Snow White and Rose Red, Patricia C. Wrede

More of an Idiot: Snow White and Rose Red, Patricia C. Wrede: "As I was searching the children's section for Briar Rose, I stumbled upon a few books I had not read by Patricia C. Wrede. Wrede writes fun young adult books, full of magic, confusion, and spunky heroines. Being in the mood for fun and not too much thought, I picked up another book in the Fairy Tale series of Briar Rose, Snow White and Red Rose.

Snow White and Red Rose is not the same fairy tale as Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. So I didn't actually know the fairy tale of the book. Wrede interspersed bits of the fairy tale with her story, so that I read it slowly throughout the novel, but I think part of the joy of the story was lost on me.

The novel is set in Elizabethan England, in a world that combines traditional idea of Faerie with a historical fear of witchcraft. Two girls and their mother get inadvertently involved in a vortex of human wizardry and Faerie drama. Wrede uses rather Shakespearean language (this is the only place I've read 'an' to mean 'if' outside of the Bard), which jarred with her accessible prose at first. Once I got past it, I enjoyed the novel, from an 'I want something simple and engrossing to take my mind off the housing hunt' perspective."

Back to Chicago

Somehow or another, I seem to be spending a good deal of time in Chicago this year. Five of the 6 pack road-tripped it up to the Windy City this past weekend for the National Vincentian Youth Convocation, celebrating the year of the 350th anniversary of the deaths of St. Vincent de Paul and St. Louise de Marillac. De Paul University was hosting 135 young Vincentians to celebrate the founders of the charism.

Most of the attendees were students at one of the three Vincentian universities : Niagara, St. John's, and De Paul itself. In addition, there was a small but strong showing of volunteers and former volunteers and seven brave "other" souls. The strong student contingent tinted the entire conference with a decidedly collegiate focus. Still, most of it was applicable to the life of a Vincentian volunteer as well.

We started out the weekend with a service activity. Try as I might, I cannot escape education; I helped prepare activity supplies for De Paul's Jumpstart. As a teacher's aide this year and a teacher's daughter for life, I understand the importance of the prep work of coloring, cutting, and laminating, but after a long early morning drive, the repetitive activity got to me and I had a very hard time staying awake for the end bit. However, I had a nice nap afterwards and was surprisingly awake for the reflection and dinner (Chicago pizza -- yum!).

Dinner was followed by a boat ride on the river and lake, with a tour of the architecture of the shoreline. Apparently Chicago has the longest uninterrupted shoreline of any city in the US. Some highlights of the tour : 1) Part of downtown, the "Gold Coast," was once owned and declared independent from the city and the state by Streeter, a man who had dirt dumped in the river to form the land. 2) The Chicago River's flow was reverse, because Chicagoans (is that right?) were concerned about waste flowing into Lake Michigan. Instead it flowed south to St. Louis. Gee, thanks, Chicago. 3) One of the largest LEED certified buildings stands along the Chicago shoreline. The green roof collects rainwater, which is used to help cool the building.

Sunday and Monday were sit-and-listen days, with "plenary" and "concurrent" sessions. I kept forgetting the word "concurrent," and calling them "breakout" sessions, and I discovered at lunch on Monday that really no one knew what plenary means. Kudos for the cool words, De Paul leadership, but I think your genius was largely lost. Sister Patricia Connelly, DC, who represents the Daughters of Charity in the UN, gave the keynote address about systemic change as part of the Vincentian charism. We also had plenary sessions on an international Vincentian group called MISEVI and on Haiti. I attended sessions on different models of leadership (the colors, for those of you who know whether you are blue, green, yellow, or red), women's stories, forgiveness, and the Vincentian archives at De Paul. We had Mass together and ice cream and prayed some.

You'll hear more about the content and suchnot of the the sessions over the next few days. Some I enjoyed, some challenged me, some worried me. We started and ended with the "Vincentian question," a question Vincent de Paul asked at the beginning of his ministry, and one I struggle to answer and invite my dear readers to consider.

Seeing the condition of the poor in the villages of France, Vincent turned to his friend, Madame de Gondi, and asked, "What must be done?"

Briar Rose, Jane Yolen

More of an Idiot: Briar Rose, Jane Yolen: "On recommendation from a roommate and fellow Vincentian volunteer.

This book brings together the stories of the Holocaust and Sleeping Beauty, one of my favorite fairy tales. I mostly liked the fairy tale as a child because I had a Sleeping Beauty book with the most beautiful illustrations. I sped through Jane Yolen's Briar Rose in one evening, from 4pm to 10pm, despite the fact that I had assumed it would keep me reading for a few days.

