Old World Swine

Perspectives on a Volcano

My brother, who lives in Alaska, sent me this photo of Mt. Redoubt blowing its top... again (I thought Paul N. Might especially enjoy this one).

This is the same eruption seen from space, posted by Michael at The Deeps of Time, where you may always find erudite blogging at the intersection of faith and science.

"House" and "Home"

It has occurred to me, as we are beginning to look for another house to call "home", that there is probably an unconscious "blank slate" fallacy at work in the modern understanding of housing.

Let me 'splain... I think that the modern, materialist mindset holds that things are meaningless in themselves, and that we only bring meaning to them, or project meaning onto them, or lay meaning over them in a kind of grid.

People, for instance, are viewed as blank slates from birth, and the belief is that everything is learned... morality, gender roles... everything. Life in the world means nothing, except what we decide it means.

So, for further instance, sex is neutral and meaningless, and whatever meaning there is in the sex act is extrinsic to it, is something we bring into it from outside. From this perspective, the only possible answer to the question "what does sex mean?" is "Whatever it means to you".

And I believe this perspective - this materialist, blank slate mindset, has spilled over into the realm of the built environment. That is, a house, a building, has no meaning except what we bring to it. So, houses more and more come to resemble each other, and on the interior come to be only an assembly of white boxes... variations on the white box theme. They are mass produced and laid out with all the poetry and soul of an egg crate.

The assumption is, of course, that people will move into the space and "make it their own" by populating it with objects, by painting it and living in it, and this is true to an extent, but the mistake is in thinking that this is only a one-way interaction. The house is presumed to be mute, but no created thing is mute. We speak through everything we do and make. What do our modern buildings and suburban houses say about us?

If I wake up in, work in, and return home every day to a dull, prosaic, box, will I not over time begin to feel the world is dull and prosaic? Will I not tend to think in predictable boxes and right angles? If I become more and more acclimated to an indoor, artificially lit, air-conditioned life, will I begin to see nature only as something alien, inconvenient and uncomfortable... and maybe dangerous?

We are increasingly cut off from the poetry of nature by our manufactured environment. If we don't bring some of that poetry into our homes, we will find ourselves spiritually starved even as we are physically overfed. In the words of Douglas Adams, "There is another theory which states that this has already happened.".

There are houses, and there are homes. The job of "homemaker" has been denigrated and dismissed, and we have all suffered as a result. Bringing humanity and harmony and art to the home is, in our time, an extremely important and yet neglected work.

House #1

We're beginning the great house hunt, and yesterday was our first look inside two in our "possible" file. The first was a little rough on the outside, but the view (lakeside) was incredible, complete with a nice sized deck and fenced yard.

Turns out that what was "kind of rough" on the outside was beyond horrendous on the inside. For one thing, every wall was covered in the cheapest dark wood paneling (wavy with age). The carpets were all at that end stage of life, and what fixtures were left were, again, the cheapest quality and probably at least 25 years old. The entire house would have to be gutted and finished again, which I would have been willing to consider, except that the layout of the place was its worst feature... just awkward and weird, as if it had been designed by a committee. No rhyme or reason to the placement or proportion of anything. Sadly, and pining for the view that might have been, we scratched that one off the list.

Next: The Money Pit

"Forward, Into The Past!"

Paul at The Aesthetic Elevator posts about the danger of nostalgia, at least as far as it relates to economic theories, and - as the kids say - I'm down wi' dat.

But I think nostalgia can also be a powerful force for good. We just have to keep our heads.

Start to talk about family life being stronger a hundred years ago and you are likely to hear objections about "turning back the clock", and "living in the past", but does simply acknowledging that "X" was better a century ago mean embracing all the errors of that period in toto? If it does, then on what basis can we ever make historical comparisons to present models? Can we not object to failed modern experiments and return to some greater semblance of sanity in one area without simply giving the heave-ho to all our modern benefits?

Take the family, for instance. Most everyone, I think, has the sense that family life is in dissolution and that families need strengthening. I propose that we adopt an older model of family life by returning to smaller homes and simpler living so that one income might reasonably support the family, and one parent can, if they choose, make a full time job of managing the home. What a concept.

