Teach Yourself Gothic
Poking around the Web looking a for a list of Visigoth words to get some sound/name ideas for a story I'm working on about early Medieval Spain, I came across this Ancient Worlds Web site and this post on Gothic.

Thiudareiks Gunthigg writes: "Since Gothic is the oldest Germanic language we have, it gives us a valuable philological insight into the earliest forms of the ancient Germanic language family. Apart from being a useful historical linguistic tool and an insight into the culture of the Goths, Gothic is also widely regarded as a beautiful language in its own right. Amongst its many fans was J.R.R. Tolkien, who once said that even a list of Gothic words could move him simply by the aesthetic beauty of their sounds and forms. He liked to write poetry in Gothic, using the ancient Germanic alliterative style, including one called Bagme Bloma or 'Flower of the Trees."

He provides not only the text of the poem and the English translation but a link to audio files so one can listen to the poem. It was the first time I'd heard the language, and it is beautiful, at once foreign and strangely familiar.

Also included in the post are links to "teach yourself Gothic" resources.

Sofia's Christening

Father George at Saint John the Evangelist baptized Sofia Marie yesterday. Maureen stood in as proxy for my mother, Sofia's godmother, who could not be there, and Rick was a Christian witness. Sofia wore an elaborate white gown that made her fair, rosy skin glow and her red hair gleam. She was beautiful, as were her mother and brother, in a timeless sort of way that matched well Father George's limning of the ceremony as he proceeded: "I will ask," he told the families, "'what is it you parents ask of the Church for these children?' You can respond 'baptism'; or you can say 'eternal life.'" My eyes welled up when he said "eternal life," and those words will always catch in my memory with the smell of the perfume that infuses the oil of chrism, with which the newly baptized baby's head is anointed.

It was easy to feel eternity in the ceremony, carried out as it has been for millennia, at once exercising a massive supernatural power on the baptized and an equally potent (and perhaps no less supernatural) social power on the witnesses gathered there.

That's what struck me afterward, as we were standing in St. John's parking lot, getting ready to head back to the house for food and drink and celebration, the social aspect, the community aspect of the event. And my immense gratitude to the people who came to see Sofia ushered into the Church, whether or not they themselves were Catholics or Christians or religious believers of any sort.

Back when David was christened we were not sure whether to invite our non-Catholic or our non-Christian friends and family to the event.  Not because we wanted to exclude them, but we were concerned that being invited to a religious ceremony might make someone who was serious about his other- or non-religious beliefs feel uncomfortable or insulted.  We didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings by inviting him! Of course, since my mother is the only practicing Catholic in either of our families that would have been an extremely limited guest list ... We realized that we were in danger of succumbing to a hypersensitivity that would probably have an effect opposite the one intended.

We tried to be even broader with our invitations this time around. What would have made most people uncomfortable, we realized, would be not to be invited to what we, Sofia's parents, believed to be one of the most important moments in her life. Whether someone else believes that or not, he knows we believe it, and knows that regardless of his own religious convictions, he has been invited to witness something incredibly important, even if its practical importance to him is only the result of his understanding of the nature and intensity of our beliefs.

Which all sounds sort of long-winded and convoluted, probably because I don't understand it well enough to explain it. But somewhere in there is the truth at the core of genuine ecumenism - an ecumenism that doesn't have anything to do with watering down one's own faith (or asking someone else to water down his) to get along, but living a faith as resolutely and fully as possible, in community, and in the process developing a fuller understanding of other people's faith experiences and the ultimate goal of each of those.

And for many I think that ultimate goal is similar. As Father George said: "When I ask: 'What is it you ask of the Church for your children?' you can answer 'baptism' or you can be more specific and say, 'eternal life.'"

That's what I asked for daughter Sofia: eternal life in absolute joy of God's perfect love ... and when I thought about all the amazing people, friends and family -- those who came to the ceremony and those who could not be there -- who will be a part of her life as she grows up, I was sure I was seeing an utterly concrete, absolutely quantifiable example of how that great love is already manifesting itself in her life.


