To travel or not to travel

I've spent a lot of time lately debating some opportunities to travel. I have the privilege of having the option to go places and do things - a privilege of both finances and time, which are gifts we didn't possess earlier in our marriage.  Those resources are gifts I hope I don't take for granted, knowing how difficult or impossible it is for most people to get away on a vacation of any sort. 

This summer I have three opportunities to tag along with my husband on work trips. Right now I am with him on the first of these, which is a lakeside town just an hour from our house. With our college kids home for the summer, we can leave the youngest and the dog with very little fuss for a two night retreat of sorts. We're calling this our anniversary trip. 

The second trip is for a conference taking place in Alabama. We have good friends from our time in Guam in that area, and some other friends are coming to the conference, which includes programming for spouses including a hike one day and a history of the Civil Rights movement lesson/tour in Montgomery. I debated this one because it is a week long, but I decided to accompany my husband for the first half of the conference to meet up with our dear friends and learn some history, as well.

The third trip, I am debating. This trip is to Ireland for an anniversary celebration of the Notre Dame program at Kylemore Abbey.  Just typing that out makes me question why am I debating! Well, it happens to fall on the same weekend as a small family reunion my cousin has planned.  The reunion is just a Friday dinner and a Saturday picnic with the five cousins on my mom's side of the family and my three siblings and our families - about 45 people altogether. I invited but did not pressure my Boston and California children to attend because we are all convening in California for the Fourth of July/daughter's birthday celebration as our family summer vacation. They also have their own trips for weddings and family and work planned for the summer, so they are not coming, although our local kids likely will attend.  

This side of the family last convened two and a half years ago for the funerals of my aunt and uncle, who passed away within 24 hours of each other. There was a memorial service in Indiana and one in Texas, and our family attended both. The cousin who is organizing the reunion is the daughter of this aunt and uncle. This uncle, my mom's brother, was the reasons our families gathered as often as they did when we were growing up because they visited twice each year from Texas. This cousin is my sister's age, and we see each other regularly, if not often. The children of my mom's other brother I don't see as often. We all get along and have lots of shared memories of Christmas celebrations and summer barbecues back before all of us married and had our own families, but there is an age gap with the other set of cousins - I was their babysitter when they were little. Once we all started having kids and we moved away, we didn't gather at Christmas any more, and we didn't have enough in common to keep us bonded. We keep in touch by Christmas cards and social media updates, but the next time we all convene will probably be either a funeral or a wedding, although we did not invite all of these cousins to our sons' weddings, which were small.  

Part of me thinks, "Go to Ireland." It's a special celebration with performances and art and music in a beautiful location. It's our 30th anniversary year, and it's summer, and our accommodations are provided.  Our college kids are home to watch the 12 year old and dog, which may not happen again next year.

Another part of me thinks, "Go to the reunion." I committed to that six months ago, and it would mean a lot to my cousin who is organizing it. In a way it is a tribute to my aunt and uncle, who supported me when I was in grad school with two little toddlers.  My husband will have other reasons to visit this campus abroad and doesn't have an urgent reason to go to this event, other than to mark the anniversary. We've been to Ireland once, we have only limited time with our college students home for the summer, we are taking other trips, and we have some more home renovations taking place (new windows and green roof on the sun room). I'm teaching a new class in the fall and need to prep. The reunion is also an opportunity to see my other aunt and uncle, whom I love and don't see often.  

But who knows what the future will bring? The next time my husband needs to go to Ireland it may be much more difficult to make arrangements between child care, time off work, and potentially parent care.  Although the next time he needs to go could more convenient.  He also has other campuses abroad to tend to.

Who knows what the future will bring for my family? This reunion could be an opportunity to strengthen ties that have been weakened, even between my own siblings.  

I know I am way overthinking this decision, as I tend to do many decisions these days. I can't commit to chairs for the basement or furniture for the sun room, for goodness sakes. Sometimes I think I might have developed executive processing disorder, or maybe it is decision fatigue. Maybe I need a better decision tree/rubric that provides a set of questions related to values and priorities that I could use to make these kinds of decisions.

For example, what values are at play in this decision?  The reunion satisfies the value I place on time with family and strengthening relationships. 

