In 1583, Philip Stubbes described the English forerunner of American football as "rather a bloody and murdering practice than a fellowly sport or pastime." He went on to catalog the injuries of the players: "sometimes their necks are broken, sometimes their backs, sometimes their legs, sometimes their arms. . .sometimes their noses gush out with blood" and then goes on, in typical Renaissance style, to pile on more disasters that result from this game: envy, malice, hatred, fighting, brawling, etc.
He doesn't mention in his long list the thing that bothers me and many others about the sport today: head injuries. Young men in high school and college, especially, whose bodies are still growing, are subject to life-threatening concussions. The only way this will ever stop is if mothers (as well as dads) forbid their sons to participate. Universities like mine that rely on football to generate alumni support will eventually have to find other means. This won't come any time soon!
When I bring up the violence of football to certain passionate fans of the game here in Florida, where it is almost a religion, they agree with me, and yet, as smokers used to do when reminded of the dangers of tobacco, maintain the status quo by supporting the bloody game.
In a New York Times piece today by David Leonhardt, I learn that in blue America--those urban areas with heavily Democratic voters and better educated citizens--the number of boys playing high school football is down 15 percent in certain states over the past six years. The decline in Colorado: 14 percent. And 8 percent in Mass. and Maryland.
Of course, every part of America still watches football, but it is hopeful to read in this brief piece that sometimes education does bring enlightenment and that the sons of thinking people are gradually being saved from the violence of the gridiron.
Tuesday, November 4, 2014
Saturday, November 1, 2014
Peace of mind
A brief quotation, courtesy of Richard Rohr, the Franciscan priest, author and speaker, that is apt for this blog:
". . .peace of mind is a complete misnomer. When you are in your mind, you are never at peace, and when you are at peace, you are never in your mind but in a much larger, unified field."
". . .peace of mind is a complete misnomer. When you are in your mind, you are never at peace, and when you are at peace, you are never in your mind but in a much larger, unified field."
Friday, October 31, 2014
Halloween Spirit
I just completed my ritual workout at the local Y, where there was no sign of Halloween: not a ghost or skeleton or costume to be found. Everyone was very, very seriously working away on their treadmills. I wanted to put on the wolfman mask I had in my pocket and say, "it's never to late to have a happy childhood!"
To mark this holiday of silliness, Lynn Schiffhorst (my wife and prolific author of children's stories) has just published her 18th story about Giggle called "Giggle and the Skeletons." (available on Kindle and other media@Amazon.com)
For those who may not know, Giggle is a ten-year-old ghost, visible to those she likes; she is playful and goes to school and often tries to help people in need. Nothing scary about Giggle, or her neighbor, Mrs. Wigglebone, a skeleton lady with a long red dress who's quite hospitable.
I can't possibly sum up the hilarious antics of this story, with its dogs, kids, ghosts, and skeletons; all I can do is recommend it as fun reading for kids of any age. And be grateful that I live with a creative woman who delights people every day and reminds me that a day without laughter is a day lost.
Happy Halloween!
To mark this holiday of silliness, Lynn Schiffhorst (my wife and prolific author of children's stories) has just published her 18th story about Giggle called "Giggle and the Skeletons." (available on Kindle and other media@Amazon.com)
For those who may not know, Giggle is a ten-year-old ghost, visible to those she likes; she is playful and goes to school and often tries to help people in need. Nothing scary about Giggle, or her neighbor, Mrs. Wigglebone, a skeleton lady with a long red dress who's quite hospitable.
I can't possibly sum up the hilarious antics of this story, with its dogs, kids, ghosts, and skeletons; all I can do is recommend it as fun reading for kids of any age. And be grateful that I live with a creative woman who delights people every day and reminds me that a day without laughter is a day lost.
Happy Halloween!
Friday, October 24, 2014
Autumn and Mortality
I have lived for the past four decades in central Florida, where autumn does not really exist, where the rhythm of life is distorted. Here, a few leaves fall, and in January, the sugar maples turn red, but until Christmas time, usually, the weather remains warm, and the air conditioning is on, at least part of the day. So we are deceived with a sense of endless summer.
We are cheated of a rare beauty, not only of autumn leaves and bare branches shaking in the chilly breeze but of nature's slowing down and preparing to die a bit--a healthy bit of memento mori.
