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November 30, 2005

Under a Deadline

This afternoon, I had an email message and a phone call from my editor at Fortress. The requirements of production and marketing oblige me to propose my alternate title within twenty-four hours (actually, by now it’s down to around twenty-one).

Fortress put the project together under the name Faithful Subversion: Reading the Bible in a Postmodern World, which makes me uneasy; the “faithful” part stands to bother readers who might be attracted to “subversive” readings of the Bible, and vice versa. On the whole, I’d rather not invoke either of those words in the title.

The top half of the cover features a close-up of the central valley of an open book, over a flipped and reversed-out negative copy of the same image (on the lower half). Laura points out that this design “is looking for a two-word phrase that contains a paradox or other kind of surprising juxtaposition,” and I think she’s quite right. I tried Walk This Way on my editor, and he felt (and I agree) that it just doesn’t look quite right.

So the minutes are ticking away. Readers who know the kinds of thing I’m probably writing about, please rack your brains to help me out on this. I’m inclined to ask that the subtitle be changed to “Reasoning Biblically in a Postmodern World,” but apart from a title, the subtitle doesn’t matter much. A combination of “Interpreting” or “Meaning” or “Signifying” with something else would be especially welcome. I’ve had a project in mind for a long time which I’d expected to call “Representing the Truth”; maybe that title would work here. If I used my envisagted-future title for this book, it would make the second time I’ve had to draw on a title from a prospective work to identify an actual work; the publishers of my first book chose Making Sense of New Testament Theology as the title, when I had been hoping to save that for a later, different book.

If you can offer any help at this stage, please speak up (even if I don’t take your suggestion, it may jar loose the title I’m looking for from the logjam in my brain).

Posted by AKMA at 03:38 PM | Comments (22)

November 29, 2005

Firewire Frustration

In the past few days, a number of Firewire devices around the Adam family compound have refused to mount (on two different CPUs). Different cables, different peripherals, different computers, no discernible static discharges, but inconsistent mounting behavior.

Since I can’t figure out what’s going on, it’s driving me batty.

Posted by AKMA at 12:23 AM | Comments (4)

November 28, 2005

Au Revoir

No, I’m not still brooding about sending my wife and son away again (or, more to the point, I am still brooding about sending Margaret away, but I wasn’t thinking about it until you reminded me just now, thank you very much).

Instead, I’m wincing about having to leave my iBook in the tender care of the local Apple Store. I could have kept running it from the power adapter indefinitely, but I knew I’d have to bring it in sometime. Since this is the Holiday Overconsumption Season, the interval between now and mid-January (perhaps even longer, if Steve makes an exciting announcement such as “Intel iBooks available!”) will see a steady pack of would-be buyers and desperate service-seekers jamming Apple retail outlets; I figured that today was my best bet to get careful, patient attention from an Apple employee.

They confirmed what you and I already suspected: that either the DC connector or the power controller has gone bad. If it’s only the DC connector, we’re out of there relatively inexpensively. If it’s the power controller, well, it could be worse: It could be the power controller and the screen, one hinge, and the optical drive.

In the meantime, my ol’ trusty TiBook has stepped off the bench and is filling in for its younger, more robust compatriot. It doesn’t recognize my hard drive at work, though it does recognize my home back-up drive. Its own optical drive seems moody or dysfunctional. It has a slower processor and half as much RAM, and I haven’t upgraded its OS or added the Pages application in which I did most of my word processing for the past year. And I’m not even going to try to install World of Warcraft on this unit; sorry, Joi, but I’ll join in as soon as I can.

But I’ll tell you — those three extra inches of screen size sure look great. The Microsofties who showed that the biggest productivity boost you can give your system is more screen area were definitely onto something. I’m looking at 15" PowerBooks with lust in my heart.

Posted by AKMA at 08:01 PM | Comments (0)

November 27, 2005

Sharing, Visual Information, Categories

I hesitate to intrude — but a vexatious conflict has opened up in an area of Blogaria that’s dear to my interests, and it’s worth deliberating about, in several different dimensions.

The conflict concerns Flickr, “almost certainly the best online photo management and sharing application in the world.” It turns out that at some point, Flickr has begun segregating certain images that do not appear to be photographic, on the basis that their brand identity involves their “photo sharing” function. Drawings, paintings, computer-generated fractal patterns, and doodles do not count as “photos,” on this account, so the 700 Hoboes Project (for one prominent instance) ought not appear in publicly-accessible areas of Flickr. When Flickr has private-ized drawings, their artists and sympathizers have made a ruckus.

To grant Flickr all the sound points possible, it’s clear that they present the site as a photo sharing application, and they do differentiate photos from drawings or other graphic designs. It would be unreasonable to use Flickr as insulation from the bandwidth costs that elaborate graphics can run up. They have made that explicit, although not necessarily obvious. And it’s their (Yahoo’s) site and service, so if they want to enforce their terms of service over against the practice of their clients, then it’s their prerogative.

On the hand, this situations entails certain peculiarities that actually correspond to problems with the RIAA/mp3 controversies. In both cases, commercial agencies try to constrain their clients’ online behavior based on aspects of physical-world media. As a point of fact, there’s no intrinsic difference between jpg files generated by digital cameras and those generated by scanners (EXIL data notwithstanding) — and it’s easy enough to take a digital photo of a drawing, and to scan a photographic print. Which is the true Flickr-OK “photograph”?

Moreover (as constant readers of Jeff Ward or even my talk about visual hermeneutics from two years ago will immediately recall) all these distinctions along the spectrum that runs between “photograph” and “printed text” run the risk of invidious arbitrariness. Is a photograph of printed text more Flickr-OK than a scan of printed text? On what basis? Is a photograph of a drawing more Flickr-OK than a scan of the same drawing? Will it make a difference if a photo has been altered to look more painterly (as with a filter in Photoshop or Painter)? What is it about the bits that have been gathered together to represent visual information in a “photograph” that differentiates them from bits gathered for visual information in a “scanned drawing” or even a digital sketch?

Furthermore, although Flickr has maintained its concentration upon photo sharing, the viral aspects of Flickr have all along been the way they engineered in collaboration and social interaction. Flickr is, after all, the mainstream genius offspring of the eccentric genius of the late lamented Game Neverending (Wikipedia). In both, the most obvious features (photo sharing, multi-player gaming) thrive because they’re wrapped around robust, innovative social software. Under the circumstances, the features that have made Flickr unique and popular have nothing to do with the mechanical means by which bits were defined as representations of an image, and everything to do with the interactions between participants (which again have nothing to do with whether the images involve “photographs” or “drawings” or whatever).

