A Home in Ruins

Yesterday I went back to the Historical House with Benedict Ambrose to pick up a bag of utensils and ingredients for making our traditional Easter Sunday breakfast. He went straight to his office, and I went up the old servants' staircase, as usual, to the attic. The slightly musty smell was discouraging, but at least my slippers were waiting for me under the hall chair, where I left them last time. The slippers are necessary because various carpets have been pulled up and occasional floorboards removed.

I clandestinely straightened up the place while we still lived in a hotel in the neighbourhood, over a month ago, but workmen have gutted the bathroom and moved our furniture out of the way of their operations, which seem not to have taken place for a week--except for the removal of the bathroom sink. It is very odd to see your bathroom without a sink. I think the sink is now on the floor of the guest room, aka my dressing room. My actual dresses are on a coatrack in the front hall--with the exception of my wedding dress, which--thank heavens--was in a wardrobe in my office when the Deluge occurred. 

The air was and cold and dank. Very depressing. 

I have been thinking about what makes a dwelling a home when you or your family don't, in fact, own it. If you're not allowed to alter it in any way, with paint, or wallpaper, or new fixtures, let alone ever light a candle or permit a guest a quiet smoke, how is it a home? 

My conclusions are that what makes a home are the memories that you create in it, which in the case of a family could begin with the first family meal there and perhaps a toast to the new dwelling. The attic of the Historical House teems with memories, from my first visit almost ten years ago to the departure of Polish Pretend Son and Daughter-in-Law-to-Be the day before the Dreadful Event. 

Memories of the Historical House involve a lot of parties and a lot of visits. This may because we don't have any children, and suddenly I am reminded of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Oh dear. Not a good analogy. No wonder B.A. doesn't want me to get a pug. 

Last Easter was utterly splendid because the house was so full of guests I am not sure where I put them all. I am astonished now to recall just how much I cooked and baked. Polish Pretend Son, who is very anti-sugar, nevertheless kept cutting and eating slices of mazurek krolewski with a greed that filled me with cook's pride.

It was an extra-merry Historical House weekend, first because one of our friends got married on Easter Monday, and second because Benedict Ambrose seemed to have cheated death. It is, of course, a great mercy that none of us knew B.A. and I would soon be fighting for his life, through the long and frightened months, and that the following Easter we would be squashed into a tiny flat meant for weekend tourists.

I am not sure what the moral of that story is except to say that it is a good thing to surround yourself with friends and family, when you can, and cook them splendid meals, when you can, because later you might not be quite so lucky.

Another moral is to try to make the best of disaster and salvage what you can from the wreckage, even if that is just a baranek (lamb cake) pan and a jar of marjoram for Easter zurek. This reminds me that I must get off the sofa and buy some butter, so that B.A. and I can at least have a decent Easter Sunday breakfast, poor childless couple that we are.

And while we reminisce about our splendid Easter breakfasts of the past, we will hope for equally splendid Easter breakfasts in the future. Perhaps in time we will even look fondly on our little sojourn in the city centre. In a few years, we won't remember that our stay was cramped and lonely; we will probably think of it as quirky and charming. 

Terrible Translation of the Day

While trying to put my Riverdale addition to good use, I went to youtube on a fruitless quest for Polish dubbing. Poles don't do dubbing. For some reason unfathomable to the rest of the world, they prefer to have an emotionless voice reading a Polish translation over the original dialogue. I don't know how they stand it, and it's hard not to see it as part of a complicated plot to keep the rest of the world from learning Polish. Not having any geographical defences, they construct linguistic walls to keep everyone out--except, apparently, foreign wives and Antonia Lloyd Jones.

I haven't found any Riverdale episodes with Polish subtitles which makes me suspect the dubbing is happening to it, the horror. (Imagine deep male voice: O-Jaghaid-ko-ham-chay-eh.) However, I did find a clip of an interview with Cole Sprouse, and the subtitles turned "Jughead" into "Chuck Adam."

If it weren't for the linguistic walls, I'd advise unemployed English Lit graduates to learn Polish and become English-to-Polish translators because something seriously wrong is going on there.

To show friends and enemies (to whom my blog readership is now reduced) the depths of my pop culture/linguistic insanity, here is a Polish translation of "Mad World." For, to quote TV-Jughead's most iconic speech, "In case you haven't noticed, I'm weird. I'm a weirdo." Besides, you'll also see what anglophone students of Polish are up against.

Update: Naturally it is problematic to be watching Riverdale at all. I know that. Sex & the City was a gazillion times worse though.

Brain-changer

Student not working to his capability.

Yesterday afternoon Benedict Ambrose and I went to a lunch party to celebrate Palm Sunday and the Feast of the Annunciation. There were almost a dozen guests, including a relatively recent newcomer to the Edinburgh Extraordinary Form, to whom I have never really had a chance to speak. BA's and my after-Mass social life was much curtailed last year by BA's awful illness, and he still hasn't regained his old energy levels.

However, I was very interested in speaking to this newcomer, in part because newcomers to the Trad Scene are congenial company, but largely because he is a native speaker of Polish. As I've pointed out to my Polish tutor, who feels guilty for being paid for conversations she enjoys, there are many language-learning skills I can develop on my own, but spontaneous Polish dialogue is not among them. 

Speaking languages at parties that few others around can understand is not exceedingly polite. However, occasionally at after-Mass gatherings the Poles or the French-speakers or the German-speakers do have tete-a-tetes in their beloved languages. And so after two glasses of sherry and some interesting chat in English about the development of modern Polish, I asked my surprised interlocutor if we might converse in Polish. 

