Matching Tracksuits

Month: June 2008

Polish Busses

Tuesday 17 June 2008

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“What are you looking forward to?” I asked K.

“Riding in a bus,” she said with a smile.

While we lived in Polska, we often dreaded a bus ride. Bumpy, crowded, cold or hot depending on the season, a bus ride could be torture. And it could be real torture.

One winter evening, coming back from Krakow on the now-obsolete 6:35 public bus to Lipnica Wielka, I was sure my toes had completely frozen; I was fully expecting to have frost bite. I pulled my boots off and sat Indian style — or “criss-cross apple sauce” as it’s called now — in the hopes of warming my feet under my folded knees.

One summer afternoon, on a bus to Kielce, I was sure I would melt. No one directly in front of me saw fit to open a window, and I was suffocating in body odor and heat.

But when you haven’t had one in three years, nostalgia sets in.

Papa and Nana on a Polish bus in August 2004

Bus ticket prices are a sure indicator of inflation. When I first moved to Lipnica, the ticket to Nowy Targ, about 35 km away, cost less than four zloty. Three twenty, I believe. When we left in 2005, a ticket cost an even five zloty. Three years later I’m sure it’s up to six.

We’ll find out in thirteen days.

Weekend in the Mountains

Monday 16 June 2008

Saturday evening, as the sun was setting and the fog was settling in, this is what K and I saw:

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Sunset in Madison County

Getting to that moment was just as enjoyable as the moment itself, though.

We set off Saturday morning — after my Praxis test — on a trip to the mountains: Asheville. Hippy-ville, land of the sky, where the patchouli flows like water.

Our first stop was actually a good bit north of Asheville, in Hot Springs, at the annual Bluff Mountain Festival. Bluegrass, old-time music, clogging — a fine festival.

K and L danced and twirled

Dancing at the Festival I
Dancing at the Bluff Mountain Festival
Dancing at the Festival II
Dancing at the Bluff Mountain Festival

L made a new friend,

New Friend I
New friend

only to discover that the new friend was not wild about hugs.

New Friend II
New friend, who doesn’t like hugs

After the rain finally chased us away, we went to stay with friends in Madison county — friends who live on the top of a mountain and keep bees:

Hives I
Hives

We spent the evening as all evenings should be spent: on the deck, surrounded by nature and friends, without a mosquito to be found.

I took the time to talk with someone knowledgeable about bees about what’s going on with the bee population in the States. It’s fairly frightening. One word: monoculture:

Many worry that what’s shaping up to be a honeybee catastrophe will disrupt the food supply. While staple crops like wheat and corn are pollinated by wind, some 90 cultivated flowering crops – from almonds and apples to cranberries and watermelons – rely heavily on honeybees trucked in for pollinization. […]

For many entomologists, the bee crisis is a wake-up call. By relying on a single species for pollination, US agriculture has put itself in a precarious position, they say. A resilient agricultural system requires diverse pollinators. This speaks to a larger conservation issue. Some evidence indicates a decline in the estimated 4,500 potential alternate pollinators – native species of butterflies, wasps. and other bees. The blame for that sits squarely on human activity – habitat loss, pesticide use, and imported disease – but much of this could be offset by different land-use practices.

Moving away from monoculture, say scientists, and having something always flowering within bee-distance, would help natural pollinators. This would make crops less dependent on trucked-in bees, which have proved to be vulnerable to die-offs. (Christian Science Monitor)

Once the ladies came out to the porch, though, we changed to less depressing topics, but not for long: “Who knows when the Girl will wake us” we said, trotting off to bed around eleven.

L woke us up at her usual hour, which meant we got to see a mountain sunrise:

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Sunrise in Madison County

L played with the dogs for a while. Our friends have four dogs, but only three of them were interested in L.

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She got a face-full of tail a couple of times but took it like a trooper and insisted on staying with the dogs.

It was wonderful seeing how the dogs sensed L’s fragility and were so gentle with her. They didn’t attempt to jump on her and would gently approach to lick her in the face — which she loved and showed the baby sign for “more” again and again.