Flickr made itself precious to its clients by devising a way for them to do something they loved. At this point, restricting the bits they can share to “photographic” bits risks cutting down the tree’s trunk in order to sustain its leaves.

All in all, a difficult case, and an odd circumstance in which to read about the Flickr-ization of Yahoo, when one might suspect that current events foreshadow the corporatization of Flickr, instead.

[Later: I should emphasize that, contrary to what some bloggers have written, Flickr neither bans nor removes non-photo images. In the interest of helping users get the search results they want, Flickr excludes non-photo images from searches, and I gather that Flickr is working on ways to enable users to select “photos” or “non-photo illustrations” as a search criterion. At the rate at which Flickr grows, though, engineering a more discriminating search mechanism will take a lot of work. I’m heartened to hear that Flickrites are not out to get illustrators — but I’m not convinced that this is the most productive way to work toward their desired end. On the other hand, I didn’t just build an image-sharing empire and sell it to Flickr for quillions of sheets of purple paper.]

Posted by AKMA at 02:11 PM | Comments (3)

November 26, 2005

Sifting Through the Rubble

We’ve done four or five loads of dishes, rearranged the furniture back to a condition approximating the pre-party alignment, and dropped my beloved bride off at the airport for her return to her homework and paper-grading. Happily, she’ll be back in less than three weeks.

I took Bruce’s advice this morning relative to my power management problem; I downloaded Coconut Battery tester for OS X 10.4 (Tiger), and it confirmed what System Profiler told me: the battery ain’t charging. I swapped in Si’s battery, and his didn’t charge either (we didn’t try my battery in his iBook). I was hopeful, since my battery shows 411 cycles — I thought my battery might be dying. Alas, that seems not to be the case.

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Margaret was worried about the impression her lime rice might have given last night; it turns out that the garlic she pressed during her preparations turned a greenish blue when she used iot to season the rice. At the time, I figured it was just lime rind in the rice (which tasted fine); as it turns out, it was indeed the (startling, but quite harmless and delicious) garlic.

Posted by AKMA at 12:57 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

November 25, 2005

One More Thing

That which I couldn’t say earlier in the day is that tonight our family held its first-ever surprise party, to celebrate Pippa’s birthday (five days early, as Margaret has to leave tomorrow morning). A large passel of Pippa’s friends from seminary life gathered to surprise her, share our enchiladas (she didn’t guess, even from the superhuman quantity of enchiladas she and Margaret baked this afternoon), and play Bible Pictionary. A splendid time was had by all.

I couldn’t feel more pride and exhilaration at Pippa’s closeness to so many wonderful adult friends. She’s a gift.

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Did I say that Margaret leaves tomorrow? The party gave us something to focus on other than the number of hours till she heads back to Durham; now that’s oppressively present to my awareness. She’s upstairs, quietly packing, now; I’m downstairs, pretending I don’t know what she’s up to.

Thank heavens she’ll be back in a couple of weeks.

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For what am I thankful? So many answers; I hope no reader will be miffed if I state, first and most emphatically, that I thank God daily for the marvelous family that surrounds me. The odds disfavor anyone winding up with this provocatively splendid bunch, and I’m first in line to emphasize that I wasn’t a propitious candidate for “father of a marvelous nuclear family.” We’ve pulled together through a number of challenges despite my many weaknesses — we’ve shared our family life with a number of dear friends; we keep growing, closer and stronger. Through their affection and support, I can also give thanks for everyone around who offers generous encouragement and necessary criticism. I give thanks for the plenty that makes it possible for me to worry about finances in a general way, rather than the specific “getting by day to day” way, or the “can’t even worry about finances” way of miserable scarcity. I have a job that brings me into the lives of people, some of whom give up practically all their old lives, who turn to me for instruction, for guidance in perplexity, for spiritual support. And I have an avocation that entangles my prose and promises and prayers with the lived questions and affirmations of friends around the world. I thank God, and I thank you. Thank you.

Posted by AKMA at 10:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Our Traditional Thanksgiving

This afternoon, we’ll celebrate our traditional Thanksgiving family meal. Margaret and Pippa have been making mountains of enchiladas, bean dip, and various other yummy vegetarian delights; we’ll have pie and ice cream for dessert; and in a couple of minutes, we’ll fire up the CD player and listen to Arlo Guthrie sing “Alice’s Restaurant.”

PIppa has been so caught up in the excitement that she drew a poster of Alice’s Restaurant, complete with red VW microbus and a restaurant separate from the church (since, after all, Alice didn’t live in the restaurant, but in the church nearby the restaurant) and a doghouse for Sasha the dog.

It would be great if Nate and Jennifer and Juliet could be here — and grandparents, and aunts — but Si and Laura will gather round the fire with Margaret and Pip and me, and we’ll eat till we can’t hold another tortilla.

Oh, and one more thing — but I can’t tell you that yet.

Posted by AKMA at 03:49 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

November 24, 2005

Giving Thanks. . . Tomorrow

It’s not that I didn’t have time to blog today. I did, this morning; but once the day started rolling, it was activities back to back. Late morning, I needed to drive the college boy to Laura’s house where he would celebrate Thanksgiving with them, today (Laura’s coming over to our house to celebrate with us tomorrow). When I got back from dropping him off, we walked down to the movie theater to catch Harry Potter on a less-crowded day (we thought). As it turns out, even with four or five screens showing Harry Potter, the theater was pretty crowded.

Once we got back from the movie, Pippa and I needed to go to the grocer to buy provisions for tomorrow’s banquet. That took a long-ish while. Then dinner. Then we watched King Kong, the original version.

That’s the day, friends. Capsule movie reviews? Goblet of Fire, excellent, though so much was cut from the book that non-book-readers must be bewildered by some developments (Pip and I took a long time explaining various elements to Margaret). I’ll have more to say about Harry Potter and Christian theology sometime.* Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (last night), excellent — though was Roald Dahl’s original quite so transparent to pop psychology and Michael Jackson? Johnny Depp, however, is an amazing actor, and I loved Helena Bonham Carter and Noah Taylor. King Kong 1933: Stagy and sometimes jerky, the power of the original vision shines through the hokiness. Hasn’t anyone learned not to shoot flash photographs at monsters, though? I thought that was Lesson One (or “Two,” after “Don’t twist your ankle.”).

* Yes, I know I’ve already promised to write more about romantic theology. Someday, I will fulfill each promise.

