In honor of my relatives

I stayed with some relatives near Seattle this past week; my father’s first cousin and her mother. Great-aunt Grace Botkin. Married to Lloyd, my grandfather John’s older brother.

My father’s cousin told me that when Lloyd was of a certain age he was diagnosed with acute leukemia. So his children and grandchildren sat around the living room with him for ten days to say goodbye. Lloyd played his accordion and they sang hymns. Apparently, a serviceman came out for maintenance and saw everyone sitting around, and asked if he had interrupted a party.

“No,” said Lloyd “I’m dying.”

With this plethora of technology, I wonder if my great-neices will have more of me at their fingertips than stories like that. I wonder if that’s a good thing.

Homework

I had one-on-one meetings with my freshmen students today, in preparation of an essay due on Monday. Most of them seemed to be suffering from lack of motivation and a desire to be allowed to do whatever they want; one argued that his essays did not have to be based in reality because the point of writing was to get people’s attention, which was easier to do with sweeping generalizations and speculation and semi-sexual metaphor. Another (currently failing) student brought in the last essay, almost two weeks late. He said, by way of excuse: “I’m a little too into the party scene.” I said: “Well, then, it’s a question of priority. Do you want to party for the rest of your life?”

He said yes, he wished he could. Why can’t you? I asked. Well, I’ve gotta do this, he said, indicating his error-riddled essay. Not really, I said. You could always get a crap job and do nothing.

“Nah,” he said, the look of shock wavering momentarily on his face and then disappearing “I want to get a good job so I can really party.”

To that end, I explained why possessives need apostrophes and why writing looks terrible without adherence to such signposts. He seemed to listen intently.

My last student came and found me after completely missing his appointment. “I keep running into your brother,” he said “Man, he is big. I think I need to study more in your class.”

Debauchary and bodily threat. It’s so nice to finally find some way to motivate today’s youth.

Vita Brevis

Five and twenty, say the years
portioned to me.
Youth, they say; we have seen much more than you,
so why fear dimming sight? You have known it
since age 9.
Spectacles shrink those lines
beginning to crowd your lashes.
You are still attractive. Young.
Yet I feel the years lap against me, touch me,
though I look better now than at 16.
—or is it maturity, sharpening appreciation of what remains?
Self-comfort, finally. Imperfect angles swallowed up in work, and health
and matron-esque beginnings—
Yes—my form hints “children.”
These years say: children?
You are a child yourself,
laughing,
though burdened with more than children would leave you room for.
Five and twenty says: freedom is knowing we can pack our bags
and hop into the nearest jet
to Tokyo or Prague or Dakar.
Freedom is academic excellence.
Which, by the way, is nowhere in your vicinity…
yet…
though it may be waiting, if you sweat enough luck into your life.

Five and twenty. Soon, it will be thirty. The years say: we expect more now.
A nicer couch. Nicer plates. More plates. Matching wine glasses.
This thrift store stuff is for college students, broke and eating ramen.
But we can’t pay for this by pursuit of academic excellence. We need
more.
We are hungry for Russian fungal delicacies,
with immune boosters and caffeine
for the exhaustion of long nights.

The years say: we want sleep. This is not freedom.
These voices in my head, they tire me.
Freedom is not desperation for status;
it is the deep breaths one takes in fresh air.
Give me nothing but a pair of good boots and the mountains.

Until my knees fail me.

Then I will need a hand to help steady my pained footsteps.
Freedom is in the grip
and the smile of love.

The years say: love.
Is love waking next to someone and seeing him still charitably
enough to say “I love you. I see your crows-feet
(I can’t see mine)
and I taste your mortality. You are a withering sack
of meat and bone.
But there is more to you, too,
lest we forget” ?

The years are cynical. They ask this with derision in their voice.
But even they cannot help but sound hopeful.
For all is vanity,
but this.

More accurate Russell argumentation (I hope)

In “On Denoting” Bertrand Russell responds to Gottlob Frege’s system of categorizing names and descriptive phrases as being meaningful within the boundaries of Sinn and Bedeutung, often translated “sense” and “reference.” Russell translates and alters Frege’s Bedeutung as “denotation.” Though Russell does not define precisely what he means by this term, from the examples he gives it can be ascertained that by “denoting phrases” he seems to mean, more or less, quantitative descriptions. By his definition, then, names acquire their meaning quantitatively from the denoting phrases attached to them or associated with them and both names and denoting phrases have meaning within the limited context of the sentence. Within the framework of the problems and examples he presents in “On Denotation,” (e.g. “Scott wrote Waverley, and it is always true of y that if y wrote Waverley, y is identical with Scott.”) this makes sense, and solves a few problems Frege’s system could not explain.

