Generated by All in One SEO v4.9.10, this is an llms.txt file, used by LLMs to index the site. # A World of Speculation Abstractions and Perpetual Possibilities ## Sitemaps - [XML Sitemap](https://janvbear.com/sitemap.xml): Contains all public & indexable URLs for this website. ## Posts - [Blog](https://janvbear.com/blog/) - ['The Crop'—Living in My Head](https://janvbear.com/the-crop-living-in-my-head/) - OK. She’s done it this time. In her story “The Crop,” Flannery O’Connor has taken her satire a step too far—skewering a writer in search of a story. As the old joke goes, "I resemble that remark." Miss Willerton (and O’Connor never gives us her first name) lives with her two sisters and her brother-in-law - ['The Turkey'—A Redneck Fairy Tale](https://janvbear.com/the-turkey-a-redneck-fairy-tale/) - If Flannery O’Conner were to write a fairy tale about a boy who got everything he wished for and it all turned to dirt on him, it would look a lot like her story “The Turkey.” Ruller is a boy of about twelve who spots a turkey limping through the underbrush and wishes he had - ['Wildcat'—Facing Death](https://janvbear.com/wildcat-facing-death/) - In Flannery O’Connor’s story, “Wildcat,” an old, blind, black man faces death. Old Gabriel, blind from childhood, can perceive a lot through his senses of smell and hearing. He recognizes three of the four young men—his grandchildren—on the front porch by their smell, and he knows the smell of a wildcat. The young men are - ['The Barber'—Arguing with Trolls](https://janvbear.com/the-barber-arguing-with-trolls/) - O Lord and Master of my life, take from me a spirit of despondency, sloth, love of money, and idle talk. — Lenten Prayer of St. Ephrem the Syrian Did you ever get into an argument with a troll? I’m ashamed to say that I have a few times, and it doesn't turn out well. - ['The Geranium' and the Expulsion from Paradise](https://janvbear.com/the-geranium-and-the-expulsion-from-paradise/) - In one of Flannery O’Connor’s earliest stories, an old man from Georgia laments his decision to move in with his daughter in New York City. His yearning for home is like Psalm 136 (137): By the rivers of Babylon, There we sat down, yea, we wept, When we remembered Zion. This Psalm is sung during - [In which I Substitute Writing for Sleeping Meditation](https://janvbear.com/writing-meditation-not-sleeping-meditation/) - Meditation comes hard for me — or maybe too easy. I always fall asleep. So I tried something different. Writing. Read more at Unorthodox and Orthodox. Photo by dorota dylka on Unsplash - [Writing Days: Good and Bad](https://janvbear.com/writing-days-good-and-bad/) - At the beginning of the 1984 movie, Romancing the Stone, we find romance author Joan Wilder, played by Kathleen Turner, finishing her new novel. As the heroine and hero ride off into the sunset, the camera turns to Joan behind her typewriter, with her face transfigured by the story. She’s been crying, and she gets - [The Villain’s Journey](https://janvbear.com/the-villains-journey/) - In some stories (my own included, sadly), the villain moves through the plot like a chess piece in a rigged game. These stories may have action, but they lack depth.In a great story, the hero and the villain engage in a kind of dance, each illuminating the other’s options and choices. There’s a sense that - [Inner Life, Inner Work](https://janvbear.com/inner-life-inner-work/) - Whether you’re a fiction writer trying to add depth to your characters or someone wanting to explore the mysteries of your own inner life, Inner Work, by Robert Johnson will be a valuable resource for you.Johnson, a Jungian analyst and author of 17 books, wrote the book as a means to interpret dreams, avoiding the - [Mansfield Park vs. Mansfield Park](https://janvbear.com/mansfield-park-vs-mansfield-park/) - I recently watched the Mansfield Park movie, made in 1999. As standalone entertainment, it was OK: entertaining and emotionally moving with a dollop of social consciousness.But it had been a long time since I had read the book by Jane Austen, and there were a few things that surprised me about Austen. A hardness, a coarseness, - [Asphalt Asylum, Steve Theme](https://janvbear.com/asphalt-asylum-steve-theme/) - Steve Theme’s memoir, Asphalt Asylum: The Dark Roads to Light is a moving and thoughtful adventure story about a young man who leaves home to fight the darkness he sees growing in himself.As a 19-year-old in 1978, Steve struck out from Seattle, Washington, heading south on a hitchhiking journey that eventually took him to Key - [Anansi Boys, Neil Gaiman](https://janvbear.com/anansi-boys-neil-gaiman/) - Neil Gaiman is a mystical portal where folk stories and mythology come pouring into our present literature. Everything from Norse (and other) mythologies (American Gods) to the land of nightmares (Coraline) flows through his rich imagination. In Anansi Boys he goes to the African spider-trickster for his source and brings him into a dysfunctional American and - [Robert McKee's 'Story'](https://janvbear.com/robert-mckees-story/) - It's probably the single most useful book I've ever bought on large-scale writing projects. Robert McKee's Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting is written for screen-writers, but it deals with the higher structural issues that figure in films, plays and novels -- the only difference is the mode of presentation. He starts - [Anathem by Neal Stephenson](https://janvbear.com/anathem-by-neal-stephenson/) - In Neal Stephenson's Anathem, young members of a mathematical community (that looks a lot like a monastic community on earth) simply want to live out their bookish lives in the quiet, calm seclusion of the community. But when the once-a-decade Apert celebration comes around, they find themselves pulled into the hubbub and confusion of the - [Doomsday Book by Connie Willis](https://janvbear.com/doomsday-book-by-connie-willis/) - Time travel to the 14th century and a 21st-century flu outbreak test the resourcefulness of people in both locales in Connie Willis's Doomsday Book. Kivrin is a young time traveler sent to explore 14th century England at the same time a fatal flu outbreak back in her "present" combines with the chaos of the Christmas - [Prophets and Loss by Martin Roth](https://janvbear.com/prophets-and-loss-by-martin-roth/) - Martin Roth's Prophets and Loss is a deep character study wrapped in an intriguing mystery. Who can you trust? is the question that runs through the story, with twists and turns on the question in every chapter. Even Johnny Ravine isn't quite sure he can trust himself, leading him into the deep pits of his - [The Maze by Jason Bannon](https://janvbear.com/the-maze-by-jason-bannon/) - In The Maze, a man’s near-death experience throws him into a psychological-spiritual-symbolic labyrinth that calls into question everything he’s been and whether it’s worth it to him to be something different. Jamie Burroughs is a man whose moral needle points to the yellow, “pretty good” region of the dial. He’s never killed anyone, he would - [Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome](https://janvbear.com/three-men-in-a-boat-by-jerome-k-jerome/) - I've wanted to read Three Men in a Boat ever since I first read Connie Willis' funny time-travel novel, To Say Nothing of the Dog, which is the subtitle of this book. Three Men in a Boat is an episodic journey of three men in flannel and boaters traveling up the Thames River in Victorian - [Restaurant Redemption: The Christian Vision of Kitchen Nightmares](https://janvbear.com/christian-vision-kitchen-nightmare/) - I’ve gotten hooked on Kitchen Nightmares streaming on Netflix. I love the drama, the high stakes, the storytelling, and the effect it has on my own cooking (taking me from “whatever” to “that might be good”). One evening as I was cooking dinner and watching Chef Gordon Ramsay close yet another restaurant for unsanitary conditions, I - [Log's Eye View](https://janvbear.com/logs-eye-view/) - A week at the beach has been a good time for learning to create a zone for writing. In the psychological fantasy I'm working on, I find that the sound track is the David Lynch station on Pandora. Why David Lynch? What attracted me most to Twin Peaks was not the story, which was a series of loosely - [Stakes in Fiction-Writing: The End of the World](https://janvbear.com/stakes-fiction-writing-end-world/) - In fiction, stakes are always about the end of the world. I’ve been resistant to that because I think oncoming asteroids and alien invasions are boring (even though I like science fiction). But that’s because I’ve defined the “end of the world” too narrowly. The end of the world can happen on every level, from - [Book Review: The Substance of Style](https://janvbear.com/book-review-substance-of-style/) - For an Orthodox Christians, there’s a lot in Virginia Postrel’s book The Substance of Style: How the Rise of Aesthetic Value Is Remaking Commerce. Culture. and Consciousness by Postrel. Virginia I. ( 2004 ) Paperback that generates an “aha.” From the ornately carved caves of the seventh-century Cappadocian hermits to the spectacular mosaics of Constantinople - [Substance of Style III](https://janvbear.com/substance-of-style-3/) - I'm heading south for a week, and when I get back I expect to have finished reading The Substance of Style: How the Rise of Aesthetic Value Is Remaking Commerce. Culture. and Consciousness by Postrel. Virginia I. ( 2004 ) Paperback and have begun McKee's Story. In the meantime, there's packing and remembering all the - [The Substance of Style II](https://janvbear.com/substance-of-style-2/) - More about The Substance of Style: How the Rise of Aesthetic Value Is Remaking Commerce. Culture. and Consciousness by Postrel. Virginia I. ( 2004 ) Paperback. I'm still not finished with the book so this constitutes a discussion with an argument in progress. That is, I don't know where Postrel is going, but I'm thinking - [The Substance of Style by Virginia Postrel](https://janvbear.com/substance-of-style/) - The Substance of Style: How the Rise of Aesthetic Value Is Remaking Commerce. Culture. and Consciousness by Postrel. Virginia I. ( 2004 ) Paperback Virginia Postrel's new book is part pop-culture, part economics and part a glance into the human psyche. She lays out her groundwork really well, which is that people are interested in - [Satire](https://janvbear.com/satire/) - OK, what I need to do here is go back to - [The Social Dimension of Literature](https://janvbear.com/social-dimension-of-literature/) - I love audio books. It's another place where technology has brought us closer to our roots, and those roots offer much nourishment. Once upon a time, literature was stories, and stories were oral (and aural). People gathered with the clan to hear the clan's history, its days of glory, how we got to be where - [Progress on Ghosts](https://janvbear.com/progress-on-ghosts/) - On the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, 2003, it's Regina Carter on iTunes tonight, and Mocha is off elsewhere. But I had intended to write at least every day or two and now it's been almost two weeks. So, Jan, where've you been all this time? Thanks for