Sofia's Christening: The Movie!
Rick's daughter Elizabeth gave us a sweet surprise by capturing the baptism with her digital camera. Maureen is to the left, then Kristen and Sofia, with me sort of behind them, then Rick and Father George on the right.

The Zines of Summer
An NPR summer reading series segment with Jamez Terry and Kelly Costello, founders of the Denver Zine Library. Jamez mentions, about 2:50 in, that's he currently reading Suburbs of Heaven, by New Hampshire writer Merle Drown. Merle has served as a trustee on the New Hampshire Writers Project, and is friend. And Suburbs is a dark, funny, beautifully written book. I'm glad Merle got the plug!

Why We Need Novels
Ellen Heltzel looks at the grim findings of the NEA's newly released survey that shows the reading of literature declining drastically in America. Among educated intellectuals it has dropped 15 percent in 20 years, among 18-24 year olds it's dropped 28 percent. The NEA study doesn't provide an answer -- whatever will reinvigorate the public's need to read (for pleasure) will have to come from beyond the Beltway.

Why is it important at all if people stop reading novels? Heltzel writes:

"The level of book readers, in particular readers of literature, are a leading indicator of civic health and — as long as we're talking about Sputnik, let's be bold here — the future of democracy."

And ...

"As a reading experience, fiction and poetry are distinct from non-fiction, even the creative kind in which writers (journalists, even!) incorporate fiction techniques. Ideas and stories that spring from the imagination call on different tools of discernment. They cultivate intellectual qualities that are often underrated in our pragmatic, just-do-it kind of culture."

Agreed.

Ilan Stavans Speaks On "The American Language" At The Monadnock Summer Lyceum
Stavans, a Mexican Jew whose language at home was Yiddish and in the world was Spanish and who now lives and teaches in America, reflects on how languages and cultures intermingle. Especially interesting are thoughts on why Latin American immigrants are different from previous generations of immigrants in that they adopting English as a public language but refusing to give up Spanish. He also gives a cogent defense of Spanglish.

Glimmer Train Press Online Submissions
This literary mag has the best online submission process I've ever seen. I imagine more publications of all sorts (including the ones I edit) will soon go in this direction since it is not only convenient for the writer, but for the editors as well.

Thunder Hole

When I got home from work it was raining and David was disappointed because he hadn't been able to go outside all day. (Sofia is still too little for Kristen to take walking in the rain.) We got into our slickers and sandals and went downtown to return a movie at Cinema 93.

After splashing through some puddles and walking along the curb like a balance beam, we came to a storm drain and stopped to watch the water rush into it. After a minute I tugged on David's hand, but he planted his feet and leaned against the pull. He wasn't done looking. I thought, come on, it's just a storm drain. Then I thought of Thunder Hole up at Acadia National Park in Maine. Thunder Hole is a great vertical throat hollowed out of the rock on the seashore. When the tide is right the waves smash into it like a stampede and it shoots spray high into the air and booms like thunder. The first time I saw it, I looked at it for a long time.

I looked at the storm drain again and saw that there was a rust-colored lattice of heavy iron like an artifact from an abandoned world through which a murky, detritus-filled cascade rushed, pouring over a ring of concrete, tumbling past outcroppings of stone and mud and into seething pool of indeterminate depth, which seemed to be draining at its upper, more visible levels, into a pale blue tube.

I wondered what I would think if I were less than two years on the planet and seeing this thing so freshly. Then I wondered if I wasn't seeing it freshly, too, because it had been a long time since I'd seen its like. I stopped tugging his hand and we stood and watched it for a good while.

