humpty dumpty

It had been a grueling day for Humpty Dumpty. One of the younger eggs in the carton had been in hysterics most of the day, calling for the hen that had laid it; another of the eggs had been in a difficult mood and unwilling to do anything without a great deal of prodding. And of course, the refrigerator was a mess, someone still needed to change the light bulb, and there were disturbing reports about tensions on the eastern borders of the kingdom. Let things go the way they were right now, and the kingdom could end up involved in a third war by the end of the year, which of course meant that more eggs than ever would be needed to feed the troops.

He sighed, and wiped the moisture that was beading around the top of his shell. He thought back to the time when he had been a new egg, fresh from the henhouse. It couldn't have been that long ago, but it seemed impossibly remote. He hadn't known enough to be worried about what the farmer was putting into the chicken feed, nor had he ever thought to worry about whether the hens were getting enough exercise. And of course it had never even occurred to him that there might be mercury in his own yolk

The world was spinning out of control. Maybe it always had been, and he had been too young an egg to appreciate it before, but he certainly noticed it now. His carton, which originally had been nothing but a comfort a joy to him, now felt confining and he found himself growing resentful toward it instead of drawing strength and purpose from it.

At times like this, Humpty Dumpty needed a moment's respite to clear his head and let everything go. Perched here atop the kitchen counter, he could feel at ease again. He sat, like a bird on a wall, and tried to relax.

For a moment, he did feel at peace, but that moment of serenity evaporated into fear as he felt more than just his troubles slipping away. Terror swelled in him as he slipped from the counter and the hard tiles of the kitchen floor raced up at him. There was a sickening crack, and a fleeting sensation of ooze, and then the world went dark.

When the king's cook entered the kitchen the next morning, Humpty Dumpty was still lying there, a mouse burying its face in his splattered yolk. There was nothing to be done — no one could put a shattered egg back together — so with a weary sigh, the cook scraped the mess up and threw it into the slop bucket.

And no one ever noticed that the unfortunate egg was gone.

words of hope and joy

God is as close as the person shivering next to us.
So why does he seem so distant?

Under the cold and distant stars we tell ourselves the lie that we are not alone, that there is someone with whom we can share this sad and lonely misery that we call life. We comfort ourselves with the delusion that there is a God who is watching, that he cares, that he knows our pain, bears our sorrows, and hears the cries we make in the dark when no one is around to listen. We feed ourselves and our children this Cinderella bullshit that a fairy godmother will lead us to true love, but we know better when we allow ourselves to. We tell ourselves these lies, and they give us the pretense of comfort, of meaning, and of hope, but deep in our hearts we know the truth that weighs heavily on us from the cradle to the grave.

And that truth is this: We are alone. Alone we suffer the cruel attentions of our peers in childhood, enduring their barbed taunts with each day as their words exact their bloody pound of flesh from our self-worth, our self-respect, and our sense of identity. Alone we suffer the ignominy of adolescence and adulthood as we are thrust, ill-prepared and unsuspecting into a pool of sharks that will tear us in a frenzy once they first scent blood.

And alone we suffer the bitter fruits of maturity, as those we discover the lies that our leaders and our parents have fed us over the years, as we learn the deceitfulness of heroism and honor, as we see the might of law corrupted by small men and women with dreams no bigger than their own conceit and interests that extend no further than their own hands, and as we find that there is no love in marriage, no hope in friendship, and nothing to look forward to each day except another day of going through the motions, being crushed by disappointment and disillusion, and watching the steel bars of our cages slowly descend and take shape around us.

We are alone, and all we have to look forward to is that one day, the misery we have seen under the sun will end for us in the kind and final mercy of death.

little miss muffet

The Shoe had just come into sight when the cramp hit Miss Muffet. The calf on her right leg clenched itself rock hard and nearly dropped her to the ground. Biting hard on her lip, she ignored the pain and tried to force her leg to obey. Once she had made it inside with the little old lady and all her children, there would be time to soothe the aching muscle. Only then could she afford the luxury of stopping. Only then could she allow herself to rest, to catch her breath, to stop. Until then, all she had room for was terror.

Crazy with fear, she pounded her unbending right leg into the ground and hobbled forward as fast as she could. She could hear the rustle of the tall grass behind her as her pursuer followed. It could have overtaken her at any point, she realized, but it was enjoying the thrill of the hunt.

Even as she staggered forward another step, despair threatened to overwhelm her. There was no way she could make it. She bit down harder, blood as red as her hair coming from her lip, as she determined to give the old monster a run for it.

She knew she shouldn’t have gone into the woods, but it had been a hard winter for everyone, and with spring here at last, and the day so pleasant, it had seemed a harmless enough thing to gather a small meal and eat it outside. And when she had seen the woodland flowers in bloom, and thought how lovely they would be in the drab interior of her family’s kitchen, she had to pick some. Soon one thing and led into another, and she fell into the folly of Red Riding Hood. She left the safety of the path, enticed by the beauty of the flowers that grew in the forbidden parts of the forest.

Before she knew it, most of the afternoon had passed, and she had collected her flowers in abundance but had not eaten. So she sat on her tuffet, pulled out the meager curds and whey she had brought with her, and began to eat.

Trouble was, if it had been a hard winter for everyone in the village, it had been just as hard for the creatures that lived in the forest. And when fresh meat came walking straight to their lairs, it was only to be expected that they would do what came naturally and try to eat.

She saw the great spider sit down beside her just in the nick of time. Without wasting breath on a scream, she sprang to her feet and ran away as fast as her feet could carry her, back through the woods, as branches slapped her skin and tore her dress. She didn’t slow down when her breath began to come in sharp, painful gasps that tore her throat. She didn’t slow down when her side began to ache with every footfall that jostled her tiny frame. And all the while, too frightened to look back, she could hear the spider scuttling through brush and fern, and over creek and log as it followed her, letting her work her blood into a heat.

The Shoe was in sight now, but as her leg collapsed underneath her and she fell to the ground, Miss Muffet knew she would never make it. She closed her eyes in unexpected serenity, and waited for the end.



Copyright © 2007 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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five favorite quotes

It has come to my attention, almost by accident, that I have been tagged and given the task of providing five of my favorite quotes on any subject I desire, by the JJ herself. So, out of a desire to be sporting, here they are:

1. "I would like to know what Jesus meant when He said, 'Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.' I would like to know poverty of Spirit, for poverty is all I am left with. I would like the courage to be made poor before the shattering depth of the Creator and alongside the unthinkable breadth of humanity. Spiritual poverty is all I ask for now, and it is more than I can handle."

