Just a Reminder

Most of my blogging these days is happening at my Rome blog.

Quote of the Day

From Marcus Zusak's The Book Thief:

She said it out loud, the words distributed into a room that was full of cold air and books. Books everywhere! Each wall was armed with overcrowded yet immaculate shelving. It was barely possible to see the paintwork. There were all different styles and sizes of lettering on the spines of the black, the red, the gray, the every-colored books. It was one of the most beautiful things Liesel Meminger had ever seen.

With wonder, she smiled.

That such a room existed!

Even when she tried to wipe the smile away with her forearm, she realized instantly that it was a pointless exercise. She could feel the eyes of the woman traveling her body, and when she looked at her, they had rested on her face.

There was more silence than she ever thought possible. It extended like an elastic, dying to break. The girl broke it.

"Can I?"

The two words stood among acres and acres of vacant, wooden-floored land. The books were miles away.

The woman nodded.

Yes, you can.

Sincerity vs. Fidelity

I'm slowly working my way through Thomas Sowell's A Conflict of Visions:  Ideological Origins of Political Struggles.  Sowell writes to explain and describe the ramifications of the conflict of two visions:  constrained and unconstrained.  He defines a vision as "our sense of how the world works", and some of us might call that worldview.  I will attempt to briefly show the difference between the two visions, but considering the brilliant Thomas Sowell takes at least one book to do it, it will be a poor attempt.

How the two visions view the nature of man is key to understanding them.  Someone with what Sowell calls a constrained vision sees the nature of man as a fact of life, something we have to make the best of and work with because it's indeed our nature.  You might say we're constrained by that nature.  Someone with an unconstrained vision believes man has unlimited potential and can be improved.  He is unconstrained by human nature.

You'll need to read Sowell to see how all of that plays out, and I'm still in the process of that.  But in this post I want to address an especially fascinating ramification of the conflict of these two visions.  Sowell contends that those with an unconstrained vision value sincerity as the highest virtue.  Surely you know people who think like this:  any idea is valid as long is it's sincerely held.  Someone with a constrained vision, however, hold fidelity to one's duty as "morally central".  Sowell:

There, within the sphere of his competence, the individual can make the greatest contribution to the social good by serving the great systemic process which decides the actual outcomes.

And here's the passage I marked up in my copy:

In the constrained vision, the businessman's moral duty is fidelity to the stockholders, who have entrusted their savings to him, not sincere pursuit of the public good through charitable donations or investment or hiring decisions which compromise that trust. Similarly, the judge's moral duty is to faithfully carry out the law he was sworn to uphold, not sincerely change that law to produce better results as he sees them. Within this vision, a scholar's moral duty is to faithfully promote the intellectual process among his students and readers, not lead them to specific conclusions he sincerely believes to be best for society. For similar reasons, advocacy journalism or liberation theology are also anathema to those with the constrained vision, since both are seen as misuses of entrusted roles.

In the preface, Sowell writes that the purpose of his book isn't to determine the validity of either vision, and that he does that in other books. I've read enough of his work to know which vision is his, and it didn't take me long to determine which vision is mine.  Still, it's interesting to think of how all of this plays out in real life.  How often have you seen a businessman distracted by "sincere pursuit of the public good through charitable donations or investment or hiring decisions" so much so that his business, his duty, fails?  The news is filled almost daily with examples of judges trying to change laws out of a "sincere" desire to improve society.  College campuses are awash in professors who forsake their duty "to promote the intellectual process" in their sincere desire to effect change.

And this is especially apropos of the current political climate:

Sincerity is so central to the unconstrained vision that it is not readily conceded to adversaries, who are often depicted as apologists, if not venal. It is not uncommon in this tradition to find references to their adversaries' "real" reasons, which must be "unmasked". Even where sincerity is conceded to adversaries, it is often accompanied by references to those adversaries' "blindness," "prejudice," or narrow inability to transcend the status quo."

Might that be what Charles Krauthammer is writing about here?

As I said, I'm slowly working through this book.  I'd love to hear your thoughts.

"Can we all use a little common sense?"

I'm liking Governor Christie more and more:

Quote of the Day

From Church History in Plain Language:

Man needs salvation not because he is imprisoned in a body but because he willfully chooses his own way rather than God's way. Man's evil is not in his body; it is in his affections. He loves the wrong things.

Quote of the Day

From Bruce L. Shelley's Church History in Plain Language:

Church history shows us that Christian theology is not primarily a philosophical system invented by men in the quiet of an academic study. Doctrines were hammered out by men who were on the work crew of the church. Every plank in the platform of orthodoxy was laid because some heresy had arisen that threatened to change the nature of Christianity and to destroy its central faith.

Homeschool Prep

This year I'm switching over to Tapestry of Grace for our history, literature, and theology study.  PalmGirl will be a junior this year, and we're using Year 2 (Fall of Rome through the birth of the U.S.) because that's our next time period to study.  We've used Omnibus for the past four years, but their production schedule no longer works for us.

The prep for Tapestry (TOG) is overwhelming, and it is very hard to get a handle on their website and all the resources it includes.  But as I've spent more time on it the past few days, I finally feel the fog lifting.  I'm very excited about what we'll study this year, and I'm especially excited that we're in Rome and can see much of the history up close and personal.  I've ordered a few supplements from The Teaching Company (They've had some fantastic sales recently!  Be sure to like them on Facebook for even better deals.) and I look forward to digging into those.