Posted by AKMA at 09:58 PM | Comments (1)

November 23, 2005

Retrospect and Prospect

I’m determined to do absolutely nothing productive today. I’m sitting in the dining room, blogging on my battery-impaired iBook, sipping coffee from my Baker Academic travel mug, wearing my Fortress Press 2005 World Tour t-shirt, and re-gathering my energies after an intense four-day Society of Biblical Literature meeting.

Incidentally, the conference totaled 10,002 registrants at last count, of which nearly half were members of the Society of Biblical Literature, the slightly larger half being members of the American Academy of Religion. The two societies will no longer meet in conjunction as of 2007, but for now we can expect five-digit attendance totals. After the Great Divorce, Margaret and I will have to decide which meetings who will attend, since she’s in systematic theology and I’m in biblical studies — though a number of Christian-theologically-identified scholars will likely be meeting in cooperation with the SBL. I’ve been enlisted to join a parallel body, and that probably won’t be the only one.

Anyway, it’s time to begin reworking the paper I read at Monday morning’s session of the “Christian Theology and the Bible” section. I’ll post its current state below; over the next few weeks, I’ll flesh out the bit about Johannine theology (left inchoate to keep the paper within time limits) and liturgy as signifying practice (left undeveloped because I didn’t have time to write out carefully what I wanted to say on the subject). When the paper is fully revised, I’ll submit it to journals for publication.

But wherever it ends up in periodical print, it will inevitably end up in print somewhere else, since one reason I’m wearing a Fortress Press t-shirt is that about this time last week, I received a contract from Fortress. They’re going to publish a collection of my essays, edited for continuity, sometimes next year. We’re haggling over the title. Fortress suggested “Faithful Subversion,” a phrase they say I used in one of the constituent essays; I prefer “Walk This Way,” which I use as the title of another of the essays (cast your vote below). Start saving your nickels now, and next year buy a couple of copies of a vital contribution to the debates over theology and biblical interpretation. . . .

I’ll try to get back to clean up the links and note styles later in the day; for now, I’m off to run errands with Pippa.

A great preponderance of the literature concerning exegesis and theology begins from the premise that these two endeavors differ in such important, constitutive ways that they require a special discourse dedicated to explaining and remedying their divergence. I will not try to convince this audience that this premise has not always seemed self-evident to the most sophisticated exegetes and theologians (who until recent years have frequently turned out to be the same people). Nor will I suggest we can simply pretend that the nineteenth and twentieth centuries never happened, and return ourselves intellectually and spiritually to a fantasy of what an exegete-theologian of bygone years must have thought like. Rather, I will point to elements of these separated-sibling discourses that provide the possibility of finding a renewed convergence, and will sketch a way of imagining exegesis and theology in an integrated discourse.

In a series of recent lectures, I’ve argued that theologians and biblical interpreters who care about a clearer connection between exegesis and theology ought to consider their theological reading as a signifying practice, a deliberate intervention in the economy of signification, toward the end of articulating an understanding of the gospel in a lived expression.*1* The key-concept of “signifying practice” offers a number of advantages to the theological interpreter, but for the purposes of this morning’s session, the greatest of these is that it affords a multifaceted way to envision exegesis and theology as complementary aspects of an integrated pursuit.

I will take as my texts for this meditation the phrase Maurice de la Taille applied to God’s initiative in the Incarnation – “he placed himself in the order of signs”*2* – in apposite conjunction with John 1:18, “No one has ever seen God; God the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, has made him known.” Students of the Greek text of John will immediately recall that John writes that the incarnate Word ἐξηγήσατο the Father, “exegeted” God. I hasten to repudiate the temptation to torture the sense of ἐξηγήσατο to equal the “exegesis” after which the papers in this session seek; our exegesis is more technical and narrow than the activity John ascribes to the Word. If, however, we read the verb in question with greater lexicographic precision – whether as “expound” or “interpret,” “narrate” or “describe”*3* – it fits aptly our work of expounding, interpreting, narrating, describing the character of God via the complementary exercise of textual exegesis and reflective theology. Moreover, especially, by imagining God’s incarnational intervention in the economy of signification as a model and vehicle for our own exposition of the Truth,*4* we can more soundly coordinate our study of Scripture and our reflection on doctrine to strengthen one another.

This suggestion depends first of all on the presumption that theology and exegesis do indeed somehow hang together. Certainly many contemporary practitioners of theology and exegesis dissent from that presumption, and their grounds have been made clear often enough. At the same time, we have historic reasons for supposing that this need not be the case, and I doubt that we will come to understand the convergence of exegesis and theology if we begin from their disjunction. If we can attain such a convergence during the next twenty minutes, though, it will be by envisioning the complementarity of these two distinct discourses and exploring how we might make that possibility real.

The case for convergence will not carry conviction, however, if we neglect the causes that have provoked so persistent an investment in the separation of discursive powers. The two academic discourses have developed defensive antipathies against one another on the basis of real experiences of disruptive intervention. Biblical scholars learn from their disciplinary history that theologians are likely to demand that the Bible be forced to yield only those interpretations that meet dogmatic criteria of legitimacy, or to affirm a greater degree of positivity than the conventions of technical interpretive analysis permit. Theologians (and here I’m partly guessing) learn that biblical scholars devote endless attention to minutiae, or that they insist theologians rely on “assured results” whose half-lives compare unfavorably to the durations of popular television series, or sports dynasties. The particular complaints each party might bring against the other matter less than the actuality of the impulse to protect each’s autonomous disciplinary authority; in order persuasively to induce any exegetes or theologians to participate in a coordinated interpretive endeavor, the basis for that participation should draw all concerned toward a telos more convincing than disciplinary autonomy. Neither discipline produces the results that the other would find compelling on its own terms*5*; so long as their interaction is constituted as a tug-of-war for authority or priority, we can hardly expect to see productive cooperation.

We won’t alleviate the disciplinary stresses by constructing a new, improved Überdiskurs (whose specialists would, of course, claim authority over those of the constituent fields). Rather, we need to devise a way of thinking about the interoperation of exegesis and theology (“theology” in all its specializations and subfields, and ethics, church history, liturgics, and pastoralia as well) that permits us to construe each of these discourses as a salutary critical interrogation of one aspect of the integrated whole. I suggest that we can gain considerable yardage toward that goal by treating these adversarial siblings as elements in the signifying practice of Christian discipleship.