asking. I've made progress on my novel, Ghost Songs - [Changing Lanes](https://janvbear.com/changing-lanes/) - Changing Lanes is a morality tale of two men who have a traffic accident and spend the rest of the day alternately trying to make peace and destroy the other. The young lawyer, played by Ben Affleck, is driven by ambition and fear to lie, deceive, manipulate -- skate over the daily moralities that make - [The Cathedral vs. the Book](https://janvbear.com/cathedral-vs-book/) - I enjoy bloggers with humor, who find profundity in daily events, who read the ingredients on the Can 'O' Rhetoric that is served up on every side. Especially good at this is James Lileks. He finds meaning in the great icons—architecture, publishing, advertising, commercial symbolism—they tell about us. One of the most fascinating passages I - [His Dark Materials](https://janvbear.com/his-dark-materials/) - Philip Pullman's trilogy, His Dark Materials, has spurred thoughts about fascism and how it shows itself today, and perhaps tomorrow. The point of the trilogy is that the entire human tradition of good and evil has been turned upside down. God is evil; Satan is good. All forms of Tradition are soul-destroying. There is no - [To begin a blog . . .](https://janvbear.com/to-begin-blog/) - This is an experiment, to find out if I have anything to say. I'm a middle-aged writer and editor with two teen-agers and a novel on the way. Mocha is a year-old Lab puppy and Thief of Socks. In religion, I'm Eastern Orthodox; in politics mostly conservative; in animals a dog person; in music a - [Memories of long-ago inspiration](https://janvbear.com/memories-of-long-ago-inspiration/) - When I went to check the lyrics of Desiderata for a game at Ship of Fools, I thought it would be gaggingly sweet, embarrassing. I expected it to be like watching Billy Jack again or reading my high-school poetry--a reminder of how earnestly vapid I was as a teen-ager. I was surprised to find it - [Goo-goo-googling](https://janvbear.com/goo-goo-googling/) - I think I've been an occasion for distraction. Someone got to this site by way of a Google search for Google Search: "thumb over" piano technique. Me? Piano technique? Well, there was Steve, pointing over his shoulder with his thumb, and there was the shopping technique the person rifling Mary's closet learned from the Goodwill, - ['Wishing upon a star'](https://janvbear.com/wishing-upon-a-star/) - In a review of Finding Neverland, Frederica Mathewes-Green points out an insidious trend in children's literature: When Sylvia dies, Barrie instructs her son Peter (Freddie Highmore), "She's on every page of your imagination. You'll always have her here. She went to Neverland and you can visit her there any time you like." Peter asks, "How?" - [Icons shine at Orthodox Writers Week at the Beach](https://janvbear.com/iconographer-orthodox-writers-week-at-the-beach/) - Not everyone at Orthodox Writers Week at the Beach this year worked in paper or pixels. Orthodox iconographer Heather MacKean’s project took the form of egg tempera paint on a wooden board. The icon, Saints of North America, features eight standing saints from North American Orthodox history, as well as the Theotokos, looking down from - [Stealing Time](https://janvbear.com/stealing-time/) - I creep through the house in the dark morning And find time lying abandoned in pools of night: Tossed into corners, scattered on the floor, jumbled on the chairs. I take an hour, maybe two, and use them for my own purposes. Who will know? I will. My conscience nags. “Sleep,” it says. “Or talk. - [The Greater Trumps](https://janvbear.com/the-greater-trumps/) - I don't read Charles Williams in quite the same way I read other novels, unless every novel is different, which is a possibility. I don't read him for the puzzle, for the "Aha! I know that person!," for the eye-popping descriptions. I know when I pick up one of his novels--or his poetry for that - [Sound](https://janvbear.com/sound/) - I just took a One-Minute Vacation in Jalisco, Mexico. It was fun. I had never been that far into Mexico before, and a couple of guys were playing marimba in the marketplace, with people walking by talking Spanish, and I could almost smell the wares of the food vendors, feel the sweat streaking down my - [What element are you?](https://janvbear.com/what-element-are-you/) - No, it's not one of those nifty quizzes. At a writers' workshop a while back, the leader, Cricket Pechstein, gave us an exercise, asking to classify ourselves accordiwg to the four elements--earth air, fire, and water. Well, different people took it different ways, and none were wrong, of course, but I landed on a scheme - [Comment on Theophany](https://janvbear.com/comment-on-theophany/) - My friend Barbara comments Dear Jan,I always enjoy "what if's" especially in the Chestertonian sense of the earth having life instead of merely being the objects of scientific laws. I have had various conversations that express exclusivity between literal and abstract, reality and non-reality, fact and fiction. I get into conversations with people who are - [Irritating Words](https://janvbear.com/irritating-words/) - According to an Associated Press story, Lake Superior State University has determined that the following words should be banned: Metrosexual: An urban male who pays a great deal of attention to appearance.X: As in “X-Files,” Xtreme, Windows XP and X-Box.Punked: To dupe, popularized by the MTV show “Punk’d.”Place Stamp Here: Printed on return envelopes.Companion animals: - [Of Mice and Men](https://janvbear.com/of-mice-and-men-few-miles-south-of/) - Of Mice and Men A few miles south of Soledad, the Salinas River drops in close to the hillside bank and runs deep and green. The water is warm too, for it has slipped twinkling over the yellow sands in the sunlight before reaching the narrow pool. On one side of the river the golden - [Another one of those funny quizzes](https://janvbear.com/funny-quizzes/) - Morpheus ?? Which Of The Greek Gods Are You ??brought to you by Quizilla Actually, I would have preferred to be Hyperion, but he wasn't on the list. Apollo was — steadfast and trustworthy, sort of an immortal golden retriever. It wasn't the way I envisioned him. But then, I wouldn't have envisioned the God - [Theophany](https://janvbear.com/theophany/) - Greetings on Theophany Once upon a time, many years ago, when I hadn't chosen a number of the roads I've since chosen, I thought I would write a book about the Orthodox view of the cosmos. As a hiker and backpacker, a lover of solitude and the songs of rivers, I thought the Orthodox view - [Some good advice for writers](https://janvbear.com/good-advice-for-writers/) - The rabbit blog doesn't seem to be updated very often, and the questions do have a tendency (noted in the text) to go on and on, and yet scrolling down to the answer to the Dec. 1, 2003, question, one finds some really good advice for writers: 1. Use your critics for good, not evil. - [Memory Eternal](https://janvbear.com/memory-eternal-2/) - Nona C. died Dec. 31. It's a simple sentence that closes the book on a life of nearly 80 years. She was half Aleut and grew up in Kodiak, near the island home of St. Herman, a holy man and early Russian missionary to Alaska. Although she lived here in Portlandfor many years, her heart - [Stepsheet completed](https://janvbear.com/stepsheet-completed/) - How to Write a Damn Good Novel - Books > Fiction After months of plotting and arranging scenes and rearranging scenes and pulling my hair because I'm not sure about the motivation and the stakes aren't high enough and why doesn't anybody care about the conflict anyway?, I've gotten a step sheet worked out with - [Bishop Auxentios of Photiki -- The Harry Potter Phenomenon and Orthodox Reactions](https://janvbear.com/harry-potter/) - Bishop Auxentios of Photiki -- The Harry Potter Phenomenon and Orthodox Reactions This is an incisive piece by an Orthodox bishop contrasting the "open, intelligent, and expansive intellectual view advocated by the Church Fathers" to the narrow and superstitious view advocated by Orthodox (and other) fundamentalists. He even manages to explain the anti-Western, specifically anti-American, - [A novelist looks at the Passion](https://janvbear.com/novelist-looks-at-the-passion/) - Mel Gibson's movie has stirred up a lot of controversy, and the cloud of fury of some Jewish people's response is so thick that we Christians can't even get down to arguing among ourselves about it. OK, just to get this out of the way, anti-Semitism is evil, and people, including Christians, who have committed - [A little history close to home](https://janvbear.com/a-little-history-close-to-home/) - At 160 years old, Oregon City is the oldest town in Oregon. For those who read this blog in other, more ancient places, that's laughably young, and yet it has some oddities about it that make it unique in the United States. First, unlike many of its contemporariess among the U.S.-settled cities west of the - [Highway people -- the hawk](https://janvbear.com/highway-people-the-hawk/) - The red-tailed hawk sits on a tall light pole overlooking I-84 in east Portland. Beneath him, a stream of cars creeps along a maze of over- and underpasses through a district of light industrial, warehouses and railroad tracks. The hawk sits tall and dignified, with his wings folded. Maybe he's watching for prey or maybe - [Back](https://janvbear.com/back/) - Holy Week was wonderful, as always--a pageant of backstory, flashback and foreshadowing, building tension, great poetry, strong and frequently conflicted characters, the Hero's Journey. An Orthodox Jew came to the Holy Saturday Vigil Liturgy, because a mutual friend of ours was being chrismated into the Orthodox (Christian) Church. That's a good liturgy for a Jew - [Fr. Dimitry Klepinin](https://janvbear.com/fr-dimitry-klepinin/) - Last month, I mentioned Mother Maria Skobtsova. Today I ran across a biography of Father Dimitry Klepinin, who helped her in her ministry in Paris. Here's an excerpt from the story: A German officer named Hoffman had collected a large amount of evidence on how Jews had been helped by Mother Maria and Fr. Dimitry. He was - [The door remains closed (for now)](https://janvbear.com/the-door-remains-closed-for-now/) - At GetReligion, Terry Mattingly posts this photo of a door in Constantinople (Istanbul to those who count the past 550 years as more important than the prior 1450). It's symbolic, because it's a door into the Phanar, the headquarters of the Ecumenical Patriarchate there, which was welded shut after the Turks hanged Patriarch Gregory V - [Critique group](https://janvbear.com/critique-group/) - My critique group meets in a the restaurant attached to a biker bar in Beavercreek, Oregon. When I go there in the summer, half the parking lot is roped off for Two-Wheel Tuesday, and a bunch of middle-aged Harley riders are gathered in their leather clothes with their leathery skin and talking about whatever middle-aged - [Rejection again](https://janvbear.com/rejection-again/) - It's ironic, after my post a couple of days ago about rejections, that I received one today, from the imprint of a