Baby by Numbers: Late Edition

• {3, 4, 5} - days overdue I am, depending on if you calculate from the first due date we were told (Oct. 31), the due date on file at the OB (Nov. 1), or the date they gave us at the ultrasound (Nov. 2).
• ? - number of contractions I've felt. Every visit the OB asks me if I've felt any contractions and I say, "I dunno." Because really, it's difficult to tell the difference between your stomach tightening because your silly baby is using you as a punching bag or your lunch is thinking about making a return appearance; and your stomach tightening because it's practicing for when it has to get a baby out. I have nonetheless been reassured by everyone that when I'm in labor, I'll know it. Duh.
  
• 0% - how much I like being overdue. Courtney was right when she posted the following on my facebook wall: "My sister once described being overdue as every day being your birthday, but no one remembering. I thought that described it pretty well." Amen and amen. The reason it sucks the most is that there is nothing I can do about it, and each day that goes by has a handy way of transforming the excitement we had about the birth of our son into frustration and annoyance. Don't worry; we'll still love him. I just spend a lot more time telling my baby to hurry it up.
• 2 - number of weeks I've been totally finished with my projects-to-do-before-baby list. I am somewhat bored out of my mind, but I don't want to start anything because I know it'll be left half-done for months if baby comes. My mother-in-law claims that the baby won't come until I'm half-way through a project though, so . . .
• 2 - number of hats I've knitted in that time period, and . . .
• 452 - number of stitches per row in the very masculine scarf I'm making for my soon-to-be missionary brother-in-law. Come on baby, you know you want to interrupt that.
  
• 7 - days before election day that I voted because baby was supposed to be here by now. Though I eventually decided to vote for McCain, it was a hard choice. Not for good reasons though. I really didn't feel like either candidate was someone I wanted to lead the country, but oh well. I'm excited for Obama and hope that his actions can catch up with his amazing grasp of rhetoric. But they probably won't because, as George pointed out, "No matter who wins, the country is still being run by politicians." On the other hand, good rhetoric means people won't care as much that they aren't getting what they were promised, so maybe that's not so bad.
  
• 3rd - man named George Edward Busby that our baby will be. Yup, after all that deliberation, we've come back to the easiest choice as the most likely one (ever since George bailed out on Luke for no apparent reason). George would probably like me to make it clear that the baby is being named after his grandfather and not him. Whatever. I'm kinda disappointed with the un-creativity of the name--I feel kinda gyped out of the chance to name my own baby. At least I can hold this over George's head and name the next boy Luke Tennyson. Ha ha.

Well, that's pretty much all. Hopefully the next post will have baby pictures rather than more griping.

New Perspectives: A Nibleyesque Musing

So, every Friday for my Hugh Nibley class, we're supposed to ramble for one page on what we thought of the readings. You know I'm all for stealing homework for blogposts, so you may see a few of these this semester. But hey, it's Hugh Nibley, so it's for your own good!

Some very interesting readings this week—“Treasures in the Heavens” was, of course, astounding. It was interesting to me to see how Nibley treats things I would normally think of as abstract philosophies as concrete facts. As an English major, I often wonder how important the abstract concepts we discuss in class are because they seem so detached from what constitutes the majority of our lives. But Nibley makes no apologies for the fact that his ideas are big and seemingly unconnected to the mundanities of day-to-day life. He’s not concerned with forcing you to realize why his theories are relevant to you—if you don’t understand the importance of them, then perhaps you aren’t ready to read Nibley.

The idea of heaven being more concrete and real than this life also matched up with what I’m reading in CS Lewis’ The Great Divorce. Heaven is not going to be less real than this life, but more. We are here to prepare to experience that level of reality and power that we could not have managed without a body. I guess the reason we think of heaven as so spiritual and insubstantial is because we have difficulty imagining anything more concrete than this reality.

I really liked Nibley’s “An Intellectual Autobiography” on a couple of different levels. First, it was just a great piece of creative non-fiction. As a writer, I admire Nibley’s style in this piece: he doesn’t allow us to get bogged down in the details of his life, giving us just enough to move us through his intellectual journey without confusion. He makes everything fresh and humorous. Second, I really enjoy the idea of giving an intellectual autobiography. Isn’t that the story we’d rather tell—the story of how we grew as a person—rather than the dates, facts, and figures that normally occupy so much of a biography?

Finally, one particular passage really struck me, the one where Nibley talks about working through the entire nine floors of the Berkeley stacks. The idea is so very appealing that I’ve begun to think about trying to do this myself with the BYU library. It’s definitely a crazy project, but it would be so rewarding. Think of how much you could learn about interests you didn’t know you had just by browsing through the stacks of an entire library! Not to mention the bragging rights . . . .

