Wordsmiths

Hey Steph!

This week I've begun to wonder if I've mislabeled myself. I've always seen myself as a writer, but I started questioning whether I really had talent there or not. I spend the majority of my day writing. Writing magazine articles and social media updates for work. Writing academic jargon (that I try not to be jargon) for my thesis. Writing music lyrics for my soul and my acoustic guitar, Declan. Oh, and writing attempted profundity for this blog. Lots of words, but I'm not so sure their all worth reading.
               At work I've been writing an article about a band in my area. As I've immersed myself in their music, I've become more and more aware of the triteness of my own musical lyrics in comparison to their simple and emotion-filled lyrics. The more I learn about the group the more I want to do a good job on their article. I want to do their music and their goodness justice. I want to mirror their art with my art of journalism. And this desire pretty much paralyzed me at the keyboard. I wrote a sentence and deleted a sentence. Over and over, until I was left at the end of the work day with a blank screen.

Source

               Writing is hard business. I started to wonder if I just didn't have the talent for it, and if I should give up. (Quick time out: I freely admit now that this was a bit over the top. Please bear with me while I get to the point.) Who am I to call myself a wordsmith?

wordsmith: a master craftsmen of eloquent and profound writing

               There were people with broader vocabularies and more creative syntactic play. As I toyed around with the idea that I might not be cut out for it, a thought from a previous article I had written came to my head. The subject of the article was a painter. He told me that it bugs him when people come up to him and say, "Man, your work is beautiful! I wish I had that talent!" as if it were a compliment. He said that he's sure they are trying to be nice, but he always hears the idea that he didn't work hard to be a great painter. He said growing up he wasn't very good in art class, that his brother always did a better job than him. But he just kept painting and drawing and working. And he got really good at it.

Source

               As I recalled this conversation, I started wondering why I would ever think that writing should be easy. Olympians aren't amazing athletes because they were born that way. Concert violinists aren't masters because they picked up a violin a played it perfectly. They worked at it. We have this idea in Western culture of being blessed with the Muses in our creation of art, but I think we also need to be blessed with hard work as well. Just like a blacksmith must first master the art of making a symmetrical horseshoe before he can create a beautiful suit of arms, so must a wordsmith build one skill at a time before she can write her magnum opus.

Source

               November is the start of National Novel Writing Month. I know there are friends of mine out there that want to write a novel but have trouble pushing through the rough times. Let's consider this our first horseshoe: Get something out on the page. Once the words are living there in black and white, then we can craft them into a suit of arms. And if novel writing isn't your thing, pick something else. For me, I'm going to work through two songs that are presently musing around in my head unformed and unmetered with the goal of of leaving no lines of lyric behind that just kind of landed there because they rhymed and fit the musical cadence.
               There's a reason that libraries aren't just one shelf big. There's room there for the masters and the hard-working apprentices.

Cheers,

Amanda

Feminism and a Definition of Motherhood

There is a list of feminist quotes from Caitlin Moran going around the internet lately. If you don’t know what I’m talking about you can read it here.  I don’t hesitate to call myself a feminist, and lots of those quotes were really awesome... until this one:

“If you want to know what’s in motherhood for you, as a woman, then — in truth — it’s nothing you couldn’t get from, say, reading the 100 greatest books in human history; learning a foreign language well enough to argue in it; climbing hills; loving recklessly; sitting quietly, alone, in the dawn; drinking whisky with revolutionaries; learning to do close-hand magic; swimming in a river in winter; growing foxgloves, peas and roses; calling your mum; singing while you walk; being polite; and always, always helping strangers. No one has ever claimed for a moment that childless men have missed out on a vital aspect of their existence, and were the poorer, and crippled by it.”

Don’t get me wrong. Childless life can be just as amazing and fulfilling as having children, (see Mother Teresa). Happiness is always within your grasp if you’re willing to take it, regardless of your circumstances.  However, I will definitely claim that a childless man has missed out on something.

A portrait of my family as illustrated by Robby Cook.
Because Awesome is what being a parent feels like

I’ve always believed that with enough dedication, I was capable of anything. And yet becoming a mother has made me feel, simultaneously, infinitely more competent and completely inadequate.

Motherhood is having a pair of small yet impossibly strong arms clinging to your neck with the knowledge that you could save them from anything, and it is the euphoric rush  of feeling like you could. Having access to another realm of instinctual ferocity inside of you, yet outwardly more tender than you’ve ever been.  Brushing the tears off your child’s cheeks with an angel’s touch and a lion’s soul.

