I wish I was...

Homeward bound...

When the weather in VA is like late September, the Californians are complaining about the 40-50 degree "cold" and the 18-mph winds, I miss the 28 degrees and 24-mph winds that weather.com tells me are currently sweeping Plattsmouth.

Anyway, my parents are driving up today from our grandparents' in North Carolina, where we had Thanksgiving. They will celebrate my 21st birthday with me, and then head home. Just 25 pages of writing and 4 exams in the next 15 days, and I'll be home. Look forward to being back on the Plains.

A new poem posted to the poetry blog, also.

Grace and peace,
Colin

Ho there!

It was a breezy evening occupied only with a pipe and a friend's essay. As he neared the end of the essay, and the end of the pipe, the day neared its end as well, the sun keeping just barely above the trees for one last glance at the Nebraska fields before retiring for the night. School was out and life was good....

I am on break and back at home! The semester was full, but fun. Learned a lot, laughed a lot, cried a bit, and grew in the grace of our Lord in all things. Updates coming soon, to at least 3 of my blogs. I'm going to posting some of the semester's work to my Lit Crit and Creative Writing blogs. If anyone is still tuned, remain so!

Life is good....

Got sick Sunday night, had a slight headache and stuffy head Monday morning, and completely crashed Monday afternoon with a fever and headache and all kinds of good stuff...but I got 9 hours of sleep last night and am feeling much better; not 100% yet, but MUCH better. My fellow students are wonderful in their compassion and caring (and my roomie is stupendous, both as a person generally and because he got me a cup full of fruit this morning so I could sleep in but still eat).

Professor Donnelly took our 3-person PHC ROTC group down the National Defense University yesterday morning; he was giving a lecture on homeschooling to people (mostly colonel or their equivalents) attending the NDU College of Industry-Education track. After the lecture, which was largely an informative one with demographic and academic statistics, we cadets were introduced, and a Q&A session ensued. We were asked such questions as how we might deal with people more "experienced" in the world than ourselves when we eventually became second lieutenants, and whether we ever wish we could have gone to public school, and whether or not it's hard for us to relate to our peers. Overall, it was a fun experience, and I look forward to doing it next year.

Classes are going well; finished my first Physics exam today, on which I scored well, and have been doing well in my other classes, too: have done a recitation and 1/5 Commonplaces for Brit Lit, 3/4 outlines for Lit Crit and am working on my first paper for it, 1/2 Short papers for Shakespeare, and am constantly working on Physics homework.

So far I'm most enjoying Literary Theory and Criticism--it has the most difficult reading of all my classes, but is the most provocative of deep thought and theorization on the nature of art, and especially of Christian art. It is interesting to see what both Christians and non-Christians have had to say about it over the millenia--we've gone from Plato to Heidegger over the last month and a half, and each reading opens up a new idea. I'm writing my paper on Nietzsche's argument that Christians cannot be artists and vice versa. I believe it can be answered only with a profoundly Christian and especially theocentric view of art. It will be fun, and I'll post it to the Lit Crit blog when I finish it.

Speaking of which, for those interested, I finally posted the last section of the Drama paper to my Lit Crit blog, discussing history as a tragicomedy and how this is biblically, philosophically, and aesthetically satisfying.

A Soldier's Valentine

(No, I don't have a valentine. No, I'm not looking for one, either. But I've come a long way in that I'll admit that this bears thinking about... :-))

Why do we fight? For glory? For fame? For family? For home? Why do we not throw away our lives in a glorious death in battle against overwhelming odds, indelibly etching our name in the annals of history? Because we fight not for ourselves, but for our home and family and for that person who awaits our return with eager eyes…so let us fight hard and fight well, and if our lives are lost, let them be lost dearly, but let us remember why we fight and wherein lies our glory.

"The heroic serves the pastoral." ~Dr. Hake

"Pretty Fair Maid In The Garden"
From Fiddler's Green
(Traditional, Arrangement Tim O'Brien)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NR5zX4nryBc

Pretty fair maid was in her garden,
When a stranger came a-riding by;
He came up to the gate and called her,
Said,"Pretty fair maid, would you be my bride?"

