Protecting Our Children from the Evils of the Civil War, Part II

After my previous post about the Civil War, my dad sent me this article from the Washington Post by E.J. Dionne Jr. He argues that slavery was the main cause of the Civil War, which I still don’t agree with, but that’s not really the point. The article rings with “those who don’t understand the past are doomed to repeat it” sentiment. In my opinion, most people who love that phrase don’t really understand history.

The likelihood that any Western society will once again enslave African Americans in the near or distant future is pretty much nonexistent. That’s not what “doomed to repeat it” means. And that’s why it’s so important to understand more about history than just what we think of it today. When Texas decided they were going to change the textbooks, one of the things they wanted was for kids to study Jefferson Davis’ inaugural speech in addition to Lincoln’s. Everybody had a cow about that. “Oh, my goodness, we can’t have our children learning about him. He was evil. We must pound it into their heads that he was The Bad Guy. That’s all they need to know.” Okay, if we want to teach our children that Jefferson Davis was The Bad Guy, fine. But my whole point is that it’s also important (I think more important) for them to understand why so many people believed he was The Good Guy.

Let’s take another example. Hitler is almost universally acknowledged to be evil, and if I had kids I would certainly want them to grow up understanding that Hitler was evil. But I would also want them to understand how and why Hitler was able to rise to power and do all the evil things he did while most of the German population looked the other way. It’s not very likely that another evil dictator will send millions of Jews to die in concentration camps. But a country being won over by a charismatic politician who promises to get them out of an economic depression? That could happen. That’s what “doomed to repeat it” means.

I also don’t think it’s fair to vilify all Confederate slave owners for being racist. Most people in the 1860’s were racist by today’s standards, no matter where they lived or what they thought about slavery. I think we need to encourage students of history to try to see things the way the people at the time would have seen them. Slavery was a huge part of the southern economy. If your whole livelihood was based on something like that, you’d be pretty inclined to keep it going, even if you maybe knew in your heart of hearts that it was morally wrong.

Some people think high school history focuses too much on facts and dates. I think it focuses too much on good and bad, particularly when it comes to American history. The British get the same kind of unfair vilification when the Revolutionary War is being studied. Maybe if we could get our heads out of our American history bubble and simultaneously study what was going on in Europe at the time, our students would grow up with a better understanding of why things happened the way they did, instead of just learning that taxes are bad. Just something to think about the next time the Tea Party starts whining for lower taxes.

Why Christmas Won

First, I promise that this is not going to be another post in which I rant about The Message Board. I just need to mention it briefly.

Recently there have been several threads centered around the question of Why Some People Get So Upset When You Say “Happy Holidays” Instead Of “Merry Christmas.” There were the standard arguments in favor of “Happy Holidays.” Then somebody pointed out that saying “Happy Holidays” in an attempt to be inclusive of other religions’ holidays is actually sort of stupid since Hanukkah, for example, is actually a minor Jewish holiday and it’s sort of un-PC to assume it’s a big deal simply because it falls around the same time of year as the big Christian holiday. Somebody else responded, saying that Christmas should actually be a minor Christian holiday compared to Easter, which is true. And that got me thinking: how and why did Christmas become the holiday that we go all out to celebrate?

The history of Christmas is a fascinating thing. As most of us know, Christmas was assigned a day at the end of December because Those In Power were trying to convert pagans (and others) who had major holidays or feasts around that time, and it was a lot easier to convert people if they could keep on doing what they’d always done, just with a different meaning attached. I believe, although I’m not certain, that Easter was assigned a day in the spring for similar reasons. So maybe the winter celebrations that Christmas replaced were a bigger deal than the spring ones and so Christmas became a bigger deal than Easter in the minds of the new converts. It also seems possible (and this is purely a guess) that it had something to do with the agrarian calendar. In the winter, the harvest was done and you had a lot more free time to hang out inside making merry, whereas in the spring you had to be out plowing or planting or whatever and you only had time for a quick holiday.

But I’m not sure Christmas really was that much of a bigger deal than Easter until the Renaissance at the very earliest, and it didn’t really take off until after the American Revolution. Christmas as we know it today was invented by Americans, the descendants of Puritans, who didn’t think that getting plastered and wreaking havoc was an acceptable way to spend your holiday. So they made it all about kids, family, presents, and Santa Claus. Then there is the fact that suddenly Christmas was sandwiched right in between Thanksgiving (an American holiday that hadn’t existed in Medieval Europe) and New Year’s (which, until at least the sixteenth century, had been observed in the spring, not in January). Easter, on the other hand, has no other important holidays in close proximity.

I think the real reason Christmas won, though, is simply that Christmas became secular and Easter didn’t. This was probably sort of always the case. I believe Easter was the one day when Medieval Catholics had to take communion or go to confession (or maybe both). Easter was a church service and Christmas was a party. You see, nothing really ever changes.

And then, of course, there is the commercialization of Christmas, but I think that by the time Christmas became heavily commercialized it had already won. Commercialization was the prize, not the cause. Easter is commercialized (and to some extent, secularized) as well, but not nearly to the same extent. You don’t usually hear people fretting about how they’re going to pay off their Easter bills.

So maybe Easter should be the bigger holiday, and maybe it is to some Christians, but in the wider world, Christmas has won. It won a long time ago and it is going to retain the title of Biggest Holiday on the Planet for the foreseeable future. I believe Christmas may become less commercialized as the perfect middle class lifestyle becomes more unattainable, and more secular as Christianity declines in popularity, but Christmas is here to stay, and so, unfortunately, is the debate about what we should say to wish others well.

Protecting Our Children from the Evils of the Civil War

The current hot topic on the message board that I still read but don’t currently participate in is the Civil War era, specifically “fundies” who romanticize the antebellum South or display the Confederate flag without bothering to consider the horrors of slavery, because everyone knows that the Civil War was 95% about slavery and every single southerner at the time was evil and inhumane. I am barely able to restrain myself from signing back on to ask if any of the other posters have ever taken a history class.

I don’t know that much about the Civil War. It always seems to involve long discussions about how General So-and-So led the 37th Infantry up to the top of XYZ Hill, but the sun was in their eyes so they charged too soon and ran right into General Somebody Else and the 126th Artillery or whatever. But I know enough to know that, while slavery was certainly an issue, it wasn’t the only issue. In fact, I would argue that the Civil War was more about states’ rights, and slavery was something that a lot of people felt should be left up to the states. This is just my not-very-educated opinion, but I think the Civil War would have happened even if slavery had already been abolished and I think slavery would have been abolished even if the Civil War hadn’t happened.