The term “signifying practice” came into currency through the work of Julia Kristeva, who deployed it in the context of analyzing two ways that language functions in a text. In the first function, language cooperates with the rules, conventions, expectations, that constitute conventional usage (the “phenotext”), the structural elements that make satisfactory communication possible. The second function (the “genotext”) involves the ways that communication operates beyond or athwart rule-governed patterns of expression.*6* Aural elements (timbre, sonority, speed, pitch), phonetic elements (rhyme, accent, alliteration), physiological elements (stammer, dental geography), visual elements (the speaker’s appearance, attractive scenery) all inescapably affect the auditor’s uptake of meaning. In written or printed words, phenomena such as a typeface’s characteristics or handwriting style, color, quality of reproduction, and page layout influence our sense of the meaning of a text. Kristeva analyzed the convergence of phenotextual and genotextual functions as the locus for all signifying takes place (even, as she allows, apart from linguistic expressions).*7*

Subsequently, the Birmingham School of cultural criticism (particularly Stuart Hall and Dick Hebdige) took up the term “signifying practice” to apply it not simply to the tension between linguistic system and specific utterances, but to the multifarious embodied ways that people express themselves. In Hall’s account, we participate in reciprocal social activities (including, but not limited to, speech and writing) in ways that affirm, amplify, and perpetuate meanings for our behavior; a particular integrated set of these words and actions constitutes a signifying practice, a complex tapestry of expression by which we assert the sorts of meaning by which we and the culture around us define our identities.*8* Hebdige applies this cultural semiotics to the ways that non-dominant social groups define themselves over against the networks of meaning that prevail in the dominant social groups.*9* Thus gangstas, punks, goths, and various subcultures use their appearance, the sounds with which they make their presence audible, their distinct vernacular, the gestures by which they interact with one another and with outsiders – making meaning by the ways that they signify, in dress and music and speech and action.

The language of “signifying practices” offers numerous benefits for our inquiry. First, the range of signifying practices extends far beyond the conventional verbal arguments with which exegetes and theologians conduct their daily business. Paintings, musical compositions, drama, textiles, gesture, and countless other expressive practices contribute to the semiotic economy; they communicate not as diluted approximations of verbal communication, but intensely and coherently in their own idioms. Second, “signifying practices” directs our attention to the fact that all our interpretive discourses involve matters of practice, however powerfully or feebly. In this frame of reference, we do not simply “apply” our interpretive conclusions as a belated postscript to the cognitive work of textual scholarship and dogmatic reasoning, but (in a manner reminiscent of the Aristotelian practical syllogism) our interpretations are fulfilled in the way that our lives express our claims. Third, this frame helps us explain how exegesis in its strictly academic, technical sense differs from the theological interpretation of Scripture, and how the conceptual work of systematic theology differs from the pastoral implementation of theological teachings. Fourth, the terminology of “signifying practices” embraces not only the credentialed authority figures who speak from academic or ecclesiastical offices, but also the enacted exegesis and theology manifest among those saints who manage without degrees and titles. Fifth, when we consider exegesis and theology within the domain of signifying practices, we can better recognize the inevitable fluidity and ambiguity that attend our efforts to express the truth to which we bear witness. Where a strictly verbal account of these disciplines nurtures the illusion that we may control and police a propositionally-correct definitive version of the faith, our signifying practices never attain finality, always turn us back to discernment and judgment. We learn about exegesis and theology not solely from studying ancient languages and conciliar decrees, but from feeding the hungry, visiting prisoners, sheltering the beleaguered – and this is not simply a liberal escape hatch by which to bootleg fuzzy “experience” into disciplined reasoning, but the recollection of the unanimous teaching of Scripture, the saints, and reason itself that the Truth transforms lives that acknowledge its truth. Finally, the signifying practice to which exegesis and theology lend complementary energies may, arguably, point to a consummation in the church’s signifying practice par excellence, the eucharist – “an essential action,” not “an isolated presence or merely illustrative symbol.”*10*

The eucharistic consummation of theological exegesis returns us to my conjoined epigraphs. The first – de la Taille’s characterization of the Incarnate word having set himself in the order of signs, which my title quotes – serves in its original context as part of an extensive argument relative to the integrity of the Last Supper, the Passion and Crucifixion, and the Mass. In the context of this essay, however, it further highlights God’s eternal decision to communicate with humanity by way of embodied action, not solely by way of revealed linguistic expressions. In many and various ways God spoke of old to Israel by the prophets; but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, choosing to communicate not by word alone but by body language. As de la Taille says,

When God willed to create the world, he created it by his Word, by his eternal locution per quem omnia facta sunt, as we sing in our ancient Credo. And when God willed to raise the world up from its ruins, he did so once more by his Word, but by his Word made flesh. . . in his eucharistic flesh, I say, turning himself into something like a word uttered in figure by the Father, into a kind of subsisting speech, into a living and efficacious intimation of that plan of unity with which the divine intelligence is at work, in order to sum up all things in Christ, and through Christ in God.*11*

If we envision a pursuit of the truth that integrates exegesis and theology, our account must account for embodied meaning not solely as a semiotic afterthought, the Nachklang of a real-er verbal meaning. Indeed, as Pickstock has proposed, in the eucharistic recapitulation of the Incarnation we participate in the condition of the possibility of meaning.*12*

De la Taille’s discourse on the “Flesh that has itself become a word, a divine oracle, in order to express the life of Christ in the members of Christ”*13* catalyzed the understanding of signifying and sacramentality that David Jones developed in a series of essays and meditations.*14* Jones observes the analogy between the superabundant significance of the sacraments (and Jones considers the Eucharist almost exclusively) the true expression to which human arts, all making, point. Where we observe the impulse to forgo mere functionality in the name of useless beauty, Jones identifies an aspiration to sacramental significance.

Let us take the names of Picasso and Joyce as world-famous practitioners of the useless within our ever-accelerating utility-putsch: the one something of a magician and a superlatively able artist in various disparate media, from painting to ceramics; the other a master of the metaphoric who, in one medium alone, commands the incantational power of a number of media. Whereby the aural and the ocular senses of us are confronted with a new art form of unparalleled complexity, of signification piled upon signification, thus producing a work of exceptional sacramentality.*15*

In Jones’s sacramental semiotics, “meaning” and “making” are inextricably intertwingled, and although the eucharistic “making” uniquely effects the truth that it signifies, nonetheless all our activity evinces some sort of relation to the truth. To the extent that we answer the call to walk in newness of life, to direct our energies toward participating in the anamnesis of meaning, we can orient our lives toward the vocation of manifesting God’s glory in all our “making,” letting our light so shine before all people that they may see our good works and give glory to God.*16*

The explanatory value of such a eucharistically-shaped life derives a warrant from God’s own self-exposition in Jesus Christ, as it is formulated in the lapidary formula in John 1:18: “God the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, has made him known.”*17* The Johannine Jesus emphasizes the importance of “believing in his name” and expounds the Father’s identity in lengthy monologues, yes – but John also places a distinctive emphasis on Jesus’ role as revealer-of-the-Father, and that revelation continually foregrounds the activities by which the world can recognize the Father’s identity. John depicts a Jesus who teaches the mutual determination of knowledge and action, of belief and works, and who instructs his followers to perpetuate his works in order that his testimony might continue. In typically circuitous Johannine logic, the disciples who know Jesus, who love him and do his works, thereby know the Father, and make the Father known in the world. *18* And if we, in turn, want to take up the discipleship to which Jesus calls us in John’s Gospel, we must attend to the way that the incarnate Word expounded the Father’s identity when he placed himself in the order of signs.