Amusingly, after my good-natured acquaintance agreed to this plan, he listened to my Polish with a palpable intensity akin to mine when I listen to anyone speak Polish. I assume that I am going to speak Polish with a heavy Canadian accent for as long as I live, but I don't mind as long as I am intelligible. And I seemed to be intelligible, and I understood about 75% of what he said. That, let me tell you, is a massive improvement. 

It's curious, this language building. It is a LOT of work, just as becoming a wiry amateur boxer was a lot of work. But on the other hand, its results come as a surprise. Counting vocabulary cards is easy, but it is difficult to quantify how much your conversation skills have improved. 

While watching a clip from "Riverdale", I saw that Jughead's school records--held against him by Sheriff Keller--were almost legible. I found a screenshot online (above), and I had to laugh because although I did do SOMEWHAT better than TV-Jughead in some courses (and worse in others), the straight As across the board in English, with less impressive grades everywhere else, looked all too familiar. 

Which brings me back again to my post-graduate lesson that hard, hard work can make up for a lack of natural talent. And also to my conviction that externals matter, and what you listen to, watch, experience and speak about shapes your brain and thus your mind and character, too. The Jesuit philosopher Bernard Lonergan invited his readers to watch themselves thinking; I'm watching my brain change, especially the part connected to my ears. 

Not a lot of language skills are immediately transferrable, by the way. You can memorise 2,000 vocabulary words from flashcards and not be able to pronounce them correctly, let alone string them into fluid sentences. However, forcing myself to listen to Polish audiobooks has led both to easier comprehension of Poles speaking Polish (fellow foreigners speaking Polish, not so much) and to hearing recorded lyrics. The latter skill is perhaps not all that relevant, but it is a palpable improvement in my ability to process what I hear.

My goal of ready fluency does not seem quite so elusive these days. One Polish acquaintance who came to the UK with almost no English at all (having not worked much at school) eventually learned to speak it very well, with an accent, yes, but also picking up colloquial Scottish words. When I asked him what changed, he said it was as if a switch in his brain had flipped. 

It's been six years of study, and the switch hasn't flipped for me, but I think it eventually will.   

Language advice bonus: Write online about a country or countries where your target language is spoken. If something you write pleases native speakers of your target language greatly, one or two of them may translate it and pose it online so their non-English-speaking countrymen may enjoy it, too. I just discovered this piece translated into what looks to me like very good Polish. I've read only 350 words of the translation so far, but it seems to be faithful to what I actually wrote and perhaps even preserves my style.

Update: Cancel that. When the first-person narrative begins, I am turned into a man. In Polish, unlike in English, you can always tell if a speaker is male or female from the verb endings. For some unfathomable reason, the translator assumed I was male. Although disappointing, this adds to my motivation to reach the official European Union C1 or C2 level in Polish. Then I can translate all my work likely to be of interest to Poles myself. 

The one problem with this, however, is that I am not sure it is psychologically possible to reach C1 or C2 without an immersion situation.  Polish Pretend Son is definitely at the C2 level, but then he lived in the UK for five years or so and is writing a doctoral dissertation that frequently cites American philosophers.  

Words to Live By

The problems in our society are going to be fixed by people who actually know how things work, not by ideologues.

--Jordan B. Peterson

****
If you have time, read the whole interview.

After you have read the post I wrote this morning, of course. 

Cultural Adventure of Rip Van McWinkle

If you want to be a popular blogger--which I used to be, relatively speaking and within my niche, five years ago---don't  close and open blogs and hop around like I do. However, if you want to write publicly but feel that you are somewhat under the radar, feel free.

It's not entirely an illusion. Words on the internet are as plentiful and frequent as rain on Glasgow. After twenty years of falling, the accumulated words are a vast, unplumbable ocean. Even a targeted Google search by a friend or foe would bring them to the edge of the murky rock pool that is twelve years of my own online writing.

While I was an undergraduate, I lived in a student co-op house for a memorable year, and on the floor below mine was a plump M.A. candidate who read James Joyce and smoked dope. Still overly impressed by graduate students, I mistook Oren for an oracle.

"History," he pronounced during one of our rare conversations, "is text."

A lifelong diarist, I thought those were the truest words I had ever heard that side of campus. They continued to sink into my brain, even when, two or three years after I left the house, Oren said they were complete nonsense. Hadn't I noticed how much dope he had smoked?

Yeah, but traditionally pagan oracles were usually stoned one way or another, wern't they?

Many years later, possibly after I met B.A., I understood that history is also cultural artefacts. I wished I had done a better job, as a diarist, in describing the material objects that would differentiate the 1970s from the 1980s, the 1980s from the 1990s, and so on.

One of the problems, perhaps, is that one does not know which fishes to catch in one's diaristic nets. (How did I know in 1985 that I would want to recreate it in words in 2015?) And then, of course, I gradually lost interest in pop culture, at first lagging behind, but then ignoring it completely. This may be normal for adults, especially childless ones. In 1985, I could had a good idea of the Top 10 hits of the given day. In 2018, I have no idea at all, unless "Believer" by the [Something] Dragons is still there.

I know about "Believer" only because of "Riverdale", and I know about "Riverdale" only because a disaster befell the Historical House and B.A. and I were temporarily rehoused in a flat furnished with Netflix. And being prone to sudden obsessions, I have binge-watched "Riverdale" and gone online to read what other watchers think of it.