Furthermore, I think it’s wrong to assume that everyone in the antebellum South was inherently evil. The majority of white southerners did not own slaves. Along the same lines, most northerners at the time probably weren’t gung-ho for racial equality. Even die-hard abolitionists didn’t necessarily believe blacks and whites were equal.

What really bothers me about the discussion on the message board is that people there seem to want everyone to say, “Slavery was bad. The antebellum South was an evil place because it allowed slavery. Thank goodness the good guys in the North came along to end that atrocity. End of discussion.” But that’s not what studying history is about. Truly studying history involves not just learning about what happened (and what we think of it today), but why. That doesn’t mean we can’t have our own opinions. For example, I’m taking a class on the history of China right now. Am I disgusted by some of the things that happened to the Chinese people during the Mao era? Yes, but I’m able to put my own opinions aside and analyze the bigger picture and the motivations of those who were involved to find out why those things happened and realize that characterizing Mao as nothing more than an evil dictator is horribly one-sided and limiting.

I have several friends who are anthropology majors. According to them, if you want to be an anthropologist one of the first things you have to do is get over any hang-ups you might have about cultures different from yours. If you’re going to study, say, native peoples in the Amazon rain forest, your goal is to understand them and learn about them, not tell them how evil and wrong they are (even if you do think they’re evil and wrong). I view history the same way. Yammering on about how Shakespeare was sexist and everybody in Victorian London was miserable isn’t going to get you any farther towards understanding those different cultures. The fact that they don’t exist anymore shouldn’t make them fair game for every judgmental remark in the book.

It’s fine to want our children to grow up knowing that slavery is bad, but if we really want to keep the past from repeating itself the next generation is going to have to understand a lot more than that.

Columbus: He Once Existed

Columbus Day is this week.

Several years ago I went to my Monday afternoon voice lesson on Columbus Day, which is also Canadian Thanksgiving. My voice teacher, Paul, who is Canadian, was on the phone with his parents in Canada. I stood and waited while he finished talking to them. One of them must have asked what the point of Columbus Day was because Paul said, “I don’t know, Columbus once existed.” It wasn’t really that funny, but I absolutely cracked up. Not wanting anyone on the other end of the phone to hear my cackling in the background, I tried to keep my giggle attack quite. A minute later Paul hung up and said, “Wow, I thought you were going to bust.”

This is what I think of anytime Columbus or Columbus Day or anything remotely related to Columbus comes up. As I was recalling it recently during one of those ever-present furniture store commercials, though, I realized that Paul actually had a point. Why, out of all the possible historical figures we could have chosen from, was Columbus the one to get his own day?

Columbus didn’t really do anything. He convinced the queen of Spain to give him some money and then he got lost. And yet for some reason he is the only historical figure besides Martin Luther King Jr. to merit a three-day weekend (a three day weekend for some people, anyway). Well, I guess technically Jesus has a day, too.

I can think of a lot of people who are more deserving of a spot on the calendar than Columbus. How about Gutenberg (I’m on kind of a Gutenberg kick, lately)? He did a lot more for the world than Columbus, and he actually did it on purpose. Or Shakespeare. Actually, Shakespeare really should get at least a couple of days. What about Da Vinci, Luther, William the Conqueror? I could go on and on.

But maybe we’re so patriotic we need to only have days celebrating Americans (because Columbus was such an American). All the presidents are covered under Presidents Day, but how about Ben Franklin? He’s way cooler than Columbus. Thomas Edison, Mark Twain, Paul Revere. I’m sure I could come up with dozens more if I had more time. Why, when we have all these possible choices, did we get stuck with Columbus Day?

I think I’m going to assign all my favorite historical figures a day on the calendar, kind of like those silly holidays. Hey, I made up my own holiday, didn’t I? I can sure decide that October 10 is going to be Gutenberg Day from now on if I want to.

One final note. Should I ever become famous enough to have a day off named after me, somebody make sure it’s on a Friday and not a Monday.

The Other Alternate Reality

I'm very upset right now so anything I say should be taken with a giant grain of salt.

One of my homework-avoiding hobbies is to read and post on a message board dedicated to snarking on Quiverfullers and other fundamentalist Christian types, typically referred to as "fundies." I have somewhat of a reputation on this message board as being the one who often tries to stick up for the fundies. I do this not so much because I always agree with them, but because I like to play devil's advocate and I like to argue.

Recently, a thread was started about the "tradition" of a man asking a woman's father if he (the man, not the father) can marry her. Others on the message board were livid. They see this tradition as taking away a woman's right to choose who she wants to marry. They see it as nostalgically pining for a past that never existed. Then, the tradition of the bride walking down the aisle with her father came up. Most people felt the same way about that tradition.

I finally chimed in, perhaps a little more angrily than I intended to. I said I think it's ridiculous to accuse people who just like traditions and want to have traditional weddings of somehow trying to take us back to a time when women had no rights, as if such a thing could happen, anyway. I also alluded to the fact that I want a traditional marriage, with traditional gender roles.

I didn't expect a positive response. I don't usually get a positive response on this message board. But of all the things I have said since I started posting there, I didn't expect that to be the one I got attacked for.

It quickly turned into a discussion about women's rights and whether I do or do not believe men and women are equal and why. I did the best I could to answer others' questions and to acknowledge that their points of view made sense. I even attempted to explain my belief in history and the great multiple choice test of life, not expecting anyone to understand it, since even my best friends don't understand it. To give these people credit, they understood more than I was hoping for.

Then someone brought up something I said in an earlier thread. This thread began with someone posting a list of "signs your spouse is becoming a fundie." This list included things like "they want to take your children to church" and "they pray every night." To me, it sounded like the person who posted the list saw anyone religious as fundie and I wanted to point out that this isn't really true. I copied the list into a new post and bolded all the things that I believe or agree with (about half the list) and then pointed out that most people would not consider me to be a fundie.

Unfortunately, one of the things I bolded was "they believe that the man should be the leader in any relationship and they want to try to make that work in your life together." I don't necessarily agree with the first half of that statement and had the second half not been there I'm sure I never would have bolded it. I did so because that is what I want for my marriage. I have no desire to tell other people how to live.

I got plenty of responses to my post in that thread, but weeks later someone brought up what I said there in the wedding traditions thread as "proof" that I believe men and women are not equal and any claims I make about reconsidering that belief are lies and attempts to hide my "ignorance."

I try to play nice on this message board, I really do. In the past, posters have been essentially ostracized because they strayed to far from the ultra-liberal party line. I like reading and posting there and I don't want that to happen to me. But this is my blog, which, as far as I know, no one reads anyway, so I'm going to say what I want.