Russell’s view on names as getting their meaning from quantitative descriptions rather than what they refer to (“refer to” in the minds of the people hearing/speaking) could present a few problems if applied to the real world, however. Consider the example “Columbus was the man who discovered America.” This is a statement that is seemingly true; we all learned this in grade school. Not only is it factually true, but according to Russell’s system it denotes one and only one person: the definite article “the” not only implies but insists upon the quantitative value of this statement equaling one and only one. Since Columbus was a real person, this statement is also logically true: the quantitative ONE (Columbus) is not ZERO (a non-entity in the real world).

Russell would not say here that this description is equal to Columbus—he was not interested in proving that x = x. Rather, he was interested in the parameters that define x, in the context of their descriptions, which should be factually true in order to equate to a truthful statement. Again, it is safe to say that most people would regard “Columbus was the man who discovered America” to be factually true. In a sense, we know this based on Russellian definitions. None of us have met Columbus, or know people who knew Columbus and have described his freckles, scars, his bearing, stench, or his quotidian mannerisms to us. What we know of Columbus we have learned by rote, by scholastic description. We do know Columbus, primarily, as “the man who discovered America.”

However, suppose it is one day concretely discovered that Leif Eriksson discovered America, long before Columbus convinced the Spanish court to supply him with ships and a bevy of sailors for the pecuniary conquest of the Far East. Suppose I forget to pick up the newspaper the day this information is dispersed. Suppose my friends are too busy doing laundry, grading freshmen papers, cooking ramen and potatoes and writing their own essays to bring this topic up. A week later, I casually refer to Columbus as “the man who discovered America.” My friends laugh. They say: “Yeah, airhead, you’re behind the times. Leif Eriksson discovered America.”

Suddenly, my textbook definition is thrown into turmoil. By Russell’s framework, what I previously knew to be true: “Columbus was the man who discovered America” could have been described in a Russellian framework as “Columbus discovered America, and it is always true of y that if y discovered America, y is identical with Columbus.” Now, I hear Leif Eriksson discovered America. According to this definition, Leif Eriksson should just be another name for Columbus. Obviously, however, this is not the case; Leif Eriksson died before Christopher Columbus’ grandmother was born; these are separate men with separate stories.

Russell might have countered that in this circumstance the definition would automatically change to “Leif Eriksson was the man who discovered America,” and the previous definition would become immaterial. This would certainly reflect what is known to be factually true in the world. However, Russell’s focus was not on sense but on denotation. If people’s names are meaningful only in the context of their definite descriptions, then, in theory, given that my textbook definition is all I really know of Columbus, and that “it is ALWAYS true of y that if y discovered America, y is identical to Columbus” and given that suddenly my new knowledge is “Leif Eriksson discovered America,” and this is all I know of Leif Eriksson, I could, quite easily, assume that Leif Eriksson is Christopher Columbus.

Again, this seems like a ridiculous conclusion. To say it is ridiculous, though, requires at least some appeal to the real people Leif and Christopher, as they were, in their glories and failures, in what we know of them and do not know of them, in their great feats and quotidian mannerisms. It requires an appeal to meaning, or sense, or to the humbling realization that I really know very little about either one of these men. It requires that I refer to them and not just to their names in the context of the sentence.

Discussing required Bertrand Russell

If the purpose of a statement, in language, is to denote something that can be accessed in the mind of the hearer/reader—not a “real thing,” as images or conception of the thing denoted will vary depending on the person (cf. Frege, Russell)—then this statement made by Bertrand Russell seems false:

The whole realm of non-entities, such as “the round square,” “the even prime other than 2,” “Apollo,” “Hamlet,” etc., can now be satisfactorily dealt with. All these are denoting phrases which do not denote anything… If “Apollo” has a primary occurrence, the proposition containing the occurrence is false; if the occurrence is secondary, the proposition must be true. So again “the round square is round” means “there is one and only one entity x which is round and square, and that entity is round,” which is a false proposition, not, as Meinong maintains, a true one.

