Entering the world of cloth

Apparently, with every new baby, I have to come up with some fabulously complex research project. With Alison, it was an obsession with learning how to brew espresso in the moka pot. Since I've already read all the sleep/early infant care books, I moved on to the enormously varied world of cloth diapering. Buying two sets of disposables at once brought on a case of sticker shock, and I suddenly was willing to entertain the thought of cloth. Last pregnancy I was briefly entranced by the idea of gdiapers, but just couldn't quite commit to trying it out. We all know why: the issue of human waste in the washing machine. That just sounds super gross. This all changed, however, once I learned a key fact:

The poop of babies who are breastfed is water soluble. 

That's right, people. Water soluble. That means that all you really need to do to get it clean is soak it in a lot of water and then stick it in the sun to get any residual stains out. The whole "human waste in the washing machine" thing was what left Pancho cold, but once I persuaded him of the whole "water soluble means it just washes away and you NEVER see it in the machine," he was on board to try, at least until we introduced solids.

So after tons of research and a complex cost analysis involve some single-variable calculus (no, really, I wrote a formula that told me how many diapers I had to change with cloth before I broke even on my investment), I decided to try the Best Bottom Diapers, which is about as close as I can get to the convenience of disposables without washing a ton. Basic concept: a snap in cloth inner liner into a PUL (waterproof) outer. You can wipe off any small overflows onto the outer liner and just snap in new inner liners. Everything goes into a dry, waterproof bag (that is also washable) for laundry day in 2-3 days. Then a brief soak, a wash, a double rinse, and out in the sun to dry.

I get an incredible kick out of watching the stains magically disappear in the sun. It's almost worth it just for that little piece of mundane magic. That said, I still have about 55 days left before I break even...

Our new arrival

There's nothing like a new baby to prompt you to pick up a blog you haven't posted in for over a year. So here she is: Audrey, just born two weeks ago and a really sweetheart with poochy cheeks.

Things are not quite crazy yet, because Audrey sleeps all the time, so that sense of double-demand has yet to befall me. Alison is taking the new baby like a champ and started heavily investing in bathing and diapering her baby doll, as well as taking all of Audrey's diapers out of their basket and strewing them around the house...and then finding them all and putting them back in (sometimes). "Alison kiss/hold her?" and "I see her?" are common questions, and she has made up a song that she plays on the piano, the lyric of which is "Audrey is a great baby"...I think. So all is calm so far. The true sleep deprivation has yet to strike, and Pancho  goes back to work tomorrow (yikes!) so Alison's morning playmate will for the first time be gone. That scares me.

I'm surprised how easy it is to love two just as much as I loved one. There is no diminishing or competing in my heart or a sense that I have a favorite. They are both my favorite, both my girls, my pies of cuteness. I am so thankful for that.

Reductive Research

I'm continuing to work my way through Wendy Belcher's workbook for academic publishing and have found much helpful advice.  Still, I have noticed a theme that is increasingly disturbing me: the reductive modus operandi of academic research culture.  Successful writers, Belcher tells us, know when to stop reading.  Fair enough.  They also know how much to read, how to mine sources for only the relevant bits that can go into their own work, and how to "reduce articles to their essence", and how to read whole books in 45 minutes (!).  As journal articles and books proliferate to an incredible degree* in an age where publishing records determine job promotion and retention, professional quality research must bow more and more to summary and reduction, rather than deliberative study.  How can we study when there is so much to plow through just to cover our bases?

I already feel compromised when I merely mine a book for what interests me, rather than attend to the argument of the whole as something worthy of study in itself, regardless of whether or not I can use it.  I see the same in academic seminars: we tend to ask questions that feed into our own pet interests, rather than engage in a proper discussion about the paper just given and its own interests.  I myself have often asked questions that went something like, "You said x which seems to relate to y [which I happen to be interested in] in z way.  Do you think that's true or can you say more about that relationship in light of x?"  Most junior scholars blow this question (and I truly don't mean it as a trap), and senior scholars tend to brush it off...perhaps rightly so.  I have rarely sat in on discussions in academic seminars that were lively and engaged around a more or less single topic of study, rather than a wide-ranging conversation.

So I am as compromised as the rest of us, but I think what I really want to do is study, not merely collect and collate and create some new idea out of all the old ones.  The question is, how do I study when I am under the pressure of time to produce and participate in precisely the culture that militates against study?  I don't want to reduce others' nuanced thoughts and work to a paragraph abstract, any more than I want my hard labor so reduced.  Yet, that is what we are taught and encouraged to do.  More and more I am grateful for the stability in my teaching curriculum, which furnishes an opportunity to truly study, widely and deeply, in some of the texts that best reward that kind of patient work and attention.

* Lindsay Waters talks of a near 100-fold increase in academic publishing in the last 50 years or so, if I remember rightly. I'll go hunt up the statistic, but it was quite shocking.  Simultaneously, where humanities books used to sell a minimum of 1250 copies, now publishers are lucky to sell 275 copies.  There are just too many books and articles driven by the need to keep a job, and not by the fruit of deliberate study.

Resolving a practical question, Aquinas-style

Quaestio: Whether or not it is the case that my research assistant, R, is irreplaceable.

Obj: It seems no.  We must distinguish between her replaceability and the ease of her replacement. While a smart cookie, R's skillz match those of competent researchers elsewhere. The difficulty lies in finding said researchers during the summer, and convincing them to work for only 8.50 an hour. But even in that case, it remains possible to find a replacement, though perhaps unlikely.