The signifying practice of this discipleship situates both exegesis and theology (and the other theological fields) as modes of critical analysis by which we assess and refine our own participation in the economy of signification. “Exegesis” maintains scrupulous attention to the primary texts that shape our practice, and evaluates the soundness of our ventures in communicating God’s identity relative to these precedents. “Theology” maintains the congruence of our sundry ventures both with the traditions to which we profess allegiance and with our other expressions of faith. Neither of these can claim systematic precedence over the other; their contributions to our clearer understanding of our vocation hang together not in a sequential or hierarchical way, but as the harmonious ordering of complementary capacities.

The harmony of this order of derives not from the rigor or precision of our scholarship, not from aligning our discourses with an allegedly correct dogmatic definition, but from aligning our lives with the gifts of the Spirit: humility, patience, endurance, charity. These spiritual gifts identify the lives that bear witness to a Truth greater than our own academic prowess, our exegetical Macht. In the power of the Spirit, we who find ourselves placed in the order of signs practice a eucharistic participation in the Body of Christ so that our lives, exegesis, and theology may draw near to the one who rests in the bosom of the Father, and so share in the Word’s vocation to make God known.

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*1* Winslow Lecture at Seabury-Western, “Poaching On Zion: Biblical Theology as Signifying Practice,” April 21, 2005, forthcoming from Baker Books; “ ‘Do This’: Translating, Re-presenting, and Signifying New Testament Theology,” Catholic Biblical Association, August 8, 2005.

*2* My examination of de la Taille’s eucharistic theology has been inhibited by time constraints and differences among editions of his work. David Jones cites this phrase in his essay “Art and Sacrament”: “. . . I venture to ask the reader to consider what Maurice de la Taille said was done on Maundy Thursday by Good Friday’s Victim, I quote: ‘He placed Himself in the order of signs’ ” (in Epoch and Artist, ed. Harman Grisewood; London: Faber & Faber, 1959, 179). Jones does not cite the specific page of that quotation, but Christopher C. Knight (“Some Liturgical Implications of the Thought of David Jones,” New Blackfriars 85 (1998), p. 445) supplies what is lacking in “Art and Sacrament,” locating the phrase on page 212 of The Mystery of Faith and Human Opinion Contrasted and Defined, tr. J. B. Schimpf (London, Sheed and Ward, 1930). David Blamires explains (in David Jones: Artist and Writer, Manchester: Manchester Univ. Press, 1971, p. 29) that this is “an English résumé” of the complete work (The Mystery of Faith, Vol. I The Sacrifice of Our Lord, New York & London: Sheed & Ward, 1940; Vol. II, The Sacrifice of the Church, New York: Sheed & Ward, 1950), but that seems a misleading characterization of what comprises a body of essays, letters, and outlines that complement but do not truly summarize the argument in the longer work. My intense thanks to Mary Ocasek of the Feehan Memorial Library of the University of St.Mary of the Lake for her help in tracking down the 1930 volume.
One cannot read de la Taille without observing the horrific anti-Judaism of his repeated emphatic charge of deicide against “the Jews.” That misreading of the Passion and of God’s relation to Israel casts a grim light on his eucharistic theology – but the point I draw from his writings does not in any way depend on blaming Jesus’ neighbors for his execution, explicitly wrought by Roman authority.

*3*Luke uses the word often for narrating (Lk 24:35; Acts 10:8, 15:12, 15:14, 21:19), and the related noun forms (ἐξηγητής, ἐξηγορίαν, ἐξήγησις) appear in the LXX with senses related to “narration.” John is the only NT author other than Luke who uses ἐξηγέομαι or related forms.

*4* John Webster warns against ascribing an “Incarnational” divine/human character to the biblical text in order to finesse problems of authority and error (Holy Scripture: A Dogmatic Sketch, Cambridge: CUP 2003, 22f); my use of “incarnation” here avoids invoking an alleged Chalcedonian character of the biblical text, though it certainly may fall prey to other pitfalls.

*5* In criticizing the posited necessity of historical-critical scholarship put forward by The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church, Stephen Fowl and Lewis Ayres point out that “whereas Adam’s claim is that historical criticism cannot protect christological orthodoxy, our argument is that christological orthodoxy cannot protect historical criticism” (“(Mis)reading the Face of God: The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church,” Theological Studies 60 (1999), 514 n. 4), referring to my argument in “Docteism, Käsemann, and Christology: Why Historical Criticism Can’t Protect Christological Orthodoxy,” Scottish Journal of Theology 49 (1996), 391-410.

*6* “I shall call signifying practice the establishment and the countervailing of a sign system. . . .” from the glossary that Léon Roudiez appends to Kristeva’s Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art, (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1980), 18; Roudiez quotes from La Traversée des Signes, without further specification. Roland Barthes makes illuminating use of Kristeva’s distinction between phenotext and genotext in his essay “The Grain of the Voice,” in Image – Music – Text, trans. Stephen Heath (New York: Hill and Wang, 1977), 179-189.

*7* The Kristeva Reader, 120-123, citing from Revolution in Poetic Language.

*8* Stuart Hall, ed. Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices (London: Sage Publications, 1997), 15-64, particularly p. 28f.

*9* Dick Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style (London: Routledge, 1979).

*10*Catherine Pickstock, After Writing: On the Liturgical Consummation of Philosophy (Challenges in Contemporary Theology Series. Oxford, UK and Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers,1998), 253.

*11*De la Taille, The Mystery of Faith (1930), 213.

*12*Pickstock, xv, 261-264.

*13*De la Taille The Mystery of Faith (1930), 215.

*14*Most prominently in “Art and Sacrament” and Use and Sign (Ipswich: Golgonooza Press: 1962).

*15*Use and Sign, 7.

