NLT 60th Anniversary

Some pics from the 60th Anniversary weekend at church... :)

Charlotte Bronte for President!

My girl Charlotte was brilliant.
Too bad she isn't here to run for President.

All of the following quotes are from the preface to the 2nd edition of Jane Eyre and from the text of the novel itself.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Appearance should not be mistaken for truth; narrow human doctrines, that only tend to elate and magnify a few, should not be substituted for the world-redeeming creed of Christ. There is — I repeat it — a difference; and it is a good, and not a bad action to mark broadly and clearly the line of separation between them. The world may not like to see these ideas dissevered, for it has been accustomed to blend them; finding it convenient to make external show pass for sterling worth — to let white-washed walls vouch for clean shrines. It may hate him who dares to scrutinise and expose — to rase the gilding, and show base metal under it — to penetrate the sepulchre, and reveal charnel relics: but hate as it will, it is indebted to him.

I can so clearly distinguish between the criminal and his crime; I can so sincerely forgive the first while I abhor the last.

Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex.

A memory without blot or contamination must be an exquisite treasure — an inexhaustible source of pure refreshment: is it not?

I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you--especially when you are near me, as now: it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame. And if that boisterous channel, and two hundred miles or so of land come broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapt; and then I've a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly. As for you--you'd forget me.

Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilised by education: they grow there, firm as weeds among stones.

Sunday Night With Kathey

This is probably not a good time for me to post, as it is after 11pm and I've had a loooooong day (had a HERD of kids in class this morning, yikes).
But then, I doubt anyone actually reads this blog, so I suppose my lack of usual charm and wit will not be noticed!

NOTE - There will be random pictures throughout this post. :)



I called the professor who hadn't (or so it seemed) posted a grade for me, the grade that is holding up my official graduation. That's being worked out. I hope they don't make me go over there and fill out the grad app again. *sigh*



After much poking around the internet and deciding on specific days for our trip, I am happy to report that we are all set to go.
I can't believe it's been five years since I have been east.
I don't feel old enough to say that I haven't been somewhere in five years, at least five post-high school years.
I broke down and bought a camera. I've needed one for a while, but I am loathe to spend such a chunk of money on a Thing. I did get a great deal on it, so that was nice. Everyone will probably hate me after it arrives, because I'll be snapping away in the heights of New Thingness. When I got my first iPod, I was happy as a duck spotting a june bug and my grandmother said "You would think someone handed her the keys to a new Mercedes!" Obviously, my grandmother is sweet and doesn't realize that I am a nerd.



Right now it seems like almost everyone around me is getting married or having babies. Last Saturday I was with a group of my crazy friends (most of them at least 10 years older than me) and one of the married ones asked me how old I was and said "Don't get married yet." Wise woman.
Sometimes I think I am not the marrying kind.
I am way too fond of my own company.
I like being able to do what I want, when I want.
I like being able to call my aunt and plan a trip without having to consult someone else.
I like being able to go see my crazy friends on the weekend.
So I'm working on the idea of being married.
Children - that idea is floating around in another universe somewhere.
The cat is enough right now.


Sheesh, this is getting way to serious.
Let me try to think of something amusing...

Oh!
We had our annual birthday dinner for Dad and Pam.
My lamb was loooooovely.
Oh! That reminds me!
Reina and I

went to a fantastic new Middle Eastern joint over on California. Check it out. The owner, Jumana, is a character.
Mujadara, dolmas, hummus...mmmmm.....
I've got to get over this liking food thing at some point.



I went to my Favorite Place for lunch today.

I took several books because I was feeling indecisive. I ended up reading part of Jane.

I'm waiting for that book to come back into widespread academic study. This whole Austen rage has got to end at some point. Anyways, I sat there, grinning like a moron, because I was having musical flashbacks. Guess what I listened to on the drive home. :)
I forget how certain music can bring about such physical pleasure.
But I'll save that post for another night.

I bid thee good night!
(As a parting thought - isn't it hilarious how people quote the "flights of angels" line from Hamlet to wish people good night...CONTEXT, PEOPLE!!!!! Our pal Horatio was speaking to a DEAD man!! Okay, I'll stop. Night)

The Blog Craze and The 2008 Presidential Race

I've been thinking about this whole blog craze.
I started this blog years ago and my ethusiasm for it has certainly waned.
It begins as a new and exciting thing to do in your life and that eventually decreases in importance and interest.
I hardly wrote anything here when I was at SSU.
For those lazy majors like business *poke, poke, wink, wink*, I suppose keeping up with a blog is not an issue. For we crazy busy English majors, it's a bit more challenging. When you've got a paper due on Henry James' The Bostonians and you know Bob the Professor is going to make you prove that every single word in that paper is necessary and justified, writing a self-indulgent few hundred words in your little blog that 6 people read is not at the top of your priority list.