I think most of these people are living in a dream world, which is funny, because refusing to accept reality is one of their favorite things to accuse fundies of doing. In their world, aside from purely physical differences, all women are exactly like all men, and they should live their lives accordingly. It is impossible to find even the tiniest ounce of pleasure in cooking, cleaning, or raising children. Everyone goes to college, and they go because they want to, because college is the single most important thing they will ever do and they have been dreaming of it all their lives. Everyone chooses what they want to do with their life, and anyone who chooses anything besides a traditional four-year college followed focus on a single career has been brainwashed by religion. People in the past were miserable. It was impossible to have a happy life before the 21st Century. Science and logic always trump religion. Anyone who believes in any sort of creation is choosing to be ignorant. I could go on, but it's getting late.

How is that not a fantasy world? Granted, I have limited experience, but every single person I know contradicts at least one of the above statements. Do I not live in the real world? Some of the people on this message board have suggested as much. Apparently, anyone who socializes with friends they met at church does not live in the real world. That's another one.

Sometimes, I wish the people on that message board could have a chance to get to know me, the real me, contradictions and all. I try not to talk about myself too much over there, because the purpose of the board isn't to talk about ourselves, although we do plenty of that. I think everyone is probably more extreme, more black-and-white on the internet. I can't believe I'm saying this, but it would be nice to see some gray areas once in awhile.

Maybe I need to take a break from that message board for awhile. Maybe I need to stop talking about my beliefs until I'm more sure of what, exactly, they are. Maybe I need to remind myself that my life is mine and I can live it however I want. Maybe I need to stop worrying about who's world is more real and just be content with the fact that my world is real enough for me.

In Which I Rant About Fashion

It used to be that I could go into practically any clothing store and within half-an-hour I’d have found at least five things that I loved and just absolutely had to buy, and that was after I’d weeded out the things I really, really liked but could live without. I can’t do that anymore (which is good for my wallet, I guess). Partly this is because I’m much more picky than I used to be (my jeans have to fit exactly a certain way or I won’t buy them, for example). But mostly it’s because fashion has gone to hell in and handbasket.

I think it started with skinny jeans. I remember walking around my high school and wondering why on earth tapered jeans, as I’d always heard them called on “What Not to Wear,” were suddenly in style again. The thing about skinny jeans is that they really only look good on you if you weigh about three pounds and have no hips whatsoever. But somehow the stores have all got it into their heads that every single teenager and young twenty-something in America, no matter what their body type, wants to wear skinny jeans, so this is all you’ll find in the junior’s department of many stores and it’s all you’ll find period at places like Forever 21 and Urban Outfitters. Why don’t I just shop in the women’s department? Because it’s impossible to find low-rise jeans there and that’s all I feel comfortable in, that’s why.

But I could live with the skinny jeans. It’s hard, but not impossible, to find jeans I like and I know where to go. And today I wasn’t even shopping for jeans. My weight loss has finally caught up to the stash of old skirts that I couldn’t bear to get rid of, even when they were too small, so I went out to look for a new one. I used to love skirts…a few years ago when flowing knee-length skirts were in style. Now it seems the preference is for those ridiculously short things that have giant elastic waste bands, which, like skinny jeans, only look good if you’re small enough to blow away in the wind.

And don’t even get my started on those one-piece romper suit things. I swear to you, some designer was sitting in his or her office and said, “What can I come up with that will look totally ridiculous, but will be a crazy fashion trend?” That’s how we got the rompers. And now that designer is sitting in his or her office laughing at everyone stupid enough to wear them. Ditto those dumb sandals with the strap up the middle of the foot that everyone is wearing this summer.

I’ll continue my skirt hunt, of course, once I think up some stores I haven’t been to already. I’ll probably stumble onto a place I haven’t tried before, walk in, find five things that I just have to have (none of which will be a skirt), and spend way too much money. If you see me there, I’ll be the one in the nice, flattering boot-cut jeans.

A Decade of Diaries

Ten years ago today I picked up a notebook and pen and started writing.

It all started with Anne Frank. I know that probably sounds weird, but it’s true. I had been reading about her, about her short life, her tragic death, and her famous diary. I was struck by her ability to confide in her diary almost like it was a person, a friend, like it was listening. I wanted to do that, too. So, one day in the grocery store I asked my mom if I could have a notebook. I went home with one of those black and white composition books, which I stashed in some corner of my bedroom and promptly forgot about. Until a few days later when I fished it out of whatever pile it got stuck in, opened it up, and started writing. It was Wednesday July 12, 2000. I was ten years old.

“This is my new notebook, and in here I can write anything I want.” That’s all it took. My little notebook and I were instant friends. I wrote page after page about anything and everything: what we did that day, how much my sister annoyed me, how anxious I was for school to start again (I was a strange little ten-year-old), how many days there were until we left for our big trip to California. It didn’t matter how upset I was, how misunderstood I felt, how many pages I wanted to fill, my notebook was there to listen. Even then, I knew I had stumbled onto something wonderful.

That notebook lasted for two years, although I would sometimes go for months without writing. I wrote mostly in the summer, those three golden months that were wonderfully and yet painfully endless to a ten, eleven, twelve-year-old. That first diary, or “Notebook,” as I came to call it, is hard to read today because I didn’t bother with punctuation or paragraphs, I didn’t skip a line between entries, and I had a fondness for pens with brightly colored, headache inducing ink. Even when I can make it out, my writing is not very interesting. My sister was driving me crazy, we went somewhere and did something, and there were X number of days until the next really exciting thing was to happen. But it wasn’t about going back and reading it later, it was about writing it here and now. Writing had become something I needed, something that was as much a part of me as breathing.

I filled Notebook’s last page on August 25, 2002, the day before I started junior high. I had a replacement diary all picked out, this one a sort of electric blue, but for a long time, I just didn’t feel much like writing. I wasn’t used to writing during the school year and junior high was a complicated thing. There was too much going on for me to process it enough to write it down, even in my loose, punctuation-free writing style. But I was also into the “Dear America” series, and reading all those diaries made me long for my own. Once again it was historical figures (albeit slightly more fictionalized this time) that inspired me to find my notebook and start writing. On October 28, 2002, my second diary was begun.

I called this one Lissi, which was a nickname I had tried to give myself some years earlier, with little success. Lissi was immediately different than Notebook. But then again, so was I. I had become a history freak, realizing for the first time that the past was something that had actually happened and I was more and more determined to make it happen to me, stuck in 2002 though I was. I drifted further away from the real world and further into a world that was inhabited by me, my diary, and people who started out as imaginary friends of sorts, but would eventually become fictional characters. My diary was my sidekick, my best friend, my confidant. I carried Lissi everywhere with me: to bookstores, restaurants, movie theaters, even occasionally to school. We had a wonderful time, and for years afterward I held that winter up on a pedestal, certain that if I could recreate it then I would be happy forever.