Suddenly I feel like Rip Van Winkle, woken up to a new world. Those who were babies when I fell asleep to pop culture are now grown up and writing in a strange jargon, often with a brutal frankness that is crudely obscene. They trade in a host of references to television shows and movies that I have never heard of, let alone watched. I have discovered that Facebook is "for old people", and I suspect blogging is, too. History is no longer text (if it ever was) but digital photographs, digital films, digital music.

This is why, by the way, I stopped giving advice to Singles. My hermeneutic was that human nature doesn't change, and so my experience as a Single adult in the 90s and 00s could be helpful to Singles now. However, I am no longer sure about this because I know that constant attention to digital culture--bathing in music and images and hieroglyphic text speak--rewires the human mind, making the human brain physically different from that of the human being who works by hand, reads, chats to acquaintances in his favourite brunch cafe, and occasionally puts a record on a turntable.

To paraphrase the Buggles, Tinder killed the internet star.

I know also that the very powerful people who direct the digital culture are deliberately trying to change human nature, to bring about the "equality of outcome" that Jordan Peterson is so afraid of.* They seem to think truth is not what is, but what you make it, and they are determined to make truth what they think it should be. This is extremely frightening.

Digital culture preaches a message of tolerance and respect for difference, but only those  differences that are compatible with its own overarching worldview. On "Riverdale", Jughead is corrected for "telling a story that is not his to tell" after he writes indignantly of the massacre of the Native American tribe who used to live where Riverdale is now. But on the most recent episode of Riverdale, yet another character has been dragged against her will to a Roman Catholic home run by Roman Catholic nuns, this time to undergo conversion therapy.

Dear Hollywood, dear Entertainment Industrial Complex, you're performing conversion therapy on us.

I am caught up on all the episodes "Riverdale", and will do my best not to think of it again until Thursday, when the next episode reaches the UK, via Netflix. I'm kind of amazed that, here I am, in synch with a contemporary, still-developing artefact of American pop culture.

Although in the UK, I watch mostly boring television with B.A. (mostly cooking shows and "Sherlock" when it appears), being plugged into something mainstream aimed at, and performed by, American Millennials feels really different. Although "Riverdale" has distracted me from objectively more valuable pursuits, I feel strangely awake.

Riverdale Outrageously Appropriates My Culture

Poor Addicted Seraphic 

This morning I took to the internet to find out if other people are have my substance abuse problem, the substance being "Riverdale". It was a relief to find it described as a "phenomenon" and discover that college kids leave clubs in time to get back to the dorm to watch it. Also a relief: the average age of viewers is 42.

Various entertainment writers ponder why the show is such a hit amongst todays TV-adverse teens, but so far none of them mention dopamine-induced-by-rapid-editing-and-music. But among the various theories is that the "Riverdale" writing team reads internet commentary by fans on the series and tailors their writing accordingly.

Once again I should point out that "Riverdale" is not a show you want influencing your children. Possibly you should be 42 before you watch it, or at least old enough not to compare real-life love interests unfavourably to Archie and Jughead.

Critics seem most disturbed by the astonishingly horrible (but creative!) punishment Jughead and the under-18 wing of the Southside Serpents mete upon the gang's super-crooked female lawyer. However, I think it very unlikely that the vast majority of today's children are ever going to be tempted into such scenarios. They will, however, have to cope with a world that worships sex, and all the teenagers in Riverdale worship sex: ordinary sex, same-sex sex, dressing up in costumes sex.

(Pregnancy, by the way, is a mysterious thing that just happens to the occasional girl, like being pooped on by a pigeon flying overhead.)

Sex as Religion

In Riverdale sex is a religion with excellent ecumenical dialogue between most of its branches. Sex without love is a-okay, if that's your thing, but the attitude of Riverdale's heroes towards actual prostitution remains ambiguous. The old-fashioned kind is considered extremely icky, whereas internet stuff is, somehow, merely edgy. Darling Betty, who is supposed to be the Good Girl, is drawn to the dark cult of stranger sex, as long as it is just online.

(Is a passionate relationship with the tortured leader of the Southside Serpent Under-18's not enough? Dear heavens.)

But for some reason, which I still cannot comprehend, the writers of ""Riverdale" have decided to introduce a rival religion to sex, without actually daring to underscore its formerly famous ethical objections to sex between anyone but the married.  That rival religion is, of course, Catholicism.

It is, however, Catholicism as few Catholics would recognise it.

In Season One, we see flashes of gold crosses on Betty and Betty's mother and, of course, an outrageously stereotyped--verging on a hate crime--Catholic home for unwed mothers and juvenile delinquents, complete with some nuns in post-Vatican 2 habits and others in pre-Vatican 2 habits. One gets the sense, however, that Betty and her family are not themselves Catholics. It's just that Catholics cornered the local homes for unwed mothers market twenty-five year years ago.

In Season Two the treatment of Catholicism becomes utterly ridiculous. We have the Latino Lodges to thank for this. Oh, and The Godfather, naturally.

1. Disrespect for the Queen of Heaven

First, when Veronica's mother goes to church to pray for a friend, she directs her gaze not towards the Blessed Sacrament or a crucifix, but to the worst statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary I have yet seen on television. The statue has big white eyes that I would find comical had I no love whatsoever for the BVM. As it is, I am aggrieved. Nobody would paint eyes like that on a portrait of Martin Luther King, Jr., so why is it okay to portray any Catholic saint, let alone the most important Catholic saint,  that way?

2. So, like, our Sacraments are sacred, you know? 

Second, when Veronica's parents decide she should be confirmed, it becomes immediately apparent that the writers have absolutely no idea what a Roman Catholic Confirmation is supposed to look like. It's as if they saw some Puppet Masses on Youtube and, while tossing the puppets, retained their spirit.

