Chad Comello

  • Destiny of the Republic

    In Assassination Vacation, one of my all-time favorite books, Sarah Vowell calls the circumstances surrounding the Garfield assassination “an opera of arrogance, a spectacle of greed, a galling, appalling epic of egomania dramatizing the lust for pure power, shameless and raw.” After reading Candice Millard’s Destiny of the Republic, which details said circumstances, Vowell’s characterization now almost seems like an understatement.

    The things I did while reading Destiny ranged from yelling at Dr. Bliss’s casual (and admittedly good-faith) malpractice in his care of the wounded president, cringing at the horrific realities of nineteenth-century medicine, admiring Garfield’s resilience and character in general (as well as his beard), and considering how naturally New York senator Roscoe Conkling could have excelled as a cable-news talking head today.

    Many factors influenced the outcome of this high drama, all of which Millard captures and deftly welds together in service of this strange, tragic, and largely forgotten pocket of U.S. history. Each subplot—Garfield’s rise to prominence, the perky madness of the assassin Charles Guiteau, Conkling’s political machinations, the dunderheaded care of Dr. Bliss—deserve its own book, but this one (wisely) keeps its focus on the assassination itself. Even the detours showing the involvement of Alexander Graham Bell, fresh off inventing the telegraph with a contraption he thinks will help locate the bullet still lodged inside Garfield, help serve the larger narrative of how disparate elements (science, politics, medicine) can combine into an extraordinary mezcla.

    I sometimes wonder how historical events would have been colored differently if Twitter and other social media had been around. But it turns out coverage of a major news story in 2014 isn’t all that different from one in 1880. With the telegraph and newspapers churning out daily, even hourly, updates on Garfield’s health and prognoses from his chief doctor, the coverage seemed just as anxious and overheated then as it does now.

    It’s worth reading Destiny of the Republic not just to get a detailed picture of this “opera of arrogance,” but also for an illuminating look at an oft-forgotten pocket of U.S. history.

  • The Leftovers

    As we approach Sunday’s season finale of The Leftovers, HBO’s new series about a Rapture-like occurrence and its aftermath in a small New York town, let’s consider a Gospel story:

    Jesus said to his disciples, “Compare me to something and tell me what I am like.” Thomas said to him, “Teacher, my mouth is utterly unable to say what you are like.” And Jesus took him, and withdrew, and spoke three sayings to him. When Thomas came back to his friends they asked him, “What did Jesus say to you?” Thomas said to them, “If I tell you one of the sayings he spoke to me, you will pick up rocks and stone me, and fire will come from the rocks and devour you.”

    Reverend Jamison (Christopher Eccleston) recites this passage to Kevin (Justin Theroux), the town’s troubled police chief, to illustrate how it’s easier to stay silent than to speak hard truths. If this passage is unfamiliar, there’s a likely reason: it’s from the Gospel of Thomas, a collection of “secret sayings” attributed to Jesus but not one of the four canonical Gospels.

    In the wake of The Leftovers’ “Sudden Departure,” during which two percent of the world’s population vanished instantly, Jamison’s invocation of this unorthodox source seems entirely fitting. The world of this new hard reality, seen through the eyes of the grieving citizens of Mapleton, N.Y., no longer seems canonical or accepted. The rules seemed to have changed, and what once was considered out of bounds is suddenly in play. Thus, what better place for a pastor, who’s struggling along with his parishioners to make sense of the insensible, to seek wisdom?

    Indeed, every character we’ve come to know in The Leftovers is seeking something—anything—that offers meaning for what appears to be a meaningless tragedy. This meaning comes in many ways, and sometimes not at all. Some in Mapleton proclaim a radical certainty by joining the “Guilty Remnant,” an eerie organization of religious activists formed in response to the Departure. They dress in white and silently haunt the town to proclaim their faith in God and deny the “Old World Order” that ended with the Departure. The leader of Mapleton’s chapter fervently proselytizes their vision to a new member, echoing the Gospel of Thomas: “There can’t be doubt, because doubt is fire. And fire’s gonna burn you up until you are but ash.”

    This zealous certitude contrasts greatly with the experience of other townspeople, who fluctuate between abject grief and resigned agnosticism. People still mourning their losses order life-like replicas of vanished loved ones (at $40,000 a piece) to be used in traditional burials. Others seek out the mysterious power of Wayne (Paterson Joseph), a messianic drifter who has attracted a cult-like following for his ability to remove people’s grief simply by hugging them (after collecting a hefty fee). But mostly what these seekers find are facsimiles, imitations of authenticity that may offer solace but rarely provide true relief from the underpinning dissonance pervading humanity since the Departure.