Radio Paradise - Eclectic Online Rock Radio
This may be the best online radio station I've yet heard ... here's a sample of the playlist from the last few hours (hours are West Coast time):
4:52 pm - Allman Brothers - In Memory of Elizabeth Reed
4:47 pm - Kronos Quartet - Marquee Moon
4:42 pm - Jacques Loussier Trio - Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 In D
4:37 pm - Anna Domino - Rhythm
4:34 pm - Briskeby - Wide Awake
4:28 pm - Suba - Sereia
4:24 pm - Venus Hum - The Bells
4:21 pm - Beat Farmers - Reason to Believe
4:18 pm - Nick Lowe - When I Write The Book
4:13 pm - Patty Larkin - The Book I'm Not Reading
4:08 pm - The Samples - Who am I?
4:04 pm - Lene Marlin - You Weren't There
3:59 pm - Sun Kil Moon - Gentle Moon
3:55 pm - Wes - Awa Awa
3:48 pm - Yes - I've Seen All Good People
3:44 pm - Crowded House - Never Be The Same
3:38 pm - Hex - Antelope
3:10 pm - Michael Miller - Live On Radio Paradise
3:08 pm - Sarah McLachlan - Blackbird
3:03 pm - My Morning Jacket - Golden
2:57 pm - Traffic - Freedom Rider
2:50 pm - Traffic - Glad
2:47 pm - Morphine - Buena
2:44 pm - Mark Knopfler - Marbletown
2:39 pm - Dolly Parton - Shine
2:34 pm - Rolling Stones - Sweet Virginia (acoustic)
2:30 pm - Peter Wolf - Nothing but the Wheel

El catecismo oculto tras 'El Señor de los Anillos'
An interesting article in El Mundo on the theology of the Lord of the Rings. A Catholic priest and professor at Universidad de Teología in Cataluña, Xavier Marlans, is making a study of the topic. (Story in Spanish)

Voynich Manuscript Mystery Solved?
Is the medieval manuscript nothing but gibberish, a clever hoax by an English adventurer named Edward Kelley? Gordon Rugg at Scientific American says yes...

Lancelot: He fear no enemy
On the perils of movie poster translation...

Bloomin' Corpse Flower!
Kristen's mom, Sheila, is up for a visit and mentioned that she and some folks from work have been watching for weeks to see whether the corpse flower at UConn would bloom, the first such event in New England. We checked the Web cam, and lo and behold, it had bloomed. According to UConn's Web site, where you can see Web cam of the offensive-smelling plant, "Amorphophallus titanum, the titan arum, is a tuberous plant endemic to western Sumatra, where it grows in openings in rainforest on limestone hills. Locals know it by the more evocative name 'corpse flower' (bunga bangkai), because of the hideous stench the fly-pollinated inflorescences produce." Nice.

David's First Fish
We spent the weekend down at Ed and Wendy's place on the lake. David had a great time, as always, playing with cousins Shelby and Cole, and Nick and Zack who despite being teenagers, are just amazing shepherds and companions for all the little ones. His aunt Kate spent some time with him while Ed, Jerry and I were out on the boat trying out the new spinning rod Jerry gave me for my birthday (my first time on that lake without a fly rod in my hand, ever, and quite fun) and helped him catch a pumpkin-seed with a bread ball and a little kids-model Shakespeare rod. He reeled it in himself. When I got back, a few wondered if I was sad to have missed such a moment, my son's first fish, but I wasn't because I saw right away that since he'd caught one, you could hardly pry the rod out of his hands. And we caught four or five more. After each one, he wanted to examine it for a moment, run a finger down its scaly side, then was anxious to urge me to let it go so it could swim. A gentle soul, his.

To Put a Fine Point on It
“My friend James sent me this link with the comment, “Who else could I share this kind of article with?” Now I did like the article, an amusing comparison of pens against a number criteria by Slate writer YiLing Chen-Josephson. But I’ll have to ponder the implications of my being the only one of James’ friends who, upon his reading it, seemed like someone who would welcome an article on “pen shopping.”

Zero Tolerance Grammar
Lous Menand has serious issues with the grammar used in the grammar Jeremiad “Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation” (Gotham; $17.50), by Lynne Truss. There's a nice thread on the book and on Menand's criticism of it at LanguageHat.com.

Literary Traveler
Itineraries and travel stories for literary trips, including Frost's New Hampshire and Stoker's Whitby England.