Jellicle Time

Aside from the normal excuses I give about not blogging regularly, another event has cut into my typing time, and it involves fabulous feline fun. Disclaimer here: I'm not a cat person. I'm not even much of a dog person. We have no pets--which probably isn't that surprising, given the number of kiddos we have--and if we do ever get a pet, it will be years from now, and it would have to be the absolute right time and right dog. I've pretty much ruled out getting a cat for many, many reasons.

All that being said, I don't dislike cats. I've taken care of them before--our neighbors had my sister and I take care of their five cats when they were gone on vacation, and they were pleasant enough when they weren't hiding (the cats, not the neighbors). I pet them if they'll deign to allow it when I visit friends or family. But cats tend to be distant. They're particular. They don't lend themselves to blind loyalty or random snuggling with the nearest human unless they really want and need some love (see Socks when baby Charles shows up). And now I have a reason to possess a renewed respect for these aloof-yet-sophisticated animals.

T.S. Eliot wrote a wonderful little book called Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats in the 1930s, and Andrew Lloyd Webber used it to write the blockbuster musical CATS, which premiered in 1981. Our local theater organization, the Calumet Players, decided last fall to tackle this gigantic show, and it's currently completed its first weekend run.

And who's involved with this production? Well, many awesome and talented people. And me.

Yes, I'm actually playing a cat (her name is Jemima). And would you believe it? It's been amazingly fun!

If you're available next weekend--like, within fifty miles of here--you should come see the show. Not because I'm in it but because you'll love it. Even if you don't fancy yourself a friend of cats. Trust me--I know!

Quite the transformation is an understatement.

On Marriage: Why 'Clarity and Mindfulness' Is Not Enough

So I just watched "The 20-Something Marriage Divide" on WSJ.com. The brief summary of the interview was this: "Kay Hymowitz of the Manhattan Institute asserts that women in their 20s should seek stability in marriage before childbirth. WSJ's Wendy Bounds asks why." (You can watch the entire video here.)

The fascinating study "Knot Yet: The Benefits and Costs of Delayed Marriage in America" that Hymowitz and three others co-authored came upon a startling, problematic pattern: while fewer teens are bearing children out of wedlock (a good thing), more twenty-something women are bearing children out of wedlock. And many of these women lack a college education and thus the opportunities to pursue middle- or higher-income positions. The typical pattern, as Hymowitz puts it, is that these women have a child, usually while they're cohabiting with the father, two years prior to the parents' marriage (if that even happens). Two-fifths of these relationships end in the first five years of the child's life. Then the parents typically move on to other relationships, involving the child in the myriad confusion of step-parents and step-relatives, including half-siblings, sinking the already low-income child into a hard-to-escape life of upheaval and usually poverty. Hymowitz explains that long, long, long studies of children's social, emotional, and educational development have shown that children benefit from stability, namely the stability of one father and one mother who are married to each other.

Bounds pounces on Hymowitz with series of anecdotal comment-leading-questions, from the extreme conclusion "So you're saying women should get married young and have children young, even if they don't really know the man they're marrying?" to the weirdly defensive "I have many twenty-something friends who have no desire to be married" (I'm paraphrasing quotes here). And Hymowitz has to respond with comments like, "No one would want women to get married just for the sake of getting married" and "Well, eighty percent of twenty-something women we interviewed said they'd like to be married someday." Bounds throws in a few comments about how families now are varied and ultimately makes a common, relativistic statement about American families, insinuating that no one can judge any non-one married father and mother family as problematic in any way. Hymowitz didn't get to respond to Bounds' last comment.