This could be why Veronica's Confirmation features a tailor-made white dress instead of an alb and Josie of Josie and the Pussy-Cats singing "Bittersweet Symphony" mid-way through Mass.

Reducing the Sacrament of Confirmation a Latino coming-of-age ritual is itself offensive, but this is mildly mitigated by the fact that in Latin America and the USA, Confirmation often is reduced to a Latino coming-of-age ritual.  However, there is no getting around the really horrible scenes around Veronica's reception of the Sacrament of Reconciliation and the Blessed Sacrament.

I fast-forwarded through most of Veronica's bizarre Confirmation Mass because I just couldn't bear it. Her Confession was horror enough. First, you would think that she might have mentioned all the premarital sex she'd had, but no. Mustn't frighten the audience by suggesting for a single second that there might have been something wrong with it. She doesn't go much into her Mean Girl past, either. Veronica's idea of sin is having disrespected her gangster parents a few times. She made a much better confession to Betty in Season One.

But what is seriously awful is that Veronica asks the walking stereotype Monsignor Murphy for counsel, and he refuses to give it to her. He just slaps her with a bunch of Hail Marys and Our Fathers, sketches an absolution, and that is that. From any Catholic point of view, this is outrageous.

And then Veronica takes Communion and rejects Satan, etc., etc., and a golden light LITERALLY shines on her from above.

3. Catholics as Superstitious Butt-covering Hypocrites  

Third, before Veronica's Confirmation, she has a sort of hen party with her female relations, who talk about how they depend on their Catholic faith for hope that their criminal husbands come home alive and to assuage their consciences for all the bad stuff that they do.

To quote the entire generation of North Americans Millennials, that is just SO offensive.

I cannot imagine how one attempts to convince the writers of "Riverdale" not to reduce the religion of over one billion people worldwide, whose rituals are not a secret and can be seen anywhere, to an offensive cartoon.  I am hoping that amongst the social media movers and shakers, there are devout Catholic fans who write "Come on, guys. Don't do that to my religion."

A Modest Proposal

Maybe Father James Martin, SJ, could stage an intervention, which is a mind-boggling thought, but when I think about it, he's the celebrity priest Hollywood is most likely to have heard of, isn't he?  And "Riverdale" is just weird enough that I can imagine Father Martin making a cameo appearance.

And to get the writers' attention, here's for the Google search: "Riverdale appropriates my culture."

Delicious Lies

Does not happen now.

Why do some of us become obsessed with television shows? I am asking this assuming that other people get obsessed with television shows. The secret of my advice-giving success is the insight that my mind is probably only about 10% unique and the rest of it can be classified as Human Female, and therefore things that work for me might work for other Human Females, 90% of the time.

Part of my 10% uniqueness is a terror of mathematics, so don't quote me on those percentages.

I don't want to guess at how much the 90% of Human Female Mind is identical to that of 90% of Human Male Mind. Obviously there are similarities, but there are clearly differences. Interestingly, although men abuse drugs more than women do, apparently, women get addicted to them faster.

But I am not a scientist, so I will abandon any pretence at clinical-trial type objectivity and go with my gut. In short, I think the success of "Riverdale" is tied to its idealisation of the teenage years. It's not just the rapid pace, emotional zig-zags, palpitation-inducing blasts of Imagine Dragons' "Believer," and Archie's chest.  I admit I think those things have a lot to do with the dopamine surges I've been experiencing.  Well, not Archie's chest, which should have its own zip code. Tooooo alarming. But, really, it's the glorious chance to rewrite in our heads the ghastly experience of being teenagers.

First of all, very few of us were that good-looking as teenagers. Not only did we not look like Betty, Veronica and Cheryl, the boys did not look like Archie or Jughead. What we looked like, and what the boys who actually "liked" us looked like, was a source of great pain. Therefore, it comes as a great relief to identify with godlings from Mount Olympus (or wherever Hollywood found them).

Second, very few of us were that clever. Well, few of us were as clever as Jughead, Betty and Cheryl Blossom, who, though criminally insane, is rocking a 4.0.

One of the iconic moments of the show (and not just for me, I have discovered) is when TV-Jughead (who is 10% Original Jughead and 90% smouldering coal) appears at Betty's bedroom window at the top of a ladder and says, "Hey there, Juliet. Nurse off-duty?

Okay, TV-Jughead is 15-going-on-16 when he delivers those immortal lines. In real life, 15-year-old-boys do not say things like that. We wish they did, but they didn't and don't. At least, not in my experience. Although I was at an all-girls' school, I arranged to be around teenage boys when I could, and no, they were not making clever allusions to Shakespeare.

Incidentally, Beloved is Betty's favourite book ever, and while I was so sick on Tuesday I wondered if never having read Beloved meant that I was a Bad Person.

Jughead, age 15/16, is writing a novel, and his model is Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, which I haven't read either. When I was 15, I wasn't attempting to write a novel.  I was writing Star Trek fan fiction. On the other hand, I also wrote an extra scene for Romeo and Juliet as an English class project, and a dialogue between Elizabeth Barrett Browning on the suitability of Raymond Souster's poetry for study in my Catholic school.  My enthusiasm for literature was tempered by a deep, frowny suspicion for anything overtly erotic.

Jughead also makes allusions to Jean-Paul Sartre, which makes me wonder if we are supposed to believe that he (15/16) has actually read Jean-Paul Sartre.