Motherhood is meeting the dark side of yourself, of knowing what your spirit desires when you haven’t slept or eaten. It’s holding a fragile baby over your shoulder while their cries bore deep into the prison that houses your inner demons, and meeting with horror the solutions your mind brings up to make the noise go away. Motherhood is telling yourself that you can only stand 15 more minutes and then you will abandon your baby while you roam the 3 am streets like a werewolf, and then somehow finding the inner fortitude to stay for an hour more, only to find yourself sleeping upright in a rocking chair when the respite comes. It’s being a well of strength tapped to the last inch, yet when two is required, finding it. And knowing  that all of that strength was inside of you all along, because your baby isn’t even capable yet of smiling to reassure you. Motherhood is becoming intimately acquainted with yourself and discovering that the carat weight of your soul is much higher than you had anticipated.

Motherhood is seeing the world with new eyes, greeting with gratitude a multitude of minuscule miracles you had never noticed before. Being forced to acknowledge the fascinating physics of an ant crawling up a wall, or the mysterious and earth-shattering skill that it is to be able to read.

But motherhood is not everything I will ever need. Motherhood gives and motherhood takes away, and my heart still looks forward to the experience of  those 100 greatest books and winter river swims. Motherhood however, unique in all that I have studied or done, accomplished or endured, has given me a spectrum in which I will experience them.

My heart and mind are vast. Motherhood isn’t the masterpiece of my life. It is the Smithsonian. There is room for many canvases.

For the record, I asked my husband if there was anything I should add about what being a parent means to a man. His response: "No. That was beautiful."

-Stephanie

Lexicography 101

Hey Steph,
  Welcome to Lexicography 101--the practice of defining words! I feel like I live a good portion of my life within the 8 point font of dictionary definitions. My master's thesis requires a lot of time in the hallowed pages of Webster's magnum opus. For the most part, this is one of the most boring things you could do with your time, but there are a few instances that get me excited in the glimmer of our language. These glimmers are the focus of this lexicography lesson today.

But first a sweet, Sherlockian story about dictionaries--and it's true! In April 1898, the Merriam-Webster offices received a telegram from Bridgetown, Barbados. The telegram read:

page 1543 third column count down 22 page 1377 third column count four Barbados page 1501 third column count four page 911 column three count 12 page 637 count 31 third column page 982 count 17 first column page 761 first column count 15

This cryptic message meant nothing to the desk-dwelling editors, but they pulled down the newest dictionary (1890) but found no meaningful message. They repeated the process in the 1884 and the 1879 edition. No success. And then they dragged out the 1864 whopper of a dictionary. Success! Herein lies your first homework assignment: click this link and use the 1864 dictionary to figure out the answer yourself. Your only hint is that Barbados was battling with Spain at the time. Go ahead and check it out, and leave your answers in the comment box below.

Within the dictionary are a lot of boring words like the and apple. But there's a lot of really interesting words that wow you with their odd spellings or interesting meanings. Here's ten to get you started in the fascinating world of lexicography, taken straight out of the 1864 Merriam-Webster dictionary.


buck: v. (Mining.) to break up or pulverize, as orcs

Yes, m'Lord. Who knew that 80 years before Lord of the Rings and 130 years before Warcraft there were orcs pulverizing in mines! Source

calipee: n. that part of the turtle that belongs to the lower shell, containing a gelatinous substance of a light yellowish color

So apparently, calipee is a delicacy made from the fleshy inside of the turtle. I figure you'd just want a picture of a sea turtle. Source

dulciloquy: n. a soft manner of speaking

Can you imagine if Hamlet simultaneously delivered a soliloquy and a dulciloquy? That would be intense. Source. 

dzyggetai: n. the Equus hemionus, a small Tartarian horse, of the size between the horse and the ass

Since I don't know what Tartarian means (ok, I looked it up: Tartar is a region southwest of Russia), here's a picture. Source.

gyve: n. A shackle, especially one to confine the legs; a fetter
         v. to fetter; to shackle; to chain

This one made me happy because it is an example of my thesis research: verbs that were originally nouns. Source

hallage: n. toll paid for goods sold in a hall

Apparently, this is a term for an Old English law. I feel like it has to do something with Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Source

mett: v. to think during sleep; to dream [Obsolete]

This word shouldn't be obsolete. Too much to think about while asleep. Source

pyxidium: n. a pod which divides circularly into an upper and lower half, of which the former acts as a king of lid, as the pimpernel