Going to Ireland satisfies the value I place on time with my husband sharing experiences that strengthen our relationship. I also value educational experiences including travel, supporting the arts, and experiencing other cultures.  This would be a budget trip to Ireland because we would just have to buy my ticket and some meals. 

However, I also see some value in simplifying the rest of our summer, which is off to a busy start. My environmental side and my frugal side see some value to staying local, as does the side of me which values the time to complete projects, including those home projects and research and study and writing that are disrupted by planning, packing, and unpacking for trips. 

Is this trip to Ireland a once in a lifetime opportunity? No. Is the family reunion? No. Could they both be? Yes. We could all die tomorrow.  And now I've just spent another hour of my finite life internally debating this decision, time which needs to be spent on other things, and I'm not sure writing about this has made my mind any clearer, as I was hoping. Any thoughts? 

An image of Kylemore Abbey from Wikipedia

Blooming

 Although a frost or a freeze is called for this weekend, spring is in full bloom in this part of the country. Last weekend, I channeled my latent DIY spirit and made some cedar raised beds to put on the side of the house for a vegetable/cut flower garden. My husband cut the boards from cedar fence rails, and I got our 12 year old to help me screw them into place. (I'm hoping to keep her involved in the garden project.) Then we stapled some weed barrier to the bottom - a very simple structure, but it always feels good to make something yourself. The biggest expense is the cost of the dirt, because the weed barrier was from Goodwill and the cedar planks were only $4 apiece. I did fill about half of the bottom with cuttings from our decorative grasses and some other yard waste, but I wish I had kept a bag of leaves from the fall for compost. Something to plan for next year!

 The challenge is going to be sunlight. I'm pretty sure plants will struggle in this location because it is in full shade for most of the day, but there aren't too many other places a vegetable garden can go in our yard. We have various islands of shrubbery in the front and just a small patch of grass in the back. It has been interesting to see what is coming up. More daffodils that I anticipated and a few tulips that I didn't plant in addition to some that I had planted have bloomed. The tulips I planted were the ones dug up by the university after they were finished blooming on campus. These leftover bulbs are given away to faculty and staff. About half of them bloomed, while some of the others sent up leaves but no bud, and a few of the buds were gnawed by the rabbits before they bloomed. At any rate, each bloom was a source of delight. 

Since we didn't see the house in the spring last year, the blooming season has been more exciting than normal. First we had some oriental spice viburnums burst into bloom. They aren't showy but they smell intoxicating. There is a twiggy redbud in the corner of the yard that I'm sure is a volunteer, but I don't plan to dig it up.  We have one sad forsythia bush - I bought another on the clearance rack last week to place near the remains of the one that did bloom a little. 

Then we were pleased to see a dwarf crabapple in the back - could be something else, but the flowers look like a crabapple. Despite having some sort of black fungus, the ornamental plum put out a full show, but a storm knocked these flowers down shortly after they bloomed. The neighbor's magnolia and big old crabapple weathered the storm much better, and they are close enough to our patio that we can enjoy their perfume.  

Now the dogwoods are blooming, and the hydrangeas are leafing out. The peonies have buds - I hope they hold off from blooming for 2 weeks so they are showy for graduation weekend. There is another shrub with buds -  maybe a weigelia? - and one that looks like a lilac cultivar.  A new lilac is on my wishlist, as is a bleeding heart.  The lily of the valley are flourishing, making the backyard smells like a parfumerie. I discovered a few old fashioned forget-me-nots, which I didn't photograph, but was thrilled to see. The combination of those three shade loving spring beauties always reminds me of the courtyard garden in the little stone house where I lived for my first seven years.  How persistent are our aesthetic inclinations toward our first memories of loveliness!

I'm hoping Sunday it will warm up enough to plant some of the garden boxes. I think there are some old storm windows and doors in the attic that I could place on top to make a sort of cold frame, but a friend told me Mother's Day was planting day around here, when danger of frost declines dramatically. I won't ever forget, though, how we had snow on my birthday, May 24th, when we lived north of Chicago.  That was years ago, but with wild weather patterns lately, anything feels possible.  

And I'm hopeful anything might possibly grow in my shady garden boxes! We'll shall see.

The koi and the water plants survived the winter. Some amorous toads visited for a few days, and now we have hundreds of tadpoles as well. 