-- Gordon Atkinson, in the Wittenburg Door

2. "You are so full of what is right that you have lost sight of what is good. I do not believe you have taken a Christian stand, but a legalistic one -- one from which even the Apostle Paul would recoil."

-- Del Terry, religion professor, on an ethics paper I wrote in college

(In a lecture two years later, he said I had the role of Satan in his class)

3. "The boy is Ignorance. The girl is Want. Beware of them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see written that which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it! Slander those who tell it to you! Admit it but do nothing about it, and make it worse! And bide the end!"

-- Charles Dickens, "A Christmas Carol"

4. "You're so nice. You're not good, you're not bad, you're just ... nice."

-- Stephen Sondheim, "Into the Woods"

5. "It is not the slander of our enemies that we will remember, but the silence of our friends."

-- Mahatma Gandhi

And as a bonus:

"It's K-K-K-Ken, coming to k-k-k-kill me!" -- Otto (Kevin Kline), "A Fish Called Wanda"

Since it now falls to me to tag three other people, and the JJ already tagged Liadan, I suppose I shall have to pick three other people. So, I choose MJ, Brucker, and Greg Hartman, especially as Sir Ian McKellan never responded to the last time I tagged him.

d&d field report

From Parker Gaiman, a loyal servant of King Jacobus, whose good pleasure has seen fit to send him far from Wendyg to learn the ways of the land and to discover the nature of recent changes in the city of Nuyork, to Sir Alain Moor, chief intelligencer of Wendyg and adviser to the king, greetings!

 

It has now been two weeks, by my reckoning, since my last report. Events that beggar description have transpired since last I wrote to you, and indeed I fear that should I describe them to you in full detail that you would think me mad.

When I last wrote, Sir Alain, I told you of the comrades I had taken up with here in Nuyork, and how we had attempted to enter the castle which seems to be at the heart of the cancer that afflicts the city and is working its way toward Wendyg, Drusillus, and the other kingdoms, counties and lesser baronies of the plains. In the chambers beneath the castle we met such creatures as it seems are of the stuff nightmares are made from; yet still we managed to escape with our lives (though not all of us, as I shall relate shortly).

Upon our escape from the castle, we took the remains of one of our companions -- one Rowena of name, who, being mortal as all flesh, was slain by a creature of truly gigantic stature -- to see a supposed wonder-worker called Noisivel Buod. I have writ in the past of his name, but until this occasion had never met him or learned more of him than rumor. In truth, he is a fellow with a nervous constitution, and given over to conjecture about events yet to come as though they were as certain as events past. During the time I was with him, he did not proclaim himself an acolyte of any god, yet he does seem to regard himself as a prophet of sorts; an easy enough thing to do these days, as many a charlatan has demonstrated, and as doubtless he himself shall prove, once his prophecies fail.

In fact, I must confess myself at a loss to explain how exactly it was that this same Noisivel perpetrated the fraud that was to follow. Through some effort of pyrotechnics or mesmerism, Noisivel was able to transport myself, Galin and Inquill -- of them I have written in the past -- either to an unfamiliar section of Nuyork or to a location beyond the borders of the city entirely. It may be in fact an elaborate hoax -- though on this scale how such a hoax could be managed is beyond my ability to imagine, as I have by my best reckoning been in this place for several days, though I have yet to see the sun rise or set.

Inquill is gone. "Back to Nuyork," the others say, though they conspire to keep me from following him and I have no memory of leaving Nuyork myself, whether by train, boat, horse or other conveyance. I suspect that whatever perfidy is presently at work, Inquill is involved with, given the abrupt manner with which he sundered our fellowship. (He is a most unnatural fellow -- though, I must note, with a definite moral compass of his own.)

Newly of my companionship are three fellows: one by name of S'Blackstunn, another by name of Lorinarth, and a third by name of Tovar. Lorinarth and Tovar are at opposite poles, while S'Blackstunn seems to prefer the middle road between them. Lorinarth is by far the most incendiary fellow I have seen in all my days. Though when I first met him, he was unaccountably morose and kept his own counsel, that soon changed and by means I have been unable to discover, he has taken to committing arson with regular abandon. Tovar, by contrast, is unnaturally calm and meditative and has a tranquilizing effect on all he speaks with. To be honest, I am not sure which of the two is more dangerous.

More puzzling is Rowena. Noisivel claimed to be a resurrectionist, and at first it seemed that his claims were true, as when we found ourselves in this strange place -- the locals call it Sigil, though I am unable to recall any dealings by the crown with any such city in the Eastern provinces -- we found Rowena herself, alive and apparently no worse the wear for her rather painful and recent death. Yet if this is Rowena, I fear she is most certainly insane. She claims to have no memory of myself or Galin despite many evidences to the contrary, and appears to be as absolutely xenophobic about creatures she calls "aberrations" as she previously had been about other creatures she claimed were undead. The other possibility I must consider is that this is not Rowena but something impersonating her for some fell purpose, something that is unaware of my recent dealings with Rowena -- or, conversely, that this is the true Rowena, and the one I fought alongside before was an impostor. Either way, I judge it unwise to trust her.

Trust, in fact, seems to be unwise with virtually any of my new companions. In the time that I have been here in "Sigil," they have made such ludicrous claims as the world hangs from a giant ash tree, that the city we are now in is shaped like a doughnut and is encircles the top of the tree, that "Sigil" is separate and unrelated from the world, and that travel from one world (they call them "planes") to another is made possible by something as pedestrian as scratching a wall with a piece of glass. We tried this and, of course, nothing happened, which to a man they effected to be surprised by and alarmed at.

What can I say? I fear I have fallen in with such a crew of cutthroats and madmen that I may not find my way out of whatever trap I am in. Worse still, I wonder if their madness is beginning to infect ... but perhaps I go too far. At the moment we are encamped at an inn owned by a man named Allerazzom, and I am passing the hours of the night by writing this report to you in my own hand, as I wait for a plot of burglars to arrive, as there is some reason to believe the inn has been targeted by whatever agents are "closing" the portals that supposedly provide transit from one world to the next. If my current companions are to be believed, these same principals are connected to the menace in Nuyork, which is why I mention it to you.

See what large letters I write with my own hand. Tomorrow I shall seek out a temple of the Weaver, if any are to be found in this place, find the answers that I seek to the many mysteries that trouble me, and I shall arrange for this letter to be sent to you. When next you see the king, remind him of the loyal service I have rendered the crown in this far-off land, and see if he will consent to be moved on my behalf. It has been nigh unto three years since I looked upon the green hills of Wendyg, and I anxiously await the king's leave to return once more.