In the interests of separating delicious lies about teenage life from the plodding truth, I now invite readers to tell me what you were reading and writing by choice when you were teenagers, specifically between the ages of 15 and 17, if you remember in that much detail. I did read Sylvia Path at about 13, I suddenly recall. It's not out of the realm of the possible.

Oh, and also: did you ever ride a motorcycle, as either driver or passenger, as a teen? Your humble correspondent did not, although she came close at the age of 27 when she got lost on Capri and a 20-something mechanic gave her a ride back to civilisation on the back of his Vespa.

Did not happen then. 

I have a theory that the writers of "Riverdale", being writers, identify with TV-Jughead because he IS a writer, and therefore have made him, not Archie, the real star of the show. That they have given him a tattoo, a motorcycle, and the crazy blonde is surely evidence of this theory.

The Dating Project

I did not get an wink of sleep on Monday night and as a result was ill all Tuesday. But the bright side of that was that I had an internet fast. That was great because---screen addiction.

How many human beings are addicted to the internet, I wonder. How many are actually addicted to television? How many people are addicted to the rage that surges through them when they read about things that make them mad? I worry about this a lot now, for reasons obvious to my newest readers.

So I was very happy that this week I had the opportunity to write about something that made me happy: an article about The Dating Project movie.

(I also planned a follow-up to this article on an eye-opening homily, so consulted Polish Pretend Son, who pelted me with colourful insults, and his pal The Giant, who didn't.)

I wish more professors made asking someone out on an a chaste, alcohol-free date a prerequisite for passing their courses. Kerry Cronin, the angel of the Lonergan Research Institute, as she really was (and probably still is), used to make it an optional part of her course.  However, she discovered that few students actually went through with it because they were just too scared.

Kerry makes girls ask out boys, not just the boys ask the girls, which I would normally not recommend, but as her motives are educational, I think it at least makes girls consider just how frightening asking a girl out really is for a guy. I read somewhere (or heard from Jordan Peterson) that the terror involved in asking out a girl is directly proportionate to how much the boy likes her, so I'm amazed to think now how totally in love with me most boys were in the 1980s.

Just kidding.

Jughead, Neuroplasticity and Addiction to Melodrama

Neuroplasticity

I became interested in cognitive science in my early thirties after arriving at theology school. My theologate is one of less than a handful that specialises in the thought of the Canadian philosopher-theologian Bernard Lonergan, S.J. Lonergan's magnum opus was Insight, an 800 page tome on how our minds move from questioning ("x+y=?") to knowing ("z!"). I found it very hard to read, but after I finished my "Insight" course, I was never afraid of reading a book again. My brain had literally been reshaped into an organ that could read very difficult (but not obscurantist) philosophy.

Lonergan was interested in introspection, by which I mean watching yourself think as you think. He was influenced by Saint Thomas Aquinas, of course, but also by the founder of his order, St. Ignatius of Loyola. The great Basque saint wrote a serious of spiritual exercises to assist Christians in developing and examining our consciences, which is highly useful for, as one priest-professor once suggested, it could be that we confess the wrong things. We think we are X and our problem is Y, but the bitter truth may be that we are A and our problem is B. Only a serious (and usually painful) struggle can get us to the truth about ourselves.

I found this fascinating because hitherto I had operated in the world not according to how the world was, but how I thought it should be.  I also laboured under a lot of misconceptions, as did most people when I was a child in the 1970s and 1980s. The most damaging one was that intelligence and talents are "fixed". But I've written about that before. Suffice it to say that I do think some people are born with a greater aptitude for some highly prized skills then others, but also that with enough passion, work and stubbornness, the rest of us can catch up to, and even surpass, most of them. 

There are some physical factors in that. Eating a balanced diet, getting enough sleep and exercising help the brain's ability to learn. But other factors are psychological. For example, a great help to concentrating for the duration of a 90 minute class is practising concentrating for 90 minutes on the subject of that class several times a week. A great help to understanding someone who speaks another language is spending a set time every day listening to people speaking that language. Externals matter. 

Jughead

And at last I come to Jughead, who is an important character in the Archie comics series and therefore also an important character in the Netflix series "Riverdale." Benedict Ambrose and I found that Netflix comes with our emergency flat in the Historical Tenement, and after watching the Unabomber series, we stumbled upon "Riverdale". 

Hitherto B.A. (Scottish) had never heard of Archie, Veronica, Betty, Reggie, Jughead and the gang, but he gamely agreed to give "Riverdale" a go. Unfortunately he now thinks it is trashy, juvenile and melodramatic. Well, it is trashy, juvenile and melodramatic. It is also incredibly addictive.

After watching 2-3 episodes a night of Season One, and not being able to sleep because I was too excited by all the craziness that is life in Riverdale, I decided that I had to stop watching it. For one thing, I would never allow a child or teenager to watch such a wicked program, whose underlying messages include "Teenagers know much better than their stupid parents"; "Casual sex with your friends is peachy-keen"; "If an attractive adult seduces a teenager, the best thing to do is move her on to the next town"; and "Depressed loners with alcoholic fathers make the best boyfriends."

How happy I am that the actor playing Jughead was not 15 but 24 when Season One aired because otherwise I would feel as creepy as statutory rapist Ms Grundy (who stole the name from the real Miss Grundy) actually was.  The series betrays Archie comics in some very important ways, but at least it preserves Jughead's grumpiness. "Grumpy" in the TV Riverdale, however, means snarling references to Jean-Paul Sartre and looking like you haven't had a good night's sleep in years. 