That's why my wife, Lynn, with her great poetic sense, insisted that we visit friends in Newport, Rhode Island in October. We have just returned with pictures of autumn in New England, the best kind, where leaves turn brilliantly red and yellow next to churches and other structures built during the Revolutionary War period.
The tavern we ate in last week dates from 1676, and our hotel was on Purgatory Road. On Farewell Street, we found several ancient cemeteries, their headstones barely visible after so many centuries of salty air. We came for the trees but savored the history, too, and the pumpkins lined up in front of a white clapboard church visited by George Washington. Autumn does not get any better, any more American.
And anyone looking for a bit of authentic Halloween in old churchyards on narrow lanes filled with dead leaves or in vast, "haunted" mansions should come to Newport in late October, when the beauty of the island sparkles and its great Ocean Drive is quiet, less traveled.
Such a trip was tiring and expensive but worth it for two people who miss the chill of autumn. We need occasional reminders to turn inward and reflect, as the year, like our lives, nears its end.
We are cheated of a rare beauty, not only of autumn leaves and bare branches shaking in the chilly breeze but of nature's slowing down and preparing to die a bit--a healthy bit of memento mori.
That's why my wife, Lynn, with her great poetic sense, insisted that we visit friends in Newport, Rhode Island in October. We have just returned with pictures of autumn in New England, the best kind, where leaves turn brilliantly red and yellow next to churches and other structures built during the Revolutionary War period.
The tavern we ate in last week dates from 1676, and our hotel was on Purgatory Road. On Farewell Street, we found several ancient cemeteries, their headstones barely visible after so many centuries of salty air. We came for the trees but savored the history, too, and the pumpkins lined up in front of a white clapboard church visited by George Washington. Autumn does not get any better, any more American.
And anyone looking for a bit of authentic Halloween in old churchyards on narrow lanes filled with dead leaves or in vast, "haunted" mansions should come to Newport in late October, when the beauty of the island sparkles and its great Ocean Drive is quiet, less traveled.
Such a trip was tiring and expensive but worth it for two people who miss the chill of autumn. We need occasional reminders to turn inward and reflect, as the year, like our lives, nears its end.
Tuesday, October 14, 2014
Atheism as a religion
I recently met a retired teacher, an intelligent man who, in the course of a conversation, mentioned that he was an atheist. I said nothing, respecting his beliefs (or lack thereof). I wondered at first if he mean "agnostic," then, reflecting on the confidence with which he spoke--and the fact that he was not a listener--I decided, No, he knows the difference, and he has made his choice.
Sam Harris, one of the prominent New Atheists who have published books in the past decade criticizing religion, is a neuroscientist who values reason above all and, while dismissing any notion of God, prefers not to call himself an atheist.
Yet in his latest book, Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality without Religion, excerpts of which I have read, he seems to have found that reason is not enough to explain the meaning of life and reality. It seems that emotion--that often suspect, "effeminate" entity foreign to the scientific mind--has its place, though Harris would not put it this way. The self-transcendence that he finds in art or nature is not, he insists, irrational. Reason for him is still the dominant player.
Like the Romantic poets of England and the Transcendentalists of the American nineteenth century, and many since, Harris has found satisfaction (happiness?) in some form of transcendence of material reality, independent of religion. Yet he insists on the primacy of reason, and it is reason, divorced from feeling, that keeps him safely among the "atheists," free from what he sees as the corruptions of religion.
At least, Harris is more open and positive than Richard Dawkins, the British author who has become rich and famous attacking God and belief and who is the subject of a recent New Republic article ("The Closed Mind of Richard Dawkins"), which suggests that his atheism has become its own type of narrow religion. For Dawkins, et al, science is unquestionably right and has all the answers there are to understanding man and his world. He would agree with the behaviorist B. F. Skinner, who once said that the goal of science is the destruction of mystery.
To me, as a theist, the loss of mystery--that sense of awe found in the mystical tradition as well as in art that evokes the unknowable and unknown, is tragic. The great poets and writers, following Aristotle, always connect head and heart, always write or create with feeling as well as ideas. And at their best, they evoke the unknowable mysteries of humanity in a way that neuroscience will never rival.
Yet thinkers like Dawkins and Harris find reason and science to be supreme and thus cut themselves off from an essential part of the human experience--the emotional need to be connected to something beyond themselves. As such, they cheat themselves, hoping to find a glimmer of something vaguely "out there" while fearful of believing in God. Their rational arrogance blinds them.