    The series, based on Tom Perrotta’s novel, is produced by Damon Lindelof, best known for his equally enigmatic show Lost. Both series share a comfort with mystery, with asking big questions and sitting in the empty space after the asking, even if answers don’t come or don’t feel good. But I wonder if The Leftovers was misnamed. More than a show about being left behind, The Leftovers is about people who are lost, who wander through the fog of fear and anguish toward whatever can restore normalcy—however incomplete it might be—and relieve their burden of despair.

    For this, Paul’s encouragement to the Corinthians is apt: “We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed.” He doesn’t offer a cure-all for suffering, nor a reason for it—only the motivation to persevere. When the sorrow is strongest, perhaps that’s all anyone can do.

    Originally published at Think Christian.

  • Ten Books

    In the Filmspotting tradition of naming lists after what you know will be on everyone’s list so should be removed from consideration, I’m going to name this the To Kill A Mockingbird Memorial List of Ten Books That Have Stuck With Me For Some Reason. Acknowledging the usual disclaimers of making lists (it’s not binding, it could change tomorrow, etc.), here are ten titles I’d think of right away if someone asked for a great book recommendation.

    The Autobiography of Malcolm X     by Malcolm X and Alex Haley
    Essential reading, for American citizens especially.

    A Night to Remember by Walter Lord
    Ostensibly a compact history of the Titanic disaster, it reads like a thrilling and expertly written novel. Though dated, the prose is solid yet so smooth, steadily pressing the narrative on like the doomed steamer it documents. 

    The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris
    Like Fellowship of the Ring, this book is really a stand-in for the sublime trilogy it begins, yet is also the best book in the saga. Most of what we know and love about TR comes from his presidential and post-POTUS years — the Bull Moose, the assassination survival, the Amazon pioneering — but the man who would do these things was forged in the 42 years before becoming president, which are chronicled in this book. He seized his days with unadulterated vim, relentlessly stacking his resume and making the rest of us look bad. I hope “Bully!” makes a comeback.

    Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman
    Haven’t read this since high school so perhaps my feelings will change with a reread, but this was my first exposure to media criticism and it hit me like a bag of bricks. It was shocking to read about how Sesame Street was ruining education and that our dependence on distracting technologies would doom us to a Huxleyan dystopia of dumbness. These were his (admittedly cranky) opinions, but they rang true to me. And their prescience was and continues to be sadly undeniable. 

    Soul Survivor by Philip Yancey
    Hard to decide between this and Yancey’s What’s So Amazing About Grace?, but I went with the more recent read. Yancey profiles thirteen prominent figures who helped restore his crumbling faith, among them Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Leo Tolstoy, G.K. Chesterton, and Annie Dillard. As faith falls out of fashion, books like this remind me that religion can be richer and more reasonable than our culture of unbelief realizes.

    The Singing Wilderness by Sigurd Olson
    “Should you be lucky enough to be moving across a calm surface with mirrored clouds, you may have the sensation of suspension between heaven and earth, of paddling not on the water but through the skies themselves.” And: “Standing there alone, I felt alive, more aware and receptive than ever before. A shout or a movement would have destroyed the spell. This was a time for silence, for being in pace with ancient rhythms and timelessness, the breathing of the lake, the slow growth of living things. Here the cosmos could be felt and the true meaning of attunement.” And so on.

    The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck
    I probably wouldn’t have liked it when it came out in 1978, given that it was a mega-bestseller and cultural phenomenon. But its plainspoken style and challenging yet attainable standards on discipline and spiritual development were a revelation to me. Peck’s four pillars of discipline — dedication to truth, delaying gratification, acceptance of responsibility, balancing — are all noble and necessary goals for self-improvement I think about, and fail to achieve, often. And when they are paired with his perspectives on love and grace, it makes for a great roadmap for life. (Hat-tip to my sister for the initial recommendation.)

    Crazy Horse and Custer by Stephen Ambrose
    I love a broad history as much as anybody, but I also enjoy when a writer takes an angle on something. In this case, it’s Ambrose profiling the oddly parallel lives of Crazy Horse and George Custer, which converge tragically and infamously at the Battle of Little Bighorn. Like most other Ambrose books it’s a smooth read with an emphasis on good storytelling and capturing his subjects’ humanity. People who struggle with reading history would do well to start with anything by Ambrose.

    Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore
    Here’s where I admit that I have a strong bent toward irreverence in life generally, but in the arts specifically. Pious readers may frown upon this fantastical take on Jesus’s youth and adolescence, but I found it funny, humane, and ultimately honoring of the spirit of Jesus. Like an Anne Lamott book, Lamb walks the line between reverence and irreverence like Philippe Petit on a high-wire: effortlessly and therefore beautifully.

    The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
    First read in high school, then again in college. It was even better the second time around (which begat a critical essay for a U.S. history class). “On the Rainy River” remains one of my all-time favorite pieces of writing. 