Now despite the fact I retrained myself years ago to avoid snarling wannabe philosophers who watch obscure films, read Sartre and lie awake at night thinking dark thoughts*, I rejoiced when Jughead broke Archie comics canon law and [RIVERDALE SEASON ONE PLOT SPOILER] kissed Betty. 

At first I thought that this was because I have been of the opinion for 35 years that the only solution to the Archie-Betty-Veronica love triangle was for Jughead to rush in and claim Betty for himself. But as Jughead was not interested in anything but hamburgers, this seemed unlikely. It seemed even more unlikely later when distant rumours from Pop Culture Land reached me that Jughead was going to be canonically deemed "asexual" as in LGBTQA asexual. 

However, last night when dark fell, I became very anxious and declared that we would watch "Riverdale" after all. So we did--three juicy episodes in which, to my joy, Jughead ceased being kindly and dull and had a nice dark hissy-fit again. At that point I realised that my fickle heart had moved on from Jordan Peterson and glommed onto Television-Jughead. But what was really pathetic, was that it was BAD, SNARLY Jughead that it loved. 

As Jordan Peterson would say, "What the hell is going on here?"

Addiction to Melodrama

I fear it was the melodrama, and more than ever I feel that children and teenagers should be forbidden to watch "Riverdale" and because melodrama is mental and spiritual sugar: sweet and deadly.

Addiction to melodrama both distorts the very important quest to see the world as it is and not as how you would like it to be, and uses up time you could be doing something more productive. Externals matter. Tell me what you watch on TV, listen to on your i-Pod and what you tweet, and I will tell you who you are. I am shaking in my shoes about the Youth Synod because it seems that the bishops are going to be forced to listen to young Catholics (or CINOS) who have been plugged into non-Catholic pop culture for 20 years.

"Why cannot the Church be cool like 'Riverdale'?" 

I have more to say about this, but I have to go to Mass through snow, which in Edinburgh can be perilous as Scots Lowlanders don't have snow tires and or the foggiest clue how to drive in snow. 

*Benedict Ambrose taught philosophy for nine years and took a whole course on Sartre, but he prefers art galleries to obscure films and sleeps long and late. He is also very kind-hearted and strangely drama-free. 

Update: There are, of course, more reasons to object to "Riverdale", including the very ancient American anti-Catholic trope of being imprisoned in a Roman Catholic convent with Mean Nuns.

Update 2: Managed not to watch "Riverdale" on Sunday. Temperance win!

Update 3: Watched Brooklyn instead so now B.A. is wandering around the flat making unflattering remarks in an Irish accent about Colm Toibin.

What to Wear? What to Wear? (Wrings hands)

As I I did not have more important things to worry about, I am stressed over what to wear to Polish Pretend Son's wedding 2.5 months from now.

My stress began when I was in Toronto and I dragged my friend Trish (who has a car) to various fabric shops. We ended up in Fabricland before I realised I didn't like any of the patterns except for the mock-mediaeval gown. It was clearly a mistake for women to move on from 14th century fashion. However, it would also be mistake to go swanning into the Basilica of Saint Mirosława the Miserable in a mock-mediaeval gown. It wasn't even authentic; there was something wrong about the fastening, as Trish (expert) pointed out. 

We left before I could wig out over the pattern books, and that night I had a very bad dream in which Trish was in love with a Stalin-Putin hybrid, but he was in love with me. It was quite an uncomfortable situation, and I was very relieved when I woke up. 

A blogpost has suggested that one should not wear to Polish weddings what one wears to English ones (e.g. lovely hats) but instead pick something one could wear to a high-end disco. 

Unfortunately I have not the slightest idea what one wears to a high-end disco.  The last time I went out dancing it was to Balkanarama and I dressed like this: 

Excitingly, although I was with two young female colleagues of my husband, I was the first one to get chatted up. This may be because young British men have a soft spot for the over-35 set, or maybe it was a sneaky trick to lower my companions' confidence so they would talk to simply anyone afterwards. I suspect one day this will stop happening and I will have to get ego-boosts from elsewhere. On the other hand, elderly widowers would approach my grandmother when she was visiting the cemetery and invite her to the adjacent McDonald's. It's not over till it's over. 

I came across this "high-end disco" advice very recently. Until then I was gazing at splendid English gowns I cannot afford. (See here and here.) As I always say, British shops have splendid dresses for women, so it is a shame British women do not wear them more often. Although I keep staring at the website for my go-to (and bought this little bargain on my lunch break), I cannot find a dress that says "I am the perfect dress for traditional June weddings in Poland!" 

So naturally I am asking for advice. I like long and floaty with sleeves, the budget goes no higher than £200, and I prefer to buy British. 

Pink Sunday

It was lovely to find myself in the choir stalls at the back of church again. Naturally I do not really belong in the stalls, not being in the minute choir, but the choristers stick to the right side, leaving the left side free for interlopers. And as the choir stalls are slightly raised, there is a view of the congregation from there. I have always liked to look at the congregation,

It was Laetare Sunday, so rose vestments were the order of the day, although the only actually pink thing I remember at Mass was our priest's stole. Such cheerful things as liturgical colours were driven from my mind by the news from the pulpit that one of the tea ladies had been hit by a double-decker bus and was lying very badly injured in hospital. It is a terrible thing to have happened to a very sweet old lady who is not only a pillar of the TLM community but a tireless campaigner for noble causes.

When I got back to the Historical Tenement I looked up "pensioner" "hit by bus" and "Edinburgh" on the internet and discovered that this was not a unique occurrence. I swiftly found news stories about two other pensioners and a heavily pregnant woman who were also hit by Edinburgh busses recently.