Despite the fact that it is in the Fairy Tale series, a series of books by different authors meant to bring fairy tales to life in the modern world. It is the story of a girl on a quest for her own history and her grandmother's identity, an identity which Yolen reveals through the story of Sleeping Beauty. Any Holocaust story is bound to be tragic, and this novel is no exception. Yet it keeps from being oppressive. I'm fairly certain that I've read excerpts from it somewhere, because portions of it were so familiar that I already knew the names of places and events, but I know I hadn't seen some of the plotlines before.

The library housed it with Juvenile Fiction, where it probably fits best, but it doesn't need to be a children's book. Which, after all, is part of the goal of the Fairy Tale series."

Book Smarts

It occurred to me as I was placing the lasted additions on the "Books I've Read" list at the bottom of this bog, that such a list is fairly useless. Its original purpose was to keep tabs on the books I could check off my "Book List" on Facebook -- a helpful compilation created by my friends for my literary benefit.

However, I never intended that list to be a show-off list of what I've read. I wanted to keep tabs on what I've read and share good books with others. Problem : I wouldn't recommend everything I've read. Solution : I will post a few brief thoughts on books when I finish them. You can click the "Books" label over to the side if you are ever trying to find a good book. Unless you are like my dearly beloved roommate (... er, best friend, since we don't live together anymore), and don't actually have the same taste in literature that I do.

That's What I'm Doin' These Days

School is over. If you've been reading faithfully (you have, haven't you?), you know this already. So what does a teaching assistant do with her days after school ends? Summer school, of course!

Ana and I are working with a summer school program that takes place on-site at our school, but is not actually run by our school. So I have a new boss now. The program focuses on maintaining and improving literacy skills for 4th and 5th grade students. Most of the day, the students will have different reading-related activities, as well as art and PE classes, although even those classes will link back to reading. The school day ends at 3:30, and then the aftercare program begins.

Enter Beth and Ana. Our boss commissioned us to set up education-related after-school activities for our kids. So, while summer school doesn't start until June 28, we've been keeping ourselves busy with planning. For the past week and a half, we've been scouring the St. Louis area for organizations that might bring activities and presentations to our school for free or cheap rates. And by "scouring St. Louis," I mean spending many hours online, researching groups and programs and sending emails into the dark : "I don't know if you can help, but..."

I've been working out of a coffee shop, which has been fun. Meemaw introduced us to a cute one in the Italian section of town that has free wireless and, unlike Panera (known as St. Louis Bread Co. here), they don't kick you off after 1/2 hour during lunch time. So Ana and I can sit for three or four hours shooting out countless emails, calculating budgeting, and creating calendars.

We're working out some cool programming. The Humane Society is coming to talk about animal rescue; the Science Center is doing demonstrations on "Creepy Chemistry" and where you can find plastic that you wouldn't expect. The Magic House offers free programs for schools with 50% or more free and reduced lunch. The Shakespeare Festival has offered us sessions. (I am in love with our contact there. He is speed and generous, has a cool email address, and passionate about Shakespeare. I am also likely never to meet him.) Our challenge is to come up with 28 days of programming on a very limited budget.

The other challenge for me relates to timing. I will only be with the summer school program through mid-July, and we are planning up through August. Logistically, for the summer school, it works out; Ana, my new boss, and one of his interns are more than capable of handling whatever I get set up before I leave. I just have received another task in patience to set up all these exciting programs knowing that I won't be around to see them. God has given me the task of planting what others will reap a lot this year, and this ministry is another of them.

Religions

Eventually, I will return to a 50-hour work-week, and my posts will once again become shorter and less frequent. Until then, my loyal readers will find more to read -- or in this case watch.

Stephen Colbert makes an appearance again! Yesterday he interviewed Stephen Prothero (who I'd never heard of) who wrote God Is Not One (which I'd never heard of) about the 8 major religions of the world, their vital differences, and why these differences are important. Besides Colbert's stunning defense of the Catholic crucifix, I enjoyed Prothero's explanation of the world's religions in terms of the problems they address: Catholicism, sin; Islam, pride; Buddhism, suffering; Judaism, exile. In fact, Prothero's explanations intrigued me so much, I put the book on hold at the library as I was watching the interview.

So, for your enjoyment:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Stephen Prothero
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Fox News

The Vindication of Taylor Swift

Disclaimer: I actually like Taylor Swift. I am "girly" in few ways, but I have a weakness for Carrie Underwood, Taylor Swift, and chick flicks.