Lissi lasted only six months. By April 2003 I was writing to my third diary, Chickie. And that was it. There was no going back. I was a diary-keeper. When one diary got close to being full (they generally lasted about four to six months, back then), I would search for a new one. By the time I acquired my fourth diary, Bel, in the summer of 2003, this had become a complicated process that only ended when I had a feeling of “knowing” that this particular blank book was to be my next diary. And once I had my future diary picked out, I had to come up with a name, and the name had to be perfect because I would use it the entire time I wrote to that diary.

I saw my diaries almost as people, so much so that I often wrote to them in the second person. Each one had its own personality, its own stories, its own inside jokes. I formed deeper bonds with some diaries than I did with others. Some lasted such a short time that I hardly “got to know” them. Some lasted so long that I got tired of them. It was not uncommon for me to fill the last twenty or so pages of a diary on a single summer night because it was “time” for that diary to be full. I would take my diaries almost anywhere, writing pages and pages every day, especially on weekends and during school breaks. Often I wrote not because I had anything interesting to say, but because I simply needed to write.

My diaries and I even established traditions. Every year on Magic Wednesday (the day before Thanksgiving) I would take my diary to school with me and make sure to write at least once while I was there. This was the only time I brought them to school. When I started a new diary, I would list all of the previous ones before telling my new diary its name. Sometimes we would have “countdowns,” tediously marking off days until something important happened. And every year on July 12, I would note how many years I had been keeping a diary. They really were my best friends. It seems almost narcissistic now to admit that for years I was essentially my own best friend. But I didn’t have other friends back then. My diaries weren’t just my best friends, they were my only friends.

As I got older, my diaries began to fade into the background. My schedule was busier. School work took more of my time. I didn’t have endless hours with nothing to do. Real friends began to fill the void that my diaries once had. But I still kept writing. I still picked out new diaries and gave them names and tried to write as much as I could as often as I could. I didn’t carry them around town with me anymore, although I followed the Magic Wednesday tradition right through my senior year of high school. They still seemed almost like people to me, but they started to lose their individual "personalities" after awhile. I had grown up, and so had they, although I still write more or less the way I always have. “It is strange, I suppose,” I wrote the day I began my most recent diary, “that I am 20 years old and I still anthropomorphize my diaries as I did when I was 13. But I have never written any other way.”

I’ve had sixteen of them now. Notebook, Lissi, Chickie, Bel, Autumn, Izzy, Pinkie, Special, Inkheart, Purity, Caro, Renaissance, Grace, Truth, Percy, and Hope. They all have their own stories, their own beginnings, middles, and ends, their own climaxes and resolutions. They are the closest thing I will ever have to moments frozen in time.

Everything has changed and then changed again in the last ten years, but my diaries have been my one constant. I have always known that no matter what happens they will always be there whenever I need them. I can’t be certain of much, but I am certain that I will never stop writing. I don’t think I would know how.

The Book of the Year

Several years ago, faced with a daunting school year that seemed like it would never end, I decided to think of it like a book. In books, time passes neatly and quickly and you only hear about the really important events. You get to skip over all the homework and other icky stuff. Each month, I decided, would be like a chapter in my "book" and each chapter should have a witty name. So, for each month of that year school year, I came up with a name. I did it as the months were going by and then in June, when school ended, I wrote them all down. This turned out to be so much fun that I did it again the next year and it became a tradition.

Another school year has just ended (well, it ended a while ago, now) and I've just added another twelve "chapters" to my list, so I decided to post them here. Some of these names will have meaning only if you know me well enough. Some of them have meaning only to me. I've forgotten what some of them meant. Some of these names refer to specific events, some refer to the general "character" of the month in question. So here they are, in all their very strange glory.

Sophomore Year (2005-2006)
August: A Very Bad Beginning
September: Troubles
October: Work and Words
November: Happened that Way
December: Christmas Choir
January: Song of Hope
February: But What is This
March: Just Like Last Year
April: Finally
May: Ordered Balance
June: And in the End

Junior Year (2006-2007)
July: Fast Food on the Way to Summer School
August: Countdown to Choir
September: Back Again
October: Selectively Permeable Membrane
November: The Rolling Stones and the Renaissance
December: My New Life
January: Church Thieves
February: Ginger Kisses
March: Mona Lisa Meets the Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B
April: Passport Catastrophe
May: What Did Meg Say Today
June: Things are Different Now

Senior Year (2007-2008)
July: The 1950's: Now in Black, White, and Pink
August: Keep Your Hands off Red Haired Mary
September: Senior
October: Becoming a Modern Person
November: Abraham Ate So Many Eggos
December: Welcome to Facebook
January: Destroying the Sanctity of Monday
February: New York, New York
March: O Latin
April: Rock Band
May: High School Graduate
June: The End and the Beginning

2008-2009
July: Counting Starbursts with Edward Cullen
August: Phelps the Fish
September: Fram, Fram, Christmen, Crossmen
October: Refrigerator Noises
November: The Day that History Happened
December: The Twelve Days of Christmas Fest
January: My New Life: Version 2.0
February: NCIS, and Other Methods of Living Vicariously
March: Thursday Brain
April: Adventure
May: Another Early Sunday Morning
June: Back to Being Never the Same (Again)

2009-2010
July: The Missing Superlative
August: Mezzanine and Lobby
September: Something Old and Something New
October: Bacche Bene Venies or The Return of the Prodigal History Freak
November: History Test of Doom
December: All Out of Darkness
January: 21st Century Breakdown
February: Fiasco of the Week
March: Fight the Good Fight
April: An Unexpected Victory
May: Pointing at Warhols
June: Higher Ground

TLC: Home of the Cakes

I don't understand why we have all these shows about cake. Okay, maybe there aren't that many. But there's "Cake Boss" on TLC and then there's another one called "Cake Wars" or something like that. And isn't there a show about little people who make fancy cakes? Or chocolate? Or something? Now, I don't have anything against cake. I love cake. That's the problem. I'm trying to avoid eating lovely, delicious, and totally horrible for me things like cake. Those stupid cake shows just make me hungry.

I know, I know, I don't have to watch them, and I don't. I don't even usually watch the previews for them because pretty much the only thing I watch on TLC anymore is "19 Kids and Counting" and that's usually recorded because it's on at the same time as "NCIS," so I can skip the commercials. But I don't understand why the good people at TLC imagine that we want to watch one show about cake, let alone several. I do have to give them props on the little-people-who-either-make-cakes-or-chocolate show, though, because they've managed to combine two of their favorite show topics (dessert and little people) into one.