After Benedict Ambrose had a nap, we went back out into the city and got on one of its lethal busses towards Portobello. Our destination was a Laetare Sunday supper, and according to tradition, all the food was pink.  In the sitting-room, we had pink lemonade-and-gin cocktails with slices of delicious Serrano ham and "ham"-flavoured crisps. Then dinner began with pink soup (beetroot, cream and red onion), followed by boiled pork and pink potatoes and then raspberry fool and "Cherry Lambrini."

The "Cherry Lambrini" is a Pink Sunday joke, really. It tastes a lot like cherry Kool-aid, and a teenager could drink a bottle of it quite innocently and not understand afterwards how she got so drunk. For once I was a bit sad I have (mostly) weened myself from sugar because otherwise Cherry Lambrini would be a wonderful drink. If I were still interested in clubbing (and could still drink sweet things), that is what I would drink before a night on the tiles.

Cherry Lambrini seems to have made me quite nostalgic for my youth--or some imagined youth that featured Cherry Lambrini instead of Mike's Hard Lemonade, a rather disgusting Canadian concoction that fuelled my dance floor exuberance when I was in my late twenties.

The entertainment during supper, besides our own highly amusing company, was youtube videos of processions and masses in Spain, and also Dudley Moore's splendid spoof on Benjamin Britten's folk song arrangements:

This last was thanks to my brother Nulli's and our friend Red Mezzo's concert in rural Quebec when my mum and I were there a week-and-a-half ago. I mentioned their programme in the hopes of eliciting a musical conversation I might actually understand, and said that I didn't like Britten's folk song arrangements, which opinion did not enrage my hearers although they clearly thought his folk song arrangements are fine. What got them agitated was my statement that Widor's "Toccata in F" is secular and was written not for a Mass but for concerts, which is just about the only thing about music I actually know.

The French Cafe

On Friday evenings around 7:30 PM, if I have put in a solid day's work, I shut my laptop and do an energetic happy dance. One of the many wonderful things about full-time, Monday to Friday work is that there really is such a thing as a weekend. Saturday is no longer just Tuesday with bigger crowds.

That said, there is a surprisingly large number of tourists around. Benedict Ambrose says that this is to be expected, and I suppose it is, now that we are no longer off the beaten tourist trail. Although not actually at the Heart of Midlothian, I could stroll over and spit on it on my lunch break.

My circadian rhythms are still off-beat, so I slept very late, ruining the best part of the day. It wasn't until eleven o'clock that B.A. and I stepped out into the pouring rain and hurried to the French cafe. This was the third morning in a row that we went to that cafe, and once again it was full of foreigners. This time there were as many Italians as French-speakers. I suspect the cafe may have featured in a continental tourist guide under the chapter heading: "British Food: How to Stay Safe."

As a matter of fact, the British have learned a thing or two about cooking since Elizabeth David first set pen to olive oil-stained paper, but continentals have a hard time believing that. This may be because they have made the mistake of eating "croissants" at Costa or Caffe Nero or sampled the meatish pies steaming under the lights at Gregg's.  I would have to be very hungry indeed before I ate any standard High Street offering, and our new cafe is one of the only three Edinburgh places I would buy a croissant with any sense of joy and anticipation.

Even Brew Lab does not offer a good croissant; it is to weep.

Fortunately, the French cafe is even closer than Brew Lab, thanks to our urban exile. After our brunch and exploratory rummage in the Walker Slater outlet, we climbed our narrow winding staircase and settled down for a restful day of reading and study.

Study meant making up 70 flashcards of Polish vocabulary so basic, you would think I would have it perfectly hammered into my head by now, ready to spring forward for easy use as soon as it is required: words like the genitive form of "Edynburg" and the instrumental form of "week" and the adjectives "north", "south", "east" and "west" with their masculine, feminine and neuter endings.

Reading meant Tim Clare's  We Can't All Be Astronauts (2009), which I found in the cognitive neuroscience shelf at Central Library yesterday. Presumably it was supposed to be in "self-help" despite the tiny label at the bottom of the back cover pronouncing it to be "memoir."

It is quite a good book despite consisting of 300 pages of a millennial class traitor (male) hating himself, his friends and the universe because his Creative Writing class friends have all got great book deals and he doesn't.  (We know he's a class traitor because he mentions his roots in an apologetic way at least twice and denounces his hometown in colourfully scornful terms. He seems to be one of those formerly working-class kids who goes to uni and then alienates all his old friends and relations by asking them what they think of Japanese cinema and by saying "dinner" instead of "tea.")

What makes it a good book is that Clare employs an excellent technique for story-writing, and it is to figure out what one's hero wants more than anything in the world and then to prevent him from getting it.

Also, Clare is so abjectly miserable--and his friends so enormously successful--that I really did feel sorry for him and forgot that he had clearly got his book deal in the end. In addition, when I reflected that it had been a long time since I myself had got any fiction published, I felt very lucky that I actually do write for a living.

The best news story I wrote all week--as far as I can remember--was this one, and I'm glad I spent so much of Friday on it because it is the story of a woman who objects to the racist anti-racist campaign in her child's and grandchildren's school district. Unlike the CBC, it seems, I thought to ask her what her family background was and whether she or her family has experienced racism herself or themselves. Yes, she has, and yes, they have. The heroine of my story is a living, breathing anti-racism poster in herself, and I'd like to shake her hand. I was very pleased to be able to tell her that Jordan Peterson had tweeted in support of her concerns.

Alas that my story is not in the Top Five, but if you look at the Top Five, you will see why.