In thinking of Harris, Dawkins, and the atheist I recently talked with, I wonder, What God do they not believe in? The simplistic God "up in the sky" that children learn about? Why don't they read more widely in philosophy (even medieval thought) and see that God is being itself, the "ground of our being," the inescapable presence that's all around and in us? If they would read Teilhard de Chardin and other scientists who have explored the connection between faith and science, maybe they would be more open to a fuller understanding of the Mystery.
In the meantime, some of the new atheists, like a few in California, feeling the need for some community on Sunday mornings, have established "churches" of sorts, where positive thinking is practiced. It may sound absurd for atheists to meet in "churches," but does it not indicate the human need to go beyond the isolated, rational mind and reach out to others? And in reaching out to others, and caring about them, are we not embracing love and thereby affirming that life has purpose and meaning? If so, we can talk about, even believe in God.
That organized religion, included Catholicism, has often failed to articulate an understanding of a loving God is clear from a recently influential book by Walter Kasper on mercy, which is influencing the deliberations among the bishops in Rome this week. Cardinal Kasper writes: Theologians have too often had difficulty making sense of God's compassion: "The proclamation of God who is insensitive to suffering is a reason that God has become alien and finally irrelevant to many."
So it is up to believers to articulate a fuller understanding of the mystery of God as the source of existence and compassion in a way that makes sense to a skeptical world: no easy task!
Sam Harris, one of the prominent New Atheists who have published books in the past decade criticizing religion, is a neuroscientist who values reason above all and, while dismissing any notion of God, prefers not to call himself an atheist.
Yet in his latest book, Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality without Religion, excerpts of which I have read, he seems to have found that reason is not enough to explain the meaning of life and reality. It seems that emotion--that often suspect, "effeminate" entity foreign to the scientific mind--has its place, though Harris would not put it this way. The self-transcendence that he finds in art or nature is not, he insists, irrational. Reason for him is still the dominant player.
Like the Romantic poets of England and the Transcendentalists of the American nineteenth century, and many since, Harris has found satisfaction (happiness?) in some form of transcendence of material reality, independent of religion. Yet he insists on the primacy of reason, and it is reason, divorced from feeling, that keeps him safely among the "atheists," free from what he sees as the corruptions of religion.
At least, Harris is more open and positive than Richard Dawkins, the British author who has become rich and famous attacking God and belief and who is the subject of a recent New Republic article ("The Closed Mind of Richard Dawkins"), which suggests that his atheism has become its own type of narrow religion. For Dawkins, et al, science is unquestionably right and has all the answers there are to understanding man and his world. He would agree with the behaviorist B. F. Skinner, who once said that the goal of science is the destruction of mystery.
To me, as a theist, the loss of mystery--that sense of awe found in the mystical tradition as well as in art that evokes the unknowable and unknown, is tragic. The great poets and writers, following Aristotle, always connect head and heart, always write or create with feeling as well as ideas. And at their best, they evoke the unknowable mysteries of humanity in a way that neuroscience will never rival.
Yet thinkers like Dawkins and Harris find reason and science to be supreme and thus cut themselves off from an essential part of the human experience--the emotional need to be connected to something beyond themselves. As such, they cheat themselves, hoping to find a glimmer of something vaguely "out there" while fearful of believing in God. Their rational arrogance blinds them.
In thinking of Harris, Dawkins, and the atheist I recently talked with, I wonder, What God do they not believe in? The simplistic God "up in the sky" that children learn about? Why don't they read more widely in philosophy (even medieval thought) and see that God is being itself, the "ground of our being," the inescapable presence that's all around and in us? If they would read Teilhard de Chardin and other scientists who have explored the connection between faith and science, maybe they would be more open to a fuller understanding of the Mystery.
In the meantime, some of the new atheists, like a few in California, feeling the need for some community on Sunday mornings, have established "churches" of sorts, where positive thinking is practiced. It may sound absurd for atheists to meet in "churches," but does it not indicate the human need to go beyond the isolated, rational mind and reach out to others? And in reaching out to others, and caring about them, are we not embracing love and thereby affirming that life has purpose and meaning? If so, we can talk about, even believe in God.