While all of this speaks indirectly to the topics so prevalent at the moment (SCOTUS, anyone?), I was first riveted by how intent Bounds seemed upon criticizing the Knot Yet conclusions. She didn't realize that so many of her anecdotal comments inherently excluded the very population that the study authors noticed, namely, the non-college-educated "Middle America" woman.  Bounds' responses weren't unique, I don't think; she seemed to be saying what any successful, educated, urban American woman would have said in response to Hymowitz's comments. I sensed that Bounds chafed at the criticism inherent in the study's conclusions, mostly because they showed how when people choose to have sex out of wedlock and a child results, the child inevitably suffers from the parents' choices. Even though the study stayed pretty far away from criticizing well-educated, middle- to upper-income women and parents--even going so far as to saying the later marriage age for college grads has helped women--the sting hits close. No woman wants to think that her choices, particularly her sexual choices, can be negative in any way. Even if the consequences of her choices, like children, are hypothetical. She knows, deep down, that children are a natural result of sex, and any criticism of her non-marital coitus is ultimately a judgment on her.

Our culture is idiotic when it comes to children. We hold up children as possessions, thinking we can trash them when they don't fit our lives or that we can manufacture them the way we manufacture toothbrushes when we want them. And any reminders that children result from a very basic, yet very mysterious biological union apart from our controlled circumstances--from faulty contraception to even perfectly-executed but failed fertility treatments--just remind us all the more powerfully that children are a gift. But we don't want to believe that. We want to believe that we can decide and choose in what instances children can be borne and raised, and then we believe that we can decide and choose that whatever instances in which children result we can deem good and successful (and immune from criticism). We have distanced sex and marriage so far from childbearing that we honestly get really confused and riled up when real people connect the three. And it's particularly difficult when the real people are children, stuck in real, chaotic, hybrid family situations. We typically ignore marriage altogether in those situations. Even Hymowitz, specifically studying marriage, could only retreat to a hollow definition of how a young woman should approach marriage if she's "serious" about having children: she should use "clarity and mindfulness" when considering and entering into marriage and think of her future child's best interests first. And who knows what a young man should be thinking.

And isn't that the problem? People cohabit for many reasons, and I'd venture a guess that precious few of them have "seriousness about my future child" or "my future child's best interest" as one or either of them, let alone words like "clarity and mindfulness" as they apply to potential children. People want sex. They want lower rent or mortgages. They want companionship without legal hurdles. They want to do what they want to do without getting "serious," which is a lazy way of saying they want to have a relationship their way, without sacrifice. Of course children in these situations would get the raw end; they're unwelcome, uninvited intruders to inherently selfish lifestyles. Parenting and sacrifice go hand in hand, and if parents of a child have never committed to sacrifice to, for, and with each other in the life-long bond of marriage, itself an institution about sacrifice and submission, their child will certainly be the one that does the sacrificing--socially, emotionally, educationally, you name it.

Where does a child fit in this picture?

The original descriptor of the interview, "20-somethings should seek stability in marriage before childbirth," only begs the question "why?" when we think marriage is ultimately and only about two people. Otherwise, the study's conclusion seem so obvious as to be ridiculous: one plus one equals three, not two. Even most of the conversations about same-sex marriage seem to miss this point. People get that marriage is important, perhaps even sacred (whatever that means to you). People even get that marriage as an ideal concept is a relationship to be desired, notwithstanding Bounds' friends. But marriage is about two people, a man and a woman, bonded together in the only relationship known in human history to be the most consistent, healthy way for children to live. Once people pretend that marriage is wholly separated from childbearing (and homosexual couples by default contend this), child-rearing, and child-maturing (even adult children of recently married septuagenarian parents are affected, after all), then of course marriage can mean whatever two emotional people want to make it. 

Any close reading of my comments here obviously indicts heterosexual couples who are married but who adopt the me-centered view of marriage. Even a couple biologically designed to enter into marriage can and--news flash!--does mess it up. So where does that leave us?  

Marriage requires philia and eros. Even more, it requires agape, the kind of love that foregoes self and unconditionally forgives. Of all groups, Christians best understand marriage because we see and confess how Christ loved us first. By recognizing our sin and our need for forgiveness, and by repenting and receiving Christ's forgiveness, we can connect Christ's love for His church to marriage. He loves us and forgives us, and then we can love and forgive each other, particularly our spouse and any children we receive. Vague, even well-intentioned clarity and mindfulness about marriage, and pragmatic choices and emotional decisions, aren't enough to make or define or sustain marriage. Sacrifice and forgiveness between husband and wife, and Christ received by both over and over and over again, are.  