  • Football is Fun

    Packers-Crowd

    I love reading Ask Vic, the daily Q&A column from Packers.com writer Vic Ketchman. He’s a self-proclaimed “dinosaur” of football, accustomed to the old ways of the game but trying to adjust to the new ones. One of his responses on Monday stuck out as essential reading for football fans everywhere, but especially the fanatics whose very lives seem dependent upon the success of their team:

    Vic, I have learned to not live or die win or lose over the years, but I can’t help but feel some apprehension heading into the game Thursday. I realize as a fan the best I can do is root my heart out, but can you add anything to allay my apprehension?

    You want a guarantee? Sorry, there are no guarantees, and that’s what makes the game so much fun. You have to decide what it’ll take for you to enjoy the game and not allow your emotions to overcome you. That’s your personal challenge. All I can tell you is that victory and defeat are out of your control. You have no say in the matter, nor are you in any way accountable for the outcome of that game. You are merely a viewer. I think it helps fans to remind themselves of that fact. I think fans have somehow deluded themselves into believing they have a role in these games, and I think they have to guard against thinking that way because it can trigger emotions that rob them of their ability to enjoy the experience. I acknowledge fans attending the game can impact the game with their energy, but if you’re planning on watching the game on TV on Thursday, all you can do is watch. That’s what I’ll do on Thursday and I am really looking forward to it. Nothing will rob me of my joy for what I’m going to see on Thursday. I hope you can say the same.

    Personally, achieving this perspective has been incredibly liberating. Once I realized that I had 0.0% control over the outcome of the game, I could let go of the anxiety that cripples many sports fans, especially those as dedicated and vociferous as Cheeseheads. I get excited with victories and sad with defeats, but I try not to let those emotions dictate my behavior or linger beyond game day. It really is just a game, and we really are mere viewers. Why accede my well-being to something I have no control over, and matters very little in the grand view of life? Football matters—especially stockholding Packers fans like me—but it should also be fun.

    Photo: The Packers faithful at a game I attended at Lambeau Field in 2011.

  • Fishing for Failure: On Writing’s Pain and Gain

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    “Writing and fishing are both art forms built for optimists.” So says Nick Ripatrazone in a wonderful essay at The Millions. I’m inclined to disagree. Writing and fishing, though art forms indeed, feel more often like science projects built for masochists.

    Writing and fishing are laborious. They take a lot of time, most of which is spent on the vast empty spaces between brief moments of glory. Often they reward great pains with very little reward, and yield results so infrequently and inadequately that they make their doers question the worth of doing them altogether. Writers and fishers have to be optimistic in order to sit down at the computer, to get into the boat, but they also have to, at the minimum, be ready for pain, and at the maximum derive something of value from it.

    I know Ripatrazone knows this, so I’m not trying to criticize something he didn’t say; but as a professional amateur in writing and fishing, I’m much more familiar with the daily, taxing grind of trying not to fail too often than with the exhilaration of encountering true success and beauty.

    On the yearly summer fishing trip I take with my dad, we get into the boat every morning and afternoon hoping that it will be a successful day, but knowing it’s possible to strike out completely. We know because it has happened. We pick the perfect bait, motor to the perfect spot, at the perfect time of day, and then—nothing. A ghost lake. We putter along the shore hoping to stir something up, and still—nothing. Cast after cast after cast ad infinitum. Insanity, as the saying goes, is doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results, but people who fish call that Thursday.

    And yet, we go out again. And the next day. We’re not exactly doing the same thing over and over again since we continually adjust, but we’re still out on the boat, roasting in the sun, throwing out cast after cast after cast ad infinitum. Why? Because we love it, and we have to do it. We don’t expect to haul in huge walleyes with every cast. To do so would rob us of the joy of the experience itself. The joy comes in the hope, the anticipation of the subtle nibble on the leech, which becomes a hooked fish, which becomes a battle to the boat.

    But failure can arrive at any time. The fish might not nibble at all, or they might nibble but never bite (or worse, steal the bait). A hooked fish might get tangled in the weeds. A fish being reeled to the boat, fighting for freedom, might snap the line. A fish at the boat and about to be netted might wriggle off its hook and disappear into the water.

    Failure, failure, failure. And yet, we do it again.

    Kinda sounds like writing. Every sentence can fail. In fact, almost every sentence does fail at some point, deleted or rewritten or slightly adjusted for grammar or effect. And yet we write another sentence and another and another ad infinitum, hoping in the midst of constant defeat that the pain and boredom of these failures will eventually yield something good. A great phrase becomes a sentence. A good sentence leads to another one. A few good ones in a row form a solid paragraph. Cast, cast, cast; write, write, write.