*16*Jones addresses this theme toward more specifically liturgical observations which demand further, more thorough articulation than time permits for this paper. In order to apprehend the integration of liturgical semiosis with exegesis and theological reasoning, I read Jones beside Graham Hughes’s Worship As Meaning (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003) – somewhat like Michael Bayldon’s “Body-Language: Post Vatican II Liturgy” (New Blackfriars 86 (2005), 450-453) only in conjunction with the claims I make here about signifying practices.

*17*The temptation to explore the semantics and implications of μονογενης θεος beckons, but must be resisted as peripheral to the point of this particular essay. Whatever we should make of that locution, John has identified the one who ἐξηγηται God as the Word who became flesh, and has compared Jesus’ glory to that of a μονογενους to a Father – so it seems safe to pursue my proposal on the premise that Jesus is the one who expounds the Father.

*18*This is not, of course, a uniquely Johannine point; Matthew’s Jesus likewise commands that disciples let their light so shine before all people that they may see their good works and glorify the Father in heaven (5:16) as above, and the Pauline imitation motif can serve this purpose.

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November 22, 2005

Re-Entry

Home safely, exhausted. Unnerving cab ride in from O’Hare. Battery-charging still unresponsive; I’ll try switching out batteries to make sure the problem is with charging. Fuller stories tomrrow.

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Transition, Transition

Yesterday morning I gave my presentation on exegesis, theology, and signifying practices. It went well, I think, and the combination of papers (Gary Anderson, Sarah Coakley, Matthew Levering, with a response by John Webster) made fora very rich session — ample demonstration that exegesis and theology need not be disciplinary antipodes, but can strengthen and deepen one another.

I finally tracked down a copy of the Catena Aurea — the Wipf and Stock team has reprinted it, God bless them — so I picked that up, along with a smattering of other books. Apart from the eight-volume Catena, though, I haven’t been as active as in years past. We’ll see how that holds up this morning as the book display closes.

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November 21, 2005

Impaneled

Yesterday morning’s session (on Bible scholars who blog) went well, I think; a fairly small room but quite full, and Mark chaired the proceedings with his characteristic grace and élan. The papers went smoothly, and set the stage admirably for the subsequent discussion. Rick’s paper touched on some of the mark-up and information-architecture questions that interest me most, though I’m inclined to doubt that this current approach — which involves a fair amount of entering regularized well-formed metadata — will catch on with less information-intent bloggers. It’s not insignificant that Rick initially designed his personal metadata software to generate imprecise XML; if even he didn’t make the effort to distinguish [cite] from [i] from [em], it’s hard to imagine that less committed bloggers would keep their biblical references consistent, or would fill out the bibliographic metadata for every book they mention. Certainly we have many colleagues who, if they were inclined at all to blog,would give it up in an instant if it involved entering copious tags, keywords, precise identifications of biblical passages, and so on. I think that Flickr and deli.cio.us hit the right trajectory by generating a space for user-oriented metadata, such that if I see something on Rick’s blog that interests me enough to want to retrieve it or categorize it, I can supply the metadata that facilitates such indexing. At the same time, it would be handy if that capacity were integrated to blogging software itself (as it’s integral to Flickr’s photo-sharing software), so that tagging a post were as easy as tagging a Flickr photo.

Peter (I think?) raised the very pertinent question of gender; a panel of seven or eight biblical bloggers included only men. Sadly Helenann couldn’t come, and people such as Dylan (who’s also not here) and Mary (whom I haven’t seen here) blog about the Bible, but with more of a view toward homiletics. (Casual readers: it would be hard to overstate the interdisciplinary condescension with which conventional biblical scholars use the term “homiletical”; it frequently sounds as though the word would mean something such as “written in crayon” or “words of one syllable only.”) To the extent that Dylan and Mary don’t enter and link to the arguments that interest people such as Mark or Jim (to concentrate on the A-list biblical bloggers), it’s understandable that they not show up on their radar; that’s not strictly a gender problem, but a social-definition-of-disciplines problem intertwined with a gender problem (and that entwinement isn’t merely coincidental). At the same time, as I said at the session, I suspect that the greater barrier to women’s participation in Blogarian citizenship has to do with the historic pattern of risks and vulnerabilities that academia tends to impose disproportionately on women (and people of color — the panel was all-white, too, not that that would be as surprising in either the biblical academy or online discourse) (very sadly, and again not innocuously).

All of this is not by any means to say, “Buck up, look on the bright side” or “No, no, it’s not a problem, stop being so sensitive”; it is a problem, but I want to concentrate my attention on the points d’appui where this problem (and a variety of related problems) put down their roots — rather than only generating heat for the panel organizer.

And I didn’t know about Yasmin’s blogging (indeed, there are increasing numbers of biblical bloggers whom I don’t know, which is destined to be the case, further aggravating the “old bloggers network” effect).

Now I must get dressed to prepare for this morning’s paper on theological interpretation of Scripture and (of course) signifying practices (honest, I’ll give it a rest once this series of talks is through). More anon.

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November 19, 2005

I Used to Blog

Really, I’d be blogging more — even live-blogging sessions — if my battery connection weren’t broken. I may borrow Margaret's iBook for tomorrow’s “blogging panel” just for verisimilitude.

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November 18, 2005

Yikes!

We arrived safely, with very smooth travel connections (apart from Pippa’s smoothie, erm, disagreeing with her in a near-projectile manner; all well after it departed).

But my iBook battery isn’t charging, so I’ll only be online in dribs and drabs for the time being. I tried resetting the PMU with a restart-hold-down-the-power-button maneuver; if someone has a better idea, please leave a comment (iBook G4 2004, running 10.4.2, battery doesn't charge although the cord checks out and it seems to be operating fine while plugged in — just not charging the battery). Everything was working fine till I installed the World of Warcraft game, Joi. . . .

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November 17, 2005

Hi, My Name Is

So I finished [mostly] my paper at midday, taught the Early Church History class (Augustine on Pelagianism always gets resistance), came home, and now I have to pack and get ready to fly to Philadelphia. It’ll be busy, but at least I no longer dread my Monday-morning presentation.

And there’s now time for me to return from my blog-absence, which is somewhat incongruous since one of my conference appearances will be on a panel discussing. . . . blogging. There’ll be two papers, then a panel involving Tim, Stephen, Torrey, Edward, James, and me.

You can tell I’ve been offline a lot when it takes me more than twenty-four hours to link to Boing Boing’s coverage of the new Barenaked Ladies album-on-a-flash-drive experiment (I’d link to their version of the story, but they don’t seem to provide permalinks). Jeff Pazen emailed me, because he connected this development with my previous posts about the coming wave of ultra-miniature, cheap, capacious media players. On that count, BNL are on the right wavelength, and Cory (I think) misses the point when he asks, “how many 128MB sticks can you usefully own?” I can manage a great many more flash drives than I can, for instance, pre-recorded CDs, but I have hundreds of CDs lining my dining-room wall (CDs that I hardly ever play, now that I’m mostly oriented toward mp3 selections).