I have been amused lately by how absolutely film-esque a blog can be.
Bloggers are basically actors. They project an image of themselves.
I read blogs and think wow...this person really paints himself/herself as other than they truly are...
This led me to wonder what people think when they read my blog here or at Myspace.
Do they think I try to present myself as other than I truly am?

I do not take issue with people who highlight their strengths.
False modesty is repulsive to me.
If you do something well, be proud of it.
If you are aware of your faults, admit them.
I do not like people who cannot admit that they are wrong.
Why do we think that we have to be perfect?
I had a teacher who told us that the hardest three words to say are "I was wrong."
I don't ever want to be so stubborn that I cannot admit error and seek to correct it.
"The man with insight enough to admit his limitations comes nearest to perfection" -Goethe

I suppose this leads ironically into thoughts about the 2008 US Presidential Race. :)
Bonaparte wrote that in politics, one should never admit a mistake.
Politicians are also actors. They will do what they think is necessary to achieve their goal. If that means that they must say one thing to one group of people and then say the opposite to a different group of people, they will do it. To mangle a line from the astute Dogberry, we can suspect them by virtue of their office.
There is no such thing as a perfectly upright and moral candidate because those candidates are human and perfectly upright and moral humans do not exist.
Does this mean that we should not exercise our right to vote because there is no perfect candidate?
I do not think so.

I am so enjoying this campaign.
What a monumentous time in America's history!
A black man and a woman are on the tickets of two major parties.
I wish we could talk to people like John Adams and Abraham Lincoln about this.
The slogans/attacks/one-liners from both major parties have been amusing to me.
There is nothing like this type of campaign that makes people sharpen their knives.
Favorite quotes/slogans so far:

"Maybe the most dangerous threat of an Obama presidency is that he would continue to give madmen the benefit of the doubt." - Mike Huckabee

"Washington is a Hollywood for ugly people. Hollywood is a Washington for the simpleminded." - John McCain

"We have an obligation and a responsibility to be investing in our students and our schools. We must make sure that people who have the grades, the desire and the will, but not the money, can still get the best education possible."
"Secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering into the public square. Frederick Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, Williams Jennings Bryant, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King - indeed, the majority of great reformers in American history - were not only motivated by faith, but repeatedly used religious language to argue for their cause. So to say that men and women should not inject their "personal morality" into public policy debates is a practical absurdity. Our law is by definition a codification of morality, much of it grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition."
- Barack Obama

And the cherry on the top of the sundae:
"Ted Kennedy's car has killed more people than Sarah Palin's gun."

Can I just say....OUCH.

A little gossip, a little chat...

I'm not sure why, but I periodically have little bits of Man Of La Mancha flying around in my head. The one that shows up the most frequently is the subject line of this post.
So, don't get your hopes up, you won't read any gossip here, only this and that about my fabulously exciting life.
:)

I'm glad the weather has cooled down.
100+ - that's just excessive.
It's a lovely 73 right now on a clear Saturday evening.
Wouldn't you know that this particular week, our ac at work was on the fritz.
How typical.
We were roasting and even Monica was hot, which makes me consider that pigs may really be able to fly.

Lissa and I are planning a trip to the other coast to see friends and hang out in a NYC for a while. Aside from catching something at the Met and seeing Tale a couple of times, I don't really have any Must See's on the list. I would like to do all the touristy things that I've never done. I realized it's just wrong that as many times as I've been there, I've never seen the Statue of Liberty. Surely that makes me some kind of bad American. ;)
Oh, I do want to go to the Cloisters. I figure I owe it to myself after being an RA for a medievalist.

My nemesis has returned this fall at work.....those blasted sour gummy vampire bats from Jelly Belly.
They are so magnificent. They're just as great as I remember them.
Oh, how they tempt me!!
The spirit is willing, but the flesh is sooooo weak.

Sign up!

adoptaussoldier.org

This is awesome.
It is so easy to join.
Check it out.

Money Matters

This is my final from Bob's Austen class.
I was still ticked off at Mooneyham for calling Sense & Sensibility a "failure," so I had to write something that showed how great it really is.
Take that, Laura G. Mooneyham White!! (or whatever you are calling yourself these days)
My girl Jane Austen had her issues and may have needed an editor, but that particular claim of yours is ridiculous.