An iris has bloomed, somewhat dwarfish, to keep St. Fiacre company. Despite losing his head a few years ago, this little statue has accompanied us on several moves.

Fancy tulips planted by the previous owners.

Some late narcissus under the dogwood. The hostas are in full leaf now, too. I was hopeful our dogwood would be pink, but the white is pretty.

My rabbit chaser

Some Solomon's seal

The white tulips from campus. They grow tall and sturdy, while the fancy pinks have drooping stems - maybe from the weight of the multiflora petals?

Spring Celebrations

 April is a joyful month around here. Not only are the spring bulbs bursting into color and the flowering trees showering the ground with pale petals and filling the air with sweet fragrances, but our table is laden with good things to eat as we celebrate Easter and birthdays, and our days are full of happy conversations and sunny walks ... or starry at night ...or gray and rainy, as is also often the case!

After our celebration of Easter with the family, so much closer now that visiting isn't an "Event" but a get-together, we celebrated my daughter's and my husband's birthdays with the neighbors who have 2 April birthdays in their house, too.  They like to joke that April is the best birthday month, and it is true that many people I love are born in April. But I also love my February, March, May, June, July, and September birthday havers. And those born in October, November and December.  I believe the month of January and August are also awesome months for birthdays, because I know a couple wonderful people born in those months, also.

This year our birthday celebrations were understated since they fell so close to Easter.  The week after Easter was also Spring Break. My daughter decided against having a party since so many friends were going to be on vacation. We stayed an extra day at my parents' farm to spend time with the cousins and niece/grandbaby. Tuesday  we both got our hair cut at the salon, which was a treat, but Wednesday, her actual birthday, was pretty quiet and dull. We took a long walk, and her brother came over for dinner and to eat eclair dessert, a family favorite made with Cool Whip and pudding mix, graham crackers, and a chocolate frosting. It's best made a day ahead, and fortunately we had time to let the pudding mix soften the graham crackers. But she was little glum on her birthday - getting sweet notes and cards from her friends in Texas may have amplified her sadness rather than alleviated it because she was reminded of how much she missed them.  She has made some friends at her new school, but friendship that is kinship takes more time. 

Although Wednesday was a dull day, we made up for it on Thursday. I had hemmed and hawed about what to do for this 12th birthday, since she didn't want a party. A trip to Chicago for museums and shopping had been on my mind as an activity for spring break, but I ended up committing to adding a special event to make the trip even more special - last minute tickets to Hamilton. So the birthday celebration was a triple treat: We took the train to and from Chicago to visit, by her request, the Shedd Aquarium, to shop at the American Girl store, and to take in Hamilton.  

The trip and the show were phenomenal! We already loved the story and music from having watched the PBS version.  But the live performance, even without the original Broadway cast, was transporting. l could hardly tell a difference! Of course, I'm no expert, and there is a part of me that thinks perhaps there SHOULD be a difference.  To be fair, all the actors were incredibly talented, and the actors who portrayed George Washington and Angelica Skylar especially stood out because they had their own sound. The actor who played Hamilton injected some different energy and didn't sound exactly like Lin-Manuel Miranda, but it is a bit uncanny how similar Elizabeth Skylar and King George and Lafayette were to the original cast.  Regardless, the production is genius.  The lyrics blow me away every time, and even though I feel a catch in my throat hearing "Quiet Uptown" on the radio, hearing it in person brought on the tears. 

That was the highlight of spring break, for sure.  Since our return train didn't pull into the South Bend station until 2:30 am, Friday was a lazy sleep-in + errands day.  LK had horse back riding lessons and a play date on Saturday, and then we celebrated April birthdays with the neighbors on Sunday, which was a lot of fun.  Their son just turned 4, so our contribution to the dinner was a dump truck cake - a frosted cake shaped like a truck dumping fruit out of the back.  Then Monday was my husband's birthday, which we celebrated again with more treats - cheesecake this time - and a tenderloin dinner with our son. A part of me wished I had planned a little better for our time off, but we ended up making some lifetime memories. 

Train travel is my favorite! Love watching the landscape from the window.

Chicago!

At the Shedd Aquarium

Starfish touch tank. Visiting the aquarium brought back so many memories of our life in Guam.

The belugas are the highlight of the Shedd

Mother and baby beluga

Along the lakeshore - not quite warm enough yet for the trees to burst into bloom, but warm enough for short sleeves!

