Christian. Here is an example: For someone who is not a Christian many of his [Augustine’s] ideas are strange or even repulsive. This is especially true of the idea of original sin, the idea that man is born evil and has to be redeemed by the Saviour. I could read around these occasional statements and enjoy the rest.
I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge the long suffering patience of my friend Brenda at TanabuGirl. When she put her copy of this book in my hand and said, “take your time”, I don’t think she meant 15 months. Brenda was one of the original 33 students who read Latin with our beloved teacher and one of the three remaining students six years later. She now teaches at a Classical Christian School and has started a private blog Latin Pagina. If you are interested in the notes of a Latin teacher, and ask really nicely [message her at TanabuGirl] I bet she’d let you be a guest and read what she is doing. Thank you my friend. This book will be on your desk Monday morning. Dominus vobiscum.
What a delicious time to read this little book! Presidential elections, tax season – it’s the perfect context!
I’m going to do a little Economics for Dummies version. Here’s my distillation of this week’s reading.
~ Consider the invisible blanks (my word, not his): what doesn’t or can’t happen because of a particular economic decision.
~ need ≠ demand
~ Demand = need + purchasing power
~ Everything must be paid for. My mom used to say, “Nothing is free in this world, except salvation.”
~ Inflation = a vicious form of taxation
~ All credit (as in credit card, store credit, credit line) = debt
We ought to change the way we speak, giving names which are more accurate: debt card, debt line, etc.
The Broken Window chapter was especially interesting to me: a gust of wind blew out a 10′ x 6′ window at the pharmacy where I work. I read the chapter with my own broken window in mind.
I learned something:
~ Claude Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850) an French economist whose major contribution was the admonition to take into account “the full picture”. Oh, what a find! My journal is filling up with quotes from this man!
His Candlemaker’s Petition is a hoot! In this satire the candlemaker’s petition for trade protection from the unfair competition of the sun. You can listen to it here.
~ Norris Dam referenced by Hazlitt as an example of a government project
This interview with Henry Hazlitt was helpful. He was an autodidact!
Interviewer: But wasn’t Keynes a very brilliant man?
Hazlitt: A very brilliant man, indeed, a very brilliant writer, a very witty writer. But being a brilliant writer was confused with being a brilliant economist. He wasn’t. We should never confuse wit with profundity.
A Living Pencil 