    I write because I love it, but I also hate it. It’s hard to fail and fail often, just as it is to cast often and into nothing. But I write because I have to, because as a means of self-expression and self-discovery it comes more naturally to me than most anything else. Because hands on the keyboard for me is as smooth as a paintbrush on canvas for others. And because I’m just enough of a masochist to enjoy it.

    (Photo: my longtime fishing lake in northern Wisconsin)

  • Deep & The Divine Milieu

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    At one point in Richard Linklater’s Boyhood, Mason asks his father if there’s magic in the world. Probably not literal magic, his dad replies. But then he asks the boy: if you didn’t know what a whale was and someone told you there was a giant mammal that lived underwater with a heart as big as a car and arteries you could crawl through, wouldn’t you find that pretty magical?

    I’d say so. But more than that, I’d call it divine. Scientists, I’m sure, would frown upon using a religious word to describe biological processes and characteristics, but I find it quite appropriate, especially after learning about the profundities of the ocean from James Nestor’s new book Deep: Freediving, Renegade Science, and What the Ocean Tells Us About Ourselves.

    Perhaps it’s because the book I read before Deep was Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s The Divine Milieu, a meditation on the earthly omnipresence of the divine. Consistent with the Jesuit motto of “finding God in all things,” Teilhard, a Jesuit priest and archaeologist, saw the natural world’s evolution not in conflict with the eternal Divine, but convergent with it. Thus the “divine milieu” is not just in heaven but on earth too, manifest in the world around us. Deep, though a study in scientific phenomena, aligns in fascinating ways with the spiritual phenomena described in The Divine Milieu.

    Consider the “master switch of life,” a term that refers to the physiological reflexes in the human body that are triggered when we enter the water and intensify the deeper we go. This transformation, writes Nestor in Deep, “protects our organs from imploding under the immense underwater pressure and turns us into efficient deep sea-diving animals.” But this isn’t an automatic switch. It requires intensive training, coupled with total peace of mind and body, to fully realize its power and unlock the so-called “doorway to the deep,” the point at about 40 feet down where the ocean stops trying to spit us out and instead draws us down. Surrendering to the immersive power of the ocean is the only way to survive.

    Likewise, writes Teilhard in The Divine Milieu: “The man who abandons himself to the divine milieu feels his inward powers clearly directed and vastly expanded by it with a sureness which enables him to avoid the reefs on which mystical ardor has so often foundered.” Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that the freedivers Nestor meets all describe their underwater experiences in spiritual, almost mystical terms: “transcendent, life-changing, purifying. A new shimmering universe.” They could see new things in a way that a life on land couldn’t fathom.

    The ocean, like the world itself, seems suspended between the tangible and mysterious, the clearly natural yet utterly magical. Nestor’s book is an ode to the people who inhabit that space in-between, who plunge into the unknown to push the limits of human understanding, like theologians of the sea. (Is sea-ologians a word? It should be.) The water beckons us to explore, to contend with the mystery of the divine as Paul does in Ephesians 3:18-19: “I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”

    A dive into the water, taken on faith but also with a clear mind, transforms and renews us all. Only when we’re in over our heads, holding our breath as we’re baptized into the deep, do we really live. Sounds like a divine milieu to me.

  • DDC 430-439: Polyglöts Ünite

    A Teach Me How To Dewey production

    This Is How We Dewey:

    • 430 Germanic languages; German
    • 431 German writing system & phonology
    • 432 German etymology
    • 433 German dictionaries
    • 434 Not assigned or no longer used
    • 435 German grammar
    • 436 Not assigned or no longer used
    • 437 German language variations
    • 438 Standard German usage
    • 439 Other Germanic languages

    Based on the material available in this section, I’d venture to say that while Germanic languages aren’t the prettiest ones out there, they are often the most interesting. There’s the umlaut-loving Swedish, the melting-pot Afrikaans, the Tolkien-like Icelandic… I’ll never have enough time to learn them all, but were I to undergo a superhero origin story, I hope my heroic alter ego would be a polyglot.

    The Dew3:

    Born to Kvetch: Yiddish Language and Culture in All Its Moods
    By Michael Wex
    Dewey: 439.1
    Random Sentence: “Men, women, and children: they drink, they fight, and they screw.”

    Swedish: A Complete Course for Beginners
    By Vera Croghan
    Dewey: 439.782421
    Random Sentence: “Vad kostar tomaterna?”

    Colloquial Afrikaans: The Complete Course for Beginners
    By B.C. Donaldson
    Dewey: 439.3682421
    Random Sentence: “Ek het vanoggend brood gekoop.”

  • Pit Bull Power

    Flower Power, a photo series from photographer Sophie Gamand, aims to portray pit bulls in a different light and captures the sweet, loving dog beneath the oft-misunderstood exterior:

    Victims of prejudices, uneducated laws and urban tales that associate them with ultra violence, they are probably the most misunderstood dogs. Pit bulls, like any terrier dogs, are strong and powerful animals. There is no denying that. But power does not necessarily mean violence. Most pit bulls are peaceful and sweet love bugs. Their power is in their snuggles and unconditional love.