Another portrait in the Bean at Millennium park

Which doll do you like best?

Walking by Italian Village, scene of one of our early fancy dinner dates.

Show time!

Fancy ice cream after the show

Behind the dinosaur museum is a prairie conservation nature preserve, complete with a herd of bison.

The nature preserve is along the continental divide. South Bend doesn't have much elevation - this is one of the highest spots.

At the dinosaur museum

A tall 12 year old!

Alleluia! Christ is Risen! Happy Easter!

 A glorious Friday after Easter! Easter morning's rising sun shone gold and pink on a green and blue spring day, heralding the Risen Son. A day to celebrate and rejoice!

How grateful I am to be reminded again and again of my dependence on the Lord.  Yet again I have limped through Lent only to be reminded of the goodness of grace given even when undeserved. 

Who can ever be worthy of a sunny spring day? The beauty of ephemeral wildflowers never fails to delight. The mystery of Resurrection is annually reenacted in the woods and on the altar, along the waterways and roads, and in our hearts. A liturgical year tied to the seasons is part of God's wisdom, and although we well know that it is not spring on the other side of the globe, there is still the rejoicing at a rainbow or a flowers during the rainy season to remind us that darkness and clouds are necessary for joy. Failure is necessary for success. Sleep precedes rising. Labor pains precede birth. Death accompanies birth as generations pass on; the new generation consoles the old as they see the perpetuation of love in their offspring. 

We spent our Easter celebration at my parents' farm with four generations. Although I would have loved to stay for the liturgies at our parish or on campus because I knew a few people, including one of my students, who were receiving sacraments at the Easter Vigil Mass, we decided to spend the weekend with family, which was just as special. 

Much of our conversation over the weekend centered on the revival happening in the Church. My daughter said she heard at Easter Sunday Mass that over a million people were received into the church this Easter.  My daughter-in-law attended the Vigil to celebrate a family member's confirmation, along with 99 others. There were 79 catechumens welcomed at the Vigil on campus. I heard it lasted over three hours. Everywhere the same story is being told: young people, and older ones, are returning to the faith. 

Some thoughts on causes for these conversions: a desire for meaning, for belonging, for grace, for something real, for truth, for beauty... One student of mine suggested desire for identity and culture at the root of this seeking for God - or being called by Him. Another student said that since Covid people have wanted community. Perhaps as creation is threatened, people are turning to a Creator.  Perhaps AI may be driving people to seek substance, incarnation, presence. Perhaps people are asking what makes them human and finding God. Perhaps people are recognizing that we are more than just the material of our bodies, that our capacities to love and to forgive and to imagine and to create are the ways we are images of God. That love exists suggest a God who loves. That we have free will means we need a Savior.  The Gospel story continues to call to the world to repent and begin again. The sacrificial love of Christ requires a response.  Or perhaps the Holy Spirit is working in the world in ways beyond our understanding. Whatever the cause of this renewal, it's a reason to hope. 

In between feasting, hunting eggs, and indulging in all of the good things we had fasted from for the previous 40+ days, we also admired wildflowers while on a couple short hikes in the woods and reveled in the adorableness of our granddaughter, who reminded us of the gift of life and the blessing of simple pleasures - sunshine, flowers, nourishment, and trust in the goodness of the world. Alleluia!

Spring Beauties find life on a fallen tree

Hepatica

Home for many life forms

Meandering through the mayapples

This woods is one of few old growth forests in Indiana. 

Trillium everywhere

 

Redbuds in bloom

Violets and phlox

Goldenwort

Blue skies and cartwheels on Easter Monday

Curls

On teaching writing and rhetoric

Today I am working on a revised syllabus for my rhetoric and public speaking course. I had to make some revisions because 1. I didn't schedule enough time for speech-giving, 2. I scheduled classes for both Martin Luther King Day and Easter Monday, which are both days off for students, and 3. We had a snow day cancellation. That means we got 2 weeks behind. A bit embarrassing, but not irremediable. We'll present final speeches during finals week - the final is a reflection essay that they can easily finish in an hour.  So we can gain at least one hour back because of that mistake. And I can hurry along the speeches - one class is smaller, so they can gain another hour back simply by staying on time for their speeches. And finally, I can cut information about crafting presentations because they use templates anyway - and probably AI...