 

Long live King Jacobus.

 

In service to the crown,

 

Parker Gaiman

 

P.S. I hope that the altercation with the thieves at the inn may be resolved, if not March 30, then one of the Saturdays in April. March 31 is not possible, as I will be in Philadelphia at the funeral of my aunt. All Friday evenings in April remain available, with the exception of Good Friday.

how's that?

I'm confused. When did trading integrity for sales start counting for respectable behavior?

If you follow Christian music, you've probably heard of the band Jays of Clay. I don't follow it myself, so I don't know how to describe their music except that it's popular with the church kid crowd. Apparently the band's lead vocalist, Dan Haseltine, is disgusted with the shallowness of the Christian subculture. Good for him. I'm disgusted too.

In a column on Argus Leader Media, writer Robert Morast discusses Haseltine's frustration with the failings of contemporary Christianity. That includes the self-delusional lie that Christians are more moral and better off than non-Christians, the too-earnest desire to turn everything into a scree on why people should be Christians, and so on. He quotes Haseltine:

There's such a facade that we have all our crap together, that we don't wrestle with what other people have to wrestle with. And that's just not true.

That's honest -- refreshingly honest for a Christian musician, who's usually expected to talk about how great God is, how following him has ended all the struggles we used to have -- and I'm with him a hundred percent on that.

But where Haseltine loses me completely is in this: The band won't perform or release some of its deeper or more controversial songs -- the column specifically notes unnamed "war protest songs" -- because it could hurt record sales.

There are many in the evangelical church to equate godliness with Republicanism and middle class values. Too many Christians are willing to break fellowship over issues like abortion, creationism (or Intelligent Design, as the new label has it) and gay marriage. And there are many who see George Bush as God's president, and therefore equate any disagreement with him or criticism of his presidency as an attack on God.

Here's what Morast has to say:

And in today's America, being "Christian" seems to be tied to being a "patriot." Basically, if you're an outspoken Christian, you're assumed to be a conservative Republican who backs President Bush without question, supports the war and believes abortion is wrong.

No question that breaking from the party line on an album is a risky thing. A lot of people, not just evangelicals, consider Christian to be inextricably linked with conservative, and have a hard time accepting the reality that there is a Religious Left out here, and that we're growing louder. Criticizing Bush or claiming that war -- any war, not just the Iraq war -- is contrary to the teachings of Christ is sure to cost a band sales and fans.

Even breaking from the tepid formula of "Gosh, how I love Jesus" can make a big mess. Amy Grant did that back in 1990 with "Lead Me On," and got angry reactions from all across the church because the album wasn't stuff like "El Shaddai" or "Thy Word." It was, in fact, a deeply personal, deeply moving and deeply spiritual without being superficially churchy album, but all that was lost amid the huggermugger over her failure to drop Christ's name into every second line of each song.

So I can see what Haseltine is saying that the band could take some hits for really speaking honestly about social issues. But Truth, not popularity, is supposed to guide believers. If the band has something more meaningful and original to say than the stuff that the Christian labels spew out with nauseating regularity, then it should come out and say it.

If Haseltine believes that the war in Iraq is wrongheaded, stupid, ill-conceived and not something Christians should be supporting -- and he'll get no argument from me on that score -- and he wants to say so, then he has an obligation to his listeners to go ahead and do it. Sometimes there's a price to be paid for revealing how ridiculous ridiculous things really are, but it's always worth it.

On the other hand, if Haseltine doesn't want to voice his views on the war because he considers them irrelevant to what Jars of Clay does, that's fine too, but then he has no business complaining the Christian recording industry is too shallow, because he and his band are just as much a part of the problem as their listeners.

Haseltine may have won new respect from Morast, but he's lost any I had for him.



Copyright © 2007 by David Learn. Used with permission.

knocking down the walls

Imagine a man who has lived his entire life in a building with a stairwell whose railing he has depended on for guidance as he goes up and down the stairs. When he is hungry, he goes down to the kitchen; when he is tired, he goes up to his bedroom; when he has work to do, he goes to his study; and so on. Every room is a floor to itself, and every time he moves, he relies on that railing for support, for guidance, and even for direction.

Then one day he realizes that the railing is loose, and that with a little effort, he can pull the railing out of the wall, or maybe push it in farther. Perhaps he's known this all along and has avoided admitting it to himself and seeing what would happen if he moved the railing, because the railing has been his main means of support as he moves between floors. Perhaps it came to him suddenly, in a flash, because his own study and use of the rail has shown him design flaws he never noticed before; or because a visitor pointed out the flaws to him. Perhaps it didn't come to him suddenly at all, but as time has gone on, awareness has come to him like dawn breaking over the horizon. Or perhaps the revelation of the stairwell has come to him in some combination of those three.

How he came to this realization ultimately is less important than the realization itself. What matters is that one day, even though he didn't know if the railing would hold or give way, or even bring the entire wall down with it, he decided the time had come to stop using the railing out of habit, and he through everything he had into seeing what the rail could take.

That, I suppose, is roughly where I've been in terms of my understanding of Scripture for a while. I tugged, there was a loud crash, and everything shook. The dust is settling, and I'm trying now to tell whether this length of metal in my hand actually had a better use before someone turned it into a railing. To be honest, I'm not even sure if the wall is still there. For all I know, by pulling the railing out of the wall, I've allowed myself to enter a much larger, much more wonderful world than I ever knew existed before.

Enough metaphor. Here it is in a nutshell: I was taught back when I was a Pentecostal, back when I considered myself part of the evangelical crowd, that the Bible is the word of God, no exceptions, and that it was a dangerous (if not heretical) thing to view it as anything less than absolutely authoritative. I heard an Assemblies of God pastor say not once but several times that although it is not a science text, and although it is not a history text, when the Bible speaks on those matters, its word is authoritative.

That means you have to believe that God created the world in exactly six days, in exactly the manner that Genesis 1 describes. You have to believe that a flood once covered the entire earth after it rained for nearly six weeks. You have to believe that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were flesh-and-blood people; that Job lost everything he had because Satan bet God that he could break his spirit; and that a man named Jonah once was swallowed by a giant fish that spat him out three days later.