major publisher, saying, "No, but . . . ." It's amazing what a difference there is between "yes, but . . ." and "no, but . . . ." Anyway, this was the - [Onion Dome Gets a Notice](https://janvbear.com/onion-dome-get-notice/) - The Onion Dome been given a big responsibility by the folks over at the Christianity Today weblog: As many Eastern Orthodox readers often point out, any time Weblog notes a news item on an Orthodox church, Weblog doesn't know much beyond the basics of Eastern Orthodoxy (what I've learned comes largely from reading Frederica Mathewes-Green - [A New Author](https://janvbear.com/new-author/) - I went to see David Farris this evening, author of Lie Still, a literary suspense novel. (Since it was at Powell's Books in downtown Portland, I thought it only appropriate to link to Powell's rather than Amazon.) He said he worked on this, his first novel, 16 years. It's been optioned for a movie, and - [Read the Onion Dome](https://janvbear.com/read-onion-dome/) - The new Onion Dome is posted. We've got a new writer this week, Alexander Lebedeff, Our Man in Moscow, who has discovered a new twist on adolescent rebellion. In the meantime, our Intrepid Editor reprises a piece about way cool bumper stickers, Marie Moffitt gives a Murphy award for a memorable houseblessing, and I've discovered - [Rejection](https://janvbear.com/rejection/) - Tor editor Teresa Nielsen Hayden deconstructs some whining responses to rejection letters: I've been contemplating a site, RejectionCollection.com, which is a sort of shrine to the rejection letter. A major portion of it is devoted to writers anonymously posting rejections they've received, and commenting on how it made them feel. I do understand their need - [Another Novel Warmup](https://janvbear.com/another-novel-warmup/) - This one is in honor of my daughters, who came to America from Russia nine years ago Feb. 2. Find your way in a strange city Mila took me to the subway station. She handed me some plastic tokens and told me where I needed to get off. I had never been on a subway - [Good Judge of Character?](https://janvbear.com/good-charge-of-character/) - Here's a fun little quiz for those who think they know their geeks: malevole - Programming Language Inventor or Serial Killer? A series of photos of men who were either inventers of computer programming language or else serial murderers? I got 8 out of 10. Not bad, the quiz says, but how many bad guesses - [Liturgical Olympics](https://janvbear.com/liturgical-olympics/) - The new issue of The Onion Dome: Orthodox News with a Twist is up. I've covered plans for Liturgical Olympics in Athens this summer; Marie Moffitt has the lowdown on an American ethnic festival, and Father Vasiliy has found another outrage at a Ukrainian meat market. - [Describe a used car](https://janvbear.com/describe-used-car/) - "Yeah, she runs good," Steve said. He stroked the door of the 1971 Volkswagen bus with an expression of pride and longing, as if it were a faithful horse too old to work the ranch. I opened the driver's door and put my head in, smelling the nostalgic scent of upholstery and motor oil. "Why - [Writing exercises](https://janvbear.com/writing-exercises/) - I'm participating in Yahoo! Groups' NovelMentor Writing Warmups. We are doing daily exercises based on the book A Writer's Book of Days by Judy Reeves. Our assignment today was to describe the contents of someone's closet. It's done in 15 minutes, by the timer, and when the timer stops, I stop. Aunt Mary's Closet Aunt - [A Dumb Movie](https://janvbear.com/dumb-movie/) - In a bid to spend some quality time with my teen-aged daughter today, we rented Alex & Emma, a work of romantic fluff by Rob Reiner, noted on the cover as the director of When Harry Met Sally. I'm not a big fan of When Harry Met Sally, but it's enormously better than Alex & - [Seldom is heard an encouraging word](https://janvbear.com/seldom-heard-encouraging-word/) - Wait. That's not the way the song goes, but it's frequently the way a writer's life goes. That's why a writer needs to be bull-headed to the point of stupidity. You don't like my book? Well, that shows what you know. Which is why it's an unusual feeling to read McKee's Story. I may not - [Subplots](https://janvbear.com/subplots/) - OK, here's something I learned today, from Robert McKee: Subplots. Any subplot in a novel must fill one of four roles: To contradict the controlling idea of the central plot and thus enrich the film with irony. To resonate the controlling idea of the central plot and enrich the film with variations on a theme. - [Onion Dome this week](https://janvbear.com/onion-dome-this-week/) - The Onion Dome this week Dare I admit that my piece in this week's Onion Dome is based on reality? Actually, anyone who reads the Onion Dome, especially anyone who's Orthodox, knows it's all true. - [About reversals](https://janvbear.com/about-reversals/) - Robert McKee defines a reversal as a change in value that takes place in a scene, over a sequence (a series of several scenes), during an act, and in the course of the screenplay as a whole. The value could be any pair of opposites that would be important to the character: wealth/poverty, happiness/sadness, harmony/disharmony. - [Postcard from Mars](https://janvbear.com/postcard-from-mars/) - I never thought I'd see the surface of Mars. I've read about it often enough in the SF dreams of the authors I've admired: Ray Bradbury's rocket-strewn skies in The Martian Chronicles; C.S. Lewis's intelligent and spiritual lifeforms; the explosions seen on the planet before The War of the Worlds; and too many more to - [Adaptation](https://janvbear.com/adaptation/) - I didn't see Adaptation when it came out, because I thought it was some Invasion of the Body Snatchers freak fest. I'm not sure I would have gotten it at the time. After reading halfway through Robert McKee's book, the movie makes sense. McKee is actually a character in the movie, and he mentions that - [A musical note](https://janvbear.com/a-musical-note/) - Congratulations to Cappella Romana on its $36,000 grant to fund three recordings. One is the Byzantine Divine Liturgy in English, scheduled for release next Christmas. For Christmas 2005 is Divine Liturgy and choral motets by Peter Michaelides. The third is music by Fr. Sergei Glagolev, conducted by Vladimir Morosan, in 2006. Cappella Romana is an - [Antagonism in Story](https://janvbear.com/antagonism-in-story/) - More applications of Story Today's great revelation from Robert McKee: The principle of antagonism. Take a story value, any story value, e.g. Justice. What's its opposite (he calls it the contradictory)? Injustice. Now think, it's possible to have a negative of Justice that's not exactly Injustice: Unfairness. (He calls this the contrary.) So Unfairness might - [Scene analysis using Story](https://janvbear.com/scene-analysis-using-story/) - My next Story exercise (more about the short story I was working on yesterday): doing an in-depth analysis of the scene structure. I found that the story falls into three discrete scenes, focusing on the three levels of antagonism I talked about yesterday. Ask who drives the scene? Who takes the primary action; who reacts? - [Faces](https://janvbear.com/faces/) - This site, SIMONHOEGSBERG.COM, has a series of 56 faces photographed walking along Edgeware Road, Marble Arch, London. The limited narrative on the site makes it sound as if the photos were taken at random. Perhaps they were. If so, then the selection shows genius. They are young, old and in between, and their faces express - [Trademark police](https://janvbear.com/trademark-police/) - Adobe's lawyers hold a sheaf of papers against a cracking dam in this page listing the "Thou Shalt Nots" of Adobe Photoshop: Adobe Systems Incorporated Terms of Use My favorite, which sums up the entire page is this one: Trademarks must never be used as slang terms.CORRECT: Those who use Adobe? Photoshop? software to manipulate - [Remembrance of Death](https://janvbear.com/remembrance-of-death/) - The Internet knows all, sees all, predicts everything. The Death Clock tells me that my personal day of death is Friday, Oct. 14, 2033. It's an average, of course, not a prediction, but the 29 years it predicts that I have left are reason for a reflective pause. The saints say that remembrance of death - [The Dog Ate My Homework](https://janvbear.com/dog-ate-homework/) - It was a long day at work yesterday, and when I got home, my head felt like it was encased in bubble wrap. I sat down at the computer, turned on Eddie Daniels and stumbled from one page to another. I've gotten to some really good stuff that way--Engrish is one and Monday's Death Clock - [Message, metamessage, subtext](https://janvbear.com/message-metamessage-subtext/) - Two sources come together for some insights into character, both on the page or screen and maybe even in real life. Robert McKee draws a distinction between characterization and character. Characterization is the outward manifestation of character, all the physical looks and actions that identify a person. Character is the secret reality that doesn't mesh - [The Onion Dome](https://janvbear.com/onion-dome/) - The Onion Dome Is Up I forgot to mention this earlier this week, but more satire is posted on The Onion Dome. Click on over. - [A marketing reference](https://janvbear.com/marketing-reference/) - Here's a quirky listing of U.S. and U.K. agents, along with candid comments and snippets of rejection letters. Everyone Who's Anyone in Trade Publishing. I'm going to put it over on my writing links so that I can find it later. - [Timepiece](https://janvbear.com/timepiece/) - Timepiece I'm reading this one on CD, and at nearly a quarter of the way through, it makes my teeth hurt. I picked it up at the library because the title intrigued me, as well as the cover quote that undertakers and clockmakers know more about life than most people because they know more about - [Story: Substance, Structure, Style and The Principles of Screenwriting](https://janvbear.com/mckee-story/) - Story: Substance, Structure, Style and The Principles of Screenwriting My copy of Story by Robert McKee ard today. I've been flipping through it and smelling the pages (is there a writer in the world who doesn't love the smell of paper, ink and spine glue--or have I just revealed a kinky little secret of mine). - [BookCrossing](https://janvbear.com/bookcrossing/) - BookCrossing It's been a long day, and I don't have a handle on the next idea in The Substance of Style, so instead I'll just refer my readers to Bookcrossing.com, which appeals to me as a network of worldwide serendipity. Check it out. - [Orthodox Satire](https://janvbear.com/orthodox-satire/) - Sunday night. Well, it's 7:21 p.m., which is late afternoon in August, but it's November, post-Daylight Savings Time, and night. I entered a writing contest for which the grand prize is a T-shirt, which shows how much I like the publication -- a Church satire site called The Onion Dome. The webmeistro, Alex Riggle, has - [A New Look, a New Direction](https://janvbear.com/new-look-new-direction/) - If you looked at this space yesterday, you may notice a change. I got tired