    More adorable pics here.

  • DDC 420-429: Nouns and Pronounce

    A Teach Me How To Dewey production

    This Is How We Dewey:

    • 420 English & Old English
    • 421 English writing system & phonology
    • 422 English etymology
    • 423 English dictionaries
    • 424 No longer used—formerly English thesauruses
    • 425 English grammar
    • 426 No longer used—formerly English prosodies
    • 427 English language variations
    • 428 Standard English usage
    • 429 Old English (Anglo-Saxon)

    While I know a little Spanish, English is (obvs) my primary language. And what a weird language it is. I’m so glad I didn’t have to learn it later in life, because in some ways it makes no sense. Especially pronunciation: this well-known poem illustrates that well. But because it’s second nature to me, it’s hard to tell how English stacks up against other languages vis a vis difficulty in grammar and pronunciation, logical spelling, and poetic beauty. I certainly enjoy writing in English, though I often wish all those silent letters—like in its buddy French—could die. Isn’t tho much better, prettier, and more sensical than though? That superfluous ugh is just… Ugh….

    The Dew3:

    I Love It When You Talk Retro: Hoochie Coochie, Double Whammy, Drop A Dime, and the Forgotten Origins of American Speech
    By Ralph Keyes
    Dewey: 422
    Random Sentence: “Rutabaga is funny. Potatoes aren’t.”

    Death Sentences: How Clichés, Weasel Words, and Management-speak Are Strangling Public Language
    By Don Watson
    Dewey: 428
    Random Sentence: “You are trapped in the language like a parrot in a cage.”

    An Exaltation of Larks: The Ultimate Edition
    By James Lipton
    Dewey: 428.1
    Random Sentence: “So, Mr. Safire, how about a phumpher of schwas?”

  • DDC 410-419: Linguistics alfredo

    A Teach Me How To Dewey production

    This Is How We Dewey:

    • 410 Linguistics
    • 411 Writing systems
    • 412 Etymology
    • 413 Dictionaries
    • 414 Phonology
    • 415 Structural systems (Grammar)
    • 416 No longer used—formerly Prosody (linguistics)
    • 417 Dialectology & historical linguistics
    • 418 Standard usage; Applied linguistics
    • 419 Verbal language not spoken or written

    Regarding the post title: what did you expect? This is a section all about words! (Plus I love pasta.) But just look at this beautiful list of literary terms. I’ve heard of probably 10% of them, but I wish to know them all, to hug them tenderly and use them liberally in my own writing and speech. Any other word nerds out there? My logophilia is partly inherited (my late grandfather loved crosswords and learning languages throughout his life), but it’s also a learned love, facilitated by reading more and more things in increasingly diverse genres and forms.

    I want to give a special shout-out to the first of the Dew3 picks: it’s pure punctuation porn for weirdos like me who could admire various punctuation marks all day. In fact, I now have plans for the weekend…

    The Dew3:

    Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols & Other Typographical Marks
    By Keith Houston
    Dewey: 411
    Random Sentence: “Case closed ;)”

    Is That A Fish in Your Ear? Translation and the Meaning of Everything
    By David Bellos
    Dewey: 418.02
    Random Sentence: “For your aches / Carat cakes / Are the cure.”

    Bastard Tongues: A Trailblazing Linguist Finds Clues to Our Common Humanity in the World’s Lowliest Languages
    By Derek Bickerton
    Dewey: 417.2
    Random Sentence: “Wolf has taken daddy, gone, and eaten him.”

  • Calvary

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    The Master of death will come soon enough—and perhaps we can already hear His footsteps. There is no need to forestall His hour nor to fear it. When He enters into us to destroy, as it seems, the virtues and the forces that we have distilled with so much loving care out of the sap of the world, it will be as a loving fire to consummate our completion in union. — The Divine Milieu

    There’s a well-known exchange in the documentary Bowling for Columbine wherein Michael Moore interviews Marilyn Manson about politics, media culture, and his supposed influence on Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the perpetrators of the Columbine shooting. Pretty quickly after the 1999 tragedy, Manson’s violent lyrics, “trenchcoat mafia” look, and anti-authoritarian attitude were scorned by parents and politicians, and the man himself was made a primary scapegoat for the carnage done by two troubled teens. Moore asks Manson what he would say to them if he could have talked to them directly: “I wouldn’t say a single word to them,” Manson said. “I’d listen to what they have to say. That’s what no one did.”

