Uncommon Sense

All right, the day isn’t over by a long shot, but I took some time off to roast a batch of Mexican Coatepec, and took it just into second crack, so it should turn out to be just shy of “full city roast.” 

Picture of the vacuum cleaner looking item on my counter top is my “baby” drum coffee roaster (check out my reflection in the chrome).  She can handle half a pound at a time, thereby making her a toy to folks who roast for a living, but the cup profile rivals that of a $12,000 Probat or Diedrich shop model.

The Coatepec has been a versatile bean in our house.  It is a switch from the Kenya AA and Sumatra Mandheling I usually enjoy for their individual characteristics.  The Kenyan is bright and sassy, a swift ass-kick to get the morning rolling, and the Sumatra is good for mid-day lag while brooding over the morning’s paragraphs. 

Coatepec is good all day long, like a well crafted story that sticks you right into the action so that you forget you’re reading. 

Now that the house is filled with the burnt toast aroma of roasted coffee, its time to get back to work.  I finished a poem this morning for a contest submission, and the task for this afternoon is children’s fantasy.  Don’t ask, and I won’t tell you.  A couple of snippets for Boys Life magazine after dinner, and I can curl up again with a Jack Lewis’ biography. 

A man could have a worse day than this.

The books to the right are a conglom of my current obsessions, researches and constant companions.

Sometimes my job is too easy. I was early to drop the younger kids off at school on Valentine’s Day.  Not a big deal, they like to play on the playground with their friends for a few minutes before going in.  I drove around a bit before going back for Mass, and ran across this.  You can see the sun coming up behind the Spiece sign in the picture.  That is a good thing, because it gave me the opportunity to capture this shot in all of its defiant glory.  Tom S. has never had qualms about speaking his mind. 

Just take it as a reminder that no matter what hardship comes into one’s life, nothing, but nothing, should be able to move him off of his land.  Taxing the family home is one of the most bone-headed moves ever undertaken by supposedly rational beings.  Eliminate property tax! 

Thoughts inspired by reading John Senior:

I was lucky enough to have grown up on the edge of forty acres of field and  forest, and yes a creek still runs through it.  From where I sit writing this, I’m only about fifteen miles away from that spot, and yet I don’t take my kids there near enough.  I’m lucky still.  Mac Park lies down the road but a mile, the Nickel Plate Trail is five blocks a way, and there are three state forests within an hour of my ramshackle.

My response to creation was wonder.  As I look back, I mourn that somehow I’ve lost that, and I’m resolved to regain it.

I have tried to instill this in my kids, but you can’t force wonder.  During a summer excursion with the kids to Mac Park, I told them to put on the oldest sneakers they had, because they’d be getting them wet.  We walked the creek from the golf course to the playground, getting a water glider’s view of the landscape, collecting stones and watching iridescent green dragonflies chase and scatter.  I want more time like that, with the hand held video games lost beneath a couch cushion, the television unplugged, and the computer in sleep mode.

Anyway, after musing over some passages of Senior’s Restoration, I wrote the following.  If you laugh, I hope it is in the right places.

I have gazed at midnight into the embers of a campfire with a few close friends, when to speak above a whisper seemed sacrilegious. I have read the sky through autumn-tinged leaves, while lesser stories slept on the pages clasped to my chest. I have walked the creek to the river and felled timbers with an ax and lashed together rafts with maritime knots and stood aloft upon the waters of the Wabash, pole in hand and muddy sneakers on my feet. I’ve hiked the hardwood forests and scaled hills of crumbling Indiana limestone. I have slept under the stars and awoken under a dewy blanket. I have climbed so far into the forest canopy that the branches in my hands were smaller than my wrists. In my childhood, I have loved fire and wind and trees and waters both deep and rushing. I have played in the rain for hours, tipsy from the scent of wet oak and maple. I have cut the vine at the foot of a muddy embankment and swung screaming through the sunlight into the swimming hole. I have dined upon wild onion, May apple and dandelion . I have stood upon massive glacial puddingstones and surveyed the world through the eyes of a child. I have thundered down countless hills on a Stingray bike, and wept for the beauty of a sunrise from a canoe in the middle of a pond. I have called back to the blue heron and the hawk, and gasped, pole in hand, as fish jumped flashing and spraying into the cool morning air. I have dammed the creek and caught minnows in a sieve. I have lived.

You can live, too.  Turn the television off.  Dress for the weather, and go outside.  Do something.  Do anything.  Toss a football around with your kids.  Take a walk.  Jump in a puddle in a pair of old shoes, and let the cold water soak into your skin.  Zoom down a hill on your bicycle and feel the wind on your face.  Please?

I’d like to give a slap on the back to  IHS Press for republishing two books from the late professor, John Senior, who for many years taught the Classics in the Integrated Humanities Program at the University of Kansas.  He was a profound Catholic thinker.  The vision he presents of a restored Christian culture is provocative for many reasons.  You will only know what I’m talking about if you read the books.

I have a hardbound copy of Death, and my last soft cover copy of Restoration is in the hands of a friend.  I was lucky enough to purchase my copies at face value, when Roman Catholic Books still had some in stock.  Used copies are now selling on Amazon and Abebooks at unbelievable prices. 

You don’t have to worry about that now, if you want to read them.  IHS Press is beginning to ship their versions on Valentine’s Day, February 14, 2008, after months of delays at the printer.

One reason to order Death is for the appendix “1,000 Good Books” which has been the standard of measurement against which classical home schoolers and those simply interested in the breadth and depth of their children’s reading adventures judged goodness.  Senior offers a compelling argument, why these books are a prerequisite to understanding the “great books” of Western civilization, and to a truly liberal education (understood not as political liberalism). 

Restoration focuses more on things we can do to bring about the restoration of culture.  It is strong medicine.  I’ll give you a spoonful.  The first requirement, which Senior repeats throughout the book as the beginning of the process is to “smash the television.”

Both books explore the role of wonder as man’s primary attitude toward creation.  No thinking Catholic should deprive himself of the opportunity to read these books.  When you sit down to read, bring a pencil.  You’ll be wanting it before page two.

Wanted:  Experienced crew to turn altar around in Catholic Church so that priest and people are both facing ‘liturgical east.” 

Responses: Pope Benedict XVI

For sale:  Portable table used in Catholic Church so priest and people could face eachother, taking focus off of Christ.

UPDATE – 7/3/08

This seems to have been the inaugural “ad orientem” public Mass by H.H. BXVI, and in the interim he has institued the practice, when Mass is celebrated versus populum, of placing the Crucifix and altar candles between the celebrant and the people.  He has also been giving communion exclusively on the tongue to those who are kneeling.  I can only applaud the return to tradition and liturgical common sense, and the sense of the sacred it promotes. – J.G.