So here are my thoughts about Mr. Holberg's sister's article.
I'm single, but I'm not thirty-five. A lot of what she says I can't apply to my life or even relate to very fully, so I felt sort of...ashamed, to try to say that it affected me very much. That seems presumptuous. But shoot, that never bothered me with any other story.
As Linnea has aptly pointed out with a quote from one of my favorite books, there is a distinction we put separating truth, myth, and fact, and that distinction is unhelpful almost all of the time, and harmful some of the time.
For instance, Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder tells the story of the title character and his family and the place they live. I understand a lot about this boy. He helps me enjoy my life by his enjoyment of his life. It doesn't matter that I don't particularly love horses or know what it's like to be the youngest in the family or male.
So I posted Mr. H's sis' a. , because it is important to me, with no compunctions. It's a story that I'm glad I read. I read it from where I am; if I was thirty-five and single (I might have the chance to find out someday) I'd read it from there, and only then would I know how close or far apart those perspectives are.
But I'll never get a chance to be a lastborn farm boy in New England. Unless 1) reincarnation actually happens and 2) you can be reincarnated back in time or maybe 3) there's some group of people that will go back to living that way in the future and I get reincarnated there instead. It occurs to me now that this list of possibilities is in no way exhaustive, but I need to go to bed.
Ooh, wait, hey Linnea, here's a review of it for you -
"I will tell you that you should get this book. I loved this book and I know you will to. This book is about a boy that lives on a farm. The boy's name is Almonzo. My favorite part is when Almonzo got his cousins to ride his sled and they all fall of. Farmer Boy is the best book I've ever read. I would recommend this book to you."
and the mittens, don't forget the mittens with the string between them. That was in Farmer Boy, right? I was thinking in chapel today that someone needs to write a song or do something about the string and the mittens.
Posted by: linnea at 01.13.04 00:38Yep, homespun mittens, and lots of good food...mmmm...remember the time we read it on the overlook whilst eating fried chicken and mashed potatoes and we threw the bones over the cliff?
Posted by: tuggy at 01.13.04 12:07when my mom read that book to us when we were kids, we ALWAYS had to have a snack afterwards. Always the food!!! My favorite part is the fine dust of sugar still left at the bottom of the barrel as testimony that they indeed did not eat all the sugar.
Posted by: Jeannette at 01.13.04 12:18I just like the name Almonzo. How cool would it be to be called Almonzo? Which other books did Wilder write? She did the Little House stuff? And then Louisa May Alcott did Little Women, right? It's so confusing, everything being little and all. If they wrote a book together they might call it Little Women Living in a Little House. At least I think they would.
Posted by: mcgee at 01.13.04 17:26Yeah, you got the authors straight. "Farmer Boy" is part of the little house series, and to make it worse, L.M.Alcott also wrote another book called "Little Men." But it didn't have as good eating descriptions in it.
Posted by: tuggy at 01.13.04 21:16To me, she sounds pretty defensive. I admit that there's a strong pressure these days to get married, especially in Christian circles. But this is not entirely inappropriate, I don't think. I've written about this before.
In essence, getting married has been considered a critical rite-of-passage into adulthood for thousands of years. It's always been recognized that though single people certainly have their role to play in society, it's families that are really the core of civilization. This perspective is currently in the process of breaking down, and I'm really not sure what to think about that.
Posted by: ryan at 01.18.04 05:34You're right, Ryan, and thanks for saying it - but especially from a woman's perspective (the reasons for which I won't go into right now) it looks like things can get pretty frustrating if marriage is a long time (or never) in coming. And I do think the church could do a much better job in the way they handle that, and in the way they make good use of their single members. That was what I appreciated most about her article.
Posted by: tuggy at 01.20.04 00:13