“Educating the Saints” was one of the Nibley articles that I had read before. However, I saw it in a new light this time. I just completed a paper on early Mormon ideas about rhetoric and education. The section where Nibley explains Brigham Young’s lack of eloquence was very relevant to the paper I was writing. The early saints really cared very little for ideas about formal education; they unabashedly shared the truth as they found it and sought more, not worrying about clever phraseology or the opinions of the intellectual elite.

I wonder if we could not use a lot more of that, even at BYU. Sometimes it feels like, even in the undergrad years, there’s such a push to get enough accomplishments to fill out a good resume (or, as Nibley says, stand at attention at the end of an obituary). When you ask people what they are learning at school, they inevitably list classes and activities rather than ideas, which strikes me as sad. The university is very display oriented, so much so that when I mentioned that I am “learning just to learn” to a classmate, he didn’t know what I meant and expressed an extreme distrust for any supposedly higher motive in education: “I’m in it to get the grade so I can get into grad school.” Learning seems to be lost on the learned.

Sock Monkeys

All right, Marisa, fine. Here's a blog post for you! I'm sorry it's been a while, but it's rather difficult to blog from home due to the dial-up 28.8k internet connection (bleh!). But now I'm back in Provo (for two days), so there's no excuse.

So I survived Christmas. It was extremely hectic because of how late finals went. I was on campus until 5:30pm on the Friday before because I still needed to finish my History of Rhetoric paper, but the paper turned out really well. The highlight of my research was finding this quote in a Mormon public-speaking book written in 1898:

[When we are in sacrament meeting,] one of three things happens: we sleep—blessed escape!—we wander, or we are mentally tortured. (N. L. Nelson, Preaching and Public Speaking, p. 6)

All the research for this paper was extremely interesting. It seems little has changed with regards to Mormon rhetoric. :D Doing this research has merely firmed up my belief in preparing beforehand to speak in church. We need to arrange our words so that they "offer the least resistance to [the Spirit’s] guidance" (Nelson, p. 435-436), so that our audience gets something besides warm fuzzies out of our 15-20 ramblings. As Nelson points out, if all I can say about your talk is that you expounded upon the gospel, I derive no more benefit than if I just stayed at home and read my scriptures. It is a testimony to the dedication of the LDS people that we continue to go to sacrament meeting despite its innanity.

(I guess it could be worse. I read some of Brigham Young's talks in the Journal of Discourses--hour-long talks with no focus! They just range from topic to topic with no apparent connection. Which is great, I guess, except if you are trying to do research on his opinions on public speaking and you have to look up 20 different talks, each with only one paragraph on speaking!)

But the research finally got done, and I drove home to SLC. By the time I got there, it was too late to go shopping, so I officially had one day to finish all of my Christmas shopping. Yay! Luckily, I purchased two CDs in the Black Friday madness that I could give to my parents, and I had already bought the yarn for the sock monkey hats for two of my brothers, so I only really had to look for 3 presents.

Speaking of those sock monkey hats, I hadn't actually started them. I had hoped to get time to make them during finals week, but it just didn't happen. (Cursed roommates wanting to do fun things!) When I wasn't out shopping, I was inside watching movies and frantically knitting away. I finally finished at 1 am on Christmas morning and dropped onto my bed exhausted (well, onto the couch, actually, since I don't have a room at home anymore *sniff*). But it was all worth it because my brothers absolutely loved the hats! I love them too--they are totally adorable (the hats, not my brothers . . . though they are pretty cute as well). Anyway, here you can see the finished products, as modeled by my youngest two brothers, Josh and Mike. I need to sew on some nostrils so that the brim will stop falling down, but other than that they are totally done.

I actually kinda want one myself. Would you people think I was odd to wear one on campus? They are 100% wool and very warm!

Thought Stew

So I have a whole bunch of things to blog about, but school is currently consuming my life. And I do mean consuming in its fully literal sense. Once we hit reading day, things should slow down considerably. (I never work during finals' week (should that be possessive?), so I have a ton of free time.) Until then, I doubt I'll have time to pull together anything decent for you to read. But since I feel guilty leaving you out in the cold, consider this post a preview of things to come. Here's what's been occupying my mind:

• I GOT INTO MY STUDY ABROAD!! I was so nervous, but it's really happening! I'm going to England in the spring to walk all over and write stuff. Joni is coming too, and it's going to be miraculous! I can't think of a better way to spend two months! Although, this does mean I have to get in shape for the hiking bit . . . drat.
  
• I finished reading Style: Toward Clarity and Grace, and holy crap! it is amazing. I want to write about it in more detail later, but here's a two page summary of the book that I whipped out as part of my ELang final project. Hurrah for classes that motivate you to do what you already want to do. Sorry about the yucky formatting. No time for making it look better. Read it, or better yet, read the book. It will improve your consciousness of good writing. I can already feel a difference in how I think about things.
  