I have been thinking quite a bit about what this course should look like going forward.  Although a public speaking course, it draws on much of what I taught as a composition teacher. It takes Aristotle's Art of Rhetoric as its text, so it is a course in classical rhetoric, as well as in argumentation with a tiny bit of formal logic thrown in and some overview of rhetorical devices and stylistic flourishes. It is also a course in public discourse about people, ideas, justice, events, issues, etc. 

 At its core, it should really be a course in being human.  What I want this course to be is an opportunity for students to test out ideas, to practice defending their position on certain issues, and to work on their ability to express their ideas lucidly, forcefully, factually, aesthetically, ethically, logically, compassionately, etc., etc. This is the part of the class I need to work on. To that end, I am cancelling some reading/discussion one day and giving more time to class debate. And I'm trying to craft a way to encourage interaction with some Nobel Prize speeches and Wendell Berry's Jefferson lecture, and Chimamanda Adichie's TED talk on "The Dangers of a Single Story."  I want students to craft responses to these in class discussion - do these words mean anything to them - challenging or encouraging? But I wish I had more time in class for reading them closely. 

Next fall when I teach this class again, I want to spend less time reading Aristotle's Rhetoric, even though I enjoy this text more each time I go through it. The first read through isn't easy, although Aristotle purports to cover his ideas systematically. And he does! - it just takes a minute to find that system. It's basically this: Here are the 3 basic types of speeches, and here are the 3 basic types of proofs or appeals. Within each of those, we find further types of proofs and descriptions of character that apply to both the speaker and the audience. We learn about the kind of language and the kinds of emotions that can be appealed to in order to gain a connection and understanding. Then Aristotle gives us a third section of the book dedicated to delivery, language or style, and arrangement. This is the clearest section because it is so practical. 

I'm not sure I need to require my students to read the whole text, although it is not long. What I need to do is more pairing of Aristotle and contemporary speeches. Or perhaps read it backwards - start with the practical to win trust ... Or just make selections of the key parts. He does repeat himself.  

What my approach has looked like:

15 or so pages of reading before each class during the Aristotle unit, followed by analysis of speeches or writing speeches, some video clips that model a concept, short assignments as scaffolding for larger ones - like write a hook and thesis statement in class, voice exercises, a logic "workshop" and a rhetorical device hunt through MLK, Jr's "I have a dream" and the Gettysburg Address. I need to have them practice writing some "sound bites" or rhetorical expressions that they can use in their next speeches. I want to incorporate small group discussion - having students lead the questioning. This means they need to read and prepare before class. 

One challenge is combatting the use of AI. Since a lot of the grade for this class is based on their oral presentations, AI is not quite as much of a challenge, but I noticed last semester that students must have submitted their study guides to AI to answer because some of their answers on the quizzes were similar - but wrong. They would be close to what I was looking for, but using different terms or expressions that what is present in our text. Maybe they were just using a different translation, but I suspect they asked AI for the study guide answers, instead of looking to their texts. 

I struggle not to have a doomsday attitude about AI, but it is just too prevalent.  I hate that it is in my gmail inbox without my permission summarizing my emails.  I hate that the first response to internet searches is an AI response that often falls short. I hate that students think it is easier to give their homework to AI to finish rather than value the process of learning. And then there are surveillance and autonomous weapons concerns that no longer are the things of science fiction.  Meanwhile, I heard a clip on the radio a couple days ago about genome editing currently occurring. I'm guessing AI is involved in some way. Not hard to imagine a nefarious AI editing to make humans even more willing to turn over their brains to computers...

Which is why learning to communicate and to persuade others is an important human skill. The why is just is important, if not more, than the how.  My goal is to keep turning the conversation back to the question of what it means to be human: to reason, to feel, to admire and appreciate, to take responsibility, to love.

Snapshots of life and the music of Purgatory

 As with all things, the sun rises, the sun sets, disappointments fade, and we move on to the next thing.  This week started with some difficult conversations, but ended with a delightful visit from our granddaughter and a celebration of our oldest son's birthday.  He has reached the age where I'm a little astounded to say that I have a son who is 29. Since people here know me as the mother of an 11 year old, I sometimes want to pull out a family photo and say, "Look, there are others!" 