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After breakfast, we drove back down to Asheville, to visit other friends, who also have a dog.

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We were pleasantly surprised at how patient all the dogs were with L. She’s so obsessed with hugging animals that she’s got an arm-full of scratch marks from where she shares the love with our cat a little too forcefully.

Finally, we met still more friends at the NC Arboretum for walk.

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NC Arboretum
14

It was a busy weekend, undoubtedly a foretaste of what’s our trip to Polska is going to be like — a trip that is rapidly approaching.

Too rapidly, in some respects.

We leave in two weeks.

(More pictures available at Flickr.)

Daj!

Sunday 15 June 2008

15

We’ll wander down to the river that runs through the edge of Jablonka, toilet plunger in hand, ready for the first game of fetch with Kajtek, the family dog.

Kajtek has always loved toilet plungers. He has his own, in fact, to keep him from stealing them from the bathroom.

“Daj” is the imperative of “give” in Polish, and is pronounced like the English word “die.”

Give a plunger a toss and off he goes: through snow, tall grass, mud — it doesn’t matter.

It came to be know as “daj” because, well, we all said “Kajtek, daj!” and he knew what we meant: off he’d go, searching for his toilet plunger, inevitably bringing it back with more excitement than would seem possible.

Favorite Toy II
Kajtek and his toy, March 14, 2004

Shortly, we’ll be introducing L to the joys of the daj.

Fields and Cows

Saturday 14 June 2008

16

Greenville doesn’t have enough fields. And it certainly doesn’t have enough cows.

Soon, we’ll be wandering among the fields and cows of Jablonka — “Little Apple Tree.”

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Cows of Jablonka, with Babia Gora in the background

Bread

Friday 13 June 2008

17

Americans don’t eat bread. By that I mean it’s not a staple. We don’t buy bread daily.

We don’t eat bread daily. And what we eat really doesn’t deserve to be called bread. Most stores sell gummy, soft, baked masses called bread, but it is to real bread what Nescafe is to real coffee.

Real bread is dense and dark. It goes bad in a few days and can be bought still warm if one gets to the corner store quickly enough.

In seventeen days, we will eat bread.

If It Looks, Smells, and Tastes Like Translated Hebrew…

Thursday 12 June 2008

There is a lot of effort — all mental, though — trying to legitimize the Book of Mormon. It should be physical effort, in the form of archaeology, but that pesky angel took the plates with him.

If we could just get a look at the plates, I’m sure we could do all kinds of analysis — physical and textual — to prove their authenticity. But at least we have the translation, and we can use the translation to look for traces of Hebrew influences that would have been in the original Egyptian-script original.

At least that’s what John A. Tvedtnes argues in an article entitled “The Hebrew Background of the Book of Mormon.”

The essay begins,

The English translation of the Book of Mormon shows many characteristics of the Hebrew language. In many places the words that have been used and the ways in which the words have been put together are more typical of Hebrew than of English. These Hebraisms, as I will call them, are evidence of the authenticity of the Book of Mormon–evidence that Joseph Smith did not write a book in English but translated an ancient text and that his translation reflects the Hebrew words and word order of the original.

I read this and I think, “Are you serious?”

He is.

His essay is an attempt to prove the Hebrew origin of one book by comparing the English translation with an English translation of another book known to be written in Hebrew.

Some choice passages:

Hebrew uses another compound preposition that would be translated literally as from before the presence of or from before the face of. English would normally use simply from. The influence of the Hebrew can be seen in these Book of Mormon passages:

  • “they fled from before my presence” (1 Nephi 4:28)
  • “he had gone from before my presence” (1 Nephi 11:12)
  • “they were carried away . . . from before my face” (1 Nephi 11:29) […]

Hebrew has fewer adverbs than English. Instead, it often uses prepositional phrases with the preposition meaning in or with. The English translation of the Book of Mormon contains more of these prepositional phrases in place of adverbs than we would expect if the book had been written in English originally–another Hebraism. Here are some examples:

  • “with patience” instead of patiently (Mosiah 24:15)
  • “with much harshness” instead of very harshly (1 Nephi 18:11)
  • “with joy” instead of joyfully (Jacob 4:3)

The Book of Mormon uses cognates much more often than we would expect if the book had originally been written in English. These cognates show the Hebrew influence of the original. One of the best-known examples is “I have dreamed a dream” (1 Nephi 8:2). That is exactly the way that the same idea is expressed in literal translation of the Old Testament Hebrew (see Genesis 37:5; 41:11).

