Week 7 (2022)
merit culture & down syndrome, industrialism & the careers we build, lost years & a pianist's story, illness & bioethics, practicing virtue as we read
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reading: books
Out Of The Silent Planet, C.S. Lewis — audio — A fun one to re-visit since it’s been a few years. I’ll be getting to the others in the Space Trilogy soon.
Letter To My Daughter, Maya Angelou — audio — She’s a beautiful storyteller, and her books read like poetry.
reading: essays, articles, newsletters
When Merit Drives Out Grace — Amy Julia Becker, Plough — “We keep working to maintain our status and to ensure our children have what they are supposed to have – piano lessons and tutoring and international travel – only to face despair… Penny’s birth slowed me down, and moving at her pace has often felt like a sacrifice. But she also has shown me that my fast-paced life is part and parcel of the anxiety-ridden, accomplishment-based ethos that has plagued so many people like me.” Amy also wrote an essay for the New York Times.
The Lost Lady Of Krasnodar — Patti Lee, Fathom — “Long, worn, arthritic fingers touched the ivories, hesitantly at first, then, full of history, they found full notes of Tchaikovsky that resonated through the hall, through our souls. A redeemed smile and tears mixed and the combination washed the years off her face.”
An Experiment In Criticism Of The Literary Canon — Jessica Hooten Wilson, Church Life Journal — “To read with this level of attention is to practice the necessary selflessness that reading demands… When students ask why they should read, I want to respond with Lewis’s words, “What is the good of listening to what anyone says?” Books are like people; to read is to make friends. And, sometimes enemies, but ones you know better than your worst troll on social media. In reading great books, you take the other perspective seriously. You know how to respond well, in love, because you have first practiced the virtue of attention.” Related: This companion video & her recent newsletter.
Resignations And Reunions: Industrialism’s Broken Promises — Rory Groves, Mere Orthodoxy — “…families today have abandoned nearly all of the functions traditionally practiced at home: work, education, apprenticeship, childcare, eldercare—and often cooking, cleaning, and brewing a cup of coffee—have been delegated to corporations, specialists, and governments. Even our entertainment is age-oriented and consumed apart more often than together. Historians record that, prior to the industrial revolution, “every household was a self-producing and self-sustaining community.” Today, with so many domestic functions lost, the typical American household more closely resembles what sociologist Pitrim Sorkin calls “a mere overnight parking place.”
What If People Don't Want ‘A Career’? — Charlie Warzel, Galaxy Brain — “Even in jobs where management is less cynical and exploitative, the focus is always on the long term: It might suck now, but you’re building toward something… What the career skeptics are asking is a simple question: What if all that reasoning and endurance language is bullshit? What if, instead of working toward something for decades and barely tolerating the day-to-day process, we created a different value system around labor?”
The Grief Of The Ephemeral — Caroline Jane Kelly, Ekstasis — “To the one despairingly and unwillingly enamored with endings, any reference to inheritance in Scripture is like a balm… and could any regrets, even our darkest and saddest, even the press of lost years, withstand the weight of divine restoration?”
From Endoscopy To Colonoscopy: One Man’s Strange And Confounding Journey Through American Health Care — Jon D. Schaff, Front Porch Republic — “Any number of times I have found myself in the doctor’s office thinking, “Don’t you people talk to each other?” Each doctor has his/her part of the body, but few are looking at the whole thing.”
Is This Still An Emergency? — M. Anthony Mills, The New Atlantis — “The point here is not to adjudicate this disagreement, but to observe that, two years after the pandemic began, quite like two years after 9/11… We are divided over the nature of the threat, what it will take to defeat it, and what defeating it even means.”
watching/listening
Velvet Eugenics And Parenting Kids With Down Syndrome — PloughCast — Peter and Susannah talk to Rosemarie Garland-Thomson about bioethics, and with J. D. Flynn about genetic testing and parenting kids with Down syndrome. Especially appreciated the second half of this episode.
Experiment In Literary Criticism — Jessica Hooten Wilson — Probably gonna listen to everything she’s recorded by year’s end. A companion video to her essay linked above.
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey — Jakob and I started this series after finishing the Lord of The Rings last week.
using: product, tip, resource
Tobacco Patchouli — A lovely scent for our bedroom.
FEMM App — Having knowledge of (and tracking!) the phases of your natural menstrual cycle is rewarding and empowering. It takes the guesswork and mystery out of the predictable, monthly hormonal fluctuations that impact women emotionally and physically. A super basic game-changer, if there ever was one for women.
remembering
A Year Ago:
A snowstorm the week before Lukas was born!
This Week:
A day date out together. Always making food with tiny people underfoot. Grandparents bearing lots of love, and the beloved dog. The baby cruising with our makeshift walker. Boys in the same size diapers. Visiting another church in the area & taking them up on their lunch hospitality. Always laughing at Jakob’s jokes, and grateful he’s a good hang.