Tag Archives: reading

Readers and Doers

books, culture, , , , ,

Janet has a discussion going on about reading and what our reasons are for doing it. I’ve been thinking a lot about the decrease in the habit of reading among Americans, which was discussed recently on a Mars Hill Audio interview with Dana Gioia.

Gioia was Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts when the agency did a large survey of the nation’s reading habits. We’ve known for decades that people are reading less…and less…and less. Isn’t this interesting, when a bachelor’s degree is becoming more common? Just this week I heard of a young woman who has a degree, who flat-out refuses to read anything, saying, “I don’t read,” at the same time she declares that she must need to get a job, she is so bored. This in spite of having a lively young child.

The phenomenon links right in to another observation by a college professor I also heard on Mars Hill, that the vast majority of students of “higher education” today do not connect their studies to their life outside the classroom. When they are with their friends, they would never think of discussing a novel or how the wisdom of the ancients applies today. Is reading a task they have only ever done to pass a test or please a teacher? One doesn’t want to call what these people have undergone “education.”

Still, there are those of us who read, and not out of duty! Not for escape, either. As it turns out–and this surprised Dana Gioia–people who have a rich internal life with books are more likely to be involved in their communities and do volunteer work than non-readers. Reading is not truly a solitary activity, because the reader and the writer are interacting, and as the reader’s interior world is enlarged, his engagement with his fellow humans broadens accordingly.

The research gives a lot to think about–and I would write down my thinking, too, if I weren’t embarking more intensely now on a very different sort of work, that of remodeling our kitchen and downstairs floors and ceilings. Just look at this bookcase that has been denuded! A pitiful sight.

It marks only the beginning of the destruction and deconstruction and disorder around here. My computer will be moved to another room, not as handy. I will be packing and packing, and scraping and painting, and cooking without a kitchen. Then I will be unpacking and setting up my home again. Though it’s certain I won’t give up reading altogether for this while, I must think of the next few months as more in the realm of doing good in “my community.”

Every Lent presents a new challenge, because even if our circumstances or station in life might be the same as last year, rare enough as that is, we as individuals have changed from last year’s season of the fast. As I heard the exhortation at Matins this morning that we would show compassion on the needy, it confirmed the idea that had been growing on me, that this house project is not this year’s distraction from Lent, but provides a perfect setting for me to learn compassion.

Having my house torn up and chaotic, wondering which task I should do next and where I stashed the item I didn’t think I would need but now I do–all this causes me anxiety. But my poor husband suffers more, I am certain, and he needs me to show compassion and patience and love.

It wouldn’t hurt me to pray the Lenten Prayer of St Ephrem throughout the days of my opportunity:

O Lord and Master of my life!
Take from me the spirit of sloth, faint-heartedness, lust of power, and idle talk.
But give rather the spirit of chastity, humility, patience, and love to Thy servant.
Yea, O Lord and King!
Grant me to see my own errors and not to judge my brother;
For Thou art blessed unto ages of ages. Amen. 

Trying to Focus, on a Wintry Day

education, food and cooking, housework, , , , , , , ,

Into the blowing and pouring rain I forced myself this morning, so that I could use the machines at the gym. While walking on the treadmill for an hour, I read The New Yorker Food Issue from last November. I pick these magazines up at the library for 25 cents each, and usually find at least one article, though not usually in the Food Issue, to keep my attention while I work out. (I have tried many other reading materials, and everything else is either too heady and distracting, or too boring to keep my mind off the discomfort.)

Today I learned about a cake that is baked on a spit for several hours and is called Baumkuchen, which means Tree Cake in German, because some of them are cone-shaped like a tree. These cakes date back to the Middle Ages, and currently are pretty popular in Japan.

I read about poutine, beloved especially of youth in Canada, where I think I could get into eating it, at least in winter, when one might be able to burn enough calories shoveling snow and keeping warm so as not to put on the pounds from enjoying a dish that consists of French fries, cheese curds, and gravy.

The Michelin Guide to restaurants took several pages to explain, after the author hung out with one of the inspectors for the company during a meal at a three-star restaurant. These inspectors and their identities are top-secret and incognito, so that they can remain objective and also get the same food and treatment as any old customer who is willing to pay dearly for their daily bread.