of the orange in the template and changed it, and I changed the name. As much as I appreciate the music of Jessica Williams (and if you haven't heard her work, do so), I'm not sure she'd like being affiliated - [The Onion Dome: Orthodox News with a Twist](https://janvbear.com/onion-dome-orthodox-news-with-twist/) - The Onion Dome: Orthodox News with a Twist Well, that's my fashion show on The Oniondome. The other two pieces are very funny, too. I may have to buy my own T-shirt. Interesting that all three are "women's" issues. Hmmm. - [The Defining Moment](https://janvbear.com/defining-moment/) - My daughter's teacher gave her an assignment: to list ten defining moments in her life and the circumstances surrounding them. A defining moment is one that causes a radical re-evaluation of one's life, a fundamental shift in perspective. The person who emerges from a defining moment is not the same as the one who went - [Why Blog?](https://janvbear.com/why-blog/) - An online writing buddy, upon reading my blog, asks several good questions. Here are my answers: I know several of you have or are blogging, and I'm wondering (1) what it is like, (2) what it is for, (3)what response do you get, and finally (4) why do you do it? It's a lot like - [Defining Moment II](https://janvbear.com/defining-moment-2/) - More about the defining moment: An online writing buddy wrote to discuss the idea. She said she has read some novels with no defining moment, and she thinks too many would be messy nd eventually unbelievable or boring. "As for a short story," she wrote," if you're going to have that 'DF,' then maybe that's - [The Courage to Create](https://janvbear.com/courage-to-create/) - The Courage to Create Rollo May takes on the psychological and social aspects of the artistic process in The Courage to Create. This is a brief rundown of the points that struck a chord with me. He begins by defining courage, and he points out a paradox of courage: "we must be fully committed, but - [Housekeeping](https://janvbear.com/housekeeping/) - I spent my blog time this evening tinkering with this site. I've decided to put in headings, to make topics easier to find in the future, and I found a nifty comment feature to add on. So come tomorrow, I'll be ready to think about writing again, and not dabbling in web design. - [Good humor wins a point](https://janvbear.com/good-humor-wins/) - Good humor wins a point This from Teresa Nielsen Hayden, the Tor editor who blogged on the rejection reactions earlier this week. She reports in her blog Making Light: Nudge note that a writer sent an anniversary card to her manuscript asking how it was enjoying the light and activity of the city. Very clever - [First Line Blues](https://janvbear.com/first-line-blues/) - I'm not the first writer-blogger to obsess about this, but I'm revising my novel to send a partial to an agent. I've added a new scene to the front end, which is a flashback from the "now" of the rest of the book, and I'm trying to perfect the first line, as well as the - [Image?](https://janvbear.com/image/) - This picture means that I've taken off the html training wheels and I'm riding my little blogger bicycle all the way to New York City by myself! The photo is of a fountain titled the Triumph of Good over Evil outside a cathedral off Broadway. I was on sensory overload and don't remember the name - [To Emily Dickinson](https://janvbear.com/blame-cathy/) - a gap yawns sudden wide -- open breaks the world -- the blue air floods inside the silk-spun dam -- and hurls the Wind the timbred songs of leaves -- wings still furled now twitch, begin to long to stretch out, ride the light -- breathe, O Wind -- wide-flung kindred ride the light, from - [An unfortunate association](https://janvbear.com/an-unfortunate-association/) - What do you get when you drag $165 million through a trailer park? A new presidential library that looks like an enormous single-wide mobile home on stilts. - [I'm back](https://janvbear.com/im-back/) - UPDATE April 20, 2013: Whatever I meant to say on this empty post from September 2, 2010, I didn't say, and the headline, "I'm back," turned out not to be true. If you're reading this in reverse-chronological order, as is the nature of blogs, you're about to enter a time when I blogged for - [Some friends](https://janvbear.com/some-friends/) - It's partly to try out the Flickr photo application, partly to introduce my friends Mocha and Sadie. Here we are on our way to an excellent adventure in the park. We were on our way to Tryon Creek State Park, a 645-acre network of trails along a ravine on the edge of urban Portland. It's - [Cosmos](https://janvbear.com/cosmos/) - Your womb became more spacious than the heavens . . . . She had been through a rough time, partly of her own making, and she had come home -- to the place where "if you have to go there, they have to take you in." We took her to the emergency room to be - [Walter Inglis Anderson](https://janvbear.com/walter-inglis-anderson/) - Someone prompted me to think of Walter Inglis Anderson this evening. The Mississippi artist, naturalist and Barrier Island pilgrim made a deep impression on me for someone whose book I ran across in a university library about 30 years ago. The book was The Horn Island Logs of Walter Inglis Anderson, and I can't even - [Song travel for Scotsmen](https://janvbear.com/song-travel-for-scotsmen/) - The Scotsman reports that Amarillo, Texas, has become a big tourist destination inspired by a song that's popular over there, "(Is This The Way To) Amarillo." Someone needs to tell the Brits that while Amarillo is a scenic place if you like sky, and the people are friendly, if you're going to travel to the - [Notes from Ashland](https://janvbear.com/notes-from-ashland/) - Revisionist historians say that the reputation of Richard III was written by his enemies, and Shakespeare's tragic character study begins with the received history of a conscienceless murderer whose death leaves everyone better off. Given all that, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival's addition of the chorus of grieving women gives us a deeper glimpse not at - [Treasures of the sea](https://janvbear.com/treasures-of-the-sea/) - Found on the beach near Rockaway, Oregon, yesterday an apparent alien invasion -- a little blue sailboat with a gossamer sail, beached on the sand by the thousands. They looked like toys, their bodies so blue that they seemed like plastic and their sails clear as cellophane, but the bodies were both squishy and resilient - [For Fred](https://janvbear.com/for-fred/) - John and Jenny -- back before they were Father and Matushka -- found Fred as part of their ministry to street kids in Portland. They were a couple of college students back then, courageous, dedicated, and veterans of the mission field from Indonesia and Africa to the housing projects of Chicago. Jenny, a talented writer, - [Where's the white rabbit?](https://janvbear.com/wheres-the-white-rabbit/) - It's supposed to represent the loneliness of the writer, but it reminds me of Lewis Carroll. - [Beneath the crust of things](https://janvbear.com/beneath-the-crust-of-things/) - Life had taken on a strange richness since Mr. Peabody had sidled like a terrified crab into his study, had lifted the thin gold shell of his watch and shown him the hidden watch cock. Until now life for him had meant the aridity of earthly duty and the dews of God. Now he was - [An odd notion about the Liturgy](https://janvbear.com/an-odd-notion-about-the-liturgy/) - I've been assigned to read The Da Vinci Code for an upcoming writers' workshop. Fortunately, I've already read it and don't intend to inflict it on myself again. But curious conjunctions bring out even curiouser connections. The Code was in many ways exceedingly awful, but it managed to hold the attention and interest of many, - [Note to Fourth Estate](https://janvbear.com/note-to-fourth-estate/) - Very important distinction about the Second Estate: A UPI story about the recent synod of Catholic bishops in Rome attempts to clarify the issue of priestly celibacy: The Orthodox Church allows priests to marry, but those who do are not eligible to become bishops. OK, here's where it gets tricky. The Orthodox Church ordains married - [The Grammar Pledge](https://janvbear.com/the-grammar-pledge/) - It always goes this way. Someone mentions a grammar problem -- in this case a novel, whose author is an English professor at a Seattle university, that is afflicted with dangling modifiers and even has an "it's" used as the possessive. These errors can be as distracting as a "factual" detail that isn't true or - [I Become the Murderer's Mom](https://janvbear.com/i-become-the-murderers-mom/) - I walked back to the car seeing nothing but the putty-colored wet sidewalk under my feet. As I walked by the door to the lecture room where the parents were, I heard a woman give a wail of grief. I shivered at the pain and terror and wondered if it was Angela. I tried to - [Questions about Melody](https://janvbear.com/questions-about-melody/) - Neither of the two men looked back at me as they walked. Our footsteps echoed in the empty corridor, and my feet were still cold and from standing in the rain. But mostly I saw the backs of their suits, dark as black in the greenish hallway light, as if they were a couple of - [Falling Water](https://janvbear.com/falling-water/) - If the shooting was at 10:15, and I got to the campus at 11, then we parents must have been standing in the rain for an hour and a half or two hours before they opened a lecture room and let us sit down.Every once in a while, an administrator would come to the podium, - ['My Baby'](https://janvbear.com/my-baby/) - Angela and I stood together shivering, more from the chill inside ourselves than from the weather, talking to the other parents as they gathered at the door, waiting. They all have a story to tell, of when they saw their child last. Child -- at times like this, the hulking 240-pound linebacker becomes, once again, - [Waiting for Truth](https://janvbear.com/waiting-for-truth/) - I had to park the car a long walk away, because the parking lots near the Student Commons were all full.It gave me time to look for Melody’s cape in every group of kids.The whole time I was walking, I had an argument going on in my head. One side said I was being silly. - [Vortex of Insanity](https://janvbear.com/vortex-of-insanity/) - I heard the news on my way to the Women’s Life Center. A shooting at Clackamas Communitiy College. Tears were pouring as I drove over the Oregon City Bridge. I thought of all those kids I see from time to time when I give Melody a ride because her car has broken down or she’s - [I Miss Melody's Call](https://janvbear.com/i-miss-melodys-call/) - Melody called this morning. I saw her number on the caller ID and just didn’t want to answer it.It was breakfast time. Rick was having problems with his tie. Chloe had put off getting a permission slip signed until the last minute, and Sam was trying to slide his Gameboy into his backpack without our - [Sam's mom, the blogger](https://janvbear.com/sams-mom-the-blogger/) - Sam was pleased that I actually put up my first post