You have to believe all this, because once you say "The story of Jonah is a parable," you have no basis for saying that the Resurrection of Jesus is an historical event, and without that, Christianity collapses like a house of cards. Since, as the Apostle Paul wrote, "If there is no resurrection of the dead, we are to be pitied above all men," anything that casts aspersions on the Resurrection undermines the very basis of the faith, so to the doctrines of Scriptural infallibility and Scriptural inerrancy, add Scriptural literalism.

Bullocks. As Gordon Atkinson once noted, once people start using the slippery slope argument, it seems as though they don't know when to stop.

There's a tendency today to deride biblical literalists as ignorant hicks, particularly when it comes to the biblical account of creation and the events of the Deluge. That is a mistake. Creationists, whatever their biases, are not ignorant. Being a creationist in the 21st century means looking at evolutionary theory far more closely than the high school biology classes that many of their fiercest critics stopped with.

Being a creationist means you need to understand not only the theory itself and the data that evolutionary biologists have interpreted to support it, you also need to discover the preconceptions those biologists brought to their analysis and then reinterpret the raw data to fit your own preconceptions.

That's going to require an understanding of radioactive dating and its weaknesses, such as the wildly disparate readings a single sample can provide; explaining the fossil record, such as noting that paleontologists have never found a case where the geological column came anywhere near to matching what has been theorized; wading into the deep waters of molecular biology, getting into issues of irreducible complexity not just at the surface level but at the genetic one; gaining a passing familiarity with the comparative Flood mythologies of world cultures, from the Aborigines of Australia to the Mayans of Central America, and seeing how they compare to the Hebrew tale of Noah; and having at least a layman's grasp of hydrogeology, since creationists generally believe that the hydrogeological forces of the Deluge are responsible not only for the fossil record but for stalactites and stalagmites, metamorphic rock, layers of sedimentation, and the erosion that sculpted natural marvels like the Grand Canyon.

Being a creationist also means cataloging the anomalies that don't fit the accepted evolutionary model, such as the lack of significant development in crocodilians since the age of the dinosaurs; tracking the many evolutionary theories, since contrary to what you may believe, there is not a single, monolithic explanation of macroevolution; remembering oddments like the human skeletons and jewelry miners have found in the coal layer, even though it supposedly was formed in the millions of years before humanity arrived on the earth; and noticing other little things like the stalactites that form under bridges and stalagmites that form on cement walkways in caves, all so you can ask how many millions of years old these bridges and cement walkways are.

And then, when all this is done, you have to integrate it with the biblical record, which runs for about twelve chapters. Sometimes it's easy to do. About twenty years ago, scientists discovered that mitochondrial DNA, passed unchanged from mother to child, is virtually identical in people around the world. That fits neatly with the biblical account in Genesis, which traces us all back to Eve.

Other times, it's more challenging, such as the thousand-year lifespans the Bible credits to men like Adam, Seth, Methuselah and Noah. And then there's the disturbing lack of dinosaurs in the Bible. It's easy to suggest that Noah took young dinosaurs or eggs onto the Ark with him, but if something the size of a tyrannosaur or a diplodocus survived the Antediluvian period, it would seem likely that they would be mentioned somewhere.

If you haven't come through the ranks of evangelicaldom, I'm not sure I can convey just how much pressure there is to subscribe to this particular point of view. The unstated message, which of course, everyone would deny if it were put so baldly, is that viewing the Bible this way is part and parcel of being a Christian. If you don't subscribe to it, you're not really "saved."

No one puts it that way, of course; but in an offhanded way, at least among many evangelicals I knew, there was a nod and a wink attitude toward those who didn't take this view. At best they were spiritually immature Christians, but more typically they weren't "really" Christians. They were Christians in name only, or, most insultingly, Christians only by culture.

oxymorons

We all know what oxymorons are. They're concepts or statements (usually from up above) that are plainly self-contradictory. In an age as cynical as ours, it's almost a sport to find oxymorons in everyday usage, such as
"three easy steps." Never mind the obvious ones like "jumbo shrimp"; just for the fun of it, I've compiled here a list of some of the most common honest-to-goodness oxymorons seen in everyday life:

• train schedule
• intelligence agencies
• holy war
• civil war
• Microsoft Works
• journalistic integrity
• congressional ethics
• common sense
• funny pages
• user-friendly
• childproof
• compassionate conservative
• humble opinion
• business ethics
• postal service
• tech support

lord of the cornfield

I had a realization last night about the Twilight Zone episode that featured Billy Mumy as a boy who terrorized the people of his community and send them to the "cornfield" whenever they displeased him: It's about God.

The boy, whose name eludes me, has absolute power and can do whatever he wants, whenever he wants, without any consequence to himself. The people live in terror of him, but constantly praise him and say what a good boy he is so they can avoid his displeasure, even when he does something as horrible as turning his father into a giant jack-in-the-box.

 

I don't know who wrote that particular episode, but Rod Serling was a Unitarian Universalist, and the episode does seem to take issue with the apparent cruelty of God, whom the Bible describes as drowning the entire planet, save eight people and a boatful of animals; killing the firstborn son of every family in Egypt; and threatening repeatedly through his prophets to bring one disaster after another onto Israel. And of course the New Testament declares that those who reject Christ will be cast into hell for all eternity -- similar, I suppose, to being sent to the cornfield. And like the townfolk who can't say enough things about the holy terror in their midst, believers never stop singing the praises of the God they believe did all these things.

 

Maybe I'm mistaken, but I think a lot of evangelicals get upset by that sort of story, which they see as an affront to the dignity of God and the gospel that Jesus preached. I know that I did, back in my evangelical days. (Although I must admit that evangelicals seem to get even more incensed about negative portrayals of the church and Christians than of God.)

 

To an extent, I suppose a negative reaction is understandable, because the writer of this episode is misportraying (and misunderstanding) the nature and personality of God, and no one likes to see their beliefs misunderstood or misrepresented. But I think the strong visceral reaction that we Christians often have to disagreement isn't fair to the people or viewpoints we disagree with, and it does a poor job of representing Christ.

 

Isn't everyone better served by asking where the critics are coming from, and seeing if they have a point? Because if God really were as sunshiney-day-in-the-park as Christians market him as, I doubt anyone would write stories depicting God as a capricious monster. Biblical stories such as the Deluge, the plagues on Egypt and the conquest of Canaan are troubling, or they should be. We try to sanitize them into pleasant little Sunday school lessons about how evil will perish and God will provide for his people, but if the thought of men, women and children scrambling for a foothold and looking for dry land in a world where torrential rain just doesn't stop coming, doesn't bother you; if the thought of a nation full of parents, suddenly bereft of their eldest children, some infants, some toddlers, and some adolescents, doesn't give you pause; if none of the stories from the Tanakh make you stop and think about how God can be the author of such things and still be called "good," then you're not reading your Bible as an adult.