TOG encourages having your student (PalmGirl is in the rhetoric stage) review some history during the summer, and one of the resources they suggest is Bruce L. Shelley's Church History in Plain Language.  I read several chapters yesterday, and WOW, I'm excited about this subject, the book, and learning more.
It doesn't hurt that I'm reading this book in the land where so much church history has happened.  As I read it, I'll be posting some quotes and some thoughts on this resource.  (Another book on church history that I recommend is Sketches from Church History.)

I'll leave you with a quote from Church History in Plain Language:

...the church underscored the importance of history for the Christian faith. Christianity is a historical religion not just in the sense that it comes from the past or that it is associated with a historical character named Jesus. It is historical because it stems from the belief that within history itself, in a particular place, at a particular time, God himself took a hand in human affairs.

Digging History

An ancient Greek ship has been found off the coast of Sicily:

A team of volunteer scuba divers have successfully raised the remains of a ship from the seabed off the coast of Sicily, adding to a growing collection of salvaged wrecks from ancient times.

The wooden wreck, thought to be an Ancient Greek trading vessel, was brought to the surface in a complex operation involving 15 divers and lasting several hours on Thursday morning.

The vessel, located around 2 kilometres away from the southern Sicilian town of Gela and 150 metres from shore, was the latest in a series of underwater finds in this area over recent weeks.

Very, very cool.  Especially this part:

The vessel has provided a unique opportunity to study Greek naval construction techniques thanks to the miraculous discovery of still-intact hemp ropes used to 'sew' together the pine planks in its hull - a technique described in Homer's Iliad.

Miscellany

I've been sharing my thoughts and photos at my other blog, but I've neglected this one.  In an effort to catch up, here's a little of this and a little of that:

~ Our small shipment of goods is being delivered right now!  Yay!  It'll be like Christmas unpacking the boxes because I have no idea what we shipped.  We had to send it back in April and a lot was going on this and since then.  I do know that our homeschool books for this year are somewhere in those boxes, so now I'll have to get busy and figure out Tapestry of Grace.

~ I think I've gotten over the jet lag just in time to do it all over again.  Next week I fly back to Georgia to get PalmBoy settled in at Covenant College.  I can't wait to see him, but I'm already dreading the good-bye.

~ Living in Italy so far hasn't been too hard to adjust too with the exception of the laundry situation.  We have an Italian washer and dryer.  Most Italians don't have dryers, so I guess we are lucky, but I will be hanging as much as possible outside.  An average wash cycle takes an hour and half, and the machine sounds like it's launching into space at any moment.  The dryer also takes a very long time and it gets super hot.

~ I can't get enough pasta here.  Fortunately, we have been doing a lot of walking.

~ I think architects should really take into account how a building will age when he's drawing up a design.  The older, classic style of buildings in Rome, while extremely old, have aged beautifully.  The newer (built in the 1930s and 1940s) buildings in our neighborhood (EUR) are just giant concrete boxes, and they aren't even close to as charming as they age.  When a chunk of concrete falls off, it just looks like disrepair.  When a piece of an ancient building falls off, it's somehow beautiful.

~ Shortly after I started this post, our power went out.  No luck working on the breaker box.  PalmPilot had to call our landlord, and he had an electrician come over.  He did some kind of temporary fix that doesn't fill me with a lot of confidence, but at least everything is working right now.

~ Our bed is an odd size.  It's called a matrimoniale, and it's somewhere between a queen and a king.  That means sheets don't fit well.  I'm off to IKEA to see if I can find some that fit better.

~ We're slowly getting into the Italian habit of late suppers.  Tonight we were at the table at 7:45.

~ Because of the internet and satellite tv, I don't feel too cut off from the U.S., but I really miss my boy.  I can't wait for him to spend his Christmas break here with us.

~ Tonight we decided we should purchase an Italian Bible and try to read a few verses in it daily.

~ The other American students (there are 7 plus families) here for NATO's Senior Course sure seem like a great group of folks.  PalmGirl is thrilled that there are a couple of girls her age here.  And she's got lots of babysitting opportunities.

Just to sum everything up, I'm immensely thankful for this opportunity.  At the same time, I'm missing my son, family, friends, Hawaii, and our church.  One solution is for my son, family, and friends to come visit us here...

We're In

We're in our apartment that will be home for the next six months.  And, yippee, we get FoxNews!  No longer do we have to watch the depressing CNN International or BBC to get news in English!

Blog Business

My new Rome blog is now linked in the sidebar, and I'll try to update it regularly.  I'm keeping PalmTree Pundit for my thoughts on books, politics, theology, etc.  I'll do some cross-posting, too.

Later today we're heading to the Colosseum and Forum, followed by dinner, and I can hardly wait!

Whew!

I can still be PalmTree Pundit in Rome!

When in Rome....

PalmGirl and I arrived in Rome this morning and are reunited with PalmPilot.  PalmBoy is in Georgia, and I'll be back there in just a few weeks to take him to college.  We're jet-lagged and overwhelmed, but we'll venture out this afternoon and start getting to know this city.

I'll be setting up a new blog about our European adventures later this week and I'll link to it here.