• On Friday, I had an epiphanic moment in History of Rhetoric class: I found my philosopher! I've always found at least some truth in each philosopher I've read, but I also invariably find problems which make their philosophies unacceptable. On December 8, I discovered Kenneth Burke. His theory of dramatism explains exactly why I feel so uncomfortable with experimental fiction that tries to eliminate storytelling *coughVirginiaWoolfcough*. And he has a pyramid theory of rhetoric that almost exactly echoes my circle theory that I've been ranting about for so long! I almost gasped when the teacher introduced it to us. It was like someone read my thoughts and deemed them worthy. It made me want to sing for joy! (I know; I'm a nerd.) I'm now planning to read at least some of his works over the break. I'll write when I find out more.
• Speaking of History of Rhetoric, I'm writing my final paper on early Mormon rhetoric. It's making me think a lot about the previous debate on what makes a good talk.
  
• I'm planning out some Christmas personal essays. Hope you guys are up to some of my crummy attempts at dialog.
• I saw Happy Feet over Thanksgiving break, which has strangely inspired an essay on dealing with the institutional Church in Mormon literature. I promise I'll explain later, though reading Orson Scott Card's review of the movie might help you see where I'm going. (The review is towards the end, but this column also has some stuff about Scotch tape and Bill Bryson, one of my favorite nonfiction authors, so you should just read the whole thing.)
• Also, some thoughts on lit crit provoked by CS Lewis' essay "Fern Seed and Elephants" are in the works. For anyone keeping score in my creativity/criticism debate, creativity is beating the snot out of criticism, but we'll find some virtue in her yet.
• And I promise I have a follow-up for Ben's rebuttal to my Santa post. I will defend Saint Nick to the end. "I believe in Santa Claus like I believe in love . . . ." (Maybe that's not so apt after the last two posts.)

And people wonder why I'm so distracted.

Class-y Thoughts

I have all my classes today. For those of you who are wondering, here's an example of what goes on in the life of a double major--thoughts from my religion, English, and science courses all rolled into one.

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A thought on the Sermon on the Mount:
In chapter 5 of Matthew, Christ contrasts the old law and the new law. In the first few examples, the old law represents the extreme sin, the new law the internal cause behind it. Murder is a result of anger, adultery is a result of lust. If we stop the cause, there's no real need to worry about the sin. But then, Jesus brings up this old/new law pair:

38 ¶ Ye have heard that it hath been said, An ^aeye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth:

39 But I say unto you, That ye resist not ^aevil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right ^bcheek, ^cturn to him the other also.

So the ultimate cause of justice is mercy? Interesting. Obviously, this is not quite the same as the others: this is a pair of virtues rather than sins. But I can see how justice is a lesser virtue derived from the ultimate virtue of mercy. Justice arises from a desire for fairness--to make sure there's no unfairness to any individual because we care about them. Mercy is the extension of that--not only giving each individual a fair standing, but giving them exactly what they need. It's a more individualized form of justice.

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Notes on the rhetoric of general conference:

• Nice use of the commonplace by President Hinckley in his Sunday morning talk--almost telling the Martin handcart company stories, but not quite; just enough to bring in the emotional component.
• Apparently, the priesthood session is usually the best because it can assume a lot more things about its audience. No need to consider non-members. Saturday sessions run a close second, since most non-members and civic authorities watch the Sunday sessions.
• Delivery/memorization has gotten a lot better since the Conference Center was built. The speakers are more aware of their audience. However, we still fall asleep. Delivery leaves a lot to be desired.
  
• Perhaps this is why videos have been inserted? They still creep me out.
• Conference has become a lot less Utah-centered in the past few years. Gone are the days when a speaker can say they grew up in Alpine and have everyone know what they mean. Even what a landfill is needs explanation, just to be sure the analogy will work for all audiences.
  

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You know you've taken too many math classes when:

• You have a favorite matrix. (It's the identity matrix, of course!)
• A black hole with mass zero sounds completely logical.
• Learning more complex things actually makes your life easier.
• Your class cheers every time something reduces to the zero vector.
• Your teacher doesn't know the difference between CS Lewis and Lewis Carroll. (True story: my math teacher was convinced that CS Lewis wrote Alice and Wonderland.)

Progymnasmata: Chreia

This progymnasmata is a little harder to explain than that of the fable. There's a good description on BYU's rhetoric website which I discovered the other night. I'm going to need to go through that website. It looks really cool. Anyway, the chreia is basically an explication on a quote or action that demonstrates some principle--more direct in meaning than either a narrative or a fable. Anyway, here's mine, since I probably won't have any time to blog today.