She said,"I've a true love who's in the army,
And he's been gone for seven long years;
And if he's gone for seven years longer,
I'll still be waiting for him here."

"Perhaps he's on some watercourse drowning,
Perhaps he's on some battlefield slain,
Perhaps he's to a fair girl married,
And you may never see him again."

"Well if he's drowned, I hope he's happy,
Or if he's on some battlefield slain;
And if he's to some fair girl married,
I'll love the girl that married him."

He took his hand out of his pocket,
And on his finger he wore a golden ring;
And when she saw that band a-shining,
A brand new song her heart did sing.

And then he threw his arms all around her,
Kisses gave her one, two, three--
Said,"I'm your true and loving soldier
That's come back home to marry thee."

Pretty fair maid was in her garden
When a stranger came a-riding by;
He came up to the gate and called her,
Said "Pretty fair maid, would you be my bride?"

2 Timothy 2:11-13

It is a true saying, "For if we be dead together with Him; we also shall live together with him. If we suffer, we shall also reign together with Him; if we deny Him, He also will deny us. If we believe not, yet abideth He faithful: He cannot deny Himself."

Conservatism/Liberalism in kids' movies

An interesting comparison of The Incredibles and Spy Kids and their respective portrayals of human nature and human interactions, by an alumna friend of mine. Definitely worth reading.

Read it here.

Morning Departure thoughts

See ya later, Nebraska.

I'm off to hit the books again. I'll miss you, the nearest state to home I've had. As much as I used to think it boring, your gently rolling landscape of cornfields, broken up by the occasional farmhouse and its windbreak or the grain silo, is a beautiful and peaceful scene. It speaks of the farmer families who settled you. And winter nights like last night, when a moon just past full gave a sleepy glow to the snowy fields, are nights that stick in one's memory and won't go away, and one doesn't want them to go away.
Call me crazy, but I'll miss your REAL winter weather...it was 15* last night, with windchills at -5. As cold as those silly Southern Californians think Virginia is, it just can't compare. That said, sometimes your blizzards make a love/hate relationship when that means friends and I can't spend time together...but it was enjoyable while it lasted. When I come back it will be summer. But we won't talk about that, and I forgive you.
I'll miss the friends who also call you home. Whether I know them through homeschool band, homeschool group, or church....May the Lord bless and keep them, and I hope to keep in touch while I'm away.
And I'll miss the family that has made you home. When I come back, the kiddos and the pup will be four months older and hopefully four months wiser (the pup needs it). But hopefully, they'll still like to snuggle and wrestle and play football and RISK and Axis and Allies...

Well...yeah. Lord willing, I'll see ya later.

New posts to Poetry and Lit Crit blogs

The poem I wrote for the Creative Writing assignment for English Literature I is on the Fiction/Poetry blog, and the next segment of my drama paper is up on the Lit Crit blog.
Only a week before I'm back at school...

The Warrior Poet

WARNING: This essay occasioned by the question "Why does a military guy like Strunk and White and Turabian?" I am a Literature major, and have this habit of going to town on questions like that. Proceed at your own risk...

It is quite obvious to all at school that I am in Army ROTC. Besides the haircut, I wear the fatigue uniform twice a week, march around with my rucksack late at night, badmouth the Navy kids (in good fun) and the Marines among us, and can be seen by the early birds in my Army PT uniform three days a week. Oh, yes, and I pretty nearly always am wearing my combat boots.

What is more of a surprise is that I am one of those specimens ever rare at PHC—a young man majoring in Literature. Since the number of Lit majors is pretty small and I'm mostly in Lit classes at this point, I still get the look of surprise and the “Wait...you're LIT?!?!??! I totally thought you were Strategic Intelligence!”--heaven forfend—rather often at this revelation. The SI assumption stems from the fact that both of the other ROTC cadets at PHC are SI, and many of the Marines have been as well.

The juxtaposition of the two—Literature and Army ROTC, is perhaps even more striking. Literature majors have this reputation of being nerds and somewhat...soft. A nerd I am, admittedly, but the Army associations and my penchant for wrestling and rucking to ease the stress from my system hopefully avoids the latter charge. And military folks (and especially the infantry, whose ranks I hope to join), have the reputation of being decidedly gung-ho and go-get-'em, with little time for such nonsense as delving into metaphysical and theological abstractions and literary theory. Gung-ho I hope I am, but I don't think that abstractions are nonsense.

