Just for fun: Dancing on treadmills

I wonder what Fred Astaire - who was famous for his love of using props in his dance routines - would have come up with given an electric treadmill to work with? These four fellows certainly use them to good advantage.

A note to parents: Because your child could break his neck imitating this (and also because for the life of me I can't decipher the song lyrics), I suggest you preview the video before turning your kids loose on it.

Having said that... what a hoot!

What route would you choose?

Imagine that you won a sweepstakes for which the prize is to be set down in Florida, where you are provided a car and a credit card to be used for travel expenses, and told you needed to be in San Diego, California, in a month. Where would you go?

Over the weekend, an enthusiastic and charming young Japanese couple who had won just such a sweepstakes prize showed up at our gas station cum bookstore here in the middle of Oregon. They had opted to zig zag across the country. Up to New York. Down to Louisiana. Up to...

Well, you get the picture. Huge zigs and equally huge zags, all the while tending west.

I must be getting old. I think it's a great idea, but I'm not sure I'd be up to that ambitious a travel plan. Certainly I wouldn't try to get so many miles packed into one month (I think they had a month) but that's probably only because I've mellowed into a slow-down-and-smell-the-roses, fewer-stops-but-more-time-in-each-place, people-are-generally-more-interesting-than-scenery kind of person. At their age, I suspect I might have done what they're doing. (Their age being about 20, at a guess, or so I'm told. I wasn't there, worse the luck.)

Here's wishing them a safe and enjoyable journey from here on out.

So, tell me, can you resist playing with what you'd do given a similar opportunity?

Feel free to let the rest of us know about possible itineraries if you come up with any.

Shakespeare Denial

Strangely literature-averse literature departments in college are apparently denying their students Shakespeare, and Ron Rosenbaum, author of The Shakespeare Wars, is fighting back. Pointedly. Rousingly. Perhaps, you might say, sneeringly. (And who can blame him for being angry that Shakespeare is being trashed where not being simply ignored?)

Rosenbaum's article contains some background on how so many literature departments got to their current sorry state, including "two generations of pseudo-scientific sophistry that gave itself the shorthand name Theory in literary studies." (Did I mention he's not happy with these people?)

I would add my usual note to this sort of discussion. Just because something isn't happening in classrooms doesn't mean it's not happening at all. A substantial share of our book sales from the classics shelves, including Shakespeare, is to teenagers and young adults denied the classics in school. In general, a lot of them know they've been cut off from their past, from great writing, from deep ideas, from pointed insights. That they have to do end runs around their teachers to learn about these things saddens me. That they aren't letting their narrower-minded paid instructors have the last word gives me hope.

hat tip: Brandywine Books

Update: Via Lady Jane, see also A day for remembering the Bard (Daniel Hannon, Telegraph, April 22, 2007), which also has a bit on St. George's Day.

Pro-life search engine

Via the sidebar at Rosetta Stone, here's a search engine that provides money to pro-life organizations/charities.

Of gardens and clotheslines

The blogger over at as cozy as spring will be hosting a Living Lives of Loveliness Fair on May 7th, and is inviting entries on gardens. All sorts of gardens. She's even inviting people without blogs to send her emails.

She also has a post on the joys of installing and using a clothesline which I found fun. But then, I also enjoy putting clothes onto a line instead of into a dryer, whenever possible. In its way, it's more restful. (Within limits, of course. I can see where someone with a large family might find using a clothesline too much of a good thing. And I understand that some people with allergies to pollen can have a lot of trouble with outside-dried clothing and bedclothes.)

On this day in history

See The Avalon Project : First Inaugural Address of George Washington, for a bit of history from Thursday, April 30, 1789.

More George Washington papers are available online here. (Via Mount Vernon, via this White House web page .)

Remembering those who die very, very young

Oh, my goodness. What a wonderful, caring and compassionate thing for someone to do...

I didn't know there were professional photographers who donate their time and talent to families facing the death of a baby.

