Tagged By My Daughter

My daughter tagged me for a meme, and since I've been far too sporadic at posting, here goes:


Grab the book nearest to you, turn to page 18, find line 4. Write down what it says:

"This means that it will likely say something not just about the four literary works themselves, but..."
From Writing Aids (Tapestry of Grace)

Stretch your left arm out as far as you can. What do you touch first?

My desk

What is the last thing you watched on TV?

I rarely watch TV here.  Probably FoxNews.  

WITHOUT LOOKING, guess what time it is:

2:30

Now look at the clock, what is the actual time?

2:50

With the exception of the computer, what can you hear?

My iTunes playlist -- Coldplay's "Yes" at the moment

When did you last step outside? What were you doing?

I went out on the balcony to figure out what the commotion was a couple of hours ago.  I heard a man's voice on a loudspeaker, and of course it was all in Italian.  No one else seemed concerned, so I guess it wasn't an emergency.  We caught the word "cucina", but our kitchen is fine so far.  :-)

Before you came to this website, what did you look at?

I looked up an article on Dennis Prager's website because I'm composing a blog post in my head.  I hope I can take it further than my head and actually type it up at some point.

What are you wearing?

Tonight is International Night at my husband's school.  There are over 30 countries represented, and we're all bringing food from our country and dressing the part.  So I'm wearing jeans, a blue & white gingham Gap shirt and a red tank under that.  Thanks, PalmGirl, for loaning me your tank. :-)

Did you dream last night?

I honestly don't remember.  I took Tylenol PM for a headache and don't remember anything.  

When did you last laugh?

We laugh a lot around here, but I really can't remember.   I'm sure I'll be laughing a lot tonight at International Tonight.

What is on the walls of the room you are in?

Some small black and white prints of Roman landmarks (I like these), a large print of a Giorgio Morandi painting that I don't like at all, a botanical print that looks out of place here, and two prints of old ships.  Also a small painting of a crucifix.  Our landlord has eclectic tastes, apparently.

Seen anything weird lately?

Pretty much every day in Italy just because the culture is still so foreign to me.  Nothing yet today, but I'm bound to see something weird tonight when I visit the Brits' table where haggis will be served.   

What is the last film you saw?

"Life as we Know it" with Katherine Heigl and Josh Duhamel. We were on the navy base in Naples and really wanted to sit in a dark theater, eat popcorn, and relax American-style.  This was the only movie playing at the time we could go.  It was predictable but served our purposes.

If you became a multi-millionaire overnight, what would you buy first?

First?  Probably a vacation somewhere in Europe for the PalmFamily over Christmas break. 

Tell me something about you that I don't know:

See next question.

Do you like to dance?

Yeah.  Back in the day, PalmPilot and I won a dance contest at a Christmas party.  But I can't remember the last time I went dancing.  

Imagine your first child is a girl, what do you call her? What if it's a boy?

Thankfully my daughter has let me off the hook with this question.

Buon Compleanno, PalmPilot!

Happy Birthday to the man I'm blessed to walk this life with.  

Ch-ch-ch-changes...

We've been living in Rome about two and a half months now, and I think I'm only just now catching my breath from all the changes our family has gone through this past summer.  It's all shaking out okay, but I think part of my weariness the past week or so has been a bit of a crash from everything catching up with me.  Since June, a few things have been different for our family:

First change:  We moved from Hawaii where we'd lived for eight years and put down roots.  The PalmKids consider Kailua their hometown, and we're all still homesick for it from time to time.  We have close friends there and a church that will always be special to our family.

Second change:  I left my job at Trinity Christian School.  I loved teaching there, and I miss the students, staff, and ministry.  Leaving that job meant I left a crazy busy schedule.

Third change:  PalmBoy has gone to college.  He loves Covenant, and I'm happy he's happy.  But we miss him badly.  Last night I pulled four napkins out when setting the table, so I guess I haven't come to terms with his move still.  And I can't wait until he comes home for Christmas.

Fourth change:  We moved to Italy.  We love the adventures we're having in Rome, but there is some culture shock and much to learn.

Fifth change:  I'm only homeschooling one child now.  My work load has lightened a great deal.  I don't feel so under the pile in my preparations, and that's a feeling I haven't had in years.

Sixth change:  Our apartment lease includes a cleaning lady.  Sweet Monika cleans for us three hours a week, and this has changed my life significantly!  For the better!

Seventh change:  Travel!  PalmPilot's school here includes the best field trips ever, and I get to go on them.  We've got two more big trips coming up, and I'll be an expert packer by the time they're over.

More changes are on the horizon as we have another move coming up in February.  When the orders are in hand, I'll share more about that.