Now, “Hamlet” and “Apollo,” as denoting phrases, could certainly conjure up something, some previous image or conception, in the minds of most speakers of English, and thus, “Hamlet” and “Apollo” could hardly be said to denote nothing. Most people might have more decided and concrete parameters for “Hamlet” than for something “real” like “the present Queen of England,” who, despite being an actual, living person, is so nebulous and inaccessible she only exists, for most people, within the confines of the supermarket tabloids and in related portions of their minds. If, however, primary occurrence and “reality” are the deciding factors to the truth or falsity of a statement, then the proposition “Hamlet originally recites the famous ‘to be or not to be’ monologue,” by Russell’s standard, is false.
The problem Russell would have with the truth or falsity of this proposition is not that it is illogical, but that the denotation refers to a fictional character. But certainly this in itself cannot make the statement false in any real sense. If denotation is based entirely upon what provably exists in the tangible world, then not only will nothing be denoted by “Hamlet,” but also nothing will be denoted by Russell’s very theory, which is also a hypothetical.

Making aesthetic judgements about grape taffy

I have a specific taste and consistency lingering on my tongue: Sticky, vaguely brackish, fructose-esque. It is better than the memory of the grape cough drops I was forced at a young and impressionable age to hold in my mouth to alleviate illness: a cure, in my mind, more distasteful than the malady.

This lingering taste is worse, on the other hand, than the memory of September wine grapes just pulled from the vine, the fullness of their youth ripened to sweet maturity.

To say this, though, is to make some kind of statement about the value of grape saltwater taffy. That’s Ok with me. I’m not a huge fan of saltwater taffy. I don’t feel bad about regulating it to the position of, say, Thomas Kincaid, cotton sweater-vests, Danielle Steele, a box house in the suburbs, or “Wind beneath my wings.”

But I do realize that if I say there are better things than saltwater taffy, than the people who like saltwater taffy can rise up in arms and say: “that’s just your opinion; taffy isn’t REALLY aesthetically worse than actual grapes, just like the people who like it aren’t really aesthetically inferior to you.” Which might be true. Maybe high fructose corn syrup and blue/red food coloring is just as tasty as the thing it’s imitating, in some kind of platonic sense.

C.S. Lewis’ “Experiment in Criticism” is interesting here, because he posits that people don’t actually have “bad” taste. They just like things for different reasons– unaesthetic reasons. They like Kincaid for the emotional appeal; the safe, warm, glowing portrait of house and hearth. They like taffy because it is also cheap and easy; keeps well, stores well, and is sweet and chewy, even more so than the real thing. They like “bad” writing because it acts as a hieroglyphic between page and brain: little thinking required, high on action, high on cliche.

Discussing what is and is not “bad” writing or “bad” aesthetic sense would be an exhaustive subject. Good writing, perhaps, is easier to define; C.S. Lewis suggested the parameters of sound and significance. Maybe the latter of these two is more widely accepted; that a text should mean something seems more or less obvious. The first goes back to aesthetics — yes, those stupid elitist English majors, always wanting things to sound pretty. I recently heard the argument that beauty, in writing, was a waste of time, and prone to be required only by arrogant snots. To put this argument into theoretical terms:

x = x + beauty, if x can function apart from beauty.

i.e. beauty has no bearing on x if it does not add to the efficiency or productivity of x.

But this argument quickly breaks down if applied in other places. If x is, for example, a window in a house, then by this test a view of an industrial processing plant and a view of rioting palm trees would be one and the same, if the window lit the house equally in both instances. If x were food, then you might as well forgo any superfluous taste or texture and stick to three meals a day of boiled beans and boiled spinach on flax seed bread with a side of milk and a vitamin pill. It would make shopping much easier, and it would include all your necessary sustenance. If x were a potential spouse, then, well, the idea that he/she were attractive or not shouldn’t even occur to you. Because he/she would be able to perform all functions necessary to marriage, even if he/she had no nose. Actually, having no nose might help the functions: it would not impede kissing.

However, we do consider beauty in these situations, and, likewise, there is more to language than sheer meaning. Words, after all, are not even really meaning. Words, taken one at a time, are symbols of something else. “Taffy,” T-A-F-F-Y, doesn’t really mean “the state and object of being taffy,” except as a link to this idea. Likewise, the most direct and prosaic language doesn’t equate to direct and prosaic truth. It can be used that way, but an idea couched in perfect cadence and powerful vocabulary will probably evoke more response than putrefying stuff like “the k-ability of Homo Sapiens to construct/formulate/enhance technological implementation.” I am assuming the best approach to try to explain anything is to try to use every tool in one’s grasp to make one’s point.

To resort to well-structured language should not be a strictly aesthetic judgement, though; it should be a judgement of meaning as well. I am assuming it will be. I assume thus not because I am an elitist English major, but because, growing up, having had no English classes whatsoever until the age of 17, I thought this was how writing operated. I read literature, essays, news stories, personal letters, e-mails, poetry, pulp fiction, and tried to write much of the same in that time.