I really don't know where TLC's head is at these days. Besides cakes, little people, and the Duggars, they don't seem to have much. Friday nights are okay, with "Say Yes to the Dress" and "What Not to Wear," but if I tune in on the weekends, they're generally showing a marathon of true crime shows. I suppose it could be worse. There aren't nearly as many "5000 pound woman" or "The Man With No Face" specials as there used to be, and they seem to have gotten rid of that show about the motorcycle guys. But last week I saw a preview announcing the return of "Kate Plus Eight." I honestly don't know what these people are thinking.

Back in the day, TLC was awesome. They used to have an hour of "Forensic Files" or whatever it was called every afternoon. I can't tell you how many math assignments I got done while watching that show. On Tuesdays there was "Urban Legends," which is quite possibly one of the best TV shows ever made. Heaven knows why they decided people would rather watch cakes. And then, if you were really lucky, you could catch one of the early Duggar specials (which were way more fun to watch than their weekly show) or one of those "Kids By the Dozen" shows. Even the "Wacky Wedding" shows you sometimes got stuck with were better than 75% of what's on TLC nowadays.

You know, when I think about it, I think it was Jon and Kate who ruined TLC. Well, them and the Duggars, but Jon and Kate had a weekly show first. Those guys gave TLC the idea that we like to watch weird people who are pretending to be normal people. But the thing is, we don't. We watch Jon and Kate and the Duggars because they are Complete. Train. Wrecks. Unless those cake-baking little people are going to cause some scandal which turns into a media circus, well, then they're just little people who bake cakes, and that's boring. If only they could find a huge family of little people who have a set of sextuplets and bake cakes. That might actually be absurd enough to work.

Generation Me at its Finest

I really like Art History. I don't really like my Art History professor. He's boring, he generally seems to have no idea what he's talking about, and he's completely incapable of ending class on time. Oh, and he accused two of my friends of cheating. That bothered me a little.

But I don't have an issue with his tests. They're always fifty multiple choice questions, which he puts up on the projector. We fill in the answers on bubble sheets. He leaves each question up for about a minute, and then it's gone. If you don't know the answer, or you realize later that your answer is wrong, that's too bad for you. It might not be the way I would do it, but he's the professor and he gets to decide how he wants to run his class.

Yesterday someone emailed the entire class, encouraging those of us who are "concerned with how our understanding of this class is being evaluated" to complain to the department. The emailer believes that this professor's method of testing "forces conformity" and is not suitable for testing "individuals with varying needs."

This email generated several responses. A few agreed, a few basically said, "eh, it's not so bad," and one person went on an even more impassioned rant than the original emailer, saying that we are being "unfairly evaluated" and "our voices have NOT been heard." Finally, one person said they had emailed the department chair and they encouraged others to do so as well.

This isn't the first we've heard of these grievances. After the first test, the professor asked for feedback. One girl asked if we could have a list of possible topics for test questions. Someone else brought up the issue of not being able to go back and change our answers. The professor listened, but basically said he felt the way he did things was reasonable and he wasn't going to change.

I don't know any of the complaining emailers, but I'd bet money they're all under thirty. This is one of the finest examples of "Generation Me" in action that I've ever seen. I've spent plenty of time complaining about and making fun of this professor, but if I wasn't doing well in the class (and for what it's worth, I may not be doing as well as I'd like, but I'm doing fine) I would assume it was because I wasn't studying hard enough, not because the testing method was "unfair" and wasn't "meeting my individual needs."

So here is what I would like to say to the Art History emailers: Yes, you are an individual, but when you are in class with 150 other people you're going to have to give up just a little of that individuality. Deal with it. This is college. College is hard. If you want to do well, you have to come to class, take notes, pay attention, and study. Unless you're really, really dim, this should earn you a decent grade. If emailing the entire class and complaining to the department makes you feel better, go right ahead, but if the department has any sense they'll side with the professor. This class, college, and the world are not all about you.

Oh, and the rest of us are laughing at you.

Tweet Tweet

I did it. I did the thing I swore I would never do. I joined Twitter.

Several times I have been on the verge of writing a post about the evils of Twitter and how it really shouldn't be allowed. I didn't really dislike Twitter so much as I disliked my sister's cell phone buzzing as the Twitter messages poured in all night long. I swore up, down, left, and right that I would never, ever join such an abomination.

But I said the same thing about Facebook and look how that turned out. The very last thing I need is another addicting website to distract me from what I really should be doing. I suppose I'll just have to stay up later, get up earlier, and drink more Diet Coke.

Never say never.

Say Cheese

First, a confession: I never went to the prom. But for. Heaven’s. Sake. It can’t be that exciting.

At least two area high schools had their proms last night and today Facebook has been a flurry of photos. Not just a few photos, mind you, but entire albums of fifty photos or more.

Now, I actually like to look at people’s Facebook photos because I’m nosy like that. But why on earth would I or anyone else want to look at fifty pictures of you, your friends, and your dates posing with your arms around each other in the living room, in front of the house, etc. Nor do I care what you had for dinner. I’m sure you were just way too excited about participating in such a quintessential high school experience, but nobody else cares.

I don’t have the picture gene. Every time I go on vacation I vow that I will be like everyone else and take eleventy seven pictures which will be posted on Facebook the moment I return. Then I get about ten minutes into my trip and go, screw that, I’m tired of remembering to take out my camera every time we see something interesting. But some people take pictures of everything, including the prom.
I know this doesn’t matter. If you want to spend the entire evening taking pictures, knock yourself out. I just have one question. Do you really think that by now anyone has any desire to look at ninety-eight photos of you in a prom dress? Yeah, that’s what I thought

True Confessions Part Two: How it Began

I didn’t want to go away to college. I didn’t really want to go to college at all, but I especially didn’t want to go away to college. I happen to live in a city with a fairly respectable state university, but in my family, going to a state university is simply unacceptable. I’m not saying this to put down my family. It’s just the way things are. Or at least, it’s the way they used to be. My parents were never going to settle for anything less than a selective, private, liberal arts college.

I applied to four schools. Two were in my state, about 30 minutes to an hour away from where I live. Those were safety schools. I was not to consider attending either one unless I didn’t get in anywhere else. The third was a well-respected, but very Christian school in Illinois that I added to the list at the last minute (later I would realize that, out of all the schools I applied to, visited, or read a brochure about, this was the only one that I discovered entirely on my own, without any input from my parents). Then there was St. Olaf.

Situated at the top of a hill in Northfield, Minnesota (population: somewhere around 20,000), it was the perfect school. It had a renowned music program, five major choirs, and even handbells. I could major in Latin and the chapel…well, you should have seen the chapel. It looked eerily like my church back home. When I walked into it for the first time, it took my breath away. We went to visit in October of my senior year and I have to say, I was enchanted. I decided that if I got in, that’s where I would go.