Money Matters
In the opening chapters of her first published novel, Jane Austen offers a social critique via a family critique of the fictional Dashwood family. Austen responds to the writing of Edmond Burke, Mary Wollenstencraft and Thomas Paine, all of whom were concerned with the social impact of issues of inheritance and family security. By beginning Sense & Sensibility with an extended history of the Dashwood family and the financial situation of the novel’s main characters, Mary Dashwood and her daughters, Austen displays her knowledge of the importance of family history and social history. Unlike Austen’s later novel Pride & Prejudice in which the entailment of an estate has not yet driven out the unfortunate dependants, the anxiety surrounding loss of financial security has been fully realized upon the opening of Sense & Sensibility.
Gene Ruoff writes in his article “Wills” that the peculiar darkness of Sense & Sensibility is starkly social in nature. The novels two main protagonists, Elinor and Marianne Dashwood, do not appear until Chapter III: money matters take up Chapters I and II. While both are “fictively excessive” in their descriptions of family history and finances, they are necessary to establish the social matrix in which Elinor and Marianne find themselves (349). Austen creates this social matrix by first responding to the work of Edmund Burke.
Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France, published in 1790, is cited by Ruoff as the origin of the “emergence of inheritance as a central subject of public political discourse” (353). Austen uses Burke’s idea of the intersection of family reproduction and social reproduction as the basis for Chapters I and II. Burke states that the perpetuation of property in families tends to the perpetuation of society itself (354). He assigns a responsibility to those who control the money matters in the family and assumes in them a benevolent disposition, for the “idea on inheritance” furnishes sure principles of conservation, transmission and improvement (354). Family virtue and civic virtue are thus inextricably tied together.
Austen interrogates the responsibility Burke presents through the figures of Elinor and Marianne’s half-brother John and his wife Fanny. John has given his promise to their father that he will do everything in his power to make comfortable the futures of his stepmother and half-sisters. Ruoff points out that John’s means are far from meager and at 10,000 per year, his annual income is roughly equal to that of Mr. Darcy’s in Pride & Prejudice (355). In her A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Mary Wollstonecraft materializes Burke’s anticipated situation of the Dashwood women, that girls would become dependent upon their brothers (355). Austen uses this idea in an explicit social setting through John’s promise and his eventual betrayal of that promise. John at first determines to give each sister with 1,000 and illustrates the “good sort of men” Wollstonecraft imagined (355). Austen continues Wollstonecraft’s scenario by including Fanny’s meddling in the situation. Wollstonecraft writes about the wife who is “cold-hearted, narrow-minded” and “displeased at seeing the property of her children lavished on an helpless sister” (355). It is Fanny who subtly convinces John to abandon any sort of financial gifts to his half-sisters. She does this by continual references to her son Henry’s inheritance taking the strain of possible financial gifts given by his father.
Austen uses Fanny as an embodiment of Thomas Paine’s response to Burke in The Rights of Man, where Paine attacks the law of primogenitureship. Paine claims that such a law is a “law against every law of nature, and nature itself calls for its destruction” (356). Paine recognized that such a law allowed the holder of the purse strings to trample on siblings and relations. While John initially represents Burke’s claim of the benevolent aristocracy, Fanny eventually shapes John into a representation of Paine’s critique of the hereditary principle: “that it provides a schooling in self-interest which blinds its adherents to notions of distributive justice” (357).
Money matters a great deal in Jane Austen’s world and in Sense & Sensibility, she responds to the public political discourse of inheritance in the 1790’s. Referring to Chapters I and II, Ruoff notes that Austen’s opening movement is “as stunning a public advent of a new writer as we have ever witnessed” (348). Her masterful response to the writings of Wollstonecraft, Burke and Paine display her knowledge of contemporary texts and her understanding of the political nature of family money matters.

Update

I finally remembered the username/password, so here we are again.
All these security measures are hilarious.
Someone must have tipped off TPTB about all the nuclear secrets to which I have access.
I guess I better sheath my dagger and put away my Secret Agent baseball cap.

Just wanted to mention that I have been using Myspace and Facebook rather than Blogger.
If I post a blog on Myspace I'll try to remember to post it here as well.
Friend me on Myspace and you can see all the evidence of my terribly exciting life.
:)

Since I LOVE the current background photo (from the girly trip to Medieval Times in Dallas the day after Sondra's wedding) and the current color scheme, it shall remain.

Over and out.

Here we are again!

Yikes, that last post is depressing!!
I chalk it up to all that Social Protest lit I was reading at the time.
Read Jude the Obscure and then try to write a happy poem.
It won't work. :)

So it's winter break and I'm planning on graduating with my BA in May.
Commencement is on my birthday, how twisted is that.
I'm going to be like those poor people who have a birthday on Christmas.

I missed the deadline for application to the MA program, so I'm deciding what to do about that. I might register as post-baccalaureate status and take 494 and whatever they'll let me credit towards an MA.
I will start reading the billion novels on the list for my orals.
I am so nervous about that.
I also have to find out if I can test out of the language requirement.
If I can't, I'll probably take Latin.
Per aspera at astra!

Am I the only one who becomes frustrated with the Bible reading charts that start in Genesis and end in Revy?
I just can't get through those.
I need the ones that are spread out, you know, something Old Testament, something New Testament, something borrowed, something blue...
Oh wait, that can't be right...
It's 1:18 am and I'm going to bed.



www.myspace.com/damekathrynthegreat