Pimpernel! Ok, so I'm not sure how the Scarlet Pimpernel flower has anything to do with this, but that's what the definition says, and dictionaries never lie. Source

stee: n. a ladder [Obsolete]

Also a good name for a member of a boy band. Source

virose: adj. having a nauseous odor; poisonous

Finally, some love for the adjectives out there. I'm thinking there's a connection between virose and virus. What do you think? Source

Bonus: gaol: n. a place of confinement or safe keeping of persons legally committed to it for crime, or of persons committed for trial or for failure to recognize in criminal cases, or for contempt of court, and of others in the legal custody of the sheriff or other officer of the law; a prison.
[That's right, kids. Next time your bored of using the word jail just switch it out for the alternate spelling of gaol.]


Don't forget to turn your homework assignment.

Cheers,

Amanda

Bravery: Irena Sendler

Hey Amanda,

I am honored to introduce you to Irene Sendler. 

Irena Sendler lived in Warsaw during WWII. She joined the Polish Council to Aid the Jews, an underground resistance group, and led their children’s division. She volunteered as a nurse in the Warsaw ghetto and smuggled infants to safety, sedating them and packing them in crates. She trained a dog to bark when a baby cried so that he could ride in the back of her truck and protect the babies from discovery if the children awoke. She arranged for Catholic boarding schools to shelter children, and when she could she would find hiding places for their mothers. She forged documents to give the children new identities, carefully archiving their real names for return back to Jewish families after the war. 

She risked her life every time she entered the ghetto. She personally carried 400 infants to safety and saved some 2,100 other Jews through her work.

Eventually Sendler was reported. The Gestupo tortured her to find the locations of the hidden Jews, breaking the bones in her feet, but she never gave in. On the way to execution her friends bribed the guards, taking her to safety.

When asked about her wartime service, Sendler said “Every child saved with my help is the justification of my existence on this Earth and not a title to glory.” She died in May 2008.

Bravery: n. an act of endurance, of following the moral dictates of your conscience. An act of doing what no one would blame you for not doing. see also Sendler, Irena

For the memory of Irena Sendler, and the kind of person we all hope we would be under similar circumstances, please share her story-- here are some links.

-Stephanie

My Voice

Hey Steph,
I'd like to introduce you to a girl names Malala Yousafzai. Maybe you know of her, but in case you haven't, here's a little bit about why you should. Malala was born in Pakistan, where during her youth, the Taliban took over her town and banned girls from going to school. Following after her father, Malala spoke up against this injustice. She was only 11 years old when she began to speak out. In 2008, she started writing a diary for BBC under a pseudonym. She spoke on radio stations in Pakistan decrying the Taliban ban on girls' education. By the summer of 2012, Malala had gained notoriety in Pakistan and abroad, and the Taliban began to fear her influence. Just over a year ago, on October 9, 2012, Malala was shot through the head, neck, and shoulder by a member of the Taliban. But Malala survived.

Picture Link. 

        And her voice hasn't gone quiet. On July 12--her 16th birthday--she spoke to the United Nations about education for all children. You can watch her speech here. (It's well worth your time.) Just last week, she appeared on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, where again she spoke with eloquence on why she did what she did:

"Why should I wait for someone else? Why should I be looking to the government, to the army, that they would help us? Why don't I raise my voice? Why don't we speak up for our rights? The girls of Swat [Malala's home region], they spoke up for their rights. I started writing the diary. I spoke on every media platform that I could, and I raised my voice on every platform that I could."

This young girl has every reason to not speak up anymore. She has every reason to not share her opinion. But she continues to proclaim the power of voice--of using it and not being afraid to stand.
           In this world of political correctness and respect for others opinions, I sometimes fill imprisoned. I am constantly aware of what everyone else is thinking, constantly aware of how I'll be interpreted and judged by the things that I say, constantly aware of how I might not be able to fully express acknowledgment of the wide variety of logical viewpoints of an issue and show respect toward them. I'm so worried of offending that sometimes I don't speak at all. I don't want to come off as rude. I don't want to come off as ignorant. I don't want to come off as non-empathetic. And so I'm left not saying anything.
          As I heard Malala speak a year after she'd been shot, proclaiming with eloquence, clarity, and wisdom in a language that was not her first, I thought, "She got shot at for her opinion, but she still keeps speaking. Can I not speak and be unafraid of far-less-terrifying consequences?"
          And even with that emboldening question pulsing through my brain, quickening my courage, and forming words in my mouth (or key taps in my fingers, as the case may be), I'm still nervous to speak. It is only when I consider a topic that I'm extremely passionate about, that the words seem to loosen in my mouth and fingers. As you know well, Stephanie, I feel deeply the importance of empowered women. My mind is often caught away with wanting women to see themselves as more, as powerful, as movers in their own lives. And if I'm going to work for empowered women, I need to be an empowered women myself. So these words must flow. They must be spoken. My voice must be heard. And if I can't find the courage to do it for my own empowerment, I can find power in doing it as an example to empower others.
          If only to help me overcome all the mental hurdles of being misinterpreted and misjudged in my expressions, I'd like to share a few foundational elements of all my future writing that may not be explicitly expressed in every post.