Here are some other examples of the use of cognates in the Book of Mormon, each followed by the more normal expression for English:

  • “work all manner of fine work” (Mosiah 11:10) instead of work well
  • “and he did judge righteous judgments” (Mosiah 29:43) instead of judge righteously or make righteous judgments […]

For example, Hebrew uses compound prepositions that would be translated literally as by the hand of and by the mouth of. English would normally use just by. The Book of Mormon contains many examples that appear to show the influence of this Hebrew use of compound prepositions:

  • “ye shall be taken by the hand of your enemies” (Mosiah 17:18)
  • “I have also acquired much riches by the hand of my industry” (Alma 10:4) […]

All Tvedtnes succeeds in doing this is the exact opposite of what he’s arguing: he’s providing indications that Smith simply used the old KJV as a model for his writing.

But if “it looks like translated Hebrew” is a good enough argument, well…

And I have taken this computer by the hand of he who is webmaster and have written a fine writing and posted a wonderful post explaining, with much patience, the idiocy of this argument.

And write like Yoda too, I can. A Mormon Jedi must I be!

If a college student were to turn in a paper with this kind of reasoning, the professor would probably write two words at the top of the paper: “See me.”

The idea of “Saac’s sons” can be traced by to J. H. Allen’s Judah’s Sceptre and Joseph’s Birthright, from which Armstrong heavily plagiarized.

Yet this kind of “exegesis” is hardly new. I was first introduced to this kind of thinking growing up in Herbert Armstrong’s Worldwide Church of God. It was there that I learned the true etymology of the term “Saxons.” It came from the old days when the children of the Biblical Isaac were referred to as “Isaac’s sons.” It’s easy to see how one could quickly drop the “I” and simply call them “Saac’s sons.”

There are a few problems with this line of reasoning.

  1. “Saxon” comes from the Anglo-Saxon word “seax.”
  2. There is no evidence that anyone ever used “Saac” as a nickname for Isaac.
  3. This derivation depends on modern English (“Saac’s sons”), which would be several hundred years in the future from the time, Armstrong claimed, people began calling the descendants of Isaac “Saac’s sons.”

But in the world of cultic exegesis and the presumed conclusion, we can overlook these kinds of things.

Hat tip to Mormanity – A Mormon Blog for the initial link to this article.
Tvedtnes’s original article is available here.

Boy, [you’ll have to] carry that weight…

Thursday 12 June 2008

18

One of the things we’re hoping to do in Polska is a lot of walking — hiking, sightseeing, general wandering. And the Girl gets heavy toting her. And she can’t yet walk very long distances. And we really didn’t want to carry our bulky backpack-carrier with us. So — we bought an Ergo Baby Carrier.

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We gave it a test-walk yesterday. Other than L being very close to my back, it was relatively comfortable. The hugginess will only be a problem here, in the super-humid South Carolina.

I have visions of walking with her in places like Chocholowska Valley or the market square in Krakow…

Only eighteen more days.

Return

Wednesday 11 June 2008

19

In May 2000, I unexpectedly returned to Poland. It all happened suddenly: I’d been planning a fall visit, but then I found one of my friends was moving out of Poland and another was going into the army, so I wouldn’t get to see them were I there in the fall. Within a week, I had tickets and I could hardly contain my excitement.