Later in the morning I read a blog about how good homeschooling can be if the family actually stays home a lot, so that the children can concentrate on whatever it is they are doing and not be constantly interrupted by having to run hither and thither to group classes and such. That got me thinking about how it is better for me, too, still a self-homeschooler, an autodidact, who always gets confused and scattered when I have to come and go.

I read another blog that linked to an interview with Makoto Fujimura, a Christian Japanese-American artist who has a lot to say about God and creativity. I remembered that I’d heard a different interview with him not long ago on the Mars Hill Audio Journal, and I was able to locate the tape and listen to him. I was not able to multi-task, though; I found that if I tried to find his website at the same time, I stopped listening.

I started to take notes on the audio interview. He was talking about how the habit of reading is even more important to cultivate now that our society is so image-oriented. Also about how all the fast-action images that people are feeding on teach their minds to avoid real concentration. They scan, instead of engaging with visual information in a more focused manner. I was still feeling distracted myself and wondering why I was picking this one topic and writer to think about. Was I randomly and shallowly scanning?

No, I had wanted to listen to him again and think more about these things. But if I hadn’t gone to the gym and taken hours to collect myself afterward, I’m not sure I’d have had so much trouble being calmly thoughtful. In the early afternoon I had to go out again and run errands–more dissipation of mental energies!

I was saved by duty–my husband’s needs were what helped me to pull myself together. We were nearly out of granola, his staff of life. And he would need a real dinner. (Without him, I’d eat eggs and toast and tea forever.) He would like to feel the warmth of a fire as he came in the door from work. When I got a fire kindled and started assembling the granola I was happy to give my attention to concrete and practical tasks.

This granola has fed the family for more than 35 years. I make a huge batch still, so that I don’t have to do it very often, even though B. often eats Power Pancakes for breakfast nowadays. The basic proportions of oats, honey and oil have remained the same, while the extras of nuts, seeds and other grains are infinitely flexible. It doesn’t make a very sweet cold cereal, as you might guess if you compare with other recipes.

GretchenJoanna’s Granola
30-32 cups of regular rolled oats, divided
3-5 cups unsweetened shredded coconut
2-5 cups chopped almonds and/or other nuts
0-2 cups each of wheat germ, sesame seeds, buckwheat groats, rice or oat bran
0-1 teaspoon salt
2 1/2 cups oil
2 cups honey (or substitute part sugar syrup, made with 1 cup sugar and 1 cup water)
3 tablespoons vanilla, or substitute part almond extract
Put 20 cups of the oats in a giant bowl. Add whatever other dry ingredients appeal. In a pot, heat and stir the wet ingredients gently and slowly together until the honey is liquid. Pour onto the dry ingredients and stir to moisten them thoroughly. Then add the other 10-12 cups of oats and mix in evenly.
Spread up to an inch deep in pans and bake in batches at 300° until as toasty brown as you like it, stirring every ten minutes. Lately I’ve been using big roasting pans that happen to have 2″ sides, but the toasting may happen faster using pans with less lip. I use the biggest pans I have, and both oven racks, so that it doesn’t take all day. 🙂
I store a gallon jar of this on the kitchen counter, and the remainder in the freezer.

I was going to show a photo of the big bowl of finished granola, but my camera battery is spent. So here is a picture of someone enjoying an early version of GJ’s Granola, circa 1977 (notice the gold draperies and tablecloth).

Time for bed now, and thank God, I can end the day having accomplished reading, writing, and homemaking, even if I wasn’t very organized in my concentrating. I want to do better tomorrow.

Fewer Read Books at All

books, history


Is it still Banned Books Week? I might not have thought twice about it but for a couple of bloggers I check in on, each of whom sheds a ray of light from a different direction than the typical articles on the subject.

Semicolon writes briefly about how librarians complain about parents “censoring” reading material, while they quietly skew the contents of the library collections.

And Orrologion explains how the mainstream press is ignoring their own reluctance to publish a certain strain of unpopular works.

The most disturbing thing in my mind is that more and more people probably don’t care whether books are banned or censored or whatever, because fewer and fewer people in our country read books at all.

When Dana Gioia was still Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, the agency undertook an extensive study of the reading habits of the nation, which I heard him speak about recently. It’s a topic that is always current with me, and I hope to post here later about some of the interesting things I learned.

But for now, I must get back to my books….