We can do this without choking off opportunity, without being sexist, and without the soul-killing, cookie-cutter conformity of the fifties (which is exaggerated to begin with, but never mind...). We do have a chance to go back and do things the right way, if we want. What is to prevent us? We have this same luxury of choice regarding things like art, music and architecture, as well. What if many of these older forms were just more human than the manufactured and mass-produced culture we have now?

Why not take what worked in past ages, and leave - by conscious choice - what didn't work? If we want to go back to, say (for the sake of argument), a nineteenth-century model of the family, no one can force us to go back to the racism of the nineteenth century, or the child labor of the nineteenth century... and yet, that seems to be the fear behind "You can't turn back the clock!" or "You would take us back to the dark ages!".

But this is an empty objection, simply because we couldn't go back to the Dark Ages (the darkness of which is exaggerated, but never mind...) even if we wanted to... and we don't want to.

We are free people. We can choose how we will live, and if we close off the past as a source of wisdom and ideas, then we are doomed to stay on our little modern hamster wheel. The worst kind of ignorance is this willful ignorance of the past that we see in modern men, this unqualified worship of mere "progress".

"My attitude toward progress has passed from antagonism to boredom. I have long ceased to argue with people who prefer Thursday to Wednesday because it is Thursday."
- G.K. Chesterton

Ozark Arts Alliance

Sager Creek Arts Center - Siloam Springs, Arkansas

Trust - Best in Show (Yayz!)

Over the weekend, I traveled to John Brown University (Siloam Springs, Arkansas) and participated in a unique regional art competition, sponsored by the Ozark Arts Alliance and Sager Creek Arts Center.

The competition draws entries from four states, and is unique (as far as I know) in that the hanging of the show, judging and awards banquet all take place on the same day. All the art is displayed together in the art gallery of JBU's fine art building, and following judging and awards, certain selected pieces are moved to hang for a month or so in a special showing at the Sager Creek Arts Center. This year's show was judged by San Diego artist Desmond O'Hagen.

The Arts Center is located in downtown Siloam Springs, and is housed in a wonderful, rustic old converted church building. Old wood floors, lath-and-plaster walls, creaky stairs, stained glass here and there... I want to live there. Concerts and plays are held at the arts center, as well as art shows by groups and individuals.

I have been taking part in this particular competition off and on since 1992, back when I was working in colored pencil. In fact, my entry in that show was probably the first halfway serious art I had done since getting my master's degree in fine art five years earlier (I was designing Harley-Davidson t-shirts at the time).

So I was very gratified, this year, that my painting Trust took top honors (over some extremely good artwork). It was especially encouraging because, as several people noted, it represents a departure for me... a different direction in my work. To have such a good response to this piece, therefore, makes me very happy (even though y'all are probably sick of looking at it, by now).

I felt good about the piece when it was finished, felt it was solid and mature in ways that some of my previous work wasn't as much, and so this recognition helps take the sting out of the fact that the same piece was rejected for the Oil Painters of America national show. I wasn't surprised, exactly (the OPA national really does represent the best of oil painting in America and is Very High Cotton, indeed) but I did think this piece had a decent shot to at least get into the show, and was disappointed when it didn't.

I haven't painted much lately, as we are in the middle of getting our house ready to sell, but I'll be back at it soon.

Angolans Fail to Protest Pope - Press Baffled

Huge crowds of Angolans angrily demand condoms rejoice and hope to catch a glimpse of Pope Benedict XVI (AP Photo).

Though media centers worldwide have stretched the truth to the point of rupture, Angolan Catholics demonstrated today that they will allow no artificial barrier between them and their Pope.

Barbara Nicolosi on Haunting Moments

I like to read the blogs of writers like Barbara Nicolosi and Mary Catelli because I find that many of the creative problems and choices that apply to writers also apply to visual artists.

One of the recent blog entries I have really enjoyed is this podcast by Barbara Nicolosi at the Act One Storytelling Conference last October.

In it, she makes the case that the job of the artist (at least the artist aspiring to do work of real significance) is to leave the viewer/reader in some way haunted... haunted with some image that returns to them again and again, and that leaves them with something important to work out. She further strongly suggests that the key to this kind of significant haunting lies in the presentation of a paradox.