Eight years later, a repetition: we will be going to Poland this summer after all. We leave at the end of the month, and we’ll stay for almost two full weeks. We’d stay for the summer if it were possible, but given American companies’ generous vacation allowances, we don’t have a choice. And K is not prepared to do something like this:

Tell them you’re planning to take 2 months off. Don’t ask. Tell them. Make it clear that you’re going to go regardless of whether there’s a job waiting when you get back. They’ll accommodate you. Trust me.

Two Weeks Vacation is only a Recommendation, not a Rule

So two weeks will have to do.

And it will be a crammed two weeks. We’re going to get the Girl baptized; we’re spending a couple of days in Krakow; we’re going hiking in the mountains; we’re visiting half the population of Podhale; we’re climbing Babia Gora;and more.

We’re leaving in nineteen days.

BoM 8: First Book of Nephi, Chapters 2-4

Sunday 8 June 2008

God comes to Lehi, Nephi’s father, in a dream and tells him to take his family to the wilderness. He doesn’t really give a reason, and Lehi complies: “he left his house, and the land of his inheritance, and his gold, and his silver, and his precious things, and took nothing with him, save it were his family, and provisions, and tents, and departed into the wilderness,” setting up camp near the Red Sea.

Here we learn a little about Nephi’s family. His mother is Sariah, and he has three elder brothers: Laman, Lemuel, and Sam.

They come across a river, which Lehi names after Laman, then says to him, “O that thou mightest be like unto this river, continually running into the fountain of all righteousness!” To Lemuel he says, ” O that thou mightest be like unto this valley, afirm and bsteadfast, and immovable in keeping the commandments of the Lord!” Nephi explains that Lehi says this because of the “stiffneckedness” of Laman and Lameul. Much like the first family, there’s some tension, with two of the brothers murmuring against their father and complain about having to follow father into the wilderness and leave behind their inheritance. Lehi puts the fear of God in them and they shape up.

At this point, God comes to Nephi and tells him something, but we don’t immediately know what. Nephi goes to Sam and tells him what God told him; Sam believes — yet we still don’t know what that was. All the same, Lamuel and Laman hear it and don’t believe, at which point God speaks to Nephi again. He tells him that, because he keeps his commandments, he shall prosper, while his brothers shall be cut off. God promises that Nephi will be made a ruler and a teacher.

Chapter three begins with a new command from God, which Nephi explains to his father:

Behold I have dreamed a dream, in the which the Lord hath commanded me that thou and thy brethren shall return to Jerusalem. For behold, Laban hath the record of the Jews and also a genealogy of my forefathers, and they are engraven upon plates of brass. Wherefore, the Lord hath commanded me that thou and thy brothers should go unto the house of Laban, and seek the records, and bring them down hither into the wilderness.

Nephi and his brothers return to Jerusalem, then cast lots to see who exactly is going to go into the house to get the records. Laman gets the short straw and goes to get the plates. Laban refuses, and the boys grow despondent.

Laban, according the the Biblical account (Genesis 24-31), was Jacob’s father-in-law. It was for Laban that Jacob worked seven years for Rachel’s hand in marriage, only to be fooled at the last minute and given Leah instead. Jacob worked another seven years and took Rachel as a second wife.Of course, this can’t be the same Laban, for Jacob is a patriarch: there was not Jewish Jerusalem at that point. It seems, though, that Smith is incorporating Biblical names to further legitimize his book — to give it a more authentic feel.

Then Nephi remembers all the gold they’d left in Jerusalem and they head off to get it. They offer to buy the plates, but Laban, seeing the treasure, decides simply to kill the brothers and take the money. The brothers run off, leaving the treasure behind. They hide in a cave, where the older brothers begin beating Nephi. An angel appears and asks them why they’re beating the one who will rule over them in the future. The angel assures the brothers that God will deliver Laban into their hands. The brothers don’t believe, despite the message having a clearly supernatural source.

