Diversions

1 . For people interested in words, here is a charmingly illustrated list of words that are untranslatable into English. Be sure to read the comments for more.

2. Here's another page sure to please people who like words: a defense of English majors. Not terribly different than the one from the Chronicle, this one is from the New Yorker by Adam Gopnik. My favorite line: "A good doctor said to me, not long ago, “You really sort of have to like assholes and ear wax to be a good general practitioner”; you have to really like, or not mind much, intricate and dull and occasionally even dumb arguments about books to study English."

3. I wish there were such a thing as a grammar major. I guess that would be in the composition department, or perhaps I should go back to school to a get a foreign language degree so I could do translations and think about grammatical forms and phraseology. I've been pleased lately that my sophomore is doing grammar, which he hasn't done for 2 or 3 years at his other schools. I get sort of excited about talking about gerunds and participles or reflexive pronouns. I have to prevent myself from doing his homework. I particularly like when he gets a tricky example.

4. That New Yorker article is a pat on the back to people who like to read. No one is likely to be offended by it. The article from the New York Times Magazine that my sister linked to is irritating and on the edge of being offensive because it's divisive.  "The Opt-Out Generation Wants Back In" by Judith Warner is yet another gauntlet thrown into the stay-at-home moms vs. working moms battle.  Why is this a battle? Because authors like Warner make it sound like an all or none choice.  She is deliberately stirring up discontent and anxiety by encouraging moms to worry about whether or not they can find employment after staying home for a few years.  Did the women interviewed think they could step right back into the workforce after 10 or more years of absence and earn the same amount?  Aside from the fact that they might have expected to start back at reduced pay, they don't give much attention to the fact that we're in a recession and many people are earning less than they used to. How many of these women would have "risen to the top" if they had stayed in their professions? There is only so much space up there. There is also only a brief mention that many of the women didn't like the jobs they left, and they get more job satisfaction from their new jobs. Additionally, how many of them are working the same number of hours?  Even if their kids are in school, their kids still have a lot of needs that limit the amount of working hours moms can reasonably carry without hiring help.

This article also bugs me because it promotes the "what about me?" attitude, which I know we all suffer from.  I hate sweeping floors, too. I hate doing laundry.  But someone has to do it. And when we do it as an act of love and service, it's easier to get past the poor me's.  When you love someone, you want to make them comfortable and happy. When you love yourself, you want to make yourself comfortable and happy and admired and well compensated.  I'm not saying all these women are selfish. But the article is definitely not written from a perspective of Christian community.  Why is it that the volunteer jobs mentioned all have to do with fundraising for elite private schools instead of soup kitchens or literacy programs or Meals on Wheels or beach clean-ups or whatever?

The article obviously got under my skin because I still struggle with the desire to do something besides just be a stay at home mom, and I'm having trouble finding that something here in California, partly because of my health condition and partly because of the schedule at the kids' schools and partly because of availability. I'm one of those unemployed English majors. In my day, English majors were legion.  So now there are no open positions for English adjuncts at the three closest branches of the community college.  And because I want to be available to volunteer at my kids' school and help them with their homework, I really don't want a full time or full attention job. My teaching and volunteer work in Guam satiated a desire to feel useful and to practice doing things I loved. I don't care that I'm not making thousands; I just want an outlet for my desire to teach that wasn't fulfilled by home schooling. So now I'm looking into other options for English majors that won't earn me millions and will allow me to continue to be present for my kids in the afternoons and to make them cookies and muffins or at least get their laundry washed during the week.

5. Finished another YA book that my 11 yr old just read: Esperanza Rising by Pam Munoz Ryan. Recommended. Kind of a cross between Caramelo and The Grapes of Wrath for the preteen. The story of a young Mexican girl whose family loses its wealth when her father dies, so she and her mother have to immigrate to California with their servants and work as farmhands. Simply told - the suffering described in The Grapes of Wrath is minimized and the value of family and friends is heightened without the drama of Caramelo.  My daughter loved it, and I'm happy she read something about a difficult period of history with a heroine who struggled against selfishness and learned to work hard for pennies to help her family survive.

6. We also both read Al Capone Does My Shirts by Gennifer Choldenko. Another unintentional California read, this time set in San Francisco. A likable story about a boy living on Alcatraz whose life is complicated by his sister's special needs.  My quibble: sometimes books that are semi-historical fiction seem a little forced when contemporary issues are appended.

7. http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/sep/02/seamus-heaney-last-words-funeral  Seamus Heaney's last words: "Noli timere" texted to his wife.  Love it. Requiescat in pace.