I have been asked: “Why does a military guy like Strunk and White and Turabian?” Well, first of all, I hate Turabian with a passion. Dr. Smith's Handbook to Research and Writing has been quite sufficient to my needs so far, and I still have not quite forgiven my Research and Writing teacher for making us read Turabian through.

But that aside, the question is reversed of its proper order. I consider myself first a philosopher, then a military man. I first of all consider all good writers as philosophers first. All people are philosophers—that is, all people have a way they view the world and their place in it—whether or not they are conscious of it. Good authors are conscious of the world and man's place in it, and write stories reflecting that. They are good writers because their message is true at some level, and they are considered good writers because their message rings true to the innate, though often vague, knowledge that all men have of the world.

I strive to find truth and to apply it. My love of literature is accidental to this primary desire—I love reading it insofar as the authors I am reading are also searching for truth, and I love writing it insofar as the writing is a reflection and a record of my own search for truth and, by the grace of God, finding it.

My love for Strunk and White's Handbook of Style, specifically, is probably a reflection of my literary theory, which is in turn a result of my philosophy. I am a strong advocate of objective truth and objective standards of beauty and goodness. Even that aside, I am very much a philosophical conservative, giving the benefit of the doubt to those mores that have been passed down to me and being highly reticent to discard tradition merely on my own authority or the authority of what is currently popular. Strunk and White are of the same temperament and lucidly—and wittily—defend such a literary theory to aspiring writers.

I am a military man, though, because I am a philosopher, and because my philosophy places upon me a duty to my family and to my country and to my fellow man. Because of my belief in truth and ideals, I have more than a pragmatic reason to serve in the military—I serve as a means of taking part in this republic. I serve as a means to protect the lives of others, as those who have gone before have served to protect the lives of others—including mine. I am merely returning the favor. I serve because it is my duty. As Major Whittlesey said in the movie The Lost Battalion, “Life would be much simpler if we could pick and choose our duties. But we can't. And we shouldn't. That's why I'm here.”

I am also serving to fight evil and to prevent, so far as possible, its consequences touching the people of the United States. I am under no illusion about war or about the nature of evil—I am not a blind idealist, thinking that evil can be eradicated, let alone by weaponry. War is an evil, but it is a necessary evil—its tragedy lies precisely in the necessity that good men are subjected to its evils in order to prevent further evil. But it is better that those who are willing to fight it do so than those who are unwilling and not called to do so. It is better that we volunteer to face fear and death every day than that civilians be forced to fear death every day while going about their daily lives.

My philosophy will, I hope, in turn make me a better military man. First, my view of the world gives me a fundamental reason to serve, and a reason that rests not in the transient nature of international politics or temporal goods, but in the eternal nature of abstract goods that are worth fighting for whether or not it is possible for my efforts to win their cause. Also, there is a fine line between the pacifist and the cruel, dehumanized soldier who has come to take pleasure in war and has dehumanized his enemy. I hope and pray that a proper understanding of, and a willingness to wrestle with the great dilemmas of war, will, by grace, enable me to walk that fine line and protect me from either extreme.

It is because I reject the idea that there is no right or wrong that I can say it is right that I volunteer to defend the defenseless. It is because of my strong sense of authority and philosophical conservatism that I think this should be done, not through individualistic and illegal vigilantism, but through the properly constituted authority of government and its military arm.

The fact that I like the military—easy enough, having been raised in a military family—is a bonus. Now, whether or not I would have followed through on the military, or even have had the same philosophy, had I not been born to a military family, would be an interesting field of hypothetical speculation; but I am not given to hypothesizing about counterfactuals. By the grace of God, I am what I am—an admittedly odd paradox—and I would not be otherwise.

Classic Calvin and Hobbes

The one thing....

I hate about the Army:

The paperwork.

On that note, it is a new year...may the Lord grant grace and peace as we make this, our next revolution around the sun...

"Wait, haven't we been around here before?"