 

The people who write and tell stories like the "Twilight Zone" episode about the cornfield have legitimate perspectives on the gospel, the Bible, and God as the church has presented them. As people who have received Christ, we believe we have a sacred Truth to share with the rest of the world. But that doesn't mean, nor should it, that they don't have important truths to share with us as well.

a magic moment

Today in the car on the way to pick up her sister from school, I was surprised to hear Rachel singing from the back seat:

How many roads must a man walk down, before we call him a man?
How many seas must the white dove sail, before she nests in the sand?
How many times must the cannonballs fly, before they're forever banned?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind.
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

The lyrics weren't exact, and the tune was a little off, but she was definitely singing "Blowin' in the Wind." Rachel is only 4, but she already knows Dylan. How wild is that?

don't patronize me

If I claimed that blacks were irrelevant , you'd call me racist.

 

If I said women were unimportant, you'd call me sexist.

 

Prejudice goes both ways. So don't discount the role men have in the lives of their children. When I suggest including fathers in the programs you market to children and their parents, don't say my concern is frivolous and brush me off as one-of-a-kind because I spend time with my daughters. If dads are welcome too, then invite them. If they're not, then there's something wrong with your attitude, and you need to fix it.

 

Who are you to say that fathers are unimportant to their children? Who are you to assign us a minimal role in the lives of our children? Who are you to push the endless stereotype that restricts fathers to a supporting role in parenting, one where we are limited to the periphery of our children's lives, with barely a passing interest in their education, their friends and their hobbies? You would never say these things out loud, but your attitude screams it loud and clear every time you laugh at my claim that saying "moms" is not enough.

 

Who are you to deride my efforts to be the father my children need and say that I'm playing at being "Mr. Mom"? I am not the mother of my daughter, and I have no wish to be. I am her father, and I am proud of the job I do. I wake my daughter in the morning, I take her to school and visit her there, I help with her homework when it is hard, I arrange her playdates and take her to the doctor, I kiss her knee when she scrapes it, and when the problems she carries become too heavy to bear, I help her to unload them. Who are you to see me do these things and say that this is the province of her mother alone?

 

We fathers were there when our children were conceived, many of us are there when they are born, and those foolish enough to miss their children's childhoods always regret it bitterly. My friends see me with my children, and they burn with jealousy. It is your casual and repeated lie that children are a secondary concern to their fathers that has robbed my friends of the belief that they can enjoy the rapport with their children that I have with mine, and it is your easy acquiescence to fatherly absenteeism that makes it the rule of the land.

 

My children are not an afterthought to me, and I will not allow you to tell them they are. I am their father.

D&D in Branchburg: The story so far

Note to self for future reference: If you're going to get together with friends every couple weeks to play Dungeons & Dragons, make sure it's a simple enough campaign to keep track of things from session to session, especially if you can get together to game only one every three or four weeks. A 12-part epic is probably not "simple enough."


I've been playing D&D with a group of friends in Branchburg for about two years now. It started out with just the DM and three of us players, but as time has gone on, we've added two more players, and what appeared to be a fairly straightforward campaign has become far more complex than I had imagined. Credit for that surely goes to the two players who have traded off DM duties from time to time. It's the first time I've played D&D since I was in high school, meaning it has far more advanced rules, and it's a much more involved game than the sort of random encounters Chris Adomshick and I used to settle for when we played.

My character is a spymaster named Parker Gaiman, more or less based on the classic Lee-Ditko Spider-man, with a dash of the recent innovations by J. Michael Straczynski, and a twist of Peter Parqaugh from Neil Gaiman's "1602," from which I got some of the particulars. Parker is a from a fairly small kingdom called Wendyg, where he worked for the crown in matters of intelligence. When his mentor failed to avert an assassination attempt on the queen, he and his proteges fell from favor with her successor.

In Parker's case, that meant a form of exile similar to what Garak experienced on "Deep Space 9." Although he is no longer officially on the payroll of the crown, he remains in service to the king and reports things that he has learned the past two years while he has been in the premiere city-state on the continent.

It's a win-win for everyone -- Parker is hoping to earn his restoration to royal favor by his continued loyalty, while the crown not only benefits from the information he provides, it also enjoys plausible deniability if he is caught.

When I wrote Parker's backstory, I decided on a lark to incorporate some of the banter we'd been having about the world we would be operating in. The city was a big one, like New York. It was an important cultural center, like New York. It was probably one of the most significant cities in the continent, if not the world, again, like New York. So I decided to refer to the big city where Parker was laboring in exile as a carpenter, as "Nuyork."

The name stuck, and in time, we revealed that Nuyork had five boroughs. We only identified a few of them, but we still crack up whenever we cite their names: Quins, Brucklinne and Haarlam.

The game started one night in Nuyork when Parker met up with the other two PCs, a human named Galin and an extraplanar fellow named Inquill. Magic in this world has been suppressed and disbelieved in for hundreds of years, owing to cataclysmic "Magic Wars" that happened centuries earlier, but each of us was drawn to Nuyork because of something unearthly that was happening there to raise the city's profile steadily higher at the expense of its lowerclass and of neighboring cities, counties and nation-states.

Eventually we learned that the author of the evil was a fellow named Vorden, a councilor to the king. Parker, although he had learned a great deal about the city under his cover as a carpenter, had been unable to find any secret ways into the castle, and no one was allowed through the front door anymore. Part of Vorden's ways involved turning the lower-borns into stew and using the black magic from their murder to drug the remaining population.

Our ally at getting in was a fellow named Fromm, part of a resistance to Vorden and his ilk. Fromm knew of a secret entrance through a chapel behind the castle. We made it in, nearly got killed by hordes of undead creatures, and finally located a magical key deep in the chambers under the chapel, with the help of another PC called Rowena. Rowena, like Inquill, was extraplanar; she also had a serious fixation on the undead.

As I say, our characters finally got the key and escaped the dungeon, but not all of us. Rowena literally was torn in two by an undead giant, and we took the treasure we found, along with her remains, to Fromm and used it to hire a cleric who could resurrect Rowena.

That was the first arc of the campaign story. One of the highlights of the campaign was when Inquill, a lawful evil ur-priest, in response to what he considered our untrustworthy behavior, insisted we all sign a contract that spelled out our obligations to share information, treasure, discoveries and such things.