    Wise words from a surprising source. I thought of them after seeing Calvary, the new film from John McDonaugh. (Here be spoilers, natch.) The film begins with Father James (Brendan Gleeson), pastor of a small Irish parish, listening in a confession booth to something startling: a mystery parishioner, abused by a priest as a child, threatens to kill him—an innocent priest—as payment for the sins of the Church. The man tells Father James to settle his affairs, make his peace with God, and meet him on the beach in a week’s time. Father James doesn’t fight back, call the police, or flee: he listens, letting the heavy words sink in, and then embarks on his allotted week bearing a new and heavy cross.

    But it’s a burden, it becomes clear, he must bear alone. His fellow parish priest (a nervous, judgmental type) doesn’t share Father James’s relative serenity, earned from his pre-priesthood life. As a layman, I’d imagine, Father James experienced the same loss, doubt, and other common plagues of the soul; it’s what makes him unlike the other priests, “too smart” for this parish as one woman puts it and yet faithful enough to abide in it. Yet even as a priest he’s still a sinner, struggling with alcohol and the desire to flee. His parishioners aren’t a reliable source of inspiration or support, their interactions with Father James throughout the week ranging from tepid respect to outright scorn. And his adult daughter, visiting after a botched suicide attempt, struggles to reconcile her father’s new pastoral role with his lack of paternal guidance in the wake of her mother’s death. He’s trying his best with the deck stacked against him, the trauma of the Catholic church sex abuse scandal still fresh for his wary flock.

    Simultaneously, Father James tries to deduce his would-be killer’s identity. Like many whodunits, most of the players in his life are suspects: is it the cuckolded town butcher he confronted about beating his wife? the pompous, grandiloquent millionaire whose support he spurned? the sarcastic male prostitute who’s contemptuous of the Church? or the nihilistic doctor hardened by the suffering around him? Father James fields each of these parishioners’ caustic commentaries —against him, the Church, or whatever else travails them. He listens, but also wearies. The parade of sin feels too long, too hopelessly unredeemable. As King Theodin remarks in The Return of the King, “What can men do against such reckless hate?”

    And what can we do? Marilyn Manson’s response aside, I doubt merely sitting down with the Columbine killers and listening to them would have persuaded them not to commit their heinous crimes. So for as much as Father James listens patiently to the troubles of his congregants, there’s not much he can do. He can administer absolution, sure, but only to the penitent, of which there are few. But now, with a very real target on his back, the time for talk is over: what is he to do?

    Calvary winds through Father James’ (final?) week with that question in mind. It’s Gleeson’s charisma as an actor that keeps things steady throughout this tumultuous journey. Gleeson teems with soulful presence and hard-won wisdom. This differs greatly from his role as Sgt. Boyle in The Guard (also directed by McDonaugh) yet still retains a similar good-heartedness. McDonaugh brings the celestial themes of sin, sacrifice, and redemption back down to earth in this darkly comic story, in a community that really could be anyone’s. It’s a welcome relief from the spate of sterile, overtly “Christian” films that proselytize more than ponder, that make good sermons but usually not good art. Calvary is good art because it isn’t sterile; it’s not afraid to get dirty, to search for truth and beauty in the muck of faith on earth. With life and death as the stakes, Calvary’s search is on indeed.

  • DDC 400-409: Learn ALL THE WORDS

    A Teach Me How To Dewey production

    This Is How We Dewey:

    • 400 Language
    • 401 Philosophy & theory
    • 402 Miscellany
    • 403 Dictionaries & encyclopedias
    • 404 Special topics
    • 405 Serial publications
    • 406 Organizations & management
    • 407 Education, research, related topics
    • 408 With respect to kinds of persons
    • 409 Geographical & persons treatment

    Gotta admit this up front: I friggin’ love words. As an English major, a writer, a reader—pick the reason. I love them so much that I keep a list of cool words I’ve encountered that I want to remember. (*pushes up glasses*) So I’m embarking on the 400s with great vim and ebullience. Though, curiously, I’ve thus far restrained myself from owning a physical dictionary, mostly because I can’t decide which version I should have. Plus, with the OED and Merriam-Webster adding new words every year, it would soon be out of date. And I gotta have ALL THE WORDS if I have a book of them. (Erin McKean’s TEDTalk on this topic is a great one if you’re interested. And who wouldn’t be?!)

    Regardless, I’m pumped—nay, aflutter—to go through this section and see all the lexical gold we will find. Shall we?

    The Dew3:

    A Little Book of Language
    By David Crystal
    Dewey: 400
    Random Sentence: “The Smiths will be in their clarence.”

    The Way We Talk Now: Commentaries on Language and Culture From NPR’s “Fresh Air”
    By Geoffrey Nunberg
    Dewey: 400
    Random Sentence: “They don’t hear a lot of resemblances to Angelina Jolie, either.”