Incidentally, while I read Tim Clare's self-description of himself in stained shorts playing video games, I felt that he would have profited from a few Jordan Peterson videos, only I don't remember if there was youtube in 2007. One of the problems of our lifetime is that everything changes so rapidly, I can't remember what technology we had from year to year. We definitely had blogs in 2006, and I had work published online on a friend's online journal between 2002 and 2005. I didn't have a mobile phone before 2008, but other people did. My dad brought home a Commodore 64 in the 1980s and thanks to his work we had very early internet access, but I  typed my undergrad papers on my dear old electric typewriter until.... hmm....

This technological amnesia became an issue last night as we watched a made-for-Netflix drama about the Unabomber. I couldn't believe the computers were so clunky in 1995, or that they still had green cursors and letters. But now I am becoming completely off-topic. Suffice it to say that we are doing well, have access to superlative architecture, good coffee, excellent croissants, library books, wi-fi and Netflix.

The Historical Tenement

Example of Historical Tenement

I'm back in Scotland after three weeks in Canada. Apologies to everyone I didn't have the opportunity to see. It was the first "visit home" in which I worked eight hours a day, Monday to Friday. Thus, I had a lot less time to sit around in cafes and kitchens.

The Historical House is still undergoing repairs, so B.A. led me from the train station to the Historical Tenement where we are currently staying. It's even older than the Historical House and in a very old neighbourhood, too. The interior of our flat is quite modern, except for the lovely 12-light and 18-light windows. It is small, but not too small for two people who are fond of each other.

To get to it one must climb a very steep and narrow winding staircase, and I was not a happy woman making the ascent wearing an overstuffed Osprey backpack. However, I was soon cheered up by the daffodils on the dining-nook table and by the sweet little kitchen with its interesting views. Also, we went out at once to have a milky coffee and a bun at a French cafe where the employees and a surprising number of patrons were themselves French.

I think this shall prove to be an interesting experiment in "living small", to say nothing of "living urban." The urban should make up for the small, but we will see.

A sad loss: Polish in 4 Weeks Part 2 fell out a pocket of my Osprey backpack somewhere between Toronto and Glasgow. This is a blow to my plan to review its grammar, to say nothing of my plan to memorise deeply all its vocabulary. However, I think I might be able to find a copy of Pi4W, P2 in the library, and for the time being I am still reviewing P1.

Ban Bridemaids' Dresses

"Just wear your favourite okay-for-church dress," I said to my maid-of-honour.

No, I didn't. I made my poor sister wear a shiny dark green formal dress even though she doesn't wear green and the wedding ended before 5 PM.

What was I thinking?

The issue came up today because last night I dreamed that I was an attendant at Polish Pretend Son's wedding (a groomswoman, as a matter of fact) and so did not have to buy my own outfit, which was great. I also got a very cool attendant's present.

I told PPS of this excellent dream, and he informed me that large bands of bridesmaids and groomsmen (or women) all dressed the same is an Anglo-Saxons tradition, one that he finds "quite atrocious" and other things I prudently will not repeat.

PPS allowed as to how perhaps he always has seen the custom badly executed, which just goes to show how the love of a good woman can change a man, or at least train him to consider alternative points of view. However, I thought about his denunciation of our little altar armies and realised that he was probably right---at least about the clothes.

It's hardly revolutionary to point out that few women wear a bridemaid's dress more than once, why not put an end to them?

Wouldn't bridal parties look nicer if instead of trying to make everyone look the same (which is impossible anyway), we just asked our two witnesses to wear their best dress and favourite tie, and let the whole matching-attendant thing die?

For one thing, it would save a lot of money. For another, it would save the whole "who's in, who's out" rangle.

A Snowy Bridge

Last night my mother and I returned from a car trip to my brother's village in the Eastern Townships of Quebec. It was a 7.5 hour journey, with at least two unnerving moments: the setting sun getting in my mother's eyes as she drove through Ontario and, before that, crossing a very high and snowy bridge over the St. Lawrence River.

It was snowing, and I thought about Scotland how the Central Belt (from Glasgow to Edinburgh) ground to a halt last week because of blizzards. It's easy to laugh at the British for their inability to cope with snow, but without snow tires or any kind of snow safety training, it's hard to see how they could. Meanwhile, Mum and I had proper tires, but as soon as we started driving up the bridge (literally up), I began to pray. The crossing lasted one quick decade of the rosary. 

This would be difficult for people from reformed traditions to understand, but since Benedict Ambrose's dramatic recovery, I've concluded our family patroness must be the Immaculate Heart of Mary. The Immaculate Heart of Mary was most definitely in my thoughts as we crossed that bridge, as was Benedict Ambrose. I realised that, having prayed for him at Mass that morning, it was more than likely that he had prayed for me at Mass that morning. This was a very comforting thought. 

This year my trip home has been unusual in that I've been working from 9-5 almost every weekday--although occasionally I take lunch out instead of just working through lunchtime with a bowl of food on the desk. It has made it more difficult to see everyone I want to see, as often as I want to see them. But at the same time, I'm grateful that I have a job I can do anywhere there is an internet connection. 

The sacrifice is time to really reflect on how everyone is and what has changed over the past year.  The children are all taller, of course. My seven-year-old niece now says she hates pink and wants to wear black all the time. She has drawn a skull-and-crossbones which now adorn her bedroom door. I asked her if she was a Goth, and she didn't know what a Goth was, so that's not it. My nine-year-old nephew is less noisily rebellious. The candy store in my brother's village has shut down. The bookshop, thank heavens, survives.