The Last of the Betties: a Betlog
11/13/09 Bye Bye, Betlog. For Now
It's been a little more than a year since I started to record my random and inconsequential observations about whatever popped into my head. Today, however, I must announce that I'm taking a break from my blog. Why? Because I'm pregnant! No, not that kind of pregnant. I'm expecting a novel; it's just in its first trimester, but I need to put other kinds of writing aside in order to concentrate on it.
I believe that there are writers out there who easily switch between journalist writing, blogging, and fiction. I'm not one of them. The fluency of people like Rod Dreher amazes me; their speed makes me absolutely jealous. When I sit down in front of a piece of paper or a screen, I usually think the following thoughts:
a) what's my title?
b) do I hear the phone ringing?
c) I'm hungry
So I guess it's no surprise that I'm a dilatory writer. In fact, the amazing thing is that I produce any writing at all. And if I'm only good for a few sentences a day, I feel I ought to make those sentences count. The kind of writing I love best, though it's a dying art and didn't paid well even in its prime, is fiction.
Please check back every now and then; I'll have another essay posted here soon, and within a few months you'll be able to find I Read it in the Wordless Book on kindle. When something strikes me, I may even be good for a blog entry or two.
In the meantime, thanks for reading! You've lifted me from my doldrums and made me want to write new books. I don't know if I'll ever be in print again--with the whole industry struggling, it seems less likely--but I can keep hoping. Sola deo gloria!
11/11/09 She Blinded Me With Science
I guess that this is science week here at the Betlog. If, like me, you've been following stories about the Hadron Particle Collider without understanding what in the heck it's all about, then have I got the youtube video for you. Actually, you're going to watch this and think it's the nerdiest thing you've ever seen. And maybe you still won't understand anything about particle collisions. But at least you'll be able to throw around words like "anti-matter" and "Higgs-Boson" with the same authority that Mr. Scott applied to Dilithium Crystals.
Seriously, the coolest idea I've heard lately is a theory coming from some physicists that the particle collider will never work because the future won't allow it. Nature abhors a $10 billion collider. According to this theory, the laws of cause and effect worked backwards last week to make a bird drop a baguette on a sensitive part of the machine (nature loves a baguette). Does this sound ridiculous? Well, think about the weird nature of quantum physics. We know that certain things must happen on an atomic scale, but we're never able to observe them because, as soon as we start measuring, the results change. Weird? Yep, and Einstein thought it was insanity. If you're interested in all of this, I recommend Brian Greene's Fabric of the Cosmos.
11/09/09
Here's an incredible story at the CNN website about "third-man experiences"
--situations where people in danger or distress feel the presence and hear the voice of another being; in the case of the last survivor of the Twin Towers attack, an unseen being led the man through a "maze" of hazards to safety.
The stories aren't that incredible to me: I've heard angel stories all my life. I've never seen or felt the presence of an angel, but I've twice prayed for comfort in intense depression and fear and felt a huge sense of weight lifted from me. So what seems most incredible to me about this story is the lengths this supposedly objective writer goes to in locating the source for third-man experiences in the brain. No matter how benevolent, how miraculous your "third man" seems, what you really need to remember is that neurologists can stimulate your brain in such a way that you sense another being in the room. Miracles, in other words, are all in your mind.
Yeah, well, so are neurologists--and everything else you see, hear, touch, taste, smell. All human experience is located in the mind, but in some cases your brain experiences reflect outside realities accurately, and in other cases they don't. Do media people just not get this? Or are there more sinister forces at work here--are there people who, for whatever reason, think that if they can make you doubt everything you experience and trust, they'll eventually be able to control you, like those court magicians replicating Moses' tricks in order to manipulate the Pharaoh.
Well, you can take methamphetines and think you're on top of the world, but it won't change the fact that your husband just left you and your car got repossessed. You can dream that you flew to the Bahamas with George Clooney and wake up with a big smile on your face, but that doesn't mean he'll click Confirm when you ask to be his facebook friend.
Experience itself isn't trustworthy. So how can you know the difference between what's really out there and what's located in an electrical impulse in your skull--between the love you have for your child, for instance, and the love you feel in a dream, in a medicinal fog, in a lab experiment, in a hallucination--for someone who doesn't exist at all?
I don't know the answer yet, but I think I'll know what to do if I'm ever visited by an angelic "third man. Particularly if he leads me from a burning building.
I won't run to a neurologist. I'll bow my head and say "thanks".
11/07/09 Happy B-Day to Dad
Today's my dad's 85th birthday! So I'll wish the old guy a very happy day, even though he'll never read this because he's got a dial-up connection that moves at the speed of...well, your average 85 year-old. Not that HE's your average 85 year-old. He stays really busy, mentoring kids and organizing blood drives in his community(his church holds some kind of record for most blood collected on a single day, which is why people have started to make vampire jokes about my paterfamilias).
The only indication of my dad's advancing age is that he can no longer walk the beautiful trails he once made in the woods behind his house. Partly because his knees give him trouble. Partly because some of the trails have been encroached upon by an enormous housing development with a twenty foot brick gate at the entrance. The development has one of those pretentious Britishy names like "Lowick" or "Greyton Aires." I think that new housing developments in the South ought to have proper Southern names that say something about the people who live there. Here are some suggestions for your next uppity gated community in North Alabama or North Georgia:
Citibank Cove
Hellish Commute
Wal-Mart Hills
Adjustable Armes
Fork L'Osures
Snobbley Covenants
11/05/09 Grandma
I'll forgive you if you don't want to look at a picture of my grandmother as a child--even as a child with chicken. After all, I can't seem to get my own immediate family very interested. But I think that this picture from about 1900 is fascinating. That's my grandma, Florence Kenyon Van Voorhis, on the left with a feathered critter in her hand. Sister Mary stands next to her. They lived in New York State, and the mountains you see in the background are probably the Adirondacks.
When I was little, Grandma came to live with us and occupied a corner room until her death in 1975. I think of her as a sweet, plump old lady who took her long hair down every night to comb it into smooth ribbons of silver gold. She was my constant babysitter, companion, guardian angel.
In this picture I get a glimpse of the life she was born to--dirt roads, bare feet, farm animals, family. There were hardships and dangers, but you can't look at this picture, I think, without a pinch of longing for that life. At least I can't.
ARCHIVES