    The Infinite Gift: How Children Learn and Unlearn the Languages of the World
    By Charles Yang
    Dewey: 401.93
    Random Sentence: “It would have been fun to know what Adam and Eve said to each other in Africa.”

  • Jane Eyre: Live Blog

    Jane Eyre

    I watched the 2011 film version of Jane Eyre and instantaneously documented my unvarnished initial thoughts and reactions. I’ve never read the original book, nor know anything about the story, so it’s entirely fresh to me.

    “What is hell?” the headmaster asks Jane. A pit of fire, she replies. But she really knew, as others have discovered, that hell is other people.

    The schoolmarm pauses her whipping of another girl in class as the headmaster enters. “It is your mission to render her contrite and self-denying,” he says. “Continue.” Woo boy, this is gonna get ugly.

    (more…)

  • DDC 390-399: Emily Post-Its

    A Teach Me How To Dewey production

    This Is How We Dewey:

    • 390 Customs, etiquette, folklore
    • 391 Costume & personal appearance
    • 392 Customs of life cycle & domestic life
    • 393 Death customs
    • 394 General customs
    • 395 Etiquette (Manners)
    • 396 No longer used—formerly Women’s position and treatment
    • 397 No longer used—formerly outcast studies
    • 398 Folklore
    • 399 Customs of war & diplomacy

    This section is a bit of a grab-bag. I suppose customs, etiquette, and folklore fit together under the broad category of culture, but on the shelves this looks like that one drawer in the kitchen where you throw all that miscellaneous crap that doesn’t have a standard space, like rubber bands and capless pens and scrap paper. Not at all discounting the value of these topics—because how could we live without Emily Post telling us how to behave?!—but clearly some sections are better synthesized and meant to be than others. But that’s why we love Dewey, right? There’s a reason for everything (theoretically… we hope…) so we best try to understand why.

    Or these books just needed to be somewhere.

    The Dew3:

    Breakfast: A History
    By Heather Arndt
    Dewey: 394.1252
    Random Sentence: “For those wanting even less human contact for their meal, there were the automats.”

    Would It Kill You to Stop Doing That?: A Modern Guide to Manners
    By Henry Alford
    Dewey: 395
    Random Sentence: “I have benign hand tumors, so don’t worry.”

    Every Tongue Got to Confess: Negro Folktales From the Gulf States
    By Zora Neale Hurston
    Dewey: 398.208996073
    Random Sentence: “Tom told his wife, ‘Tell God I’m not here.’”

  • DDC 380-389: We built this city on rock and roads

    A Teach Me How To Dewey production

    This Is How We Dewey:

    • 380 Commerce, communications, transport
    • 381 Internal commerce (Domestic trade)
    • 382 International commerce (Foreign trade)
    • 383 Postal communication
    • 384 Communications; Telecommunication
    • 385 Railroad transportation
    • 386 Inland waterway & ferry transportation
    • 387 Water, air, space transportation
    • 388 Transportation; Ground transportation
    • 389 Metrology & standardization

    Honestly, I was surprised by how intrigued I was by this section. Typically I’m not one to fall for anything relating to commerce, but I’m officially coming back to this section to find stuff for my to-read shelf. As represented by the Dew3 picks below, I’m often fascinated by how systems, especially concrete and/or historical, come into being. So while I wouldn’t care much for systems of thought or abstract things, I’m all over the Transcontinental Railroad and space transportation, despite my highly limited knowledge of engineering. Or perhaps it’s because of that lack of knowledge that I’m interested. Knowledge rocks! As do trains!

    The Dew3:

    The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires
    By Tim Wu
    Dewey: 384
    Random Sentence: “Is Google destined to arrive at its Napoleonic moment?”

    Nothing Like It in the World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad, 1863-1869
    By Stephen Ambrose
    Dewey: 385.0973
    Random Sentence: “This was hard work, dangerous and claustrophobic.”

    The Big Roads: The Untold Story of the Engineers, Visionaries, and Trailblazers Who Created the American Superhighways
    By Earl Swift
    Dewey: 388.122
    Random Sentence: “Even by his standards, he was stinking rich.”

  • Encountering Robin

    robin

    I was an intern at a large advertising agency last summer. One day I was at my desk when a fellow intern stopped by. “Robin Williams is here,” he said. Ha ha, I thought. Probably just trying to prank others interns. “No really,” he said. “He’s on the next floor up.”

    We had heard that he was there to research advertising firms for his then-upcoming CBS show The Crazy Ones (which was canceled after a season) so of course we got curious. My desk mate Marie and I went on the hunt, nervous yet excited about the prospect of meeting a Real Celebrity. We ran up the stairs and wandered the cubes, looking for one of the most recognizable people on earth. We came upon a corner office and saw him standing by the wall talking to someone. There weren’t many people around yet, probably because he’d been on the move and incognito. But as we bashfully approached the door, he noticed us and graciously welcomed us in.