I got into all four schools, of course, but I never gave the other three a second thought. I mailed my deposit right off to St. Olaf and started preparing to leave home the following August.

But I didn’t want to go. I had a life in my lovely little city, a life I loved. I felt like I had worked hard for years to get where I was and I didn’t want to start all over in a new place where I had nothing and no one. I didn’t understand why I needed to go to a school a thousand miles away where I could sing in choir and play handbells when I could do both of those things at home. I didn’t care about school. I was all too aware of the need for a college degree in today’s society, or I would have told college to go stuff it. If I had to go to school, I wanted it to be a part of my life. I didn’t want it to be my life.

But my parents didn’t understand this. I had been expressing my desire to stay closer to home since long before I applied anywhere. And all they heard, all they ever heard, was that I was afraid to leave, afraid to try new things. It didn’t matter how I phrased it, I couldn’t convince them of anything different. Maybe I was afraid, I don’t know. But I didn’t feel afraid. During the last two years I had learned that there are more important things than school. I knew I was smart, ridiculously smart, but I didn’t understand why that obligated me to give up everything I loved and cared about for the sake of a school that was supposedly perfect.

Despite all of this, by the time I graduated in May of 2008 I was more or less resigned to leaving at the end of the summer. I had realized too late that there were things in high school I had missed out on because I had been afraid, and I didn’t want the same thing to happen in college, so I was determined to give St. Olaf a fair chance. But then everything changed.

I can remember the exact moment when I knew St. Olaf wasn’t right. I was on my senior choir trip. We were driving through Toronto, on our way to go see a baseball game. I was staring out the window of the bus, watching the city go by when suddenly I knew, I just knew, that I didn’t want to go to St. Olaf, that it wasn’t the place I was meant to be. I envisioned myself going to the local university, staying at home, going to bell practice with my mom on Thursdays, making meatloaf and apple pie on cold fall evenings. It sounded so perfect, like everything I had ever dreamed of, the best of both worlds. But somehow I would have to convince my parents.

I decided there was someone else I wanted to tell first, someone I thought might be more willing to listen to what I had to say. He was less invested in making sure I attended a selective liberal arts college than my parents were. I was even going to ask him to help me tell my parents. Then I played my cards carelessly, and all hell broke loose.

My friend was flat-out unsupportive of my decision. I went home after I told him, so upset by his reaction that I ended up telling my mom before I was ready. She told my dad, which meant that he only heard about it from her perspective, not mine. I wrote my friend a long email, at two o’clock in the morning, pleading with him to “be on my side.” It didn’t work. I think I knew, then, that I would have to go to St. Olaf whether I wanted to or not, but I wasn’t quite ready to give up.

After at least a week of arguing and failing to convince my parents to even consider what I was trying to tell them, I did give up. I suspected that if I stayed home, I would never hear the end of it and I would spend all of my time being miserable and feeling like an outcast in my own home. My dreams of bell practice and meatloaf were shattered. I figured I might as well give myself one last happy summer, so I agreed to go to St. Olaf. But it had lost its chance. I was going under protest. St. Olaf was never going to get the fair shot it deserved.

It really was a happy summer, maybe not the happiest I’ve ever had, but certainly far from the worst. I discovered the Twilight series. I watched Michael Phelps win eight gold medals at the Beijing Olympics. I listened to Billy Joel. But all too soon August arrived and I had to start packing my stuff in boxes and suitcases. I had to decide which of my beloved books would come with me and which would stay home. I had to watch a new school year start without me. I had to say too short goodbyes. On the last Wednesday in August my best friend and I had one last trek down the church hallway, I had one last voice lesson, and the next morning, my mom and I got on a plane to Minnesota.

In a moment worthy of the cheesiest of cheesy movies, “Leaving on a Jet Plane” came on the radio as we drove to the airport. I realized I had left the book I was reading at home, but there wasn’t time to go back for it. My mom said we could buy another copy in the airport bookstore. I cried as the plane took off, as I watched my beautiful, perfect, wonderful city fall away from me. I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t help it.

One thing that I learned during my time at St. Olaf was that leaving was always harder than getting there. I did okay when we first got to Minnesota. We stayed in a cute little bed and breakfast. The next day we went to the Mall of America and then to Target to buy all the things I would need for my dorm room. We went into Northfield to scope out a good coffee shop and then we ate dinner at a hamburger joint near our bed and breakfast.

The next morning, I was a wreck. I listened to my favorite Billy Joel songs. I practiced my song for my choir audition. We went down to breakfast and met two other families who were dropping kids off at St. Olaf. And then it was time to go. Fortunately most of that day was so busy that I didn’t have much time to fret. We carried boxes into the dorm and up the stairs, I met my roommate, I had my choir audition, the entire freshman class and their families gathered for some sort of welcome assembly, we had a picnic where we met our advisors, and finally we played some meet-new-people type games.

The next day, Sunday, my mom came back and we went to the local Methodist church. We had lunch together, walked around a little bit, and then it was time for her to leave. She was going to visit my uncle in Minneapolis before flying home. I cried when she left, wishing with all my heart that I could go with her.

I think the next couple of days were mostly taken up with advising sessions and registering for classes. I remember that classes started on Wednesday. By some miracle I managed to get into choir, although that would turn out to be more of a curse than a blessing. I started to establish a routine and tried to convince myself that things would be okay somehow. I didn’t call my parents much at first because that just made me cry. My mom and I started emailing each other instead. I tried not to think about everything I was missing, but I couldn’t help it. I never stopped wanting to go home.

What did I blame my misery on? Why, the 21st century, of course. I had been blaming my problems on the 21st century for years, so that wasn’t much of a stretch, really. I would lie in bed at night longing for an era when women didn’t go to college, when they grew up, got married, had children and that was it. Little did I know that there were people right there in 2008 who were doing just that.

The True Confessions of an Ex-Almost-Quiverfuller

I haven’t talked a lot about Quiverfull. Partly that’s because I don’t really like labels. It’s the same reason I don’t openly call myself a conservative or an anti-feminist except around people who know me well enough not to put me in a box based on those labels. But I think the biggest reason I haven’t talked about Quiverfull is because it’s embarrassing. It’s sort of like one of those high school yearbook pictures that you look at 30 years later and think, I can’t believe I thought my hair looked good like that. Right now, when I think about Quiverfull, I think, I can’t believe I was so into that.