Chris Heard tagged me for one of those “reveal all sorts of trivial secrets” memes, in which I usually don’t participate — though for the sake of showing that I’m not totally a humorless old grump, I’ll answer one part of the questionnaire.

Five things I would do with a lot of money
1. Get out of debt
2. Send money to the Gulf Coast and Pakistan
3. Underwrite formal online publishing a la The Disseminary
4. Take time off to work on all the writing projects on which I’m way behind
5. Depending on how much money was left over, I’d like to buy a retreat center, equip it with a good theological library (and broadband wifi, of course), and host scholars who need a quiet place to write.

Later: Was I really so out of it that I didn’t hear that David is getting a PowerBook?

I’m a big target for cartoons lately; Jane thinks I don’t need a book entitled Aerobic Preaching (if you subscribe to preachingtoday.com, you can see it here), Laura calls my attention to this (presumably referring to my own lecturing capacity), and Bob Carlton notes this all-too-apposite church sign.

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Where Did Fall Go?

Last weekend, the weather was early September. As of yesterday, suddenly, it’s late January.

(As you may have guessed, the essay isn’t finished yet. Getting close, though.)

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November 15, 2005

Entry In a Bottle

No, I haven’t been hospitalized, nor fired for blogging. Still working on my presentation for the Society of Biblical Literature meeting — an extension of the argument from this summer’s lectures. The first portion of the paper, which hews closer to what I’ve already done, is set. The second, which takes me into areas outside my expertise, is resisting coming together. Will be done soon.

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November 13, 2005

Check Your Stocking (Forgive the Festal Incongruity)

And not just because Pippa might have hidden the rubber spider with which she torments me into your sock drawer (she did that to me a couple of weeks ago, though, so you might be careful anyway). No, check your stocking because the proprietors of Redlex Software promise their customers that Mellel II will be released tomorrow.

I used Mellel daily for a year or so, then switched to Apple’s Pages (in my ritual word-processing transition, which takes place roughly every eighteen months). I like Pages; it looks great, its capacity to read and produce MS Word documents obviates the necessity of using Mr. Bill’s word processor; it carries some very heavy-duty page-layout functions with impressive grace. At the same time, I’ve run into some aspects of Pages that just bug me, and a few weeks ago I switched back to Mellel and wondered how that spritely, multilingual word processing app could have gotten to version 1.8 without columns.

Of course, version 2 (II) promises columns, and widow-and-orphan control, and a heap of other improvements. Tomorrow will be a treat!

(I realize that the proprietors of Redlex may well not observe the stocking-filling holiday custom that many North Americans and Europeans observe. It’s a figure of speech. Mellel won’t go into a stocking, anyway; it’s available by download. The point is, we’ll be in for a pleasant surprise tomorrow.)

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November 12, 2005

Thinking of Rage

I’ve been thinking about Rageboy on and off this evening, partly since it’s his birthday (and he doesn’t look a day over twenty-three; how do you do it, Chris?) and partly because I’m wrestling with a conference paper that wants to communicate a book’s worth of thinking in twenty minutes of talking. When I try to do that, I get pen-tied and blocked, and then write three-ton sentences that no listener could possibly make sense of. Chris, on the other hand, just tears this stuff off – he’s amazing. A toast to you both, Chris and Rageboy, and lend me just a little of that fluency for a week or so, OK?

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November 11, 2005

Mice and Pants

Pippa works constantly to amuse and delight me. For instance, the other day she noticed this story on “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me,” and promptly illustrated it:

A couple of days later she was watching the third Star Wars movie (Is that the episode entitled The Rebellion Destroys The Second Death Star In Almost Exactly The Same Way It Destroyed The First One?) and discovered a moment of “Pants Wars” glory —

Han: Well, why don’t you use your divine pants and get us out of this?
C3PO: Begging your pardon, General Solo, but that just wouldn’t be proper.

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November 10, 2005

Winin' Boy

Having broached the topic of wine marketing just a couple of days ago, I’m obliged to point out that Hugh and Stormhoek have offered £1000.00 to any blogger who provides them with a convincing design for their bottle and label. They want their wine to stand out among wine bottles as Apple computers do among a sea of generic PCs. I offer a muted “Bravo” — as you might expect, given what I said earlier. (By the way, they aren’t looking for a full-blown presnetation treatment; as Hugh says, “An idea that works on the back of a cocktail napkin is just fine by me.”)

It’ll be easy to tear off a flashy shape or label; as a buyer, though, I’d be attending particularly to what the design communicates about the wine. (Wine bottles, after all, have drawn near perfection in packaging: optimal packing density, strongly-defined conventions relative to shape and color, and so on). I would commend a clear glass bottle, to help set it apart from the green and brown bottles on the shelf (since part of Stormhoek’s pitch is its freshness, one need not worry as much about the effects that light might have on the wine). The shape of the bottle probably can’t depart too much from present norms without incurring too great an expense in tooling and shipping. Hmmmmm.

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November 09, 2005

Just a Detail

OK, so I read the Bill Gates memo to which Doc pointed, which Dave supplied, and the things that strikes me right away is: he refers to “over 92% of Fortune 100 companies.”

Now, I’m sure that people who know more than I do about both math and business read this blog, so permit me to ask, “If it’s more than 92% of the Fortune 100, isn’t it necessarily at least 93%? Are there actually 101 companies in the Fortune 100, or is Bill counting fractional use?”

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Desideratum

iTunes’s “smart playlists” make listening more enjoyable for me; I like to hear songs I have’t heard in a while, and it’s easy to make a list that sorts of selections that haven’t played in the last month. When I want to listen to familiar, favorite music, I can rig that, too.

I look forward to the next step in playlist intelligence: a playlist that distributes the frequency with which I hear selections by my rating of the song (at a crude level, I’d hear five-star songs five times more often than one-star selections) cross-factored against how recently I've heard the selection (or how often I’d heard it). I’d thus be most likely to hear a five-star song that I haven’t heard in a few months, for instance, and least likely to hear a no-star song that I just heard yesterday. At the same time, it wouldn’t eliminate the chance that I’d hear a less-favorite selection, or a recent-repeat. Over the long haul, I’d hear my favorites most often, but mixed in with other selections I like well enough, and with occasional less-favored cuts.

It ought to be do-able (it may even be possible now with iTunes’ capacity to nest playlists) — and it would really, really rock.

