Lunch ladies are heroes

For 30 years now, TED talks have been enabling educated white people to think they have deep insight into the world. As an educated white person who thinks he has deep insight into the world, I like TED talks, and, precisely because I am their target audience, I have come to despise the smug preening of so many of them. Nonetheless, I subscribe to the TED podcast because every once in a while I hear one which touches on our common humanity rather than our overweening self-confidence. Jarrett Krosoczka's paean to lunch ladies is a lovely reminder that, whatever else one might say about the public schools, very many of their employees are decent human beings who genuinely are working for what they perceive to be the good of children. More: it's a reminder that what makes America great is a fundamental sense of decency which is grounded in a recognition of the value of human beings as such.

A running time of under 5 minutes, and I was weeping halfway through; if you have a heart, so will you.

False & illuminating

The First Things website just posted Richard J. Mouw's "My Favorite Heretic," in which he recommends reading those hostile to our faith precisely because their false beliefs help illuminate the content of the faith. It's a lovely bit of writing, clearly the result of a life spent in reflection on sympathetic reading of every writer one reads. 

"Some perspectives come close to the Christian vision precisely because they are, in another sense, so far away from it."

We can learn something about our God from every book, even from those who urge us to reject our Lord. In the end, there's no other reason to read.

The Power of the Church (Calvin's Institutes, Battles edition: pp. 1149-1166, vol. 2)

I just finished Book 4, chapter 8 of the Institutes, where Calvin discourses on what I've come to consider the particular genius of presbyterian government and practice, and which is succintly expressed in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church's Form of Government: "All church power is only ministerial and declarative, for the Holy Scriptures are the only infallible rule of faith and practice" (OPC FG III, 3). It warms the cockles of my presbyterian heart, and makes me so long to apply Scripture to Church affairs that I almost look forward to participating in presbytery deliberations.

Almost.

Nat's revenge

Since my teen years, when his column "Sweet Land of Liberty" was still widely syndicated, First Amendment and jazz scholar Nat Hentoff has been my personal Jiminy Cricket, my secular conscience always reminding me that I must read the text of the United States Constitution rather than think it follows my sometime fickle inclinations. As the newspaper industry has undergone massive contractions over the last decade, the unthinkable occurred and The Village Voice laid him off. Nonetheless, he keeps writing for the Cato Institute and continues to stir up outrage over the practical suspension of the rule of law in these United States.

I've been reading newspapers as long as I've been reading, and insisted we subscribe to The Denver Post here at the Curmudgeon household. However, Mrs. Curmudgeon has been questioning the value gained for the expense, and I was shocked to learn the monthly difference between a print subscription and a digital subscription (which includes a subscription to The Washington Post and Time magazine) is about $17. In about 10 months after switching to digital, we'll have saved enough to pay for the used iPad we're now using to read the news"paper."

Just as we were making the switch, Nat Hentoff published "How Much Digital Reading Stays inside You?," in which he cited some recent research to tout the superiority of print reading over digital forms of delivery. I can't argue with him: even though I own a Kindle, I write out all my exegetical notes for sermon preparation with a pencil and read hard copies of all my commentaries. Even though I already owned a digital collection of John Calvin's complete works, I bought a printed set when I found it on sale. I know full well that we were meant to read words printed on paper, and Nat Hentoff reminded me that I had once again betrayed the cause.

Or at least I tried to. Mrs. Curmudgeon and I have called Honduras, where The Denver Post's call center is located, countless times. We've been assured our subscription has been switched over to digital-only and we will not be charged for the print edition. Nonetheless, every morning it's there at the end of my driveway, a reminder of all that is true and good in this fallen world, a solidified phantasm of the more genteel ways under which I came of age. Nat Hentoff would be pleased: I just can't get rid of the actual, physical newspaper.

And so in tribute to Nat, I read the printed comics section first. But then I turn on the iPad, because I have to admit I prefer The Washington Post app's countless supply of comic strips, even though I know I will never be able to light my grill with it, wadded up or not.