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C. S. Lewis is often cited as the non-Mormon most quoted during General Conference. His careful study and defense Christian beliefs make him an ideal source to appeal to for a clear and concise explication of many of the more subtle doctrines of the gospel. He is able to illuminate the principles behind principles which might otherwise seem irreducible. For example, on the subject of good and evil, C. S. Lewis once said, “Good is, so to speak, itself: badness is only spoiled goodness.” The purpose in doing good things is self-evident: people enjoy going good things because they are inherently rewarding. On the other hand, evil deeds are only a twisted method of trying to obtain a good reward. For example, a man may steal money in order to support his family or better afford other necessities. One who commits adultery is trying to find an alternate route to the love or pleasure once afforded him by other relations. Evil cannot function without a good impulse to pervert. Some deeply hardened souls may claim to do evil for its own sake, much as a righteous man does good deeds simply from his nature. But even in saying so, they admit the falseness of their position. To do evil for its own sake is to take pleasure in evil acts, but pleasure itself is a good and righteous motivation which the man has only perverted by connecting it to things from which he ought not to derive pleasure. Just as a boy attempting to avoid his school work tries to find a shorter route by copying off his neighbor, an evil man is attempting to shortcut to the rewards of goodness without putting in the effort necessary. In the war in heaven, was not Satan’s goal—the salvation of all men—a righteous end? Indeed, it is the same end sought by our Heavenly Father and many righteous prophets. The evil was not in Lucifer’s end, but in his method of achieving it. It is just as Alma tells his son in the Book of Mormon: those who do evil are seeking happiness (an obviously good thing) by doing that which is wicked and contrary to the nature of happiness. Thus we can fully see the illuminating simplicity of C. S. Lewis’ description of the nature of evil.

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BTW, I skipped the second progymnasmata, narrative, because I just borrowed a narrative from one of my other blog posts. :D Yay for double counting!

No Love of Words

You might think that because I'm an English major that I have a love of words. If you had asked me a few weeks ago, I probably would have paused a bit and tentatively agreed with you. But the other day I was asked to write down my vision. Not for anything in particular, just in general, and what came out of my head was not at all what I had expected. I'll spare you the details, but the general idea was this: I want to spend my life helping people realize their potential, to use my talents to help them become more fully themselves.

This is a particularly odd mission for several reasons. First, as I've lamented several times, I'm not generally a people person--that is, people hold no innate attraction for me. So why I have this idea stuck in my head of doing something for other people for the rest of my life is beyond me. Also, English seems like a silly thing to be going into if you want to make an impact in the lives of people. Like Las Vegas, what goes on in the English department, tends to stay in the English department. As Katherine and I have discussed, not many people care about what English majors care about. Not that Chemistry is any better. Granted, science has a slightly more direct impact on your life than lit crit, but it's less suited to help with philosophical things like reaching your potential.

It started me thinking about what kind of impact I wanted to have on people's lives and how that relates to a love of writing and of words. What I've realized is that the words don't matter. Or, more precisely, that words matter tremendously, but not because of themselves. Let me explain by an example. Rhetoric, as I understand it, is the study of how you can put words together--how the practical relationships between words and ideas can be best exploited to convince someone to do something. But I have to agree with Plato's Phaedrus when he says that there's no point in teaching rhetoric unless we can also answer questions about what we should do with this power of words. Tools are useless unless we also teach "what," and "to whom," and "when," and "how much." If rhetoric, or words in general, aren't studied in conjunction with the truths they should convey, then who cares?

I also realized that many of the subjects I dislike lack this ability to convey truth. Music and dance have always seemed a little strange to me because there's no way to get any specific message across. A general message, yes, but overall it's difficult to have a melody change your perspective on life. Also, grammar and usage of English seem a little pointless to study. Yes, they can help convey meaning more precisely, but can studying the details of how paint is made get the Sistine Chapel painted? Granted, some knowledge of these things is necessary, but spending too much time on them and you miss the point entirely. Same thing with studying a foreign language. Too much time spent on the medium rather than the message.

For me there is no love of words, except in the power that words have to link two minds together. A well written novel or essay takes you through another person's logic and emotions. For one instant, you can be wholely understood by another person, to completely share their thoughts and feelings. Words are very much the power of God in that way--the ability to know and understand something independently animate and outside yourself. Maybe that's why I don't like debaters or purple prose or long-winded descriptions. There's no particular glory in an eloquent arrangement of letters; only the idea behind them matters to me. Words are simply words, but when they convey powerful ideas, they gain the power to change people.

Gorgias, in his Encomium of Helen, compares words to love because these two alone have the tools necessary to change the soul, to lift it up or bring it down.

I like that. No love of words, but words=love.