after he helped me create this thing. He gave a report about it at school today. The topic was something he helped somebody with.Ms. Haycock-Meyer sent home a note congratulating me. Very funny. :) - [Melody, I love you, no matter what](https://janvbear.com/melody-i-love-you-no-matter-what/) - Everybody knows that mothers and daughters have complicated relationships.I understand complication. Really I do. And I know I didn’t do everything right for Melody. What mother ever has done everything right?When Melody was a teen-ager, I took her little rages and poutings in stride. Aren’t teenaged girls famous for angst and drama? But she’s 22 - [Using character autobiography to discover plot](https://janvbear.com/using-character-autobiography-to-discover-plot/) - My character-driven novel has resisted plotting. Experts who specialize in plotting have thrown up their hands and told me it may not be publishable. Others have suggested an infusion of gunshots or perhaps a car chase.As I told a friend in a whining e-mail, "The other thing I learned from [unnamed experts] -- which is - [Fictional snooping](https://janvbear.com/fictional-snooping/) - Here's something I learned from Jurgen Wolff, writing coach and author of various books on motivation, goal setting, and writing. He's also an NLP practitioner, and this little exercise is a way to bring to conscious knowledge a fuller picture of a fictional character or situation.Get comfortable somewhere where you won't be disturbed, which could - [My first audio drama](https://janvbear.com/my-first-audio-drama/) - I just finished up the second draft of my first audio drama. It's been quite the project, and although it's getting closer to where I want it to be, I know it's not there yet. But it's been an incredibly fun project and a good change of pace from the novel, which is on hiatus, - [Visit from an old acquaintance](https://janvbear.com/visit-from-an-old-acquaintance/) - So I'm walking along, minding my own business, and here comes this novel I gave up on. "How're you doing?" it says. "Been a long time," says I. "You'll never guess what I found," says the novel. "A plot." "You mean you want to be buried in the garden?""No. Beginning, middle, end, plot points, conflict, - [Paperless writer](https://janvbear.com/paperless-writer/) - A little ditty of mine published in the March 2009 issue of the National Court Reporters Association Journal.Paperless Writer(with apologies to the Beatles)Dear Stenograph, buy back my machineI've seen the latest, and they're sleek and mean,With seven backups, give or take a few,And the latest software, student version, too --Paperless writer.I'm tired of ink getting - [The Secular Case for Christmas](https://janvbear.com/the-secular-case-for-christmas/) - My friend forwarded this from the New York Times, in which self-described secularist Laura Miller explains why she enjoys The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe every Christmas, and by extension, Christmas itself.My friend was saddened and disappointed by the writer's wrong understanding of the source of Christmas. For my part, I'm more or less - [How novels get started](https://janvbear.com/how-novels-get-started/) - On Aug 17, 2008, at 2:48 PM, Anastasia K. Bond wrote:Fr. George gave me your basket! Not quite sure why he was so desperate to unload it, but you drove away just as I came looking for you. I can bring it next Sunday, or you can swing by sometime to pick it up.Wouldn't this - [Another blog](https://janvbear.com/another-blog/) - The last thing I could justify, since I post here so seldom, is starting another blog, but I offer the excuse that it's a group blog, it's a finely focused niche topic, and it's fun.In that spirit, I offer you the Crones' Old Book Reviews.The idea is that there's a vast world of literature out - [Murderer's Mom -- the pitch (in progress)](https://janvbear.com/murderers-mom-the-pitch-in-progress/) - Grace asks: "I get more and more curious about your book. Do you have a blog entry somewhere back there that talks about what it's about, what it's called and all the rest of that? If not, do you feel like doing one just to fill me in?"Here's the elevator pitch (in progress).I got the - [Word count, May 2](https://janvbear.com/word-count-may-2/) - Got back to the story for the first time since before Pascha. It was OK to skip Holy Friday, Holy Saturday and Pascha, but Monday through Thursday of Bright Week? I had a lot of other stuff to do, but also, it's resistance against this painfully shitty first draft.So I sat in my coffee shop - [When the poet writes a novel](https://janvbear.com/when-the-poet-writes-a-novel/) - From Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men."No," he said, and it was another voice, quiet and easy and coming slow and from a distance, "I'm not here to ask for anything today. I'm taking the day off, and I've come home. A man goes away from home, and it is in him to do - [Jonah and plot structure](https://janvbear.com/jonah-and-plot-structure/) - I got to read the book of Jonah at this year's Holy Saturday services. It's a short book, maybe a five-minute read, even aloud, and it offers some some great insights into story structure.The book is in four chapters. There's little or no ordinary world, and the story opens with the call to adventure.God tells - [Word count, April 23](https://janvbear.com/word-count-april-23/) - Word count Tuesday, zero, zip, zingo. Bad me!Word count Wednesday, 1,000, bringing the book total to 14, 400. The added words were all in the same scene where the story went its own way Monday, and now I've "discovered" that my characters are distant relatives of characters in another book I'm working on. This is - [Words of wisdom](https://janvbear.com/words-of-wisdom/) - It's 6:45ish here in the land of sun and snow, where you have to ask whether that white stuff on the ground is the current form of spring shower (I blame global warming) or a drift of cherry blossoms -- anyway this would make great weather for my book, but it's fall, and Oregon fall - [Word count, April 21](https://janvbear.com/word-count-april-21/) - Word count as of Monday, April 21 -- 1,000 for the day, and 13,400 for the project. I took Sunday off, and I think a day off once a week will do me good.It was a hard thousand words, and I almost quit for the day after 500. The story took off on its own, - [Word count, April 19](https://janvbear.com/word-count-april-19/) - Word count as of Saturday, April 19 -- 1,125 for the day, and 12,300 for the project. I haven't made up my recent slackery, but progress continues.A police interview gave an opportunity for backstory, but I haven't made nearly the deft use of it that Robert Penn Warren did. Still, as I keep reminding myself, - [Word count, April 18](https://janvbear.com/word-count-april-18/) - Word count as of Friday, April 18 -- only 650 for the day, but past 11,000 for the project.Very bad writing, which is still better than no writing. My protagonist crossed the threshold into the special world.I need to know a lot more about murder prosecution. I've got to do some field trips to the - [Word count, progress update](https://janvbear.com/word-count-progress-update/) - At Christopher Vogler's workshop last weekend, he told about how he strengthened his resolve to finish his book, The Writer's Journey. It helped him, he said, to make the announcement outward -- to tell family and friends that he had decided to complete it -- and to make the announcement inward.He compared the latter to - [A weekend with Christopher Vogler](https://janvbear.com/a-weekend-with-christopher-vogler/) - I've been a fan of Christopher Vogler since, I don't know, the '90s, maybe. The second edition of his classic storytelling handbook, The Writers Journey, has been on my bookshelf for a long time. I had been thinking it was probably time to update, but wasn't sure.I picked up a copy last week so that - [What does my character want?](https://janvbear.com/what-does-my-character-want/) - I don't think I'm the only novice novelist who has trouble coming up with where the character is at the beginning of the story and what she wants before she has the piano dropped on her head at the end of the first act.My characters have been criticized (with justification) as being too passive. Readers - [Another backstory technique -- alternating chapters](https://janvbear.com/another-backstory-technique-alternating-chapters/) - Adding to yesterday's thoughts on backstory, Cory Doctorow's podcast novel, Eastern Standard Tribe, uses a different method of revealing backstory.Like Warren, he starts his novel in medias res and goes backward, after setting the hook, to establish a little about who his character is and why he's there.A couple of differences, though. Doctorow opens the - [Backstory and the Call to Adventure](https://janvbear.com/backstory-and-the-call-to-adventure/) - Something remarkable about All the King's Men (earlier post on the subject here).Between the Call to Adventure in disk 4, maybe, of 18 (here's a brief overview of the Hero's Journey and the stages; The Writers Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers is Christopher Vogler's indispensable handbook on using the monomyth in fiction and screenplay writing) - [A Novel Start Seminar: How to Disappear Completely](https://janvbear.com/a-novel-start-seminar-how-to-disappear-completely/) - I think I mentioned before I dropped off the face of the earth that I wanted to think through what makes a good beginning for a novel. And as a case in point, I thought Myke Bartlett's How to Disappear Completely: The Terrible Business of Salmon and Dusk was almost a textbook in hooking the - [Thought for the day](https://janvbear.com/thought-for-the-day/) - Writing a novel is like climbing stairs carrying a huge armload of laundry -- socks, underwear, sheets and towels, clothes for children and adults -- all the while wearing (among other things) high heels and tiara.Powered by ScribeFire. - [What's Going On?: The game](https://janvbear.com/whats-going-on-the-game/) - A black man and a black woman stand on a street corner in inner but not Downtown Portland. She is talking with animated, but not wild gestures. (This is where her racial background is relevant; blacks tend to use bigger gestures than people of, for example, northern European descent.)I had the length of the stoplight - [I'm reading a book](https://janvbear.com/im-reading-a-book/) - More thoughts on my most recent post about entering fictional worlds.When I -- and probably a lot of people -- am reading a book and not in the story's world, I'm evaluating. It might be grammar, story structure, character, whether the "facts" of the story are believable, whatever. The critical sense is antithetical to the - [On beginning a novel](https://janvbear.com/on-beginning-a-novel/) - I've been thinking a lot lately about stories about crossing over into other worlds. It's a staple of the fantasy genre -- if the character is not born in this alternative universe, he has to get there somehow, whether it's by falling down a rabbit hole, stepping through a magical post in the train station, - [Naming names](https://janvbear.com/naming-names/) - Populating