This is no joke, by the way -- Anthony, the player behind Inquill, actually drafted a contract that we bickered over for the better part of half an hour, defining such things as the death of a party member and our legal obligations to that person's remains and soul, and so on.

A point of lesser interest but greater relevance was the discovery of Parker's gift, one of true sight. Periodically, for reasons he can't explain as yet, he will see things exactly as they are. Magical illusions are cast aside, magical natures are revealed, and so on.

At that point in the story, the entire party experienced a disconnect in our memories, and we found ourselves with Rowena, and two other fellows, without Inquill in sight, at the Inn of Glad Tidings in the midst of a party in our honor. We never did figure out what we were being honored for, though, as  werewolves attacked, killed one of the local dignitaries and ran amok all over the grounds.

The werewolves were only the start of our problems, though. We soon realized our memories had been tampered with in more ways than we realized. Galin and Parker had no idea who S'Blackstunn and Lorinarth were, and although they recognized Rowena, she had no idea who they were. Neither did S'Blackstunn and Lorinarth.

And then it turned out that Lorinarth is an impulsive pyromaniac with some fire elemental ancestry. Once we were outside, someone complained that it was too dark, and he promptly lit a tree on fire, during the dry season, starting an out-of-control fire that devastated the countryside.

Oh, and Galin was bitten by a werewolf, on whose person he found a note that seemed to described Parker as the chosen one of prophecy, before whom gods would fall.

Most of our next few sessions was spent running around a hive of caves, trying to figure out where we were, what was going on, and being attacked by werewolves. This last item in particular led to the most memorable moment I've ever had in role-playing games. In these tunnels, which were barely five feet high, meaning our characters had to crouch the entire time they moved through them, Rowena used her clerical spells to summon a Celestial Lion to help with the fight.

This proved to be impractical for a few reasons, the biggest of which is that a Celestial Lion, when it stands erect, is far more than five feet high. The poor beast was able to take out the werewolf in front of it, but then it was unable to move, or to turn around when another group of werewolves attacked it from behind. Rowena returned it to its plane of origin, but not before it was savaged from the rear. Somewhere out there in the multiverse is a Celestial Lion with a severe grudge.

The group dynamics at this point became increasingly interesting. Parker and Galin still worked together, owing to their history together; and S'Blackstunn and Lorinarth also worked together, for the same reason; but Rowena was the only person in the party whom everyone would trust to work with them.

By the time we returned to the Inn of Glad Tidings to keep an appointment with a Count Drusillus, we were viewing each other with paranoia and suspicion, following and spying on one another, and generally not getting along or willingly sharing information with the whole party. At one point, Parker even split off from the rest of the group and went his own way.

It turned out that we actually were not far from Parker's home country of Wendyg. The next step of our journey led us to County Drusillus, which borders Wendyg. There we discovered that the count's daughter recently had converted from whatever the prevailing local cult was to a newly revived cult of a wolf deity named Fenron. Parker, although he was from the area, had never heard of this cult, but he did recognize that Fenron was likely a corruption of the name Fenrok, a wolf deity who had been worshiped in the area hundreds of years earlier, but whose cult had died out.

The count's mission for us at this point was to rescue his daughter, who he was concerned had been seduced and led astray by Tarron, the charismatic founder of this cult, and who had broken off her betrothal to the son of a prominent nobleman, whose marriage would have helped boost the county's standing.

It was at this point, incidentally, that we discovered that in our missing period, Inquill had taken over Nuyork and now was ruling as its sovereign. There was also a war afoot, with pretty much everyone else fighting Nuyork and things now at a stalemate.

Anyway, more stuff happened. Exploring the shrine of Fenron, we discovered Abyssal creatures in the sewer, as someone had seen in a dream; eventually we found the count's daughter, and we once again split the party as three of us went through a portal into another plane and Lorinarth and Parker stayed behind. They eventually went through as well, after getting some of the count's best soldiers to come with us.

The portal led to the Beast Plains, where Tarron had set up his armies and was pretending to Fenrok's place. We also discovered that Galin had contracted lycanthropy, and Fenrok was now using him to thwart Tarron's ambitions, which he did, at least for the time being.

Tarron it turned out was a lich; through a clever manuver, his corporeal form was destroyed. Parker freed a woman bound to Tarron's service through a stone of dark magic -- necromantic, actually -- and was given the chance of tremendous necromantic ability if he would only sacrifice one of his companions. (He refused.)

This stage of their journey complete, our characters walked through another portal and emerged in the Astral Plane of all places, where far below they saw the titanic body of a dead god, chained in the Abyss. This is important, since two of the characters had dreams connected to a god who had died and now was returning to life, to the great dismay of his former worshipers.

And then Anubis appeared in the Astral Plane, sent everyone to Sigil -- a ring city built around the World Tree -- and there we recalled the events from the missing period of our journey, which we are roleplaying now.



I don't expect anyone to care about this, really. I'm just writing it down so I have it committed to memory in some format. (My favorite memory from this leg actually is a joke I had made about rescuing a princess from the werewolf king. It was a joke I made before discovering that we were essentially going to be called upon to do just that, except that Tarron is not really a king or a werewolf, just the leader of a cult of them.)



On this new (old) leg of our journey, Galin, Parker and Inquill arrivied at Sigil, where Inquill dumped his companions for perceived breach of contract and  they discovered someone who appears in all ways to be Rowena, except that she has no recollection of them and instead of the undead is obsessed with aberrations as the ultimate evil. Also joining us for the first time were S'Blackstunn and Lorinarth. For kicks and for contrast, since Parker and S'Blackstunn hadn't got along at all in our post-amnesia stage -- they had been the most mutually suspicious of the entire groip -- I decided that they should hit it off right from the start, and in fact Parker has been more than willing to follow S'Blackstunn's lead many times.



Parker's been having a bit of a hard time getting used to the idea that he has left his native plane of existence, that he is now in a city built in the shape of a giant doughnut around an ash tree that provides structural support for the entire multiverse, and that tree is somehow being threatened. In short, he's a little out of his league.



To make it more complicated, he's started seeing bizarre things with his True Sight, and something appears to be moving him around at key moments without his consent. This happened once in a fight with monsters, so that he was able to kill a fairly nasty beast from behind; and it happened another time in his quest to find a portal that would take him back home. I suspect he's going to experience a total collapse of his paradigm, at which point he's going to need to find a way to incorporate all these new experiences he's been having.