Losing Fiction

Oh, how I've missed this.

I'm pragmatic. I love non-fiction texts--biographies, social analyses, theology (duh), political theory, all types of history. I think all people, particularly young people, should spend more time immersed in history. But this article raises the hackles on my knowledge-loving soul. In short, it reports that almost all states will require at least 70% of classroom texts to be non-fiction by 2014. Here's the terrifying ending quote from the article: "Supporters of the directive argue that it will help pupils to develop the ability to write concisely and factually, which will be more useful in the workplace than a knowledge of Shakespeare."

God help us all. Besides the fact that public education in our country is incontrovertibly failing (case in point: how many high school graduates do you know who can sit down and write "concisely and factually" about, say, how the printing press affected the Reformation or three causes of the American Civil War? Really, anything historically, politically, theologically significant that happened before 1990?), since when did usefulness in the workplace become the definitive educational purpose?  I know that liberal arts education has long been out of vogue, but I suppose I hoped most educators at least pretended to embrace knowledge for knowledge's sake, not just because they could draw a direct line from addition to clean accounting books.

Some years ago, Wendell Berry, the agrarian philosopher and author of some amazing novels, succinctly put our educational quandary this way:

The complexity of our present trouble suggests as never before that we need to change our present concept of education. Education is not properly an industry, and its proper use is not to serve industries, either by job-training or by industry-subsidized research. It's proper use is to enable citizens to live lives that are economically, politically, socially, and culturally responsible. This cannot be done by gathering or "accessing" what we now call "information" - which is to say facts without context and therefore without priority. A proper education enables young people to put their lives in order, which means knowing what things are more important than other things; it means putting first things first.

"First things first." And what are first things? Truth and that which sheds light on it: great art (and, I would argue, science can shed light on Truth, too). But if first things are passé at best and rejected outright at worst--and it would seem we're reaching for the worst--then we're all in serious trouble. For if usefulness in the workplace more than any other reason drives our education for our children, then they--and we--will lose a lot more than fiction. 

Yet In Its Depth What Treasures, Part II

In a private letter written in 1820, Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote, ''You are now in London, that great sea, whose ebb and flow at once is deaf and loud, and on the shore vomits its wrecks, and still howls on for more. Yet in its depth what treasures!'' These words in no way conjure up the dignified, even majestic image (re: NBC entry shots) we desire for London. And yet they fit sport, and especially the 2012 Olympics, in London, metaphorically well.  (We don't really want to talk, let alone think, about vomit, do we?)

It's been an exciting two weeks, these Olympic Games. Swimmers, shooters, gymnasts, runners, divers, tennis players, volleyball players, basketball players--amazing athletes all, and we Olsons had our favorites. Phelps made tremendous history (though he began disconcertingly sluggishly), and we will always be glad we witnessed his historic achievement of twenty-two medals. Unfathomable, really--I don't think we'll really be able to appreciate it until years have passed. He's truly a legend.  Lochte made his mark (in more ways than one--wink and YIKES); Schmitt, Vollmer, Soni, and Ledecky pulled off big, happy wins, too (and Brit Adlington showed super class). The US women's gymnastics team won a stellar gold team medal, and Douglas scored the all-around (impressive feats!), but Aly Raisman gets our biggest nod for peaking--and pulling off awesome performances--AND being such a great team leader for the women's team. We were thrilled Usain Bolt won again, but we were inspired by gentle David Rudisha, who won the 800 meters in world record time. The trifecta of golds in forty-five minutes for the UK was moving--and hearing ten thousands of people sing "God Save the Queen" at the top of their lungs was tear-inducing. So beautiful.