1) I write out of love. I try my hardest to view others around me with love first. If anything I write comes off as offensive, it is not intentional.
2) I write out of respect. I know that one person cannot agree with all the different views out there in the world, but I do respect others's rights to their viewpoints. If I write firmly, it is not because I believe other opinions are invalid or worse than mine.
3) I write seeking understanding. I do not know all, and I do not know much. I write from where I am in my life and that means I'm ignorant of a lot of different ways of seeing things. I welcome discussion that augments my current understanding.

          Phew, I feel a bit more able to write and speak now, to cast aside the laryngitis of fear that has imprisoned my voice. I've taken my voice back from the sea witch, and I'm ready to use it.

Cheers,

Amanda

Modesty: you're doing it wrong

Hey Amanda,

Sometimes I get so frustrated with human beings that I decide to give up on people for a while and only associate with fictional characters (kidding. ...mostly).

Modesty.

I actually really like modesty as a principle. I don't understand why people have to make it all misogynistic and awful. Look, modesty is not about clothes or lack of clothes. Modesty is saying "my body is not the most important thing about me." Modesty is saying "I'm worthy of attention for who I am not what I look like." So "modest is the hottest" actually completely undermines the value of the principle. As is "help our Christian brothers."

Modesty isn't a favor a woman does for a man.  Modesty is sticking it to the messed up patriarchy we live in where a woman is first assessed aesthetically. Modesty should train you to rely on the inherent value of being a divine creation.  I care if I'm compassionate. I care if I'm intelligent. I care if I'm creative. Sexy is irrelevant because I'm a fantastically interesting human being and that's all that should matter. That is the point of modesty. Getting into the specifics of inseam and shoulder coverage is a distraction.

And blaming a woman's dress for a man's lust, especially when those clothes easily fall within the realm of normal apparel... well, I think this video pretty much covers my opinion  on that front.

Keep it classy,
Stephanie

P.S.

ravishing- adj. a very threatening compliment. Just putting that out there. 

Government Funding

Hey Steph,
  So, the government's been shut down for one week as of today, and I'm sure, like me, you've read and heard and said a lot of opinions on this matter. After I got over the initial irritation and anger at Congress for being so irresponsible with the jobs of 800,000 people and tried to understand what the politicians were trying to achieve with their stalemate, I had, oddly enough, a positive response to everything happening--or not happening--in DC.

A week ago, I went to my local library to hear the state poet laureate speak. It was awesome! He referenced some of the greatest writers that have ever lived, some more obscure than others. And I had that rare occurrence in which I felt like I actually learned something from my undergrad degree in English. As I looked around the room, I noticed two demographics represented: white-aired retiree couples and single, twentysomething females. There was that one twenty-three year old dude wearing a track shirt and chasing around his toddler, but he turned out to also be a student poet, so we'll place him firmly in the outlier category. The vast majority of the attendees were the retiree couples, but the handful of ladies like myself made me feel at home. I'm a big fan of education, and I felt surrounded by fellow epistemophiles (that's "lovers of knowledge"). At the end of the night of thought-provoking prose and verbally delectable poetry, we received one more gift: a free copy of Tinders, a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. Free knowledge and books! I didn't know I lived so near heaven.

You know who built and supports this slice of heaven? The government! And fortunately, it was the local government and not the federal government. That would've shutdown my wonderful night. Man, libraries are such a beautiful public service, and something I don't want to live without. Just like the National Parks that are closed all around the nation, libraries are something about the government that I can fully get behind.

So every morning that I wake up and the government is still shutdown, I've decided to replace my frustration with the government with something about the government I'm not frustrated with, like libraries and decent roads.

Check out music from the National Parks--fortunately, not shutdown by the government.

Cheers,

Amanda