I have a hunch I'm going to do more than a little blogging about these talks that I mentioned in my last post, so let me explain that the talks come from the FOCUS conference at New Years and my friend Benjamin has been gracious enough to share them with me. I listened to a few in his car while on my whirlwind tour of Virginia and requested a few specific ones of interest. Today, my subject is one offered for the benefit of the males present to explain the inexplicable mystery of the female. Despite the fact that I was not the target of the talk, I found it fascinating, pointed, and useful.

The speaker, Lisa Cotter, based her talks around Taylor Swift and chick-flicks and why they speak to women. She starts out with superficial premises about men and women : Men are physical and visual beings; women are emotional and relational. She explains that men can see and create beauty in a special way -- a new notion about men for me at least. She also claims that, statistically, there are more male martyrs and female mystics in the Church's history. I want to look more into this tidbit, because it might help my search for a female spirituality.

Then she gets into the fun stuff. I won't give you the whole talk -- just the outline and the thoughts it inspired. She starts with a Taylor Swift favorite: "Love Story." Okay, not one of my favorites, because I don't know if Taylor doesn't know literature or just likes to play with allusions. Cotter takes the idea of a girl waiting for her prince, because she's the princess. I take issue to the idea that every girl wants to be a princess or is waiting for her prince, though Cotter does qualify that some girls are Cinderella and some are Xena, Warrior Princess. However, I do grant that our society (which does permeate the way we live our faith) encourages girls to wait for that man Cotter dubs "Mr. Wonderful."

While we are waiting, a void forms. I loved this image that Cotter used. A void forms. A void -- an empty space, a sign of something missing, something lacking. And it forms -- it isn't naturally in us. It isn't the same ache as Augustine's heart waiting to rest in God. It forms around the idea of something other than God, something that can be beautiful and holy -- or twisted and hurtful. Cotter allowed that women's desire for intimacy and connection is a good thing, while still explaining how it turns into a dangerous ache.

Dangerous because, like men's physical and visual tendencies, it causes particular temptations. And Cotter develops a relationship trajectory for her hypothetical Taylor. She meets a boy, who seems pretty awesome. She doesn't know him well, but he could well be Mr. Wonderful. So she begins what Cotter calls "mental stalking." She thinks about him. She wonders what it would be like to date him, what he's doing, if he thinks about her. Then she has a luxury that her mother did not have : she begins to "cyberstalk" him. She scouts out Facebook for tidbits about his life and possible competition. And finally, she "physically stalks" him -- not in a creepy way, but placing herself conveniently near him. By now, she has built up a strong emotional connection to him -- and he has no idea.

At this point in the talk, I was having very profound thoughts, such as, Wow. Dang. And thoughts that were more in depth, such as, I've been there. I've seen friends there.

Cotter carried on with the outcomes of crushes. Option one is that Mr. Wonderful doesn't like her and starts dating someone else. At this point, I knew which of Taylor's songs she was about to quote : "Teardrops on My Guitar." (One of my personal favorites, which I am now self-conscious about.) Option two is that he likes her. Of course, that won't last either, and we get "White Horse."

Much as I loved the talk up to this point, this direction took it to the next level. See, when he likes her, they start dating. And when they start dating, she is allowed to be emotionally intimate with him. Cotter makes the analogy of the Hebrew temple. The temple had many sections that got progressively holier, and, depending on status, people could only enter certain sections. The innermost section was the Holy of Holies, the Ark of the Covenant. We are the same way. And as women, with a desire for intimacy, we have the temptation to draw back too many curtains too fast. We want to let that guy into the holy of holies inside our hearts. I add to Cotter that women believe this immediate intimacy solidifies and cements a relationship, distinguishes it from something "purely physical." But, as Cotter points out, we end up giving away bits of our hearts in relationships that won't last.

At this point, it becomes clear that Cotter is addressing a male audience; she begins to tell the men about ways they can help their female friends combat their unique temptations. Which, good, I'm glad men get to hear this talk. I wish women could hear a similar talk.

I wish women could hear a similar talk because, to be honest, just because we do these things does not mean we are aware of them. Listening, I felt like Cotter was describing my life and my friends' lives in terms I had never considered before I heard her. And suddenly I was aware of challenges and temptations in my life that made sense, but which I had never heard before. I want to know : As a woman, where do I go from here? Men were instructed not to be flirts, but what instructions do we get? Now that I know more about myself how does that change how I act?

Cotter seemed to be saying, and saying clearly, "Guard your heart." Yet she commended the emotional needs of women. So I am left with the necessity of guarding my heart without putting up walls, a difficult balance to seek, let alone achieve. Any thoughts, dear readers, (male or female) on how to live out this challenge?