Also problematic is Rowena. She's clearly the person he and Galin just paid to have resurrected, and yet she also claims to have no memory of him. Something weird is going on there, and it's definitely diminished the amount of trust he has in her.



And since we've been on Sigil, we've actually been through two portals. One took us to the Abyss -- making it the third time the campaign has connected with the Abyss -- and another took us to a damp subterranean chamber in Parker's native dimension, although we ended up going straight back to Sigil right afterward through another portal, and the way back home appears to be blocked once more.



Interesting stuff going on, at least to have played it. I doubt this is of much interest to anyone in its present format, but I'm hoping it will be of use to me as the campaign continues.

nibelungenlied

After having a Penguin Classics edition of "The Nibelungenlied" for about ten years, I'm finally reading it.

 

For those not in the know, "The Nibelungenlied" is one of those classic works by dead white European males that is considered a classic piece of literature, even though no one ever reads it. You can find "The Odyssey" and "The Iliad" at the corner bookstore, but if you want "The Nibelungenlied," you probably will have to special order it. It is, after all, one of those classic pieces of literature, the sort that you read either because a teacher has assigned it and Cliff's Notes are not available, you feel you ought to read it because it is a "classic" work, or because you just really enjoy old stories by dead people, and you like tracing their twisting paths of literary antecedents.

 

I more or less fall into the last category. I read the unabridged "Brothers Karamazov" and "Les Misérables" for kicks, I enjoy watching Shakespeare, and I read Alfred, Lord Tennyson's "Idylls of the King" to my girls for a bedtime story. And when I find a story I really like, I'm inclined to follow its literary roots as far back as I can without losing the recognizable story.

 

I once did that with Stephen R. Lawhead's Pendragon Cycle, back in college. As Arthurian retellings go, they're about average, but they were enough to pique my interest. I knew Lawhead was drawing on the Welsh poems of "The Mabinogion," so I snagged a copy of that, before eventually searching out other, more modern renditions by Geoffrey of Monmouth, Sir Thomas Mallory, T.H. White, Tennyson, and John Steinbeck, among others.

 

Written down by an anonymous poet, "The Nibelungenlied" is a Medieval German poem that is connected to some widely enjoyed works of the last century, not least of which is Richard Wagner's opera of the same title. The opera in turn in some ways shaped J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" and of course was the inspiration for the Chuck Jones piece de resistance, "What's Opera, Doc?", in which Elmer Fudd uses his spear and magic helmet to "kill da wabbit."

 

The plot is fairly straightforward: The hero Siegfried, having set his heart on marrying the beautiful Kriemhild, travels to Burgundy to win the consent of her brother Gunther to give her to him in marriage. Gunther for his part has decided to woo the lovely Brunhild. (All together now: "Oh, Brunhilda, you're so lovely!" / "Yes I know it, I can't help it.") The downside is that, as with the Greek beauty Atalanta, Brunhild has executed every one of her suitors so far, as they have failed to best her in three contests of strength. So Siegfried proposes a deal: By means of trickery, he will best Brunhild at these feats, but make it appear that Gunther has done it. In turn, when they return to Burgundy, Siegfried gets to marry Kriemhild.

 

To pull this off, Siegfried, Gunther and Co. find it necessary to tell Brunhild that Siegfried is Gunther's vassal. Gunther also ends up needing Siegfried's help consummating the marriage; when he tries to do it himself on his wedding night -- the poet notes that his bride had no interest in being party to it, and he therefore tried to force himself on her -- Brunhild overpowers him, ties him up in her girdle, and leaves him hanging from the doornail. Quite amusing, really. I laughed out loud at that part. The next night, Siegfried -- who, like Brunhild, possesses superhuman strength -- disguises himself as Gunther, trades places with him, and wrestles Brunhild into submission so that Gunther can have sex with her, which in turn ends her superhuman strength.

 

An important plot point here is that when Siegfried wrestled Brunhild into submission for Gunther's pleasure, he took from her both her girdle and her ring, as trophies. This is probably representative of an earlier version of the story in which Siegfried raped her, although in this version of the story, he gives them to Kriemhild.

 

Ten years later, Brunhild -- still believing that Siegfried is Gunther's vassal -- convinces her husband to send for his sister and brother-in-law for a visit. Brunhild accuses Kriemhild of overstepping her bounds by trying to enter church at the same time as her, as though their husbands were equals, and Kriemhild, incensed by the claim that Siegfried is a vassal and that she was debased to marry him, pulls out the girdle and the ring and shows them as evidence that Brunhild was not a virgin when she married Gunther, and in fact had been Siegfried's paramour.

 

That causes a major and rather public row, and one of Gunther's advisers or vassals, a stalwart fellow named Hagen, decides that he must avenge the insult to Brunhild's honor by killing Siegfried. This he does, through trickery, and then he conspires to take from Kriemhild the treasure of the Niebelungs, which Siegfried had gained by conquest and gave to her as a dowry.

 

In the part I'm just starting to read, Kriemhild marries King Etzel, known elsewhere as Atilla the Hun, and gets the weregild she is owed for her husband's murder by systematically killing every male protagonist in the book. By the time "The Nibelungenlied" is finished, the abattoir in "Hamlet" is supposed to look like a pleasant day in the park feeding pigeons and eating ice cream.

 

It's been a little difficult to get into the book, mostly because of the distance between me and the poet's original audience. Reading one superlative description after another gets old to the modern eye, although I'm aware it was the practice of the day to describe the fantastic rainment of kings, the superhuman ability and bravery of the heroes, and the beauty of the women, which surpasses the sunrise over the lake. And of course everyone is a "noble king," a "gay knight" and so on. If it weren't for heartwarming thoughts of Elmer Fudd crying, "I'll kill the wabbit!" to avenge his own humiliation, I don't know if I would have made it to the part where it started to pick up, with the confrontation outside the church, nearly halfway through.

 

I will say I really dislike the treatment of women in the poem, which isn't surprising, considering that this is a Medieval poem, and women at that time either were valued as objects of beauty or as bearers of strapping male heirs. It angered me to read about how casually Gunther and his men make free with Brunhild's treasure, the deceit that went into winning her hand in marriage (and then in consummating it, although I definitely think Gunther got his when Brunhild hung him up for the night), and I got really pissed off when Kriemhild says something about how Siegfried beat her for humiliating Brunhild in front of the church, and how she deserved it. Ugh. I shudder just thinking about that line.