I’m still not going to bash QF for the reasons a lot of people do. I still don’t think it oppresses women or is contributing to overpopulation. I don’t see anything wrong with Quiverfullers homeschooling their kids or believing that the earth is only 6,000 years old. Do I think I saved myself at the last second from a horrible future? Not really. Quiverfull works for some people, so I’m not going to condemn it as some sort of horrible cult. And anyway, I can only provide a limited perspective because I was never in the movement. I only read about it and adopted the parts of it that I could on my own.

The name Quiverfull comes from Psalm 127, which says that children are “like arrows in the hands of a warrior…happy is the man who has his quiver full of them.” In these very basic terms, the movement is made up of families who believe that God will decide the number of children they should have, and therefore they should not use birth control. But Quiverfullers come in as many different varieties as everyone else. Common practices, however, include traditional gender roles, homeschooling, and limiting contact with people not of their faith. Quiverfullers tend to be most criticized for being anti-feminist, for supposedly causing/contributing to overpopulation, and for trying to take over the government by out breeding the rest of the population (which is a goal/belief of some Quiverfullers, but by no means all).

I discovered Quiverfull by watching the Duggars, the Arkansas family with 19 kids and a TLC reality show. One day in the fall of 2008 I was checking my email and one of those “news” stories that always come up on my email homepage was about their oldest son’s recent wedding. I had watched their show on TV a few times, and I was mildly interested, so I clicked on it. The story described how he and his wife had “courted” rather than dated and had saved their first kiss for their wedding day. Oh, how I envied that girl, only a year older than me and already married. And she got to have the “old-fashioned” type of relationship that I longed for.

In early 2009 I clicked on another Duggar article. This one was about the birth of their 18th child. It contained a link to a message board, dating back to 2006, just after their 17th child was born, where people could leave comments. This message board was by far the most critical of the Duggars and the entire Quiverfull movement (which the Duggars have denied being a part of) that I have ever read.

I spent several days reading all 200 pages of this message board. By the time I was finished I was desperate for more information. Reading that board was the first time I heard the word “Quiverfull,” and despite the fact that the vast majority of posters had not one nice thing to say about it, I thought it sounded lovely. But I wanted to know more, so I started Googling. This led me to Ladies Against Feminism, which is an interesting site, but so over the top it’s almost comical, and also likely to make the vast majority of people angry enough to stab their computers. That website contained numerous links which I clicked on for hours. I read blogs, online magazines, and message boards, all the while becoming more and more attracted to a lifestyle that seemed made for me.

Now I need to provide a bit of context. I had just dropped out of college and was spending my days sitting at home with nothing to do. I was lost, I was angry at the world, and I was hurting. I would probably have fallen hard for any movement, no matter how strange or controversial, that helped me justify that decision. One common belief among Quiverfullers is that people (but especially girls) shouldn’t go to college. So see, I told myself, I had done exactly the right thing. I didn’t have a job, but that was all right because women shouldn’t work outside the home, ever. Even if they were done with school they should stay at home until they got married, helping their parents, and learning how to be wives and mothers.

Beyond justification for my current situation, Quiverfull provided me with a religious base for a lot of things I already believed. Many followers advocate living a simple, frugal, “old-fashioned” lifestyle. They tend to be (selectively) critical of technology, science, modern medicine, the media, and society in general. How could anyone who had spent six years trying to live in the past without leaving the 21st Century not be drawn to that like a magnet?

And then there were the skirts. Many (but again, not all) Quiverfullers believe that women and girls should only wear skirts and dresses. This is based on some Bible verse that says a woman should not wear a man’s garment, or something like that. And they don’t just wear any skirts, they typically wear long skirts, often those long denim skirts that were in style some years ago and can now be found in abundance at thrift stores. I think I latched onto this because it is one of the most visible signs of being a Quiverfuller, and it was something I could do all on my own, for relatively little money. Plus, I just liked the way the long skirts looked (I still do) and it gave me an excuse to say, “Screw fashion,” which, to some extent, I’d already been doing for years, anyway.

There were things I didn’t like, of course. Most Quiverfullers’ attitude towards music is that anything besides Christian music (and then only certain kinds of Christian music) is evil/wrong/whatever. This tends to hold true for any kind of media: TV shows, movies, books, etc. And as much as I liked Quiverfull, I wasn’t about to give up my Clancy Brothers or my new NCIS obsession. And so I would put on my long skirt, read blogs about teenage girls learning to be homemakers, and then go to the library to hunt for books about pirates. I was certainly a strange almost-Quiverfuller.

A friend of mine described what I did during this time, in a nutshell, as “clamming up and making pies,” which is a pretty accurate assessment, actually. After overpopulation, oppression of women, and trying to take over the government, one of the most common criticisms of Quiverfull is that followers try to shield themselves and/or their children from the “real world.” To me, the world that most modern people live in is anything but real. I felt like I was trying to find the real world, not hide from it. But I see where the critics are coming from, I really do.

There were times during my “semester off” when I would go somewhere like the mall or the movies or even the bookstore. These were places where I would have felt perfectly comfortable only a few months before, but now I felt so out of place, like I didn’t belong and I should just leave and get out of the way of people who hadn’t dropped out of the modern world (sometimes I couldn’t help but think of it as the real world, although I tried not to). I hated that feeling. I hated feeling like I had to choose between feeling awkward and out of place everywhere I went or selling my soul to a lifestyle I have no interest in. So I increasingly stayed away from these places or told myself that I felt uncomfortable because this world was fake. My world was real.

And then, after eight months of thrift stores and message boards and fantasizing about getting married and having babies, I went back to school. I went to my first day of classes at the local university wearing a long kaki skirt, determined to stick to my convictions no matter what. But even then I didn’t expect QF to last. I didn’t ever expect it to last, really, but once I went back to school I knew that was more or less the beginning of the end. And I was right.

That semester wasn’t easy. At first I hated school. I hated the idiots who acted like they were still in high school. I hated the people in my sociology class who spouted off all kinds of liberal, secular nonsense. I hated that my art history professor told us that a good way to stay awake during class was to imagine really good sex. I hated that I had to be there every day even though I believed it was wrong and every day I worried more and more that I would never survive without losing myself. I would have given anything to somehow escape back into my world, my real world.

But things started changing, and for once, the change was for the better. I learned to tolerate school, although I still hated it. Pants and shorter skirts started creeping their way back into my wardrobe, albeit very slowly, in a one step forward and two steps back sort of way. I became obsessed with a collection of medieval poetry called the Carmina Burana, which reminded me what it was like to really be interested in something, to want to find out more about it, but not necessarily because I wanted to build my life around it. And then one day I realized I was happy. For the first time in so long I had forgotten what it felt like, I was really, really happy. That was my first clue that maybe I was actually doing something right and maybe I wasn’t selling my soul to the 21st Century after all.

