Well, it’s almost Election Day, which means we’re getting bombarded by political commercials.

It’s particularly bad here. Not only do I live in a battleground state, I live in a television market that serves the three neighboring states as well, so I have to endure the commercials for all four state elections.

As I’ve mentioned before, my father watched CNN’s “Crossfire” every night during supper. I can handle listening to political debate (i.e., bickering); it’s the utter unoriginality of the commercials that is driving me batty.

Everyone is “fighting” for me. Joe Blow fought to better our schools. Suzie Smiley fought for Social Security. Sometimes they “take on” things. Paul Politician took on the Big Scary Drug Companies to help bring down drug costs. One poor woman fought for it all: our schools, Social Security, to protect seniors, the Big Scary Drug Companies. She’s been so busy fighting, I can’t imagine how she found the time to keep her hair so perfectly coiffed.

I think it’s time they came up with some new verbiage. It would still be tedious, but maybe a bit more tolerable.

Paul Politician combated the Big Scary Drug Companies.

Suzie Smiley’s bellicosity saved Social Security

Okay, so maybe that’s not so good either. It reminds me of the 2001 Inauguration. The Fox News commentators tried so hard not to say, “The dignitaries are making their way,” that a frustrated Brit Hume finally said (jokingly), “The important people are walking.” Didn’t have the same panache.

One more week, and it’ll all be over.

Heaven help us in the meantime.

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The Detective Club, consisting of Dorothy Sayers, G. K. Chesterton, Agatha Christie, Clemence Dane, E.C. Bentley, Anthony Berkeley, Freeman Wills Crofts and others, was formed in 1930. The group would meet together once a month to dine and talk shop. Dorothy L. Sayers: A Biography by James Brabazon, contains the transcript of the initiation oath:

Do you promise that your Detectives shall well and truly detect the Crimes presented to them, using those wits which it may please you to bestow upon them and not placing reliance upon nor making use of Divine Revelation, Feminine Intuition, Mumbo Jumbo, Jiggery-Pokery, Coincidence or the Act of God?

Answer: I do

The President: Do you solemnly swear never to conceal a Vital Clue from the Reader?

Answer: I do.

The President: Do you promise to observe a seemly moderation in the use of Gangs, Conspiracies, Death-Rays, Ghosts, Hypnotism, Trap-Doors, Super-Criminals and Lunatics, and utterly and forever to forswear Mysterious Poisons unknown to Science?

Answer: I do.

The President: [I]f you fail to keep your promises, may other Writers anticipate your Plots, may your Publishers do you down in your Contracts, may Total Strangers sue you for Libel, may your Pages swarm with Misprints and your Sales continually Diminish. Amen.

Call me peculiar if you must, but things like this really make me laugh. I think every genre would benefit if their authors would take oaths such as this to heart, don’t you?

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When I discovered the Essays of E. B. White earlier this year, I decided that he had lived my dream life. He divided his time between the city and the country, and spent his time writing fantastic essays for The New Yorker. I could do that, if only I had his talent.

But the essays of mystery writer and Christian apologist Dorothy L. Sayers are nothing to sneeze at. Most classical homeschoolers are familiar with her essay The Lost Tools of Learning. So yesterday at the library, when I ran across a collection of her essays called Unpopular Opinions, published in 1947, I had to check it out. A title like that just makes you want to read it. And it doesn’t disappoint. From “Are Women Human?”:

But it is the mark of all movements, however well-intentioned, that their pioneers tend, by much lashing of themselves into excitement, to lose sight of the obvious. In reaction against the age-old slogan, “woman is the weaker vessel,” or the still more offensive, “woman is a divine creature,” we have, I think, allowed ourselves to drift into asserting that “a woman is as good as a man,” without always pausing to think what exactly we mean by that. What, I feel, we ought to mean is something so obvious that it is apt to escape attention altogether, viz: not that every woman is, in virtue of her sex, as strong, clever, artistic, level-headed, industrious and so forth as any man that can be mentioned; but, that a woman is just as much an ordinary human being as a man, with the same individual preferences, and with just as much right to the tastes and preferences of an individual.

And later:

I am occasionally desired by congenital imbeciles and the editors of magazines to say something about the writing of detective fiction “from the woman’s point of view.” To such demands, one can only say, “Go away and don’t be silly. You might as well ask what is the female angle on an equilateral triangle.”

I became so intrigued that I went back to the library today and checked out the only biography of hers they had, Dorothy L. Sayers: A biography. Unpopular Opinions is out of print, but the essay is reprinted in a book of the same name, Are Women Human?