This is one element that I have more and more desired in my own work and that I understand to be lacking... in fact, I began to understand this a couple of years ago, but rather than calling it Paradox, I called it (to myself) Mystery. Truth in a puzzle.

Not that our job is to hide or obscure the truth... to set up some kind of arbitrary maze for the viewer to work through to get to the nut of truth we are hiding. The fact is that the truth can hardly be grasped except through the apprehension of some mystery... whether it be the mystery of the Cross, or the mystery of the The God in the Manger, the mystery of His strength perfected in our weakness...

The deep truths of life, if they are to become real to us, cannot be adequately expressed or fully grasped in diagrams. They must come to us, in some sense, as stories.

Very much worth listening to. The sort of creative homework that I have a little more time for these days (being currently unemployed).

More on Hitchcock on Chesterton

In response to my last post, reader Sleeping Beastly (good to see you around again, SB) writes,

"I've seen a lot of talk about these two essays in the Catholic blogs. Am I the only one who doesn't really care? I like Lewis and Chesterton, although I haven't read a lot of Belloc. Still, if Lewis and Chesterton aren't Hitchcock's cup of tea, so what?"

That is a sentiment I expressed, as well. If Chesterton isn't Hitchcock's favorite flavor, that is really fine with me, but he takes things well beyond a matter of taste and makes a number of wrongheaded and completely unfounded criticisms... mistakes he might have avoided had he been actually more familiar with the work of those whom he criticizes.

Hitchcock's real problem with Chesterton et al seems to be more a matter of disposition - of mood - than anything really solid, and even in that he presents a picture of Chesterton, Belloc and Lewis that is at best a caricature, as when he states;

"...the faith they displayed to the world was by design relentlessly cheery, just as they fashioned relentlessly cheery public personae for themselves."

To dismiss these three as merely shallow and cheery is to admit that you do not know enough about any of them to make any sort of informed critique. It's embarrassing.

Reading some of the comments on Hitchcock's piece, it becomes clear that there are some people who just don't "get" Chesterton's paradoxes, who see nothing in them, and who then get irritated and characterize his use of paradox as merely a too-cute stylistic device, or as empty and facile word play.

They have not considered at all, it seems, that the problem may be more their weakness than Chesterton's. It would be the same as if I came on a group of people all peering into the woods who told me "See? There are deer walking..." and I, after taking a quick glance, relpied "I didn't see any deer... you are all hallucinating.".

It all reminds me very much of Lucy Van Pelt carping, "Beethoven wasn't so great".

Though not all error is worth the time and energy of a rebuttal, this one is, because it leaves drifitng around in the atmosphere a false picture of Chesterton, Belloc and Lewis, their writing and their Christianity.

To summarily dismiss these three as "relentlessly cheery" based on only a cursory knowledge of their work is as unfair as if I - based only on this one piece by Hitchcock - were to characterize him as a white-wine sipping elitist who's real problem is that he finds these writers too popular and therefore too "common" to deserve his serious attention.

Martin Cothran Contra Hitchcock

If, like so many, you found yourself gnashing your teeth at the sloppy condescension of this recent critique of the Chesterton/Belloc/Lewis tradition by James Hitchcock (published at Inside Catholic), then be sure to read this able rebuttal by Martin Cothran at his blog vere loqui.

Actually, you should read it even if you didn't gnash your teeth, and perhaps especially if you found yourself half convinced by Hitchcock, who gets Chesterton (at least) completely wrong.

ADDENDUM: Do yourself a favor and read also this response from Carl Olson at Ignatuius Insight Scoop.

Inconceivable Ignorance

Jill Stanek kindly attempts to help Former President Bill Clinton get over his confusion regarding the first stages of human life (hat tip to SDG at Jimmy Akin's blog, who does an admirable job, himself).

Wow. About the only thing Clinton gets correct is when he says "I honestly don't understand".

You would think that someone in his position would know that embryonic stem cells don't come from unfertilized eggs...

Everyone knows that stem cells are either A) found in the garden under a cabbage leaf, or B) delivered by the stork.