Oh, man, that must be tough to do. (Can you imagine? I think I'd go home afterward and bawl my eyes out. Possibly after collapsing in a puddle at the hospital.) But what a gift they give.

My twin sister died the day we were born. A thank you from the bottom of my surviving-sibling heart to the photographers who offer their art and their consolation in this way.

Check your religious beliefs at the door - or don't (your call)

Doug Payton looks at yet another of the now-frequent attacks on religious belief coming from leftist activists and promoted by numerous members of the press. In this case, a PC group is trying to drop the hammer on pro-life medical professionals and any Catholic hospital that isn't Catholic in name only.

A note to the leftist activists: I might be wrong about this, but as far as I can see people are not vending machines. You can't expect someone to mindlessly dispense whatever you want. Even for money. Or to make you happy. Imagine that. Hit men and other criminal types, maybe. Good folks, no.

Then there's that whole inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of a clear conscience thing. One definition of a free country is one in which a decent human being cannot legally be forced into doing something he or she would be ashamed of doing. That was a founding principle of the United States of America. It's still a good one, I think. One of the best. Think about it, won't you? At least toy with the idea a while and see where it takes you? Thank you.

A note to Christians and Jews and anybody else with a strong and healthy moral compass (one that actually points in a direction worthy of this precious life you've been given): You might want to read Religion and the Common Good, by Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap., the archbishop of Denver, printed at First Things, April 24, 2007. An excerpt:

In other words, ideas have consequences—which brings me to today’s topic. When Cardinal Rigali first invited me to come to Philadelphia to talk about religion and the common good, I accepted for two simple reasons. First, I’m tired of the Church and her people being told to be quiet on public issues that urgently concern us. And second, I’m tired of Christians themselves being silent because of some misguided sense of good manners. Self-censorship is an even bigger failure than allowing ourselves to be bullied by outsiders.

Only one question really matters. Does God exist or not? If he does, that has implications for every aspect of our personal and public behavior: all of our actions, all of our choices, all of our decisions. If God exists, denying him in our public life—whether we do it explicitly like Nietzsche or implicitly by our silence—cannot serve the common good, because it amounts to worshiping the unreal in the place of the real.

[...snip...]

...As Christians we need to live our convictions in the public square with charity and respect for others, but also firmly, with courage and without apology. Anything less is a form of theft from the moral witness we owe to the public discussion of issues. We can never serve the common good by betraying who we are as believers or compromising away what we hold to be true.

He's also got information on the novels of Georges Bernanos, which I admit I haven't read. Yet.

And he's got some comments on Nietzsche. And on attacks on human memory and history. And the meaning of history. The language of the abortion debate. A Flannery O’Connor short story. More. It's a wide-ranging essay, but interesting, I think. And one that made me stop and think and reconsider.

Update: See also Half-Christians, by Rev. Robert Lynn, associate pastor for mission, adult education and university ministry at Knox Presbyterian Church in Ann Arbor. (BreakPoint, 4/30/2007)

Boorish bargain hunters

Would you knock on a door at eleven at night to propose taking tarps off tables so you could go through things left out for a yard sale set to start the next morning?

This is not a question I concocted out of thin air.

I wish it were, but it isn't.

Last night we had someone knock on our front door, and then, not getting a timely answer, he went to a side door and knocked. At eleven at night.

This I could understand if it were the fire department reporting that we needed to evacuate, or police warning us of a dangerous felon on the loose, or a child who is lost and desperate, or something like that.

But no. This was a guy who said he and the other people in his car were passing through town and wanted to browse through the yard sale next door. Browse. Paw through. Just in case there was something one of them wanted.

It wasn't even our yard sale. Since it's set up in the parking lot of a company more or less next door to us (there used to be a house between, but it burned down), I guess I can see that a person - especially the sort of person who would knock on a stranger's door at 11 p.m. to announce that the large signs clearly saying No Sales or Looking Before 8 a.m.!!! do not apply to them - might happily if erroneously jump to the conclusion that the inhabitants of the nearest residence might be able to give them the go-ahead to shop.