And how about that Allyson Felix getting her gold in the 200 meters? You go, girl! And those relay finals were spec-tac-u-lar. The beach volleyball win by May-Treanor and Walsh was awesome; here they come, Rio?! We watched most of the match between Murray and Federer, and that was a tennis final to remember! Awesome Murray win! (Okay, yeah... we cried during that medal ceremony, too.) The US women's soccer team pulled it out again, as did the men's basketball team in a relatively close final with Spain. And David Boudia squeaking out a gold on the men's platform diving? WOW. All these and many more really impressed us.

And no, we didn't forget her. Yeah, HER. Missy Franklin, the sparkly, smiley teenage swimming phenom, wins our family gold for most bright, positive, sportsmanship-like behavior, and a girl whose attitude we hope can inspire our boys and our little C (who, literally as I typed this, pulled herself up to a standing position! At eight months! Inspired already!). Missy, we hope we get to watch you swim--and smile--for many more Olympics.

Missy, you gave whole new meaning to "in its depth what treasures!"

P.S. Our silver goes to Bob Costas, whose prose and poise always impress us. Watching him interview Missy Franklin was one of our favorite parts of these Olympic Games.

P.P.S. And we've got a tie for bronze--Kayla Harrison, who is a fighter in the best sense of the word, who won the first US women's medal (and gold at that!) in judo; and in the spirit of British excellence, Mohamed Farah, the 5000 and 10,000 meter winner, who Papa can't talk about without getting emotional. Truly amazing.

In Its Depths What Treasures, Part I

Watching the Olympics take place in London and vicinity has been a real joy for Papa and I. When the Williams trumpet chorus begins as glorious vistas emerge of rolling, brilliant green hillsides with ancient ruins; of sailboat-dotted waves nestled close to seaside villages; of regal Buckingham Palace and stately Big Ben; even of drizzles misting the "wilderness of steeples peeping," as Lord Byron put it; all these images make us happily nostalgic for our brief time, as they say, across the pond.

A little sweet, romantic history: ten years ago this fall, Papa and I met in Cambridge (England, for those of you who weren't reading closely above) while we both studied abroad. Papa and I visited London separately during our time there, but we also went to the grand old city together one lovely Saturday. We took an early-morning bus through the ubiquitous drizzle, which dropped us off in the shadow of Big Ben. We wandered through Westminster Abbey, saw My Fair Lady at the Theatre Royal on Drury Lane, popped into the National Gallery, and ate some below-average steak and potatoes at a Trafalgar Square steakhouse before heading back north that evening.  (Side story to our little history: In a miracle of circumstance and twin intuition, my sister--studying in London for the semester--found us in a ticket queue. She spotted the back of my head as she peeked into the kiosk and pulled on my purse to get my attention. I thought I was being mugged, and then I nearly went into cardiac arrest when I saw it was her. I hadn't been able to reach her by landline phone that morning, but she remembered that we might go to a show during our visit, and the stars aligned. Okay, so maybe it wasn't completely circumstance. But hey--this was before we owned cell phones, before we had "smart" anything and had to figure out maps, times, and rendezvous all beforehand and hope nobody got lost or delayed. So it was pretty cool that Mil found us, and we had a nice picnic lunch all together. Um, guess that wasn't so much a side story as a big chunk of it.)

Anyway, we loved our time in England, and the Olympics has given us a chance to vicariously enjoy London's treasures again. As we watched the women's marathon twisting and turning through the city, pointing out places we had been and picturesque sights we never witnessed firsthand, P piped up, "I want to go to London." We will go there someday, God willing, little man!

Going to the Grocery Store

Going to the grocery store for us Olson's can be a chaotic or delightful or some-combination-thereof time, depending on circumstance. We are blessed to live five doors down from the nearest store, Hank's, which has been a boon in time of sudden need. (Missing an ingredient in the middle of cooking dinner? No problem. Sprinting to the store, finding and paying for said ingredient, and sprinting back takes less than ten minutes. Yes, I'm speaking from experience.) And it's a boon several times a month, too, in slightly less urgent times.