The brothers return to Jerusalem at the beginning of chapter four, after Nephi points out that it was an angel that promised them all this — he must have inside knowledge. As they approach Laban’s house, who should appear but Laban himself, drunk and stumbling. He passes out at the feet of Nephi, who takes Laban’s sword and feels the Spirit telling him to slay Laban. But Nephi is a young man; he’s never killed anyone; he’s nervous. God speaks to him, stiffening his resolve:

Behold the Lord hath delivered him into thy hands. Yea, and I also knew that he had sought to take away mine own life; yea, and he would not hearken unto the commandments of the Lord; and he also had taken away our property. And it came to pass that the Spirit said unto me again: Slay him, for the Lord hath delivered him into thy hands; Behold the Lord slayeth the wicked to bring forth his righteous purposes. It is better that one man should perish than that a nation should dwindle and perish in unbelief.

So Nephi pulls Laban up by his hair and decapitates him with Laban’s own sword. He then takes Laban’s armor for his own. He heads to Laban’s house and, predictably, everyone thinks he’s Laban. He gets the plates and much of Laban’s treasure, then convinces Zoram, Laban’s servant, to head back with the now-rich brothers.

It’s striking how similar the actions of Nephi and the others are to the characters of the Old Testament. In a word, barbaric. There are two ways to explain this: the first is that the Book of Mormon is as genuine as the Bible, and thus is a fairly accurate reflection of life in those times. The second is that Smith deliberately chose to pattern his book after the Old Testament — a wise move, considering the claims he makes about it. However, there seems to be a third option, combining the other options: Smith was himself convinced that he was transmitting the word of God, but in fact was deluding himself. This might work if Smith claimed, as Mohammad did, that a supernatural being dictated the words to him. However, Smith claims that he translated plates — in other words, it would be possible to have physical proof of the divine inspiration of the Book of Mormon, if only the plates were still here. That backs Smith into a corner: either he’s telling the truth, or he’s deliberately lying. And if he’s lying, then that means a whole religion was created on one man’s lies.

How many times has that happened?

Swimming

Sunday 8 June 2008

We bought a small “pool” to put on the back deck for the Girl. She took to it hesitantly at first.

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And it’s really not that she took to it–she likes splashing at the edges, but that’s about it right now.

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And she likes building towers:

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Year’s End

Wednesday 4 June 2008

I’m sitting on the back porch with a bit of scotch and a cigar, reflecting on the day-the last day of school. It ended on a positive note, with a few very positive emails from parents and relatively peaceful final classes. It’s fairly amazing how all perceived animosity burns itself out in those final days and students and teachers alike seem more able to see the positive side of school — not to mention each other — than they have for weeks, or even months.

It being my first year teaching in the States, I did a lot of experimenting. I used in-class journals, Moodle, various writing workshops; I tried different forms of classroom management: some experiments were frustratingly unsuccessful, while others were more effective than I’d ever dreamed they’d be.

It was a year of relearning how to be a classroom teacher. It was a year of relearning all the wonderful things from adolescent psych about what thirteen-year-olds can, can’t, will, and won’t do. It was a year of fighting bureaucracy that I didn’t know existed in American schools. It was a year of relearning content-area knowledge, like how to spell “onomatopoeia.”

In trying to determine whether it was a successful year, I’m left wondering what “successful” means. How do I as a teacher measure success? My MAP test scores were higher in all classes in the spring than they were in the fall. Does that constitute success? NCLB says it does. I had a student who was brilliant and brilliantly troubled, and I never managed to make a chink in her armor so that we could string together more than two consecutive learning-filled days. Does that constitute failure? I taught some vocabulary well enough that some students were referring to other students’ disruptive behavior as “superfluous.” Does that constitute success?

This year I realized again what I’d learned years ago in Poland: the immediate, clear successes are few and far between. But there’s no way to know what seeds were planted. Teaching in a small village in Poland afforded me the opportunity to see what seeds I’d planted, because students would often come back years later and tell me what they were using their English for. Some got jobs abroad because of their English; some fell in love with foreigners because of English; several became English teachers. So I simply have to trust that I did accomplish good, that I did teach the 90+ young men and women in my charge for 180 days something, and maybe even something more than English.

In Thought

Tuesday 3 June 2008

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The Girl looks more and more like a young lady and less and less like a baby every day.