    Soon a crowd gathered, eager to get face time with the man we all loved from something. When Marie approached, she mentioned she was from France and he immediately began speaking fluent French with her as I took their picture with my phone. I’d decided that I wouldn’t get a picture with him, but I did want to shake his hand. But since I’d followed the French speaking, I said, “I’m not that exotic, but I would like to shake your hands. Thanks for everything you do.” To my dying day I will regret not telling him how rockin’ his beard was. But I’m sure he knew.

    We slid past the throbbing crowd and back to our desks, reveling in the brief encounter with a legend and telling the other interns the news.

    I’ve often thought about that moment, especially now that Robin has died. But I think most often not about shaking his hand, but about when he welcomed us in, knowing that yet again a crowd would develop and he’d have to hold court in that conference room for yet another round of autographs and pictures and forced conversation. To be sure, conversation never seemed forced with Robin; he always seemed to be the one fueling it with zany antics, spot-on impressions, or even heartfelt monologues. He appeared highly skilled at working the room, person by person. Yet no matter how extroverted a person is, taking the time to do that Lord knows how often has got to be draining. I’m grateful for his willingness to welcome it, for taking time for everyone there, and in every situation when celebrity duty calls. But it’s a duty I wouldn’t want for myself, and it pains me to ponder how heavy that burden feels for people who already struggle with the weight of life in general.

    No one can really understand the inner turmoil that led to his demise. There were outward signs that he’s been open about, like his drug and alcohol addictions, but clearly (as always) there was more going on. It’s not our place to speculate, only to mourn and to continue living, that we may contribute a verse.

  • DDC 370-379: Trigger warning – School

    A Teach Me How To Dewey production

    This Is How We Dewey:

    • 370 Education
    • 371 School management; special education; alternative education
    • 372 Elementary education
    • 373 Secondary education
    • 374 Adult education
    • 375 Curriculums
    • 376 No longer used—formerly Education of women
    • 377 No longer used—formerly Ethical education
    • 378 Higher education
    • 379 Government regulation, control, support

    A fitting section to happen upon as we approach back-to-school season. It’s a time of year that is bittersweet for me: while I do miss the camaraderie and intellectual rigor of being in school, I don’t miss BSing papers, having to take math, and the peaks and valleys of semester after semester of different work. But every trip to Target these days brings all this back, especially seeing all those school supplies that would be on the list every year but that I would never use. I mean, who uses hole-punch reinforcement stickers?

    Anyway, this section goes out to all those teachers returning from the sunny beach and getting back into the classroom to prepare for another year. I had a handful of terrible teachers in my day, but also some great ones. Here’s hoping for your kids’ sake that you’re the latter.

    The Dew3:

    How Lincoln Learned to Read: Twelve Great Americans and the Educations That Made Them
    By Daniel Wolff
    Dewey: 370.973
    Random Sentence: “He’d sworn off that, but there was this: this hunt for ideas.”

    True Notebooks: A Writer’s Year at Juvenile Hall
    By Mark Salzman
    Dewey: 373.11
    Random Sentence: “You stealin’ my chips?”

    Be Honest: And Other Advice from Students Across the Country
    Edited by Ninive Calegari
    Dewey: 371.8
    Random Sentence: “You are not our last salvation.”

  • DDC 360-369: A curious case of massive understatement

    A Teach Me How To Dewey production

    This Is How We Dewey:

    • 360 Social services; association
    • 361 General social problems
    • 362 Social welfare problems & services
    • 363 Other social problems & services
    • 364 Criminology
    • 365 Penal & related institutions
    • 366 Association
    • 367 General clubs
    • 368 Insurance
    • 369 Miscellaneous kinds of associations

    361 “General social problems”? Really, Dewey? There could (and probably should) be an entire library filled with books in that subclass. But as has been the case with the previous 300s sections, this one gets FascinationPoints™ for dealing with people themselves: the good, the bad, the insane, the pathological, the criminal… We contain multitudes, we humans and our psyches, and it’s all pretty well represented here. So dive in, if you dare, to the Human Experience. Hope you brought a swimming suit because you’re about to get drenched by humanity.

    The Dew3:

    Devil in the Details: Scenes From An Obsessive Girlhood
    By Jennifer Traig
    Dewey: 362.196852
    Random Sentence: “Instead of tights, I had Torah.”

    The Kid: What Happened After My Boyfriend and I Decided to Go Get Pregnant: An Adoption Story
    By Dan Savage
    Dewey: 362.73408664
    Random Sentence: “I took some more codeine.”

    Catch Me If You Can
    By Frank Abagnale
    Dewey: 364.163
    Random Sentence: “After that I was flying kites.”