It's also been great fun to go to Hank's on the occasional, special morning to get doughnuts and eat them in the little booth area. We have members who work there, and we almost always run into people we know--the perks or the downside of living in a small town! A downside only on a bad hair day :). We also love the ceiling tiles that droop, the old linoleum, the feeling of being back in time when we're in there--I'm always reminded of going to the Piggly Wiggly with my grandma when we visit Hank's. We LOVE Hank's!

The other grocery store in town, Coburn's, also has perks we enjoy. I enjoy their Super Saver coupons tre-men-dous-ly. And the lady in the bakery almost always comes out with M&M cookies for the boys, which is a treat for them! And they have a drive up, where you can pull up in baking sun or freezing cold and someone else loads your groceries into your car. This hasn't ceased to be novelty with me in the six years we've lived here!

But now change is a-foot. This week, Coburn's opened a new prototype store on the outskirts of town, and we made sure to visit the very first morning it was open. (I rode by during my bike ride last week.) Papa had gotten a sneak-peak tour during Kiwanis a week or so ago, so he told us the impressive statistics he found out: 32,000 square feet (the old store had only 14,000), thirty new employees on top of all of the ones who were tranferred from the old, Sioux Quartzite mixed into the concrete used in the floors (and the dark red flecks are oh-so-becoming).

Brand-spankin'-new! What could be better...

I've never been in a store that's quite so new, and I must admit that I was bedazzled--the perfect rows of vivid produce--and the section is massive compared to the old one!--aisles and aisles of products, including organic and varied choices--four different types of pure maple syrup alone, for example--the spotless glass in front of all the refridgerated and freezer areas. And P just loved the miniature carts! I felt like we were in an adult-sized version of the miniature grocery store at the Children's Museum of South Dakota--everything was just too cute and orderly. My neat-freak heart couldn't stop pitter-patting. :) And on top of getting some uber-deals, we snagged the last freebie bag given to the first customers of the store--a fabric, reusable bag stuffed with non-perishable items like granola bars, crackers, chips and salsa, and lots of things families with young kids like us use all the time. Perk, perk, perk! As we left, P said, "Can we come back, Mommy?" Yes, Honey. We'll come back. And we will always love you, Hank's, but I fear we have a new love--in grocery stores, at least.

...except that it abuts a lovely cornfield? The best of both farming and commercialized worlds.

Devastation and Inspiration

We skyped with Mom and Dad E. this evening. They've spent about fifteen hours of the last twenty-four at a Red Cross shelter at Missouri Southern State University. The tornado pretty much devastated the southern part of Joplin; my parents live downtown (which is more central) and the university is north-west, and they have power and some trickling water--they're under a boil-only restriction, due to thousands of water lines running and running where the storm went through.

Dad and Mom went down to the exercise room right before the tornado hit. While they were in there, one of their neighbors, Dr. __, got a text about St.John's, the hospital where he works. They heard him say, "No. That's not funny." St. John's was the hospital that was destroyed. They had to find out from my brother and sister-in-law what had happened in town because cable was down, radio was down. Even today that was the case until the afternoon.

Last night Mom and Dad first walked up to Memorial Hall, about three blocks from their condo, which they'd heard was a temporary shelter. Traffic was a mess because emergency vehicles were staged across the street from them in the courthouse and police department parking lots, and traffic from other parts of the city was diverted down Fourth Street due to debris. They'd never seen so many headlights on Fourth; they'd never heard so many sirens. Memorial Hall was chaotic. Bandaged people were coming out; no one really seemed to be in charge. They found out a shelter would be set up at MSSU and the Red Cross would need help there, so they drove up there and helped out until nearly four. When they got home, they were still hearing sirens.