a novel can be hard. After the top tier of characters have introduced themselves and then their closest associates, you're left with "guy who sells papers" and "driver." Which can be OK if that's all they do, but if they come back, if the POV character knows their names (or maybe even if not), - [A garden of music](https://janvbear.com/a-garden-of-music/) - One of my favorite places in the world is the Portland Chinese Garden. It's a block surrounded by some of the busiest streets in Portland. On one side is an office building; on another a single-room-occupancy hotel; just a couple of blocks away are the downtown post office and the train station. And in this - [A speculation on Transfiguration (reprise)](https://janvbear.com/a-speculation-on-transfiguration-reprise/) - In honor of tomorrow's Feast, I've dug out a 2005 speculation on the Transfiguration. It starts with a metaphor and ends with "What if" and meanders through time, literature, heaven and earth, and the Communion of the Saints to arrive at the meeting of Christ, Moses and Elijah on Mount Tabor. It's quite long, and - [When genres collide](https://janvbear.com/when-genres-collide/) - I know it's been done from science fiction to western (as in the television series Firefly and Molly Gloss's The Dazzle of Day). But Steve Ely's introduction to "Cloud Dragon Skies" talked about how often science fiction is about meeting the unknown, which is also the focus of all stories of exploration, colonization and making - [Literary agent gives free e-book on the dreaded query](https://janvbear.com/literary-agent-gives-free-e-book-on-the-dreaded-query/) - Literary agent and author Noah Lukeman has posted a 100-page e-book (PDF format) titled How to Write a Great Query Letter.He's one of the top agents in the business, and free advice from someone of his caliber is very welcome.Powered by ScribeFire. - [Which font should I use?](https://janvbear.com/which-font-should-i-use/) - The last writer to arrive at the workshop, a 50-something medical professional, is an attractive woman with large earnest eyes. Under her arm, she carries an 800-page manuscript (I'm estimating a 250,000 to 300,000 word count) that she's planning to pitch at an upcoming writers' conference.At the end of the Q&A period at the end - [Compossible](https://janvbear.com/compossible/) - Anu Garg's word of the day today "compossible" exactly describes a new serendipity in my novel.To give a brief update, a while back, I had a chance to attend a Michael Hauge workshop in Portland. Michael is a Hollywood screenplay consultant whose clear and usable explanations of story structure make his workshop one of the - [Lines from a deposition](https://janvbear.com/lines-from-a-deposition/) - I just love this stuff. I'm proofreading a deposition in which the attorney is asking the plaintiff in an automobile accident case about what happened immediately after the accident:Q. And did you say anything to your wife?A. I asked her how she was doing. We were obviously a little shook up and sore. But, you - [Which way is up?](https://janvbear.com/which-way-is-up/) - The artist and her friends were placing artworks in the Starbucks gallery (hung on the coffee shop walls for sale).They were bold, colorful oil paintings with bright yellows, oranges, purples. One of the women mentioned how much she liked the "fish" painting, but if there was a representation of a fish, I didn't see it.As - [Quiet time at Orthodox Writers Week](https://janvbear.com/quiet-time-at-orthodox-writers-week/) - We have been very, very good today. We sit in our little worlds, arrayed on couches, benches, on the beach, with our laptops, manuscripts, notebooks in hand.Quiet, please. We are birthing. Articles, books, poetry, a more conscious life. Gloria in her headphones is encased in a sphere of music. I don't hear it. Katherine turns - [Repeat after me: 'It's only a novel'](https://janvbear.com/repeat-after-me-its-only-a-novel/) - Apparently, Stephen King's Cell got to Afghanistan, says the Scotsman:WORRIED Afghans switched off their mobile phones yesterday as rumours spread that a deadly virus could be contracted by answering calls from "strange numbers". Powered by ScribeFire. - [Thinking? Me?](https://janvbear.com/thinking-me/) - What can I say? Despite my recent dearth of writings, Father Joseph has decided to nominate me for a Thinking Blog Award. And this is the sort of award that a nomination is a win (which may be true of many awards, but that's a rabbit trail I won't follow today).Quoting Father Joseph, here are - [What we miss](https://janvbear.com/what-we-miss/) - Washington commuters missed a treat recently when the professional violinist Joshua Bell played a free concert in a subway station. Incognito, one of the world's best violinists played some of the world's best music on one of the world's best violins. For whatever reason -- context, time pressures, distraction -- most, vastly most, of the - [New Onion Dome posted](https://janvbear.com/new-onion-dome-posted/) - The new Onion Dome has a piece inspired by a visit from -- I hope -- our new bishop.OK, so the synapses do weird things when I see a resplendently robed man, who looks something like a cross between Santa Claus and Jerry Garcia, periodically emerge from the Royal Doors and bless the congregation.But it's - [A Poem for Librivox](https://janvbear.com/a-poem-for-librivox/) - I've been enjoying Librivox audio books for many months now and finally had an opportunity to pay back a minute and 53 seconds of my debt. It's Robert Frost's poem, "After Apple-Picking." Tell me how you think it went. - [Orthodox* Writers' Week 2007](https://janvbear.com/orthodox-writers-week-2007/) - Coming up April 23-29, 2007, the second annual Orthodox* Writers' Week at the Beach.Featuring: NO program NO speakers NO required activities Time to work on the project of your choice Miles of beach to walk Fellowship of others engaged in the same effort Morning prayer (readers’ matins) Price:Full week: $60 plus $35 annual membership in - [A curious thank-you](https://janvbear.com/a-curious-thank-you/) - The TV was blaring something about a school shooting when I walked into the waiting room at the car repair shop this morning. The two men already sitting there weren't watching -- one was reading the newspaper, and the other was doing something that involved a legal pad and a pen -- and I was - [Just say No](https://janvbear.com/just-say-no/) - Words of wisdom from Tracey: "If you're ever at your prayers and you're suddenly struck with an idea for a brand new icon, just wait for it to go away."Here's an illustration of what happens when someone ignores that advice.It's an "icon" of all the special people riding in the big boat.On the ground are - [Political Shibboleths](https://janvbear.com/political-shibboleths/) - The man who sat on the mall bench next to me was in his late 70s, maybe, or early 80s, no doubt taking a break, as I was, after having been outshopped by his companion. I had taken Jayden out of the stroller to stretch his legs, and he sat on my lap behaving like - [We need a little (more) Christmas](https://janvbear.com/we-need-a-little-more-christmas/) - "Happy Holidays!" the chirpy voice rang out the last weekend of November. "Welcome to McDonald's."Well, happy holidays to you, too. Any particular holiday? Arbor Day? Third Finding of the Head of John the Baptist? Of course, I didn't say that, just gave my order and drove on through.I sat out the Chrismas wars this year, - [Best-laid plans](https://janvbear.com/best-laid-plans/) - So I get home from work Monday fully intending to be useful and productive the whole evening long. It's the first day of our Christmas vacation from court-reporting school, and so it's the first Monday evening I've been home in months.I thought I'd cook a real dinner, do the Christmas cards, read a little bit, - [Schultze Gets the Blues](https://janvbear.com/schultze-gets-the-blues/) - It's a little late for a relevant review, but I just watched the 2003 German movie Schultze Gets the Blues. If you're in the mood for a fast-paced action-adventure thriller, it's probably not the best time to watch it. But if you loved the slower-paced, blossoming (in the sense of layers unfolding and revealing themselves) - [The end begins](https://janvbear.com/the-end-begins/) - I've got no blame, finger-pointing or recriminations. I think I'm going to continue what has become a step aside from politics, while I get other things done.But the shadows lengthen at the end of what James Lileks called "the greatest summer ever" (it was in a bleat last August or September -- you'll just have - [The Truth about Snapping Turtles](https://janvbear.com/the-truth-about-snapping-turtles/) - Controversy erupted on a recent comments page, as Fr. Joseph reported that in North Carolina he was told that snapping turtles hold on until the next thunderstorm, whereas I was told in Louisiana that they would hold on until sundown. Amazon.com WidgetsThis is a matter of no small importance, especially since they inhabit streams and - [Stop Editing](https://janvbear.com/stop-editing/) - Life lessons can come from surprising places.Over the weekend, I was looking on the web for magic formulas to help me progress faster in my court reporting course. Actually, I ran across this article in some practice material, and it offered one of those lovely categorizations: If you can fix these problems, you will be - [When I'm Not Blogging](https://janvbear.com/when-im-not-blogging/) - Despite good intentions and not-as-good efforts, blogging has fallen off over the past couple of months. I'm pleased to report that there's a good reason.I've gotten to the text phase of my novel.It's been longer in production than I care to admit. I started writing it in the 1980s. It was going to be "Left - [A Shameless Paschal Promotion](https://janvbear.com/a-shameless-paschal-promotion/) - What it lacks in theological nuance it makes up in . . . pink.H/T: Marie. - [My Name, Too!](https://janvbear.com/my-name-too/) - I went to the schoolyard to interview a teacher for a story. When I was done, I called to a few of the little girls playing nearby to have their picture taken with the teacher. I got three of them, about third grade, and they stood smiling in a cluster around Mr. G. They called - [Dying for Christ vs. Showing What's Real](https://janvbear.com/dying-for-christ-vs-showing-whats-real/) - Christians are getting down to the discussion of the two reporters who decided to "convert" to Islam at the point of a gun.Grace asks pertinently:I’m not saying that the martyr’s crown is for everyone. If it was, there would be nothing exceptional about martyrs. But here we are, nearly 100 years later, and the radical - [Same old playbook](https://janvbear.com/same-old-playbook/) - Stella Jatras finds the parallels and the contrasts between the media front in the Hezbollah-Israel war and the one in the Balkans:It appears that Hezbollah has taken a page out of the Bosnian Muslim playbook: Win the PR battle, and you win the war. What better example of media disinformation than the Bosnian War, where - [Blog blunder fells UA