Ownership

From The Grapes of Wrath, which I'm reading for school:

...It's our land. We measured it and broke it up. We were born on it, and we got killed on it, and died on it. Even if it's no good, it's still ours. That's what makes it ours—being born on it, working it, dying on it. That makes ownership, not a paper with numbers on it.

What do we mean when we say we own something? The word has different shades of meaning. We say we "own" our clothes, by which we mean they are our property. But we also say we "own" someone as a friend, by which we mean we acknowledge the relationship, not that we possess them. What makes something our property? A book may sit on your shelf, but can you really say it's yours until you've read it and slipped bookmarks in the folds or dog-eared the pages or stuck sticky notes to favorite paragraphs or added notes in the margins or whatever you do with books—in other words, until you've made it yours by spending time with it and letting part of yourself become involved in it? The relationship makes it yours, not the purchase.

Bookish glee

You can tell a lot about someone by what makes them excited. So I guess this post will say a lot about me. But-- I had a very cool moment in humanities class today. We've been studying the Renaissance, and last class my professor (who is a bibliophile) was telling us about his collection of books. Today he brought in one of his old books for us to look at. And when I say old, I mean it: this was a 1525 edition of Theophylact's Gospel commentaries, in Latin, with the original leather binding. It was in beautiful condition: the paper was heavy, the print was clear, the binding was worn but intact. My professor got it as a gift from a friend who found it at a library booksale, somewhere in Illinois, for the bargain price of $1. (It's worth tens of thousands!) I got to look at it after class and read a little of it. The page layout looked just like one of Howard Pyle's books, with the decorative caps and ornamental title illustrations and side-note summaries. It was hard to realize that I was holding something printed before the founding of the US, before the Pilgrims, before Queen Elizabeth, before Shakespeare. That must be something like how the scholars of the Renaissance felt, when they were rediscovering classical writings and having fresh conversations with old manuscripts.

The New Book Banning

From an article by Walter Olson (thanks to Katie for posting this)

Here are a couple of paragraphs from the article:

"It’s hard to believe, but true: under a law Congress passed last year aimed at regulating hazards in children’s products, the federal government has now advised that children’s books published before 1985 should not be considered safe and may in many cases be unlawful to sell or distribute. Merchants, thrift stores, and booksellers may be at risk if they sell older volumes, or even give them away, without first subjecting them to testing—at prohibitive expense. Many used-book sellers, consignment stores, Goodwill outlets, and the like have accordingly begun to refuse new donations of pre-1985 volumes, yank existing ones off their shelves, and in some cases discard them en masse."

"Whatever the future of new media may hold, ours will be a poorer world if we begin to lose (or “sequester” from children) the millions of books published before our own era. They serve as a path into history, literature, and imagination for kids everywhere. They link the generations by enabling parents to pass on the stories and discoveries in which they delighted as children. Their illustrations open up worlds far removed from what kids are likely to see on the video or TV screen. Could we really be on the verge of losing all of this? And if this is what government protection of our kids means, shouldn’t we be thinking instead about protecting our kids from the government?"

Hold On To Your Kids: A Book Every Adult Should Read

Hold On To Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers by Gordon Neufeld, Ph.D., and Gabor Mate, M.D.

I started reading this book because a number of moms on a parenting forum I frequent were reading it, and then I started reading it to dh because it was so good, and now I think this is a book that every parent should read in order to understand the forces creating a generation gap and undermining parental attempts to guide their own children. I'm only blogging each "part" rather than each chapter. This first part actually includes three chapters.

Part I - The Phenomenon of Peer Orientation

It's common for kids to be absorbed in instant messaging, email, hanging out with friends. Meanwhile they keep their parents at a distance, or are even hostile to their parents. Parents feel less confident, less respected, and often resort to harsher discipline in a desperate attempt to bring their children back. Yet children continue to reject their parents' values or have respect for parents or accept guidance from them. Is this a normal part of the maturing process? Hormones? Individuating? The author says no, it's not normal (although it's so routine that we no longer are even alarmed by it) or healthy.

What's happened is that society has changed, and the context for parenting - the context of an attachment relationship - is missing. Parents don't earn respect because they do everything by the right method. They have their children's respect because of who they are to their children - because they're the parents (at least, that's how it's supposed to be, and how it was for hundreds of years). That attachment starts in infancy and develops so that the child isn't even aware of it, but it provides context for parental respect throughout the child's development. The problem is that our culture no longer values or supports that attachment. In fact, it tries to undermine it. In place of parental attachment, children orient to their peers, but peers can't provide the love, acceptance, stability and guidance that experienced adults can.