Perhaps I should clarify that. The fellow didn't seem to be asking permission so much as demanding service.

Let us say my husband made it clear we weren't interested in obliging him.

At a guess, the stranger mostly didn't want to risk being shot at or arrested; perhaps he thought he was going through the formalities to keep the silly peons from panicking. It's hard to say. He didn't make himself clear on that, but that's the impression he left behind after he took his disgruntled, high-handed self away.

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that you'd never demand middle of the night special browsing privileges at a yard sale? Am I right?

I hope so, let's put it that way.

A poet confronted with a toddler

Melissa Wiley shares a poem by Thomas Hood, "A Parental Ode to My Son, Aged Three Years and Five Months," in which the poet's boy keeps breaking into the flights of fancy. Too funny.

"Saint George" for a "New Era"

The Church of England might try to "rebrand" St. George??? (Rebranding Saint George, by Hal G.P. Colebatch, The American Spectator, 4/24/2007):

Just when it seems the Church of England can go no further in offensive fatuousness, it manages, faithfully, to excel itself yet again, to the continuing despair of those would-be satirists whose most absurd and savage inventions cannot hope to compete with the reality.

The latest exercise in grotesquerie is a call to "rebrand" Saint George, the Patron Saint of England, in the interests of culture-war, political correctness and leftism. The proposals are contained in a paper, "When the Saints Go Marching Out: Redefining Saint George For A New Era," created by what is described as an "Anglican think-tank" Ekklesia, and published in the Church of England Newspaper.

[...snip...]

[Simon Barrow, one of the paper's authors] claims that: "The patron Saint of England should be rebranded, and Saint George's Day should become a national day to celebrate the tradition of dissent." He believes Saint George should be re-branded as a "People's Saint,"...

When the Saints Go Marching Out?

Celebrating the tradition of dissent?

A People's Saint?

Colebatch is right, I think. Satirists face a steep, steep challenge here.

The article has some background on the sometimes very nasty controversy over how St. George's Day should be celebrated, and ongoing efforts by multiculturists to ban the St. George's flag from being displayed.

P.S. Robert at Expat Yank has the St. George's flag/England national flag flying in his sidebar, if you want to know what it looks like.

Or you can visit the Wikipedia article for St. George's Cross (which notes that England's flag is hardly the only flag or official symbol featuring it).

BTW: Wikipedia notes that citations aren't yet up to standards for the St. George's Day article, and is asking for help improving the page.

P.P.S. For getting me to The American Spectator, a tip of the hat to Lars Walker.

Addition: I knew I'd seen a St. George Feast Day post the other day...

Noted later: For reasons that are not clear to me, the Wikipedia links above (to St. George's Day and to St. George's Cross) keep changing into a link to the main St. George article. I've relinked, and relinked, and relinked, and achieved only temporary victory. (For instance, when I went to bed last night both links were good. This morning both have morphed.) I guess you'll have to search the articles out once you get over there, if you want to go to the bother, because I'm giving up on relinking, and moving on. To be honest, I generally feel a bit silly linking to Wikipedia anyway. This only makes me feel sillier.

Not all stories are created equal

Candice Z. Watters discusses using and choosing children's books.

Another encore I could do without

I am beginning to wonder if every single bad idea that was promoted to my generation when we were college students is going to resurface this decade.

Take, for instance, the "equal pay" idea. I know why I fell for this when I was an adolescent and early twenty-something (miseducation matched with inexperience, boosted by the insane, fact-free, unrooted idealism of the '60s and '70s; flavored with a Marxism I didn't realize was there, not to mention just plain ignorance about how the economy functions in general and how businesses survive in particular, not to mention just plain naivete about human nature, etc.). I can see why this sort of thing can be attractive to a well-meaning but misguided kid. But how can any actual adult with real-world experience think this is something the government ought to pursue? It's crazy.