Our celebration was a little muted because of the terrible flu going around. Our daughter-in-law ended up staying home with it, and the dinner party we'd planned was smaller both because of flu and because some of their friends had week-old twins a little earlier than expected.  The dad came by to say happy birthday. I ordered them a copy of Everywhere Babies by Susan Meyers and Seven Silly Eaters by Mary Ann Hoberman, since they have a two and a four year old at home. 

How many different lives do we live? Each day a new birthing and dying. 

On the other end, another friend has lost a parent.  This is the season we are in now - losing parents, gaining grandchildren.  We are in the midst of planning visits to our own parents in the next month or so.  

Sunday afternoon, I drove a couple hours south to meet up with my high school track coach and one of the runners from my club track team that I still keep in touch with. It was a great visit reliving glory days, and although it meant a lot of time in the car, it reminded me of how wonderful it is to stay connected with these friends from the past.  My track coach was a middle school history teacher and then a high school botany teacher and coached for decades. Although now in his 80s, he still talks about continuing to coach, but it is probably wishful thinking. His wife died not long ago and her care required all of his time and attention for several years. He remembers an astounding amount of detail about the past. His comments about wanting to coach reminded me of the need to have purpose and meaning even in your ninth decade.

These days I run rarely in between aches and pains in my feet and knees, although I've made it to the gym more often. For Lent, I've been trying to be on time and to be considerate of my husband by going to bed earlier. Although I have regularly fallen short in this practice, I have noticed that going to bed early results in better sleep as all the studies say. 

Since I'm not reading anything too exciting right now, this is easier to do. For my book club, we are reading Dante's Purgatorio, which is timely for Lent. What sin, what disordered love, keeps me from Paradise? So many! Those suffering from accedia and from pride are the two that seem most familiar. I've enjoyed revisiting Dante again after many years, through the Mark Musa translation (although I tried listening to a Librivox recording of the Longfellow translation on Sunday during my drive - hard to stay attentive to!) I've noticed more strikingly this time, the curious lack of references to Christ but the abudance of reference to myths and artistic representations of people of virtue, as well as the references to songs as the souls progress.  I looked up a few:

When the souls reach the gates of Purgatory they sing the "Te Deum":

And the prideful sing Beati paupere:

While some of the souls blind to the gospel hear Lucis ante:

Summae Deus clementiae is the hymn of the lustful, which I couldn't find, but here is Beati mundo corde - Blessed are the pure of heart - another verse they sing:

And just as Virgil departs, the souls sing Venite benedicti Patris mei, in the 27th canto as they leave the circle of the lustful.

I'll close with that, although perhaps I should draw the connection between the purgations of Lent, and opportunities to offer up the illness and aging in this world for forgiveness in the next. I hope to make more notes on reading Dante at some point. 

Recent Watching

My daughter and I are feeling a little bereft this Sunday - there are no more episodes of All Creatures Great and Small to look forward to.  The series has warmed our hearts for the past four years, and every time a new season has been released, we look forward to watching it on Sunday evenings. It's a lovely end to the weekend/beginning of a new week, and an unqualified positive family viewing experience. I can't think of a single episode where I've felt I had to filter anything.  A few episodes have caused tears when an animal has died or when something sad has happened related to the war, but primarily we are lifted up by the warmth of the family connections, the wholesomeness of caring for animals, and the beauty of the Yorkshire Dales. It's been a bonding experience for my daughter and me, even though her siblings don't all watch along with us and are annoyed when they call for their Sunday check in, and we are occupied watching the show. 

****Spoiler alert!  ********

  

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10590066/mediaviewer/rm763092738/

The last episode of season 5 had the feel of a finale.  There are a few loose ends, but although we've been rooting for Tristan and Maggie and Mrs. Hall and Siegfried to acknowledge they have feelings for each other, it's really more appropriate for the season to have ended the way it did.  Love doesn't always end in marriage, and fondness might be a better word for the affection between Mrs. Hall and Siegfried.  They need each other because they don't have someone else, and after years of sharing a home, it's no wonder they care deeply for each other. But I admire the show's writers for showing restraint.  While the show may be dismissed as sentimental, at least it doesn't descend into excess romantic fodder with an unlikely and inappropriate love affair.  I could be wrong and there might be another season in which the vet and the housekeeper actually are able to transcend their class and educational differences, but I'm all for a bittersweet restraint.  