Orientation is a person's need to find their bearings - we get cues about how to dress, what to say, what to value, our own identity, on whatever we're oriented to. With animals, the young orient to the mother, and she teaches the young how to survive. If ducklings orient to the wrong thing, they may not learn what they need to know. If humans orient to peers instead of to parents, they may not learn what they need to know, either. Humans weren't designed to have other children as the dominant influence in their lives, and to take their cues from other young in the species.

But society, largely motivated by money, has created a youth culture that encourages kids to orient to peers rather than adults, and trends in our society (also motivated by money, as in moving for jobs, and moms needing to work) have resulted in peer orientation in place of parental attachment. The momentum is so strong that even dedicated parents are having a hard time holding onto their kids. Peer dependency fuels aggression, bullying, drug use, depression, even suicide and murder because kids aren't mature enough to guide themselves, much less each other. Dr. James Coleman warned about what he saw coming back in the 1960's, but nobody took him seriously - and now we're living in the midst of it.

People can't have competing attachments: Jesus said we can't serve two masters, and no love relationship can survive if one person has an outside lover. One must be rejected, and become an object of scorn and hatred. When children have an attachment to peers whose values differ from parents, they're placed in a position of having to choose one and reject - hate and mock - the other. They reject their parents and become the opposite of everything their parents are, not to be individuals, but to conform to 'another master' - their peer group.

Parents unwittingly set their children up to form alternate attachments when they force their protesting infant to go to a care-giver without establishing an attachment with the care-giver first. Daycares where infants and toddlers outnumber caregivers forces children to attach to each other, and public schools where children are segregated by age guarantee it. Even our churches exacerbate peer orientation by dividing members into age-appropriate ministries rather than encouraging family togetherness (even church "family activities" usually have adults gathered in one area, and children elsewhere, either playing games or watching videos).

Appropriate parent/adult attachment doesn't have to eliminate schools. In Provence, France, they still have proper parent/child relationships even though the children go to public schools. But lunchtimes are spent at home, and the teachers reinforce the parent bond and support adult attachment; children are never thrown together to fend for themselves and create their own support network exclusive of adults. The whole community encourages bonding among families.

Next section: How Peer Orientation Undermines Parenting

Book Find: Will o' the Mill

On July 4th we went downtown to see a parade--down in the old section of town, with all the little shops and artisans and restaurants--and afterwards we spent some time poking into the shops. Brother J spotted this book in one of the antique stores and I loved it. It's leatherbound, with ink-and-watercolor illuminations and a beautiful frontspiece. It was made by Elbert Hubbard at the Roycroft Shop in East Aurora NY (which is about a half hour from Buffalo--we came very close to visiting while we were up there).




Unfortunately the binding is broken and several of the pages are coming out. Does anyone know how a book like this could be repaired, or whether it would be wise to try?

Book Find: Y Bibl

I like looking at old books. I like looking at books in other languages. So I was curious when I was in the Old and Rare section of our local used books store a couple weeks ago and saw the title of this Bible. Imagine my excitement to find that it's in Welsh, one of my favorite languages, and it was printed in honor of the coronation of an English King. I mean, I say!

Edward VII R & I
Coronwyd
Mehefin 26
1902
Duw gadwo'r Brenhin

("Edward VII R & I, coronated June 26 1902. God save the King." I'm not sure about the R & I.)

Presented to Arianwen Thomas

The Gospel of John

Twilight

I also read the first three Twilight books this week. They were engaging some of the time (I like Alice) but I found them rather frustrating. Stephanie Meyers has a good story in there, but she can't seem to find it. (Not that I won't read the fourth book too when I get the chance...) Anyway, I've been thinking about the books in relation to three quotes.

The first is C.S. Lewis's, which I shall have to paraphrase because our internet is still down and I am working away from home and I don't have my copy of Of Other Worlds with me. Lewis said that there are certain ideas that can only be explored with fantasy. But many writers unfortunately jump onto the fantasy bandwagon, missing the point of fantasy and writing "fantasy" stories that could just as well--or better--be written without the fantasy element. Lewis laid down a general rule, that if the fantastic element isn't integral to your story--drop it.

Stephanie Meyers seems to me to have this problem. She has the makings of a great fantasy story in the love affair between a mortal and a vampire (I'm hearing echoes of Tuck Everlasting and the Lay of Luthien), but she instead fills her story with irrelevant action and teen angst.

I'll leave the other two quotes without commentary.

"Love, having become a god, becomes a demon." (C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves)

"Q: Maybe writing is some kind of Resurrection Stone.
"A: Yes, of course, but I think you realize that once you’re writing to make a dream come true. If it’s just like that then, for me, writing loses its worth. Describing your fantasy is not the same as creating a world." (J.K. Rowling, interview with Spanish magazine El Pais)

Libellus Meus

Nonne pulcher est?



Found at the used-bookstore. I've never heard of the book, but the cover was too pretty to pass up. (In other words, I'm a conspicuously unproductive consumer. :) )