That organized religion, included Catholicism, has often failed to articulate an understanding of a loving God is clear from a recently influential book by Walter Kasper on mercy, which is influencing the deliberations among the bishops in Rome this week. Cardinal Kasper writes: Theologians have too often had difficulty making sense of God's compassion: "The proclamation of God who is insensitive to suffering is a reason that God has become alien and finally irrelevant to many."
So it is up to believers to articulate a fuller understanding of the mystery of God as the source of existence and compassion in a way that makes sense to a skeptical world: no easy task!
Friday, October 10, 2014
A cynic's guide to social noise
Many of the people I know have tastes in reading (and movies) different from mine. When a neighbor lent us a favorite video, which not something of interest to us, I returned it recently, with thanks. He asked how I liked it.
Suddenly I was faced with the familiar dilemma of making white lies sound like polite social noise. "Very enjoyable," I said. "Well done." (I had not bothered to play it, knowing it was not worth my time.) He went on: "We loved it. Would you like to keep it a white longer?"
I would rather spend an hour in the dentist's chair, but I smiled politely and said something about being busy getting ready for an upcoming trip (the truth).
This prompted me to think of all the times in the past year or so when I have been confronted with familiar situations, in which the devilish side of me wants to be cynical (though I never am), as follows:
1. I routinely say, "how are you?" (Do I really want to know? Do I want an organ recital--what a friend calls chatting with people of a certain age who immediately list their ailments?)
2. "So glad to see you." (I really mean, I hope this chat is brief and less boring than the last one we had OR I was enjoying the quiet time to think before you appeared.)
3. "You look wonderful" (despite the weight gain/wrinkles/age spots/ missing teeth/ thinning hair)
4. At the end of a phone call, I will say, "So glad you called." (Please don't do so for another year or more; in fact, not calling at all would be ideal.)
5. Or if I missed a call, probably because I use an answering machine to screen those who phone us: "Sorry I missed your call." (Actually, I am happy to have had some time to think of a polite way to get out of the invitation you put on my machine; or: I wish you hadn't called at all since I know you always complain about something.)
6. And of course, on receiving a gift, "How thoughtful." (Better than the old "just what I always wanted," which is both sarcastic and trite; yet thinking of me at Christmas is thoughtful, so I should be grateful, but why do you always get things for me that either don't fit or that I don't want? Give me cash!")
Ah, the pain of being polite and feeling guilty for being hypocritical; yet the truth would be worse than the lie, however much fun it might sometimes be for me to be honest.
Suddenly I was faced with the familiar dilemma of making white lies sound like polite social noise. "Very enjoyable," I said. "Well done." (I had not bothered to play it, knowing it was not worth my time.) He went on: "We loved it. Would you like to keep it a white longer?"
I would rather spend an hour in the dentist's chair, but I smiled politely and said something about being busy getting ready for an upcoming trip (the truth).
This prompted me to think of all the times in the past year or so when I have been confronted with familiar situations, in which the devilish side of me wants to be cynical (though I never am), as follows:
1. I routinely say, "how are you?" (Do I really want to know? Do I want an organ recital--what a friend calls chatting with people of a certain age who immediately list their ailments?)
2. "So glad to see you." (I really mean, I hope this chat is brief and less boring than the last one we had OR I was enjoying the quiet time to think before you appeared.)
3. "You look wonderful" (despite the weight gain/wrinkles/age spots/ missing teeth/ thinning hair)
4. At the end of a phone call, I will say, "So glad you called." (Please don't do so for another year or more; in fact, not calling at all would be ideal.)
5. Or if I missed a call, probably because I use an answering machine to screen those who phone us: "Sorry I missed your call." (Actually, I am happy to have had some time to think of a polite way to get out of the invitation you put on my machine; or: I wish you hadn't called at all since I know you always complain about something.)
6. And of course, on receiving a gift, "How thoughtful." (Better than the old "just what I always wanted," which is both sarcastic and trite; yet thinking of me at Christmas is thoughtful, so I should be grateful, but why do you always get things for me that either don't fit or that I don't want? Give me cash!")
Ah, the pain of being polite and feeling guilty for being hypocritical; yet the truth would be worse than the lie, however much fun it might sometimes be for me to be honest.