This morning they were back at MSSU at eight. One minute, Dad said, they'd be carrying a bucket of water to help unclog a toilet; the next minute they'd be checking in families who were arriving at the shelter. The first man my mom checked in told her his name and his address--17__ Rex Avenue, Apartment _. My mom looked up at him and said, "Is that the Plaza?" He said, "It was the Plaza." He had jumped into his bathtub when the storm hit (what they say to do) and saw pictures and other stuff flying by the bathroom door after his patio doors blew out. The central community building, the swimming pool, were gone. The third floor apartments were gone. The Walmart and the Home Depot a few hundred yards from the complex were gone. And he'd taken pictures of this, which he showed my mom. Incredible. And a small world--when my parents first lived in Joplin, before they bought the condo, they lived at the Plaza.

Another couple came in and told how they'd been heading to Home Depot when they saw the storm coming. Right before they got to the parking lot they realized they weren't going to make it into the store, so they stopped the car on the road--left it running--and jumped into a steep ditch next to the road. The man said he looked over his shoulder and he saw the truck go up into the funnel--just plucked off of the road--and all of his power tools and supplies scattered and flying through the air. After the tornado had passed, after about forty-five seconds, they emerged from the ditch. Their truck had landed on the roof of Home Depot. But they were unscathed.

Another lady came in with some family members, and Dad could tell they were distraught. The lady's first words to my dad were, "Where's the morgue?" They had come to identify a body.

There truly are no words to describe the physical devastation, the emotional shock and anguish, people experience in tragedies like this. A siren goes off, and twenty minutes later entire livelihoods and lives are wiped away.

Dad and Mom said that today was tough, very tough--and also inspiring. Older people were coming in who had lost everything--their homes, mementos, everything. And they'd say to my parents, "But my kids and my grandkids are fine." Other people said the same thing--not that they didn't care that their homes were matchsticks, their cars totally wrecked; they were speaking from a very clear place of perspective. "We all made it." And they believed they would make it. Mom and Dad couldn't get over the constant donations coming in at the Rec Center across the way from where they were. A circle drive, and car after van after car dropping clothes, food, toothpaste, water, toys. I actually thought, maybe our materialist culture actually does some good in these situations. People lose all their stuff, and more people are there to give them more stuff. That's not all people need, or even close to what they need for the life to come--man shall not live by bread alone--but daily bread is sure needed and a great blessing. What a gift that God uses our hands to serve and love our neighbors.

The chaos at the shelter started dissipating by the late afternoon. Volunteers were finding their stride; organization and plans were slowly working their calm and comfort. You could tell, Mom said, that they'd had about twenty-four hours to adjust. This is a blessing, because tomorrow will be easier, and harder. The first responders and volunteers will know more. More people will need help. The weather--which has been abysmal for search-and-rescue--might still cause more problems. And people will have to start thinking about the next day, and the next day, and the next week, and the next month.

Today has brought us devastation and inspiration and perspective. Our petty worries seem paltry. Today Papa and I cherished hugging S and giggling with P--what a gift every day is. We thank God for His goodness in giving us another day, another reminder that He is always with us, caring for us, providing for us.Thank you for all your notes, thoughts, and especially prayers for Mom and Dad and everyone in Joplin. They will continue to need our support. Check out Mom's post about today here.

LC-MS Updates (Mostly) about Joplin Tornado

Read this update from the LC-MS relief agency. Immanuel is the church my in-laws attend.

This is the latest response from LC-MS Missouri District President Mirly.

If you would like to donate please consider LC-MS World Relief and Human Care.

These are more pictures we've seen from Joplin.

Prayers for Joplin, Missouri

Thanks to Dad and Mom O. for alerting us to the tornado news in Joplin, Missouri, where my parents live. We talked to my mom very briefly this morning--she and my dad are safe, praise God--but much of the town was damaged by a tornado. People in the news are comparing it to the tornadoes in the Southeast in April. Mom said that she and Dad were in a safe place when it came through in the early evening yesterday, and they went to the Red Cross to volunteer right away. They got some sleep at 4 a.m. and were already back at the Red Cross by the time we spoke to them about a half-hour ago. Please pray for all the people in Joplin and in the surrounding area! You can also donate to the Ozarks Red Cross which serves the area.