As I contemplate all that's happened in the past few months, I can't help but thank God for going before us, sustaining us, and blessing us far beyond what we could ever deserve.  When everything else changes, He never does.

Then & Now

I'm still slowly working through Bruce L. Shelley's  Church History in Plain Language, and I enjoyed the chapter on "The Nectar of Learning" which explained Scholasticism, the time during the Middle Ages when "a distinctive method of scholarship arose and...a unique theology of the Middle Ages emerged."  I shared a quote from that chapter yesterday.

An article I read earlier today made me think of something I read in that chapter, and how far scholarship has fallen since the Middle Ages in at least one particular area.  When we disparagingly call them the Dark Ages, we should think on this (from Church History in Plain Language):

"As a young monk, Gerbert had been so brilliant a student that his abbot had taken the unusual step of sending him to Spain to study mathematics. Although Gerbert's mentor there was a Christian bishop, he was also exposed to the broad and tolerant culture of the ruling Muslims." [Shelley is quoting Anne Fremantle in the two preceding sentences.  What follows is Shelley.]  This was the first of a number of significant contributions Muslims made to the Christian intellectual awakening.

Gerbert returned to Rheims deeply impressed by the inquisitive, questing spirit of Muslim scholarship.

Contrast "the broad and tolerant culture of the ruling Muslims" to this:

A few months ago, I sat in a magnificent Victorian lecture hall at University College London. It was once one of finest centres of intellectual inquiry in Europe, thanks to the efforts of its founder, the sternly anti-clerical philosopher Jeremy Bentham. It did not take me long to realise that fear of clerical fascism had led Bentham's trembling successors to abandon intellectual inquiry and basic intellectual standards along with it.

I had come along with hundreds of others because, on Christmas Day 2009, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a former UCL student, tried to detonate plastic explosives hidden in his underwear and kill the 278 passengers and crew on Northwest Airlines' flight from Amsterdam to Detroit. After such a narrow escape from mass murder, I thought that no one could deny that the universities needed to confront campus sectarianism. I reckoned without the limitless capacity for self-delusion of British academe.

Read the whole thing if you want to be even more discouraged about the state of academia today.  Are we in the Dark Ages now?

Quote of the Day

From an eleventh-century scholar as quoted in Church History in Plain Language by Bruce L. Shelley:

Olbert was not able to satiate his thirst for study. When he would hear of someone distinguished in the arts he flew there at once, and the more he thirsted the more he absorbed something delightful from each master...Afterwards just like the bees among flowers, gorged with the nectar of learning, he returned to the hive and lived there studiously in a religious way, and religiously in a studious manner.

"The bigger the government, the smaller the citizen"

PalmPilot and I just returned from a trip to five European cities in ten days as part of his work.  (I view my participation as a reward for all those deployments!)  We visited Paris, London, Berlin, Copenhagen, and Sarajevo, and I noticed a pattern.

In each city, we spouses enjoyed guided tours.  On many of those tours, the guide mentioned, with a sense of pride, really, some law that made sure that __________ happened or didn't happen.  For example, our guide in Copenhagen informed us that Denmark wants to protect its small shops, so there is a law that dictates business hours.  Now, my dad owned his own retail business for most of my life, and I didn't view that kind of government interference positively.  What if a business owner wanted to open at different or longer hours to serve his customers?  What about employees who wanted or needed to work more hours?  Wouldn't that kind of government interference stifle the economy?

Later that day I was able to chat with a Danish reserve officer.  I asked her about this law, and she was very proud of the fact that her government protected small shops.  When she noticed that I wasn't oohing and ahhing, she asked about how we did it in the U.S.  I told her that business owners decide.  I told her that when Walmart came to my little town, my father had to adjust his business model and attract and keep customers with services and a personal touch that Walmart couldn't offer.  The government didn't step in and force both Walmart and my father's business to have the same operating hours.  She was surprised.  It gave me and PalmPilot a chance to share a quote from Dennis Prager:  "The bigger the government, the smaller the citizen."

This is just one example of what I heard many times on our trip.  While I've found Europe intensely interesting (almost overwhelmingly so) in its history, architecture, art, scenery, customs, languages, and people, I've noticed that there is little sense of freedom here.  The citizens have indeed become smaller as their governments have grown bigger, and they seem unaware of it, like frogs in the proverbial pot of slowly boiling water.  I suppose that the U.S. is still young enough that many of us are aware of the freedoms that we enjoy and are suspicious of encroaching government.  I just hope that enough of us vote accordingly next month.

A Tip

I've mentioned many times here how much I enjoyed Punic Wars & Culture Wars: Christian Essays on History and Teaching by Ben House.  I highly recommend it, and you now have the opportunity to get it at a bargain price.  Just go here.  It would make an excellent gift for a teacher.