Like the Equal Rights Amendment, which I hear has also been dusted off, I find the 'equal pay/ comparable worth' idea patronizing. I'm one of those women who currently earns less than most men with a comparable education because once I got old enough to take a more mature look at my options, I opted out of the career culture. Plain and simple. I chose a life that gave me more time with my husband, more time for myself, more freedom, more autonomy, more control. Within certain boundaries, money is far easier to give up than time. Loss of income you can offset to a large degree with frugality. Lost time? Lost independence? What can you do to make up for days when you find yourself forced to wave hello-and-goodbye at loved ones as your paths cross, with no time to sit down and chat because the clock is ticking and you've promised to be elsewhere in exchange for a paycheck?

If I decide to go get a job working for someone else, I'll weigh the possibilities based on several factors. And, if you can imagine this, I can probably manage to find out if one job pays less than another, and can actually factor that into my choice of which jobs to go after, which training to pursue. No, really, I can. I'm female but I think I can do that. I am woman, hear me roar watch me make a rational choice.

In business since 578

In The End of a 1,400-Year-Old Business (BusinessWeek, April 16, 2007), James Olan Hutcheson looks at Japanese temple builder Kongo Gumi, a family business that began operations in 578 and folded in 2006.

(And yes, I know, that's not 1,400 years, precisely. It's a 1,428-year run, something Hutcheson notes in his story. The headline writer apparently rounded the figure down, all right? I guess he or she decided that when you're talking about fourteen centuries, what's a matter of 28 years, more or less?)

hat tip: John Moser

Beating expectations

From Rachel’s Blog » Miracle M-I-R-A-C-L-E Miracle:

A few months ago, Leah told us that she was going to participate in the 4th grade Spelling Bee. This is her third year of being mainstreamed with an ASL interpreter. I was concerned about the 4th grade Bee, because many of the words have no signs and it would be cheating to have her interpreter fingerspell them to her. Leah was confident that she could memorize the words, the definitions and know how they are used in sentences...

Go read the rest. There's a video, too.

Way to go, girl!

hat tip: Danielle Bean

More laughs

You know how some women like to play classical music when they're pregnant in the hopes of making their child more intelligent? Here's the kid's view...

That book you've been meaning to ship to a friend?

If you live in the United States, you might want to clear out your to-mail or to-order stacks in short order.

New postal rates go into effect May 14.

I keep looking at the new media mail rates (for books, CDs, DVDs, etc.), and cringing. Under the new rates, postage for the least expensive package -- one that weighs less than a pound total -- is $2.13.

For comparison, the current price (in effect since January 8, 2006) for the same package is $1.59.

Ouch.

Rates go up for other types of mail, too. (But pardon me if I focus on the media mail. My husband and I are booksellers.)

Senior citizens have right to sing (imagine that)

It's a sad day in America when people quake in their boots over senior citizens singing a religious song before eating.

My thanks to the Alliance Defense Fund for taking on cases like this, and for its continuing efforts to educate people about what protections the First Amendment provides.

A hero

While of course I wish that Liviu Librescu had by some miracle survived yesterday's massacre at Virginia Tech, I am grateful that he did what he did, putting himself in harm's way so that his students could escape. I want his family to know that I join those in Romania and Israel and Italy and Virginia and elsewhere who want him to be remembered with honor.

In a wider sense, I don't pretend to know what it's like for the people at Virginia Tech or the loved ones of those injured or killed - or for the school administrators and police who are being loudly second-guessed by armchair experts armed with hindsight and the sort of certainty that only comes to certain types of people watching events from a distance - but I want them to know my thoughts and prayers are with them.

Just for laughs

The Book Den: Tech Support in the 15th Century links to a family-friendly comedy sketch, acted in Norwegian, with English and Danish subtitles.

No, really.