Ginny

Age: 77 Place: Originally Nebraska, now Texas Family: Husband, 3 daughters, 3 sons-in-law, 3 grandchildren Occupation: Retired Education: BA, MA Nebraska; Ph.D. UT-Austin Work On hhe Double (1979-1992); taught: ta Austin, Blinn Jr. College (1993-20015), Kelly Girls intermittently.

The Longing for a Messiah

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Update:   If the links below the  jump haven’t sufficiently creeped you out, here’s another example a friend sent:   the Obama Votive candle.

Teaching   eighteenth and nineteenth century writers,  I  wonder about  the “Awakenings” of   the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Looking back, we see the passion they generated. Edwards says in a letter that

This town never was so full of love, nor so full of joy, nor so full of distress as it has lately been.   Some persons have had those longing desires after Jesus Christ, that have been to that degree as to take away their strength and very much to weaken them, and make them faint.   Many have been overcome with a sense of the dying love of Christ, so that the home of the body has been ready to fail under it.  

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Questions from Outside the Loop

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Andrew Sullivan  can still write well; he can even be  thoughtful and  interesting;  A&L links to “Why I Blog,”  in the November  Atlantic.    The essay makes several points about the difference between writing an essay, writing for a newspaper and blog writing.    He  remarks  

Blogging is therefore to writing what extreme sports are to athletics: more free-form, more accident-prone, less formal, more alive. It is, in many ways, writing out loud.

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Reynolds Heats Up to Room Temperature

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We usually know what Glenn Reynolds thinks, but the temperature is low  at  Instapundit.   Today he  is prompted to comment at  (relative) length: “So we’ve had nearly 8 years of lefty assassination fantasies about George W. Bush, and Bill Ayers’ bombing campaign is explained away as a consequence of him having just felt so strongly   about social justice, but a few people yell things at McCain rallies and suddenly it’s a sign that anger is out of control in American politics?”    Dry,  laconic and  link-filled, Reynold’s  post gives context.    He blames the media; reading the comments at   the  NYTimes, I begin to see different narratives built on different perceptions of how McCain’s crowd acts and  the appropriate response to Palin & her children.    I  wonder what is true and what is projection – and how we will ever know.    One thing the media’s biases have done is make us doubt its reporting.   I’m not sure  what was actually chanted at that McCain rally – chants reported in a way that angered John Lewis, set off some of   the commentors and led to McCain’s apology.   Surely, however,  defenses of booing don’t come from an understanding of  civility. (Gateway Pundit)    

Bidding & the Fifties

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The years after World War II were dynamic.   Dams and libraries, art and  state histories came out  of the depression era alphabet projects; these  were followed by the fifties’ interstate system.   Bridges, highways, infrastructure projects of broad scope connected the fast paced growth of suburbs. The first homes of many baby boomers were strange and temporary. One of my friends lived in a train depot.   We lived in a housing project that had grown up quickly during the war to house the workers for a nearby ammunition depot.   These remain, a half century later housing my aunt and other retirees in cinder block, connected homes.

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