Then Christmas came. As I walked across the snowy campus to my car after my last class before Christmas break, I felt a little sad. I would miss that class, I realized. It had sort of been fun and I had sort of, well, liked it. I will never forget that moment. That was when I knew things had changed for the better. When I knew I was doing something right.

Today I would hardly recognize that girl in the long kaki skirt who went to her first day of school last August. I wear pants now (it helps that I’m also about 20 pounds thinner). I stay out till midnight with friends who make dirty jokes. I listen to some modern music (I absolutely love Green Day’s recent album 21st Century Breakdown). I don’t feel so awkward when I go out. I’m still not really sure that the world most people live in is all that real, but that’s okay. I recently read something about Christians striving to be in the world but not of the world. I think that’s what I want. And I’ll tell you a secret. In a strange odd sort of way, I really like school.

Did I ever really believe in the (common) Quiverfull theology, which tends to be what I would call neo-Puritan (a more well known term might be neo-Calvinist)? No. The truth is (and this is hard for me to admit), beyond the basics of Christianity, I’m not really sure what I believe. But try as I might, I can’t get into the whole personal-relationship-with-Jesus-Christ-ask-God-what-you-should-eat-for-breakfast-today sort of religion. I tend to describe my beliefs as “old world,” which probably isn’t exactly the best term, but that’s how I think of it. Yes, God is there and God is wonderful, but for heaven’s sake, do we need to spend every minute of the day thinking about Him? I think God probably understands that most of us have more important things to do. A few months ago, however, I realized there is one thing that I do believe beyond any shadow of doubt and when I realized that, it was like everything made sense.

I believe, above and beyond everything else, in history. I believe all the answers we could ever possibly need have been provided to us, most likely many times over, by those who came before. Now, that doesn’t mean that everything that ever happened in the past is right. I like to use the analogy of a multiple-choice test. You have all the right answers there in front of you, but you also have a lot of wrong answers, too. Your task is to sort out the right ones from the wrong ones. And sometimes the answer is “e, none of the above.” We’re still a part of history. There are problems our ancestors never had to solve, questions they never had to answer. When we come to one of those, we just have to do the best we can and know that at least we’re writing the answer key for the future.

I know it’s not that simple. Every possible answer for every possible question has someone to support it, to claim it’s the best. My belief system isn’t going to get people to agree anymore than any other belief system. But this is why I think history is so important. I think that most of the time, if we all just stopped what we were doing and thought about it for a minute we would realize that someone else already solved this problem or answered this question and they did a pretty good job of it. And even if we do decide that the answer is “e, none of the above” we still have to know about the other choices in order to rule them out. We will never know where we are going if we don’t know where we came from.

I was drawn to Quiverfull because I believed they had more of the right answers than the rest of the world. And in many ways, I still do. I think they do have some universally good ideas which, for the most part, don’t really have anything to do with their religion. I still like their emphasis on a simple, unflashy lifestyle. I like the idea of marrying someone based purely on their character and personality, rather than physical attraction or lust. I like the idea of having a big family. I always have. But Quiverfull most definitely doesn’t have all the right answers (and I think most Quiverfullers would be willing to admit this). Neither do I. In fact, I have a lot fewer answers now than I did before I discovered Quiverfull. But that’s okay. I don’t need all the answers to be happy.

I also realized what I think I already knew: I’m a strange kind of hybrid, and I always have been. Once upon a time I was the girl who listened to punk rock and read books about the Tudors. Then I became the 1950’s Facebooker. A year ago I was the Quiverfuller who Netflixed NCIS. And now…I don’t really know what I am now. I think the answer might be “e, all of the above.” I can’t put myself in a box. I can’t put a label on myself and say, this is who I am. That’s why I don’t like labels. Because no matter how hard I try, there isn’t just one word, one category to describe what I think and believe. There’s always a but. There’s always an exception. I think most people are like that. People, real people, are so much more complex than the labels we put on them.

There are days when I wish I could make Quiverfull go away, when I want to pretend it never happened. But I can’t. Just like the bad yearbook picture, it will always be there. There will always be a part of me that is almost Quiverfull, although maybe not as big a part of me as I thought. I used to imagine that I would look back on my QF adventure and long to have just one more day like that, but it hasn’t happened yet. I love the way my life is now. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

There’s a quote that says, “There are times when all of us are frustrated and angry, but it’s usually not a good idea to make it a way of life.” I think that sums up my experience with QF nicely. Rather than simply letting myself be frustrated and angry until I sorted things out, I sought to turn my frustration and anger into a philosophy, a religion, a lifestyle. If I could go back and do it a gain, would I? I don’t know if I will ever be able to answer that. I don’t think it was a good idea, but I’ve come so far in such a short time. I’m stronger now than ever before. Without Quiverfull, I might still just be frustrated and angry.

Sometimes I regret spending my precious time off reading message boards and searching thrift stores for long denim skirts. I’ll probably be eighty before I have that kind of spare time again. But one thing I taught myself, long before I’d ever heard of Quivefull, is to never look back. I believe in looking to the past for answers, but not to fuss and fret about what might have been or should have been. What happened, happened, and there is no going back now.

What I've Been Doing Lately

I went back to school last August, after taking a semester off (eight months, really, including the summer). Last semester, I started out with a full load, but starting school again after so long was tough and I just couldn’t deal with it, so I dropped a class. This semester, I have 15 credits (12 is considered full-time). I thought that was going to kill me, but it hasn’t. Not really, anyway. I never get all my homework done, and I’m always dealing with at least one “fiasco,” but I’m doing reasonably well in all my classes. Three of my friends and I all have an art history class together, which is just too much fun (especially since the class would be dead boring if we weren’t all in it together). I’m having a great time.

Outside of school, it’s pretty much business as usual. I’m still in my church choir and still having a blast there. I’ve also been taking voice lessons again. And of course, I’m working on my trilogy. Over Christmas I wrote a whole new ending for the first book, which I think made it a lot stronger. I’m in a great critique group, which meets once a month.

Everything in my life is so amazingly good right now. Never in a million years did I dream it would be this good again. Getting here wasn’t easy and I still fight every day to stay where I am and to move forward when I can. But life’s an adventure, and it just keeps getting better.

If Anyone Is Reading This...

I am a terrible blogger. I started this blog thinking that I would post all the time, that I would have so much to say, and that it would be interesting enough to get followers. Obviously, none of that has happened. But in a few days (hopefully) I'm going to post something that I think is really important. It's also very, very personal, so I don't know how long exactly it will take me to get up the courage to actually post it (sometimes I wonder if airing our personal lives all over the internet is really a good idea). So, if anyone is reading this, stay tuned. Good stuff is coming.