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November 08, 2005

Just Checking

If I recall correctly, the Bush regime did not want to follow through with a full 9/11 investigation, and their Senate proteges have been stalling on the investigation of WMD (un)intelligence (despite the way that the Democrats have until recently been playing Milquetoast; why didn’t the GOP rush through a report before the Democrats drank their morning double espresso?). They’ve been stalling Plamegate investigations and Abu Ghraib investigations.

But once word gets out that the CIA may be maintaining secret prisons, now that needs an investigation, fast. Not the secret prisons, of course — the fact that somebody found out.

Of course they never torture anyone, so please don’t pass that bill making it explicitly illegal to torture people.

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November 07, 2005

Wine, Wine, Wine

Once upon a time, marketing wine involved extremely little obvious panache or verve: bottles had labels, price tags, and some had reputations, and one bought the bottle with the most suitable combination of qualities. Most of us shopped for wine almost randomly, a pattern aggravated by the way labels drifted into and out of stock at particular vendors.

I’ve lately observed two new tacks for marketing wine. The first, which I detest, involves cooking up a cutesy name for the wine, and designing an loud, eye-catching label. Since I do my best to make marginally-informed decisions when buying wine, the uninformative-name-and-label combination adds frustration to condescending insult. Here’s a message to wine marketers: no matter how good your wine is, I will not buy it if you slap a puerile joke name onto it. My (almost) twelve-year-old daughter noticed this trend the other day, and she was insulted by it. Call your wine “Mynah Triumph” and label it with a bird, and you can guarantee I won’t buy a drop of it.

The other tactic I noticed was Hugh’s campaign on behalf of Stormhoek. Hugh has persuaded Stormhoek to give away wine to bloggers — no questions asked. He reasons that (on the whole) bloggers will tell the truth about the wine, and that the odds suggest that a good many will write about it, and so Stormhoek gets the free publicity, the market research, and the meta-PR buzz of having developed a snappy campaign.

Oh, and the name isn’t a cloyingly clever joke, and the label actually tells you useful things about the wine.

[Full Disclosure: No, I haven’t gotten a free bottle of wine to promote the “free bottle of wine” campaign; if offered a bottle, I would accept it, but it doesn’t look as though U.S. citizens have a chance for the time being. I’d rather pay for a bottle of wine I know I’ll enjoy, than try to weed out the noble, workmanlike claret from the throngs of trendy “Goats Do Roam,” “Mad Housewife,” and “Smoking Loon.” For short, my Weinberger Real Disclosure Forward Looking Statement (WRDFLS) = FT2 SUT IJND]

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Wily Chicagoans

Margaret spotted a story in yesterday’s NY Times, vindicating yet again her contention that she saw a coyote walking down a street in Evanston a few years back. At the time, I mocked her — but since then I’ve had to eat those jests over and over again.

“Professor Gehrt says with confidence that the sensible suburban toddler has little to fear from the suburban coyote, but he will not say the same for the suburban Shih Tzu” — or Bichon Frisé, so watch out, Bea!

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November 06, 2005

Yard Labor Solidarity

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On the Academic Front

I plan to try to work David Weinberger’s newly-re-available philosophy articles (“Austin’s Flying Arrow,” and “Phenomenological Ethics”) into papers and presentations, if I can (I mean, at the very least I can throw in a “contra Weinberger” here or there).

And we’ve had some encouraging developments on the Disseminary front, which I don’t want to get specific about till everything’s nailed down — but even a drop of good news over there feels exciting.

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November 05, 2005

IP Madness

I hope that whoever’s behind the story to which David pointed yesterday has made a big mistake, or that the patent office (not having evaluated the patent application yet) will dismiss it outright. But the fact that someone might think it plausible to patent a story line — just throw in the actions against Google Print, and these cases amply illustrate the chilling winds generated by recent IP laws and decisions.

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Sorry, Hawkeyes

This morning got off to a rough start — for Pippa, at least — when the parking lot across the street began to fill up early with partisans of the visiting college football team. As this is our seventh football season living on the Northwestern campus (gosh, that seems like a long time; I haven’t lived anywhere longer since I left high school), rowdy visiting fans are not a new phenomenon to us; still, this bunch seemed earlier and more ardent than most we'd experienced, including the Michigan fans from a few weeks ago. Before nine o’clock, someone had blared a klaxon reveille to rally the visiting tailgaters, and it got more lively from there.

I should say that although people were obviously excited and had drunk more beer than advisable before eleven in the morning, I didn’t see anyone misbehave except for the over-endowed student in a Porsche who made a sudden left turn into the parking lot without signalling, and who refused to back up when it became clear that there was no way forward for him, and who finally did back out slowly, blocking traffic on Noyes Street longer than necessary because he seemed to harbor the notion that if only a few cars rolled forward out of the lot, he could squeeze in. Hey, we’ll all wait in gridlock while you come to terms with reality, dude. But I saw no signs of hooliganism or predation (unless you think of beer kegs as an endangered species).

It turns out these early-rising lagermeisters were Iowa Hawkeye fans, so I was predisposed to think the best of them, since some of my very favorite students are from Iowa. On the other hand, I hated to think what the parking lot might be like after the game. The game started at midday, so there would be plenty of time for gloating if the Hawkeyes won, which seemed especially likely when they went ahead 28-7 or thereabouts, or for vindictive vandalism if the Hawkeyes lost.

In the end, Northwestern won with just seconds left in the game, and thunderstorms moved into the region right about that time — so even if the Iowans had felt embittered and destructive (and I have no reason to think they would have — sometimes beer just mellows people out), this would not have been favorable weather for rampaging. Instead, everyone skulked back to Iowa, leaving the customary heaps of trash, bottles, and smoldering charcoal briquets.

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November 04, 2005

Surprise!

Living apart from your beloved entails a number of discomforts and frustrations, as many of you can easily imagine. Many days I wish I were at Margaret’s apartment to give her a back rub or fetch her a cup of tea while she reads, or just offer my shoulder on which she might rest her study-wearied head.

Today I wish I were down there so I could take her out to dinner, someplace romantic and quiet (that serves gluten-free vegetarian entrees and a good red wine), so I could laugh and reminisce with her, so that I could hold up a glass and promise all my energies to making the next twenty-seven years together even better than the first have been.

Happy birthday, Margaret — you give us around you such a brave example of seeing what’s right and pursuing it, of holding up under stress, of always continuing to learn and to teach, of offering your time and strength to so many others who need your gifts as a friend, a mother, a counselor, a scholar. Happy birthday, many happy returns, and let’s get together soon!

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