teacher](https://janvbear.com/blog-blunder-fells-ua-teacher/) - My schedule has become too intense to follow a lot of the big blog controversies, and this one has been going on so long that even a print newspaper takes notice. But if you want to see why people don't trust the daily papers, take a look at the story and then the first comment - [A note to grocery clerks](https://janvbear.com/a-note-to-grocery-clerks/) - Dear nice young lady who rang up my groceries this evening:I suspect that your boss told you he wanted you to be "friendly," to "engage me in conversation" so that I would feel like I'm at a "hometown" grocery store, despite the fact that I shop here about three times a year because it's outside - [Oh, by the way](https://janvbear.com/oh-by-the-way/) - There a new Onion Dome posted. - [I'd give it an "ehh"](https://janvbear.com/id-give-it-an-ehh/) - We went to see Superman last evening. We started on a lark to see the new pirate movie, but once at the theatre, we realized that only the hardcore would be seeing the pirate movie last night.So we and about five others watched Superman.I'd been hearing all the hype leading up to it: Is Superman - [Looking for love in all the wrong places](https://janvbear.com/looking-for-love-in-all-the-wrong-places/) - I was talking to a young friend recently and found myself saying about a certain kind of sinful behavior -- "What they want is real and good, and I believe there's a real need at its core, but the way they're going about it is out of harmony with the cosmos."The reason the sentence struck - [Creepy Dr. Kildare](https://janvbear.com/creepy-dr-kildare/) - I used to watch the Dr. Kildare television show back in the '60s when heartthrob Richard Chamberlain used all the latest technology to save (or not) the winsome patients who came his way.This 1940s radio episode has the same basic plot, but hindsight has the amazing power to turn melodrama to horror.It seems that an - [New Onion Dome up](https://janvbear.com/new-onion-dome-up/) - We're not as regular as we used to be, so to the handful of people who still check out new posts on this blog (thanks for that, I mean it), there's a new issue of the Onion Dome for June, featuring a classic tribute to Prof. Penguin, an Orthodox protest about the Da Vinci code - [Why Justin loves the New York Times](https://janvbear.com/why-justin-loves-the-new-york-times/) - I've been hanging out with a different group of people lately. Frequently imaginary.When I was a kid, I had imaginary friends. My mom and her fellow parents discussed it and interpreted it as loneliness, because I was an only child. Little did they know that even when I was much older and not at all - [Go, Ducks](https://janvbear.com/go-ducks/) - Medford girl waddles with pet duckSo what I want to know is why she didn't get offered a scholarship to the University of Oregon.Just asking. - [About "disrespect" and literature](https://janvbear.com/about-disrespect-and-literature/) - When I told someone recently that I "hated" The Da Vinci Code, I had to clarify that I don't disrespect people who like it. I don't understand why people take their literary taste so seriously.A couple of years ago, I went to a presentation on poetic language, and the speaker went out for coffee with - [Stephen King's Cell](https://janvbear.com/stephen-kings-cell/) - Stephen King's new thriller, Cell, reminds me of how compelling King can be, in a way that leaves me feeling manipulated and used. He shows a deep-rooted "damned mass" view of human nature, even while he displays authorial hate for characters within the story who share a view that's perhaps not as extreme as his. - [How Will Borders Celebrate Banned Books Week This Year?](https://janvbear.com/how-will-borders-celebrate-banned-books-week-this-year/) - After years of "edginess" and "speaking truth to power," Borders Bookstores (and its little brother Waldenbooks) has rolled over before the Islamist fringe.Borders and Waldenbooks stores will not stock the April-May issue of Free Inquiry magazine because it contains cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that provoked deadly protests among Muslims in several countries.And why is - [Fun find of the day](https://janvbear.com/fun-find-of-the-day/) - The George Mason University Speech Accent Archive.Native and non-native English speakers from around the world read a short paragraph, giving a flavor of what makes their pronunciation different. - [Europe, the wolf is not just at the door](https://janvbear.com/europe-the-wolf-is-not-just-at-the-door/) - He's on the dining room table eating your dinner and growling at you.This symposium in Front Page Magazine explains what the cartoon fracas was really all about, in the context of increasing incidents of gang rape of non-veiled women:The conduct towards these women is due to the new developments initiated by Salafists like Tariq Ramadan. - [Positives of St. Ephrem](https://janvbear.com/positives-of-st-ephrem/) - O Lord and Master of my life,Take from me the spirit of sloth, despair, lust of power and idle talk,But give rather the spirit of chastity, humility, patience and love to your servant.Yea, Lord and King, grant me to see my own faults and not judge my brother,For you are blessed unto ages of ages.Amen. - [I never thought I'd say this](https://janvbear.com/i-never-thought-id-say-this/) - It's been a really bad week, and now, to top it all off, I find myself siding with Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown in a plagiarism lawsuit filed by Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, authors of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, the 1982 work of "nonfiction" that provided the central conspiracy of - [Fact-checker request](https://janvbear.com/fact-checker-request/) - Writing about the cartoon brouhaha in today's Opinion Journal, Muslim (I think Persian) Amir Taheri writes:There is no Quranic injunction against images, whether of Muhammad or anyone else. When it spread into the Levant, Islam came into contact with a version of Christianity that was militantly iconoclastic. As a result some Muslim theologians, at a - [Dialects brown and pink](https://janvbear.com/dialects-brown-and-pink/) - I'm listening to a murder mystery on CD by Walter Mosley, titled Fear Itself, set in the brown community of Los Angeles of the 1950s. The POV character is a very literate bookstore owner who grew up in New Iberia, La. His friend and fellow hero is a less-educated man whose point of origin I - [A mother's grief](https://janvbear.com/a-mothers-grief/) - The young mother sat on the floor beside the small white casket bedecked in white, pink and red flowers, and beside her sat a man in a dark suit and overcoat with a white scarf draped around his neck.I had told her I planned to be here between 9 and 10 tonight, too late for - [Schedules and change](https://janvbear.com/schedules-and-change/) - First the good news. Our Intrepid Editor is back from Australia and running the Onion Dome again. He's planning to put it to a monthly schedule and invites all you Orthodox satirists (of which there seem to be many -- which probably says something, but I won't speculate exactly what, about the Orthodox Church) to - [The 'Liturgy' of Tookie Williams](https://janvbear.com/the-liturgy-of-tookie-williams/) - Watching the brouhaha over the last days of Tookie Williams' life causes me to wonder how much the "liturgy" of death penalty opposition serves as an impetus to violent crime.I mean "liturgy" in the sense of the structure of public spectacle, not the religious content -- though there certainly is a lot of that -- - [Dog spirituality 1](https://janvbear.com/dog-spirituality-1/) - And the Lord said, "Do not let your front foot know what your back foot is doing."H/T: Misspent. - [Negatives in the prayer of St. Ephraim](https://janvbear.com/negatives-in-the-prayer-of-st-ephraim/) - After 15 years in the Orthodox Church, I have seen the prayer of St. Ephraim come up on the Lenten horizon and sink behind Pascha often enough to know it without looking at the cheatsheet:O Lord and Master of my life,Take from me the spirit of sloth, despair, lust of power, and idle talk,But give - [How did I miss this?](https://janvbear.com/how-did-i-miss-this/) - Soon after becoming Orthodox, I learned that we are 13 days out of step and 15 minutes late, and it didn't take all that long to learn to like it.Now that I'm a pajama-clad blogger, I move Orthodox time into the news business, where this Sept. 5 article about a July event is news to - [Rev. Ned update](https://janvbear.com/rev-ned-update/) - We last heard from Rev. Ned Reidy back in June when he wrote an article congratulating the Orthodox on ordaining women deacons.A little googling turned up the fact that he's in a "let's play Catholic and have women priests" community, and a commenter (comment since lost) said that he had formerly been a member of - [On the Incarnation](https://janvbear.com/on-the-incarnation/) - Unvoiced, the Godhead spoke the worldAnd unflesh hands made man.Time's Creator, not bound by time,More distant than the sky,Who willed to be in place and timeConfined, Who healed and taughtWith hands and voice of matter born,Was one of us, though God.Closer now than one's own heart,Time deep and cosmos wide,Enfleshed in fallen hands and tongues,He - [Talkin' dog](https://janvbear.com/talkin-dog/) - I've been working to learn to speak dog most of my life. Most of my dogs have done better at learning my language than I have at learning theirs, but over time, I've gotten better at it.For instance, if you want to tell a dog that you're friendly, start at a high pitch and work - [I just want to say thank you](https://janvbear.com/i-just-want-to-say-thank-you/) - to this Jewish group defending "Merry Christmas." And Happy Hanukkah to you, too. - [I'm seeing someone else](https://janvbear.com/im-seeing-someone-else/) - I've posted my first post on the Conciliar Press blog, The Orthodox Way, titled "'Closed Communion' or 'Communion as identity.'" Catchy, don't you think? That's my Monday blog. - [Orthodoxy for losers, freaks and failures](https://janvbear.com/orthodoxy-for-losers-freaks-and-failures/) - A famous Orthodox priest came to Portland last weekend. I won't give his name because I couldn't attend his presentation, and so this is not really about him, but about why I don't like to go to hear religious speakers anymore.My friends and I -- the Fabulous Crones -- gathered Sunday afternoon for coffee and - [On the benefits of cleaning one's office](https://janvbear.com/on-the-benefits-of-cleaning-ones-office/) - I engaged pickaxe and shovel today and burrowed down to the woodgrain on the top of my desk.The main benefit of leaving the piles is that it's a natural way of prioritizing those tasks that you've really chosen not to do -- consumer surveys, vote-by-mail ballots (or maybe that's really the same thing -- "Your - [What I learned from the Sitka icon](https://janvbear.com/what-i-learned-from-the-sitka-icon/) - Grace went to see the Sitka icon when it came to her parish. She ended up taking an inkjet copy to a sick friend and witnessing what is quite likely a small miracle.My miracle was even smaller.I actually