Wednesday, October 8, 2014
Grammar and Style: an Example
The noted linguist Steven Pinker in his new book The Sense of Style is quoted on the internet as objecting to those grammatical purists who insist on correcting dangling modifiers, as when a sentence opens with a verb phrase that has no modifier: "Driving down the road, the cat escaped." Who is driving? The cat?
He asks, where did that rule prohibiting such modifiers come from, and what is its basis?
Although I don't think of myself as a purist or a stickler for "rules," I am the co-author of a textbook of grammar, The Practical Handbook for Writers (7th ed.), which advises writers to avoid the practice of having modifiers "dangle." Of course, in spoken English, or in writing that is meant to sound colloquial, the convention (or "rule") can easily be overlooked.
Pinker says that fine stylists "use dangling modifiers all the time." In Britain, perhaps many do, but not in American usage. If they are fiction writers, or journalists trying to capture someone's speech, perhaps they can get by with a dangler; but in this country, a good editor of any respectable journal or book publisher should suggest that the following danglers be re-worded:
To become a nurse, at least four years of study work are required. (To become a nurse, you need/one needs to study at least four years.) Why put the main clause in the passive voice, which prompts the dangling modifier?
Turning the corner, a beautiful view awaited me (Pinker's example) which should be: "As I turned the corner/Turning the corner, I saw/encountered a beautiful view." Or, if he wants to use the passive voice, "As I turned the corner, a beautiful view awaited me." Someone has to do the turning!
Or, to edit the cat example above: "While we were driving down the road, the cat escaped."
Pinker wonders why anyone would make such a change, asserting that "there is no rule prohibiting a dangling modifier." There is, I respectfully suggest, a logical reason--something better than an artificial rule--since the "driving" or other verbal has to modify a human subject who is doing the driving or turning or whatever. The issue is one of logic, the basis of the American convention. The Brits don't seem to worry about this problem.
It's true that there are several old-fashioned "rules" inherited from Latin practice in the 19th century that no longer apply in written English, such as "never end a sentence with a preposition" or "never split an infinitive." Prinker has every right to question such usage in the 21st century.
But I hope editors and writers do not apply Pinker's rejection of the dangling "rule" to everything they write. I would re-word any dangling modifier to make it less jarring, more logical and therefore more grammatical in anything I write for publication--unless I wanted to sound casual or colloquial. But then, I am a hopelessly American purist.
He asks, where did that rule prohibiting such modifiers come from, and what is its basis?
Although I don't think of myself as a purist or a stickler for "rules," I am the co-author of a textbook of grammar, The Practical Handbook for Writers (7th ed.), which advises writers to avoid the practice of having modifiers "dangle." Of course, in spoken English, or in writing that is meant to sound colloquial, the convention (or "rule") can easily be overlooked.
Pinker says that fine stylists "use dangling modifiers all the time." In Britain, perhaps many do, but not in American usage. If they are fiction writers, or journalists trying to capture someone's speech, perhaps they can get by with a dangler; but in this country, a good editor of any respectable journal or book publisher should suggest that the following danglers be re-worded:
To become a nurse, at least four years of study work are required. (To become a nurse, you need/one needs to study at least four years.) Why put the main clause in the passive voice, which prompts the dangling modifier?
Turning the corner, a beautiful view awaited me (Pinker's example) which should be: "As I turned the corner/Turning the corner, I saw/encountered a beautiful view." Or, if he wants to use the passive voice, "As I turned the corner, a beautiful view awaited me." Someone has to do the turning!
Or, to edit the cat example above: "While we were driving down the road, the cat escaped."
Pinker wonders why anyone would make such a change, asserting that "there is no rule prohibiting a dangling modifier." There is, I respectfully suggest, a logical reason--something better than an artificial rule--since the "driving" or other verbal has to modify a human subject who is doing the driving or turning or whatever. The issue is one of logic, the basis of the American convention. The Brits don't seem to worry about this problem.
It's true that there are several old-fashioned "rules" inherited from Latin practice in the 19th century that no longer apply in written English, such as "never end a sentence with a preposition" or "never split an infinitive." Prinker has every right to question such usage in the 21st century.
But I hope editors and writers do not apply Pinker's rejection of the dangling "rule" to everything they write. I would re-word any dangling modifier to make it less jarring, more logical and therefore more grammatical in anything I write for publication--unless I wanted to sound casual or colloquial. But then, I am a hopelessly American purist.
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