I can’t wait to learn more about this fascinating woman.

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The Cardinals are going to the World Series. And I’m glad. I’ve been a Cardinal fan all my life.

But watching baseball requires and inordinate amount of time. I may have to dig out the crocheting. I’ve tried reading while watching baseball, but that’s about as productive as cleaning house with a toddler at home.

Go Cards!

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Snow Bird
Anne Murray

Beneath this snowy mantle cold and clean
The unborn grass lies waiting for its coat to turn to green
The snowbird sings the song he always sings
And speaks to me of flowers that will bloom again in spring

I ♥ Anne Murray. I ♥ fall.

I saw my first snowbird today. No, I didn’t take this picture; it’s not snowing here. But winter is coming.

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From The Four Principles of Latin Instruction by Cheryl Lowe at Memoria Press (emphasis added):

We are always pushing higher level skills into the lower grades, thinking we are doing advanced work. This occurs in every subject but especially Latin and mathematics where students often try translation before learning grammar forms and algebra before mastering arithmetic.

Parents are impressed, and the program looks advanced—and the student suffers the consequences of our pride, for that is what it is. Failure to master basic skills, whether its long division or Latin grammar forms, leads to the glass ceiling. The students are unable to reach high levels in math, Latin or other subjects because the foundation is so weak that it eventually crumbles under the weight of advanced academic demands. Student frustration increases and they drop out before calculus or Cicero or Shakespeare. If this happens, it is we who have failed our students.

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A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.

~Mark Twain

In my last post, I’m afraid that I left the impression that I dutifully plow through every book that I pick up. That’s really not the case. I do read the majority of the books that I start, but I’ve left a good number unfinished.

It’s intentionally leaving books unfinished that I rarely do; I’m much too passive-agressive to do something so decisive. I am usually reading at least two books simultaneously, so occasionally I will put one aside in favor of another and then conveniently not pick it back up. After a few weeks I will move it from it’s place of abandonment (usually the night stand, but sometimes underneath the end table by the couch) and put it back onto the bookshelf. I almost always have good intentions of starting it again, but as you know, books come into our lives so quickly that it’s often difficult to return.

So now I’m coming clean. Here are the books that I have started with good intentions and then not finished. I have a feeling I will have to do this one in installments…

• Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. This book gets top billing because it has resided on my night stand for at least a couple of months. I really would like to read it, especially after Dy’s comments about it.

• Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad. I’m taking a real risk confessing to this one. It was required reading in my British Lit class my senior year in high school. If you knew me in high school, you would know that this was a huge act of rebellion, not finishing an assigned book. In fact, if memory serves me correctly, I don’t think I even gave it a respectable effort. Not only did I get an “A” in the class, I was given the English award at graduation. I hope I’m not required to return the small pin that I was given. Since the teacher is now retired and part of my father’s weekly golfing group, I’m hoping some sort of official pardon can be worked out.

• Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe. I started this about three years ago and found it interesting. I was about three-quarters through when I had my third child, at which point serious reading went out the window for a few of weeks. The book is currently peering down at me from the top shelf next to the fireplace; this one will probably be returned to at some point.

• The House of Seven Gables and The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorn. I started both of these in high school. The copies I had were ancient, yellowed, musty hardbacks from the public library. Had they had a portrait of Nathaniel Hawthorn on the cover, I probably would have persevered.
  
  
  
  He was hot quite handsome. Who knew?

• Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte. I started this in high school, and bought a copy of my own a few years ago. It too is waiting on the top shelf for my return. I did read enough to understand all the Heathcliff/Cathy allusions I encounter. And I have read Jane Eyre by her sister Charlotte, which has to count for something.

As you can see, I’ve left a lot of classics unfinished. This list is by no means exhaustive, but I think you get the idea, and the Cardinal game has begun. Happy Saturday.

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Filmmaker Richard Linklater is being sued by three of his high school classmates for using their surnames and likenesses for characters in his movie Dazed and Confused. Yes, that’s right. He wrote a movie about a bunch of high school stoners and used real names. I guess he thought they’d be flattered.

For the record, I have never seen this movie, so I can’t really comment intelligently about its content, but title itself implies that this isn’t about a group of responsible, upstanding teenagers.

I personally think that our society as a whole is a bit too sue-happy, and I of course have not heard Mr. Linklater’s side of the story, but so far I have to side with the plaintiffs. People have enough trouble distinguishing fiction from reality as it is, but if someone one went to high school with wrote a movie with a character with one’s last name, a lot of people are going to assume it’s the truth.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

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