 

On the other hand, now that the plot is moving toward its tragic conclusion, I can see why the story has endured. Just about every significant male character so far has been a grade-A scumbag in how they treated the two main female characters, and from what I know, every single one of them is going to snuff it pretty miserably. "The Nibelungenlied" is a story of betrayal, murder, and revenge ... especially revenge, and that can't help but appeal to anyone who knows what it is like to be wronged.

 

At some point, I hope to follow the thread of "The Nibelungenlied" into other areas of Nordic and Icelandic literature. A similar tale is told in "The Elder Edda," one of the few legitimate remaining sources we have of Norse mythology, and as noted, it has decedents in modern literature as well. Wagner's "Nibelungenlied" cycle of operas has the hero forging a ring from the gold of the Nibelungs which makes him supreme in power but costs him the love of women, and it ends with the destruction of the gods and the emergence of a new, grander world ruled by men. Tolkien has a similar theme in his own Ring story, but when that Ring is destroyed, the elves leave the world and a new, grimmer world of less beauty emerges, one ruled by men. And of course there's always Elmer. (And, as my children know, his "spear and magic helmet.")

 

The literature buff in me enjoys not just these obvious paths of descent and influence, but I also get a kick out of the odd parallels and recurring motifs that show up in these ancient works. The Greek hero Achilles, protagonist of "The Iliad," was dipped in the River Styx when he was an infant; as a result, he is impervious to harm, except for one spot: his heel, where his mother held him as she dipped him into the river. It is throught this point that the Trojan Paris shoots him with an arrow and kills him. So I was greatly interested to learn that Siegfried, after he killed a dragon, bathed in its blood and made himself invincible. Except there was one spot on his back, between his shoulders, where a leaf fell on him so that the blood never touched him there. And that is of course how Hagen kills him.

 

I expect to finish with the book in another week or so, depending on whether I can maintain my current pace, which in turn depends upon how frequently my computer crashes, since I read while it reboots. Once I finish it, I have other books to turn to, also classics in the dead white male sense of the word, such as "Egil's Saga," an Icelandic tale that I bought for reasons beyond my recall; and "Parzival," a German version of the quest for the Holy Grail, or sangraal, as its author calls it, coming some time after the French poet Cretien de Troyes started the whole mess with his poem "Perceval, or the Story of the Grail." There's also Dante's "Paradisio," which remains the only part of "The Divine Comedy" I never finished. (Why is it that writers always make hell sound exciting, but put you to sleep when they journey through heaven? Milton had the same problem -- I never knew the war in heaven could be so appallingly dull, until I read "Paradise Lost." And now that I think about it, I probably should re-read that, since I never managed to get to the end.) Most likely, though, my next read is going to be a seminary text or two that I've borrowed from a friend, by N.T. Wright.

 

The conclusion? If you want a nice, easy read, stick with Spider-man and don't follow my habits. I wouldn't know John Grisham if I tripped over him.

'ware the grammarian

At the otolaryngolist's office yesterday, I noticed a sign addressed to existing patients, informing them which insurance providers were no longer accepted at the office.

 

I admit, I was surprised. How many imaginary patients do you think a practice of any size can have before it folds?

what i throw out

• broken things
• packaging

 

what i recycle

• junk mail
• finished mail
• magazines past their usefulness
• retired office paper
• flat cardboard
• corrugated cardboard
• plastic bottles
• plastic cartons
• glass jars
• newspaper

valentine's day

Three 4x6 photos: 98 cents

Two sheets of magnetic backing: $2

One sheet of art paper: $1

Bottle of Elmer's glue: 9 cents

Flatbrush: 47 cents

Bits of construction paper scrap: Free

 

Three homemade Valentine's Day presents for the love of my life: priceless

 

For all the junk we don't need to buy and throw out in record volumes, there's MasterCard. For everything else, there's time, personal effort and love.

Snow chickens: your new word of the day

Snow chickens.

This is the phrase my wife has coined for drivers who won't get behind the wheel of the car, at the slightest intimation of flurries. This is an overdue phrase in Nova Bastille, which endures yearly prognostications that we're all going to perish beneath 50 feet of snow and glaciers six miles long.

Your assistance is appreciated in getting this term into the dictionary.

See also "rain chickens," for a related species of driver.

the artist: out of her time

Today on the way to the pharmacy, I was amused to hear Evangeline singing, without prompting:

All day, all night, Cary Grant.
That's all I hear from my wife: Cary Grant.
What can he do that I can't?
Big star, big deal, Cary Grant.

and:

I know a man named Mr. Lang,
And he has a neon sign.
And Mr. Lang is very old,
So we call it "Old Lang's Sign."

These are some of the lyrics to Allan Sherman's "Schticks of One, a Half-Dozen of the Other," a medley of mangled folk songs. Sherman was a variety singer who did send-ups of popular and well-known songs, such as Petula Clark's "Downtown." He also did the voice of the Cat in the Hat in the CBS TV special, but he is most famous for his "Hello Mudda, Hello Fadda" song, in which an unwilling camper pleads for the chance to come home.

In any event, as someone who appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show, he made his splash when my parents were my age. I have (somewhere) a CD of "My Son, the Greatest: The Best of Allan Sherman," which is fairly unusual for someone my age. That Evangeline enjoys his music is nothing short of astonishing.

In other words, congratulations, Mr. Sherman. You've achieved a form of immortality that most artists only dream of.

otolaryngology folo

And the verdict is, not only does Evangeline need tubes surgery, but proteinacious is a really cool-sounding word.

 

We had a visit with a different otolaryngologist today, and it was far more pleasing than the last two visits had been, even put together. Unlike Dr. Sable, the otolaryngologist we had today took the time to find out from us what Evangeline's history had been, explained in plain English why she thought tubes were necessary, and even answered questions. It was incredible. In five minutes I had got more information from Dr. Troaquin and had greater confidence in her diagnosis than I had from Sable at all.

 

Essentially, Evangeline has a lot of fluid buildup behind her ears. The fluid is dark because over time the liquid in the fluid may drain out or be reabsorbed, leaving behind an increasingly viscous muck. The muck grows darker because it is more proteinacious as the liquid disappears.

 

I love that word. Proteinacious. As soon as the doctor said it, my face lit up and I repeated it. It sounds like exactly what it is. I love words that fall off the tongue like that. Proteinacious.

 

Anyway, the tubes operation -- I had loads of these as a kid -- will provide an outlet for the gunk to escape. Her hearing should improve almost immediately. She'll miss a day of school for the operation, which is ironic, since the actual surgery takes only fifteen minutes. Routine stuff.

 

Now I just have to get Evangeline excited about the procedure. She seemed a little nervous today.