The drama between Tristan and Maggie is a little different. I have a hard time believing in the unlikely Tristan - Charlotte Beauvoir love affair.  Charlotte is from a much more privileged background, and although in a moment of youthful rebellion and idealism, she ran off from home to be a part of the war effort, she may mature into an appreciation for her station.  And while Tristan has matured because of his experiences, he also is wounded emotionally by them and by survivor's guilt.  For now Charlotte seems remarkably understanding, and remarkably well-adjusted to simple pleasures like dining at Skedale House for the holidays.  Does she love Tristan enough to settle in there or will Tristan be able to class up to her father's house?  Or will he return to his love for Maggie?  Maggie didn't choose Tristan the first time she married, and even though Arthur has apparently died (or is he just MIA assumed dead?), she probably isn't in a hurry to remarry (although widows with small children might be excused from mourning for a long time). These are the slight dramas that keep viewers returning week after week - beyond just the simple joy of imaginatively stepping into life in the countryside of Northern England for a minute.  Someday I'd like to visit. Maybe mother-daughter trip is in our future.  Or at least a read along from the books to keep the story alive ...

*****

 

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5622316/mediaviewer/rm388236289/

Our other viewing this Lent has been The Chosen. We started the series in Advent, and just finished the first 3 seasons.  It's short enough to watch an episode on a Wednesday or Thursday, although I don't prefer weeknight TV.  After a slow start, we've been drawn into the series, but I have a few reservations about it.  I have mixed emotions about my daughter watching it before the Bible stories are deep in her psyche because I'd prefer her to have her own imaginative image of Jesus and his disciples and to be able to tell when the creators of the show are filling in gaps in the story and when they are drawing straight from Scripture.  Sometimes it's easy to tell because the characters break into contemporary idioms and talk like they are well-versed in contemporary communication skills - for instance, the disciples and the women have moments when they talk about feelings that make me feel like I'm seeing an enactment of some therapists recommendation for how to have difficult conversations with those you love, like when Tamar and Mary Magdalene share about their past.  The character of Peter is played in a much different way than I imagine him, and some of the scenes between him and his wife Eden are a bit cringy.  I like the character Zebedee, father of James and John, and I like the way Elizabeth and Zachariah were portrayed in the first episode of season 4, which we just watched.  This episode is about the death of John the Baptist and was probably one of my least favorite.  John the Baptist is portrayed as something of a looney, and his hair and beard look too much like a wig.  Salome's dance is weird and erotic, and while it probably was erotic, was it as weird as this one? The actress who plays Salome is super muscly and not particularly demur.  It's an odd scene. And then the death of John the Baptist is almost laughable. He is brought into the executioner's room and just calmly strokes the chopping block. He engages in conversation with the Roman executioner who is polishing the silver platter for his head about wedding feasts, and the exchange ends with John saying "You wouldn't get it" to the executioner about the image of a wedding feast.  These are John's "last words" that the Roman documenting the execution writes down.  Odd choice of words to give to John. 

The show also presents some events out of sequence.  The death of John the Baptist in the Gospel of Matthew occurs before the feeding of the 5000 and Jesus walking on the water, but the show reverses these events.  It leaves out the disciples burying the body of John the Baptist, and it has someone else telling Jesus, not the disciples. Why would the writers reverse these episodes from both Matthew's and Mark's gospels? And why give John such a ridiculous thing to say for his last words? 

I can overlook the addition of imagined events in the lives of the disciples and the contemporary conversations, as well as the sometimes awkward scenes that perhaps weren't rehearsed as much as they could have been, but I am bothered by the reworking of the Gospels to fit some story line that really doesn't need to be reordered for the purposes of the show, to my mind. I assume the writers consult with historians and theologians as they create the timeline and story arc for this dramatization, but this shift seems unnecessary.  At the very least, it does provide opportunity for conversation about the events of the Bible, and sometimes sends us to Scripture to fact check, which I'm sure is one of the goals of the creators, who film most episodes in Midlothian, Texas, as a stand-in for Israel. While we were living in Texas, I never wondered if the landscape were similar to the Middle East, in the way I did in California with its olive groves and other Mediterranean climate similarities, but perhaps I should have!