What are you reading?

I read a lot of books (those less these days than at some times in the past) and a fair number of magazines and newspapers.  Also, blogs.  And lots of other internet things.  But there is one reading source which often escapes attention in regular discussion which is of great import here.  After all, no compendium of all things Mattathias-y would be complete without at least a passing reference to web-comics.

I also like print comics, which combine two of my favorite things (words and pictures) into a marvelous new thing. Web-comics add a third ingredient: the internet.

What use are stories?

Last August, I had the singular pleasure of reading, for the first time, a few essays by Brian Doyle, as part of a class about essays. At the end of that class, I had another great pleasure and privilege: that of sitting in the room during a phone interview with Brian Doyle himself. Here are my notes:

"The reason that poetry is in the end the greatest literary art is that it’s closest to music. It can be easily abused. There’s more bad poetry than anything else.

To say something big in a small space is a great virtue.

Part of our training as writers is to write poorly, you have to learn the craft by learning what not to do.

A lot of early writing is about the self, it’s kind of self absorbed—maturity as a writer involves looking at the glory and beauty in other things.

What's in a Name? (Part 2)

Last week I was volunteering with a project called Lose the Training Wheels, as a bike spotter. Their were about 15 of us volunteers, working together for a week. We had about thirty minutes of downtime between sessions. Almost none of us knew each other at the start of the week, but we developed the sort of easy break-room relationships that come with any project like this. We'd chat about sports scores, or colleges, or how well our riders were learning. Sometimes, we'd kick around a soccer ball or shoot some hoops.

But that's not what this post is about. Here, I mean to ponder the following phenomenon.

There was another Matt in the group. A Matthew, rather than a Mattathias, but we were both going by Matt. This caused the standard confusion on the first day ("Matt, you'll be working with Nathan... Oh shoot, there are two Matts.) This is fairly common, but what happened next is interesting.

The other Matt, it was clear, felt an instant connection because of our shared name. For the rest of the week, when he came in, the first thing he'd do was greet me with a "How's it going, Matt?" and a wide grin. During breaks, he'd come over to talk. Besides the name and the interest in volunteering, we didn't have much in common, but that didn't seem to matter to him.

Matt was friendly with everyone, but obviously felt that there was significance to our fellow Matt-hood. I don't think I felt it nearly so strongly as he did, perhaps because being a Mattathias has always made me feel different from other Matts, especially Matthews.

So what is it then, that makes a shared name feel like a shared nature?

what does it mean that I've spent hours knitting a hedgehog for you?

This question is from the last post's comments, by the way. I don't really know the answer, but I did want to show off my knit hedgehog.

Why suffering?

I’ve been reading the Book of Job, looking for an answer.
This question has been asked by person after person, year after year, struck by fire or flood or disease or war. Why, why, why?
Usually, the question is addressed to God. If humans knew, why would they ask?
And yet we also offer our own answers, and sometimes accept them. Two of the standard answers go like this:
1) It’s our fault. We’ve done something wrong, or our ancestors did something wrong, and we’re being punished by God. This is the view expressed by Job’s friends, who tell him that he’ll suffer no more if he only repents of a wrong he doesn’t know he’s done.
2) It’s God’s fault. Usually for not being there. After all, if there were an all-powerful, good God, he would prevent suffering, right? Those who accept this answer see suffering either as proof of God’s non-existence, or as proof against God’s benevolence. Job’s wife expresses this approach when she tells him to curse God and die, since his suffering is, in her eyes, a demonstration of God’s injustice.

The marvelous thing about the book of Job is that it rejects both these answers. Job is not at fault– he is the perfect and the upright man. Nor is God at fault.

How am I supposed to answer that?

I'm taking a survey on undergraduate engagement. It's a pretty well-put together and thorough survey, designed to see whether college students are actually doing all those things that are reported to make college experience so great. It's useful information for my university, and for educators in general, but it's also a useful self-check for me, to see how I've been doing.

How often have I connected ideas from my different courses?
How often have I talked with my professors outside of class?
How often have I worked harder than I thought I could in order to meet a professor's expectations?

Most of these question are pretty easy to answer-- I either have or I haven't (although there is a four step scale: never, sometimes, often and very often.)

Here's the question that made me stop, open a new tab, and start writing this post:

How often have you "had serious conversations with students of a different race or ethnicity than your own?"

Would you like to Dance?

Because I do. Like to dance, that is.

I'm taking a formal dance class for the first time in my life. It's introductory social dance, and the number is Dance 180, which I like because it reminds me of 180°, which in turn reminds me of Poetry 180, the collection which moved me from reading poetry to writing poetry.

Dancing itself reminds me of the Indian weddings in California where I first learned the rythyms and movements of Bhangra, and of the times in my childhood when someone would just turn on some music and before you knew it the whole family was there, in the living room, dancing like crazy, throwing our arms and legs all over the place. From a technical perspective, none of us were very good, but when the music moves through you that doesn't matter.

What's in a Name?

Nearly every time I'm asked my name, my answer is immediately followed by another question, usually "Where's that from?" or "What does that mean?"

Recently, I've answered the first question by saying, "It's the Latin transliteration of the Hebrew name which Matthew is the Greek transliteration of" which is more honest than saying "It's Hebrew" but also may be more than most people want to know, and doesn't really give them much that's useful to go on.

When I have more time, I tell the story of Mattathias of Modin and his sons, the Maccabees. The way I tell this story has also changed considerably over time, and changes with my audience.

I don't think I've ever satisfactorily answered the second question, and I don't think anyone else has either. What does it mean that I am named Mattathias (and not perhaps Matthew or Methuselah)? Has the name become a part of me? Have I become a part of it?