Deadpan in the snow

My first class this morning was at 8 a.m. Mind you, I’ve been sleeping in over break. And it was about 17 degrees outside, with a fresh layer of snow covering the muddy ice of the sidewalk. I walked over the hill to campus at around 7:30, and was crossing a parking lot, when I spotted a three-foot-tall Asian child looking at me over a large scarf wrapped around her mouth and chin. To me, the stranger, or to the world in general, she solemnly announced: “I’m super happy.” Then she turned and joined a group of kids on the street corner.

I said: “I’m glad,” and kept walking too.

Radiation pain

For awhile now (since getting wireless internet) it seems that every time I plop my laptop in my lap and start surfing, my body rebels. Specifically, and this sounds paranoid, I know, my ovaries hurt. A little. However, I realize the power of suggestion and that this is possibly all in my head — in my pre-determinedly hypochondriac, nature-loving, baby-wanting synapses. I theorize that the electromagnetic frequencies coursing through my bones and blood from surrounding cell phone towers and wireless routers can’t be good, though. I theorize that any recent rise in cancer might be from rising technology as much as depleted ozone. Suddenly, I want to head for the hills, foreswear plasma screens and globalization and become just a simple hunter-gatherer. Not that I will, mind you, but I do have a question:

Has anyone seen any credible sources documenting the dangers of this? I looked — on the Internet, of course — and found some theorizing only slightly more backed up than my own. I don’t know that the long-term effects of such mass exposure to cell phones and wireless internet can be ascertained at this point, though.

This is making my head hurt. I’m going to bed.

Wolfe’s den

It’s been awhile since I’ve done any sort of expose on the state of the union. However, reading this makes me want to.

What I love about Tom Wolfe: his prose flows with factual power and the skepticism of a child, not of the nihilist or contemptuous cynic, and he doesn’t stick to exposes. No. He’ll toss in philosophy, literature, and plenty of mot justes — for the sake of realism, not ostentation.

In Seattle

On Thursday I took the bus to Monroe by way of Spokane, Wenatchee, and Steven’s pass. I had chosen an unfortunate day to be picked up from that town—rain begins pounding in, sideways, and my ride calls to say the traffic from Redmond is unbelievable. I crochet in a coffee shop for two hours (manned by an ex-Communication student who had bought the shop just before graduation) as the lights flicker and the streets flood, until he arrives. To let traffic die down, we go grocery shopping and buy some raw marked-down shrimp and a baguette to bake and organic milk and cereal and run through the rain to the car.

The next day nothing works. As in, the lights, the heat, the gas stations, the phones, the cable Internet — not the West side, the East side, not in all of Seattle and its surrounding areas. Clerks behind flickering candles sell un-refrigerated Mountain Dew in corner shops to haggard coffee-lorn caffeine addicts who can neither make their own brew nor buy from Starbucks.

Seattle, even in the winter, is not bitterly cold, but no one knows how to function except to hunker down with their families, possibly lightened by the ability to skip work. In this society, that’s not actually “functioning,” though. I keep overhearing the same thing: “my cell phone doesn’t even work.”

Even for a resourceful Idaho girl on holiday, there is still the question of the now-expired shrimp, and how it might be transformed into something edible without propane, charcoal, electricity, or anyplace to make a fire. Fallen twigs litter the streets; I gather some. They’re a bit damp. I make a tent out of them anyway on a square of dirt torn from the apartment lawn; I peevishly tell my questioning Seattle friend that this will work because I have been trained in the art of fire-making. This is true, but all I have to cook the shrimp in is a pie tin. And a lot of butter. I light the fire; it takes (more or less), but emits more smoke than heat. I hold the pie tin over the flame and stir the seafood and butter. The butter even sizzles once. My eyes begin to water and I wonder how safe this cooking method is.

“That’s it,” says Scott, when the tin gets too hot to hold “we’re going to the store.”

I am highly irritated. I imagine the hoards of frantic and bored consumers have pulled everything off the shelves. I imagine I could eat cereal, or crackers. I imagine this would work perfectly with more wood and a cast iron skillet, which I have at home in Moscow.

“I just want to survive!” I wail “But no one will let me!”

Of course, I have survived. The power has (mostly) come back on. In about three minutes, I’m going to cook some seafood for dinner on an electric burner.

Lame. But, in a pinch, it will do.