Obj: It seems no. R can retain all of her virtues, and retain them personally, yet it still remains that those virtues find their source in an omnipotent Provider.  Thus, because she participates but does not instantiate those virtues, she is, by nature, replaceable by that in which she participates.

On the contrary: David confirms, "For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well." [Ps. 139]

Though all R's skills and virtues can be found elsewhere, she is nevertheless irreplacable as a beloved creature of God, made by grace for His pleasure and delight and for ours as we live in Him.

Reply to obj. 1: One must distinguish between the replaceability of R's skills and virtues with the replaceability of her person.  As one's person is not reducible to what one does, and as one is in unqiue posession of one's own person, it then follows that R in se is irreplaceable, and that that sense of irreplaceability, since it resides in being and not in ephemeral doings, is actually the most important of all.

Reply to obj. 2: Of course God is eminently able to provide me with either Himself or another of His creatures that participates in many if not all of R's virtues.  Who wouldn't want the Logos as their research assistant?  That God possesses what we only participate in does not make us replaceable.  In fact, that we exist at all and therefore can (and always already) participate in what God possesses uniquely confirms our irreplacability as creatures of utterly superfluous grace. The divine economy is always one of grace and superaddition, not efficiency.  All that has been made is by its created nature gratuitous; by extension, that which has been made cannot be truly replaced by its Maker, since the difference between possession and participation is too absolute.

Freshmen Pre-Reading

In the summer of 1997 I graduated from high school, passed my 18th birthday, and saw with a fellow soccer player my first rated-R movie: The English Patient. I remember the post-practice itch on my shins from the shinguards and propping my legs up on my over-sized practice bag, bulging with cleats, extra socks, water bottles, hair bands, braces for ankles, my left knee's custom-fit carbon exoskeleton, athletic tape, and a spare turtleneck still hanging around from the winter season. We had come to the theater from a day at soccer camp, and we smelled of sweet girl-sweat and grass and chlorine.  We were practically alone in the theater that afternoon, but we still covered our eyes during the sexy parts and took turns peeking to see when it was safe to look again. I remember liking the movie for its artsy-ness (the comparison of a desert to a woman's back still lurks in my imagination), but I don't think I really understood it very well.

A few short weeks later, I received notice from my college-to-be that they were asking the entire freshman class to read Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient to be discussed together during freshmen orientation.  I read it, but can't remember any provocative or interesting conversations that it started. The fault for that failure lies less with the book than with freshmen, who (myself included) were far more interested in comparing SAT's, taking internet personality quizzes together that purported to tell you what kind of medieval personality you had (White Knight, for the record), and hanging out in the dorm hallways lighting Peeps on fire.

Apparently, assigning pre-reading has become common among the top-tier colleges, and a recent report by a "back to the classics" association of scholars (as far as I can tell) surveyed the choices.  13 years ago, my alma mater chose a novel that had been premiered in the same summer as a movie, thinking perhaps that such a choice would be "relevant" to the students. From what I can see of the study, the principles of selection employed now-a-days are pretty similar.  The overwhelming majority of books assigned were written in the last decade, many of which were bestsellers or of great topical interest, such as Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma and Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner (also a 2007 film).  The only four pre-1900 books read were Huckleberry Finn, Walden, Frankenstein, and the Communist Manifesto, read at only 6 of 290 programs.  The report, claiming in passing that they could detect a liberal political bias in the selections, largely aimed at making the colleges more self-aware about how their selections match up with their aims and whether or not books of recent topical interest (and frequently less challenging reading) can fill the bill as well as books of proven merit (in other words, those regarded as classics).

One aim of such a program was to have at least one book in common amongst freshmen from various curricular backgrounds and who will quickly specialize.  In the Inside Higher Ed piece that reports this story, one college official objected that the program aimed at creating community, not a common foundation for an intellectual conversation.  Another noted that easily read books covering current events are essential, since the students won't necessarily have the professors guiding their conversations. What seems clear is that while the Freshman summer read is a popular trend in higher ed, precisely what it is aimed at achieving is a bit more murky.

This caught my eye because a colleague of mine recently assigned his incoming freshmen to read Mortimer Adler's How to Read a Book.  Love Adler or hate him, you have to admit that you can learn a lot from him about what it means to seriously study (and not just quickly ingest and spew for a test) a book. Students who have struggled with reading slowly during their first semesters at college have emerged from reading this book with dewy eyes, a sigh of relief, and renewed enthusiasm, exclaiming, "If only I'd read this sooner I wouldn't have wasted so much time re-reading ineffectively!" Unlike a summer read of the Kite Runner or even Huck Finn--an exercise which may, or may not, inculcate critical thinking, community, or whatever else they're supposed to do--a read of Adler's book actually prepares you to be a student in an explicit way. So few college freshmen come with the ability to read and analyze a complex book well, even on the most literal level. I can't remember how good of a reader my 18-year-old summer self was, but my guess: not that great, valedictorian or no. I can't remember much of the English Patient (even with the movie's prompts), but I don't think it deserved the burden of trying to independently usher me into "critical thinking", "community", or "issues". I'd rather take the commen-sense advice of Adler, and then get the advantage of adapting it with a faculty mentor to how I think and learn. So kudos to my colleague, for that's exactly what he's doing with his students as they prepare to slog through the classics and the not-so-classic.