Keep a commonplace book.

While in college, my professors required us to keep commonplace/idea books.  It was more than a book of quotes, it was an observation/sketch/quote/scrapbook.  Anyway, this morning I was reading through one and found this quote from when I went to have Thanksgiving with my brother one year.  At Thanksgiving dinner, a few people were already planning Christmas dinner.  And Ms. Loraine said,

“Janine, you gonna go and celebrate the Lord’s birth with canned food?  Naaw–I raised you better than that.”

Help! Murder! Police!

My wife fell in the grease!

I laughed so hard

I fell in the lard

Help!  Murder!  Police!

Have you heard that rhyme before?  My mom chants it–I don’t know in what kinds of situations, because she’s never witnessed a murder.

I digress.  This morning I was heading to the gym at 4:45 a.m., and as I approached the front door, it was standing wide open.  I was freaked out because I hadn’t slept well–which happens to me about once ever 5 years.  I put the two omens together and figured there was a perpetrator in my house.  My dad was at work, so my mom and I were alone. 

Before grabbing my weapon of choice (a red patent-leather spike high heel), I asked Mom if she had left the door open last night to let in fresh air or something.  After all, I didn’t want to lose my head in the possible noncrisis.  She declined.  I gave her a quick briefing of the situation. 

She sat straight up in bed and hurriedly whispered, “Stay right here. I’ll call the sherriff.”  I wondered if that was necessary, but you can’t be too cautious these days.  I held the phone when mom began to get dressed.  The dispatcher informed me that the deputy was at the house.  When instructed, I should go meet him at the front door.  She double checked, “Now, everyone that lives in your house is in that back bedroom with you, right?”

I quickly explained that my dad lived here, but there was no way he would be at home.  He wouldn’t be home until 7 or 8.  I double checked with Mom, “You don’t think Dad came home early, do you?”

Mom said she would call him.  She picked up her cell to call, right when the dispatcher told me to go to the front door.  As I approached the front door, I hear my dad’s cell phone ring.  I thought, I hope he just forgot that on the charger last night.  Then I heard Otis’s voice:  “hello?  …in the family room.”

My words rushed to save my dad’s life from the ready hand gun in the deputy’s hand.  “That’s my dad!  It’s okay!  It’s just my dad!” 

The deputy was rounding the corner of the kitchen as my dad was, and the man of the law shined his flashlight in my dad’s face.  “Is that your dad?”  I quickly assured him it was. 

All this while, my father had no clue why a deputy with a gun was at our house, let alone shining a flashlight in his face!  Poor thing. 

As the deputy and I walked outside (remember, I’m on my way to the gym), two other sherriff cars were there with lights flashing.  We let them no there is no actual perpetrator.  As I’m walking to my car, two more pull up.  Awesome. 

Five sherriff’s cars surrounding my house at 5:00 a.m.  What a fabulous way to start the day!

Raw! Raw! Rhetoric!

Right after I read this honest struggle on a blog and this concocted idea of rhetoric meets theology in a pamphlet, I wanted to say something.  And what I had to say was too long for a comment on a blog, so I thought I’d take up my blogspace, and not hers.  

I read a pamphlet “Quantum Faith”—I should send it to you.  Both got me thinking about rhetorical theory again.  That pamphlet has to do with the creative power of our words.  Annette Capps puts a whole lot of stock in our words, indicating that our faith actually comes from the words we utter.  (I know, you are probably thinking, “Whoah!  What happened to this?”)  She purports an extreme creative and changing power in our words.  (She also begins with a very different theology than I.)  However, I realized, among other things, that she was putting too much faith in words and not enough faith in God’s Word or Christ Himself. 

And when I think of how often rhetoric is attacked because it seems superfluous or even obscuring to the truth, I want to ask the assailants of rhetoric, “Does it have to be truth or beauty?” and “Are you considering rhetoric to be an end-all panacea for bad ideas?”

If you want to dress in rhetorical garb, I think the fabric has to be beautifully woven with strings of truth that we are able to spin from the wool of the Word and the world around us.  The speaker, not the idea, wears the garment.  The options a rhetor chooses to dress in might be merely frizzles (what a fifth grader called lace on my dress one dayJ) or starched truth that lets her barely move.  Are those the only two options in the closet? 

I hope not.  But, that means we cannot go to Charlotte Rousse’s rhetorical boutique, we will have to go back past the days of making our own clothes, to learning how to weave fabric.  If we can genuinely offer a fabby, veritable option to those around us, we can in a sense set a trend.  A trend, not of a golden mean, but a trend that makes everyone say, “Where did you get that fabby dress?”  And then we can say, “Oh, I made it!  My father me gave me the materials, and this family showed me how to make it.”

Now, what more could you ask for?  More options?  Good idea.  Paul wasn’t always concerned with looking dapper.  Some aren’t.  That’s okay.  Some ladies would rather wear 

;

I’d rather wear . 

Sometimes I need to wear if I have to get some place quickly, or  

if I’ll be getting lots of sand in my shoes, or

if I am going on a field trip through the city to look at the historic churches in the area.    I’m just saying there should be options.  Just like there should be rhetorical options.  Sometimes the most appropriate thing to say is grandiosely concise and in your face.  Sometimes the most appropriate thing to say is genuinely poetic.  Sometimes jovially entertaining.  Sometimes gently stretching.  Sometimes profoundly searching.  You get the idea.  It takes the discretion of knowing which words match which audience, and which declarations clash with which situations. 

Like so much in this world, rhetoric is not black and white, right or wrong, to be implemented today or dismissed forever.  I love to be a pendulum swinger and go to an extreme.  And maybe this is an extreme.  But in all of this, studying to get to the point of having all these options in your rhetorical closet and the style-sense to be able to put it together creates the opportunity for someone to ask where you got your outfit.  …And that enables us to share the panacea of the gospel, instead of calling the rhetorical What Not to Wear crew.

Flickr-ed out

Okay, so I did not follow directions.  I’ll post more pictures next month for you to see. 

*Note*  On flickr, You can’t recover any of your monthly allowance by deleting photos. 

Alice in Wonderland

 Click on the cast picture to go to the rest!

I’ll be adding some more pictures, so check again tomorrow!

Spring Fever and Bookworm Stew

I am VERY excited about the prospects of summer.  Today I’m making the recipe for my summer bookworm stew.  I’m trying to get 30 ingredients.  We’ll see how it goes.  I’ll be reading a combination of adult literature and literature that I can recommend to my students (both 5th graders and rhetoric students).

 So, I’m compiling a list.  I welcome suggestions.  Please let me know your favorites. 

1. Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton
2. His Excellency by Joseph Ellis
3. Confederacy of Duncesby John Kennedy Toole
4. The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain
5. The Shakespeare Stealerby Gary Blackwood
6. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
7. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
8. Gileadby Marilynne Robinson
9. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
10. God Grew Tired of Usby John Bul Dau and Michael Sweeney
11. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
12. Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
13. Snow Fallingon Cedars by David Guterson
14. The War of Artby Steven Pressfield
15. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Geniusby David Eggers
16. Poetry of Sylvia Plath
17. Wise Bloodby Flannery O’Connor
18. The Lovely Bonesby Alice Sebold
19. Everything is Illuminatedby Jonathan Safran Foer
20. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Closeby J.S. Foer

For now, that’s what I have on the agenda.  As you can see, I’m lacking some good biographies and non-fiction.  Specifically, if anybody has a big idea for historical books (preferably early American–up to 1812), I’d love to hear them.  I need 10 more.  Help me add to my list!