don't like the Sitka icon very much. It's in the "realistic" painting style that characterizes the Western - [What about me?](https://janvbear.com/what-about-me/) - Enough about hurricanes, Supreme Court, the War on Terror, and UN scandals, how about me?I thought you were wondering.A few weeks ago, a friend I don't see often asked if I was writing. I told him I blog everyday if you consider that writing, and I did. But a day or so later, I realized - [The Best Thing I've Seen about Katrina](https://janvbear.com/the-best-thing-ive-seen-about-katrina/) - Wilfred McClay talks about the blame game and the need for people to delude themselves that they're in control. He also points out the connection between the screeching and finger-pointing to the paranoid style of politics (and by my extension, literature): It has often been argued that an individual's attraction to conspiracy theories, far from - [The rural scourge](https://janvbear.com/the-rural-scourge/) - Minor Clergy posts a heart-rending account of the effect of meth in his neck of the woods. Particularly anguishing is his observation that the meth addicts seem to be mostly women. If you know why, he's collecting suppositions in his comments. - [A Chesterton warning about the unappreciated street](https://janvbear.com/a-chesterton-warning-about-the-unappreciated-street/) - Here's a Podcasts site of classic stories well read. This one is a G.K. Chesterton tale about what happens when people both overwork and ignore inanimate objects. - [A speculation on Transfiguration](https://janvbear.com/a-speculation-on-transfiguration/) - I want to tell you about another speculation I had, about Transfiguration. The problem is, it starts with a metaphor and ends with "What if" and meanders through time, literature, heaven and earth and the Communion of the Saints to arrive at the meeting of Christ, Moses and Elijah on Mount Tabor. I don't know - [A Brief, Friendly Rant on KHMD](https://janvbear.com/a-brief-friendly-rant-on-khmd/) - KMHD radio (pronounced "Kaymaichdee" for those outside the area) is a regional treasure. It's part of Mount Hood Community College in Gresham, and its 24-hour jazz programming is something you wouldn't expect in a market our size -- running across the jazz spectrum and through the jazz ages, mixing in some blues now and then - [Scientific Serendipity](https://janvbear.com/scientific-serendipity/) - So I promoted my little jellyfish discovery to the Tangled Bank science carnival and discovered that the host of the carnival is a Technogypsy and Orthoblogger.This carnival is my first real look at the science bloggers (I'm thoroughly outclassed here, believe me), and they remind me of what my husband's Cousin Doug, a bioscience guy, - [Why I love my parish -- reason No. 6,942](https://janvbear.com/why-i-love-my-parish-reason-no-6942/) - Where else can I go to a picnic and find myself in a conversation with four other people about the Battle of Thermopylae, and at least two of them know something about it, and the rest are not rolling their eyes and trying to escape? (University classics departments excluded) - [Pass it on](https://janvbear.com/pass-it-on/) - EFF: Legal Guide for Bloggers H/T: Orthodixie - [Kontakion anyone?](https://janvbear.com/kontakion-anyone/) - You can find everything on the Internet.Prove it. How about the structural specifications of an obscure form of poetry in wide use in the Byzantine Empire from the early sixth century through the late seventh century, when it dropped out of sight except for a few stanzas scattered throughout the Liturgy of the Orthodox Church?Hah! - [Mt. St. Helens](https://janvbear.com/mt-st-helens/) - Mt-St-Helens Originally uploaded by janbear. It might have been a better photo, but I was across the Columbia River and shooting through a window screen, so it might also have been worse. - [Off to Ashland](https://janvbear.com/off-to-ashland/) - I'll be away from home until Sunday with uncertain Internet access. When I get back, I'll have a report (of some kind) ion the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. - [Where I've been today](https://janvbear.com/where-ive-been-today/) - Looking north along the Willamette River Originally uploaded by janbear. On the theory that a picture is worth a thousand words, I'm blogging 3,000 words tonight. At the time of its construction in 1915, some called the Oregon City Bridge one of the most beautiful in the world Originally uploaded by janbear. Sailboats on the - [If you're looking for inexpensive software](https://janvbear.com/if-youre-looking-for-inexpensive-software/) - I had to get a Windows computer for my court reporting software and didn't have much budget left for Microsoft Word. I hard about the Open Office suite from an on-line acquaintance and have found it to be quite good for my uses -- typing up steno notes. The standard document formats in court reporting - [The fall of Miss Of Arc](https://janvbear.com/the-fall-of-miss-of-arc/) - I hope I don't have to have watched an episode of the television show Joan of Arc to say that the New York Times DVD critic Kate Aurthur doesn't seem to get it.I don't mean she doesn't get the show. As I said, I haven't watched it and just can't seem to get around to - [Sticheron for the Tuesday after Thomas Sunday](https://janvbear.com/sticheron-for-the-tuesday-after-thomas-sunday/) - My friends and fellow choristers were futzing with a sticheron for vespers of next Tuesday, and asked me to have a hand at it. The problem was that the Greek version was too soft and the American version was too hard (or vice versa). That is, the Greek version sounded like it was translated by - [Just because . . .](https://janvbear.com/just-because/) - I like it.UPDATE: I suppose I should be more specific.It's a statue of Albert Einstein in Washington, D.C., and what's striking about it is that it's so casual.I mentioned earlier John McWhorter's book on the dearth of formal speech. Well, this is an informal statue. In another time, we'd have had a dignified bust of - [Highway avatars](https://janvbear.com/highway-avatars/) - The blue boat of a car came onto the freeway in the morning traffic and slipped in between two trucks. I was in the center lane, and although the left lane was clear, I was not traveling as fast as the cars that had been coming up in that lane all morning. I stayed put. - [Ah, the Divine Comedy](https://janvbear.com/ah-the-divine-comedy/) - Thomas at Endlessly Rocking has characterized the Great Story as a Shakespearean comedy: Think about it. From the moment of the Fall, what do we see? A villain who seems a prince of light; a merciful King who must disguise himself at various times as now a beggar and now a horrible judge; mistaken identities - [Why people look at me funny](https://janvbear.com/why-people-look-at-me-funny/) - I used the word "arguably" in a spoken sentence yesterday, and my boss looked at me quizzically and said, "Did you just say 'arguably'?"Well, yes.But this isn't really about my odd speech patterens; rather it's about John McWhorter's Doing Our Own Thing: The Degradation Of Language And Music And Why We Should, Like, Care.McWhorter laments - [Another dissenting voice on applause](https://janvbear.com/another-dissenting-voice-on-applause/) - Fr. John Whiteford also thinks applause at Pope John Paul's funeral is weird. Fr. John writes: It seems to me that applause during a worship service is the final step in the process of making the services a show. This is not unconnected with the innovation of the pew, which invites people to sit and - [Finding the value of failure](https://janvbear.com/finding-the-value-of-failure/) - I arrived in speed building in my court reporting class last week. I had gotten to the end of Phoenix theory, theoretically having learned all I needed to record anything in the English language -- all, of course, except speed.So I went into the first speed-building class, the one where they test at 60-80 words - [Memory Eternal](https://janvbear.com/memory-eternal/) - To Archbishop Iakovos of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese in America, forced out of office in 1996 by the Patriarch of Constantinople for calling a meeting of Orthodox bishops at Ligonier, aiming for Orthodox unity in the United States.The multiple Orthodox jurisdictions in America are a heresy and a scandal; we are bedeviled by cultural misunderstandings, - [Some kinds of prayer I don't understand](https://janvbear.com/some-kinds-of-prayer-i-dont-understand/) - A Catholic priest from a "traditionalist" parish was keeping vigil in St. Peter's Square with thousands of others when the announcement came that the pope was dead.To pick up the story:Within moments, a cardinal announced to the crowd that the pope had "gone home to his Father's house."After a moment of stunned silence, a reverent - [Mothers and daughters](https://janvbear.com/mothers-and-daughters/) - The girl sitting across from me on the bus doesn't remember me, but she was on my daughter's third-grade soccer team eight years ago. She was a beautiful child, with a mass of thick, wavy, blonde hair, which she wore in a long braid. Her mother had a no-nonsense appearance -- comfortable shoes, no makeup, - [That's it](https://janvbear.com/thats-it/) - Outer Life has captured what I'm trying to get from court reporting school He calls it superfluidity: (as good a name as any): Not to be confused with superfluity, a very different goal, superfluidity is an unusual state of matter characterized by a frictionless flow. This state of matter has so far been observed only - [Ah Spring!](https://janvbear.com/ah-spring/) - It was a crazy morning. Young-adult daughter's car is in the shop, and we're sharing a vehicle. I dropped her off at school, ran across town for an interview for the day job, went back to pick her up at school and leave her the car for the rest of her afternoon work.I arrived at - [A look at national dialects](https://janvbear.com/a-look-at-national-dialects/) - This map shows generic names for carbonated drinks. Besides being a lovely mosaic of the USA, it tells a story of migration and influence, as well as pockets of disconformity. Why is St. Louis "soda" country at the juncture of "coke" and "pop"? How did Detroit stake out "soda" in the midst of "pop"? What - [Happy Easter](https://janvbear.com/happy-easter/) - Western Easter, 2005I stopped at the Starbucks in Lake Oswego after church today. It's the second Sunday in Lent for us Orthodox (Pascha is May 1), because of a glitch in the calendar and Orthodox recalcitrance. Papacino's, our neighborhood coffee shop, was closed, and its empty parking lot was my reminder that this was not - [What I'm reading](https://janvbear.com/what-im-reading/) - I would have thought from the title of Alain de Botton's Status Anxiety that it's just another self-help book and have passed on it. In fact, it is another self-help book, in a way, but this author of The Art of Travel makes the genre something beautiful, and the "self" he aims to help is - [Real-time reporting](https://janvbear.com/real-time-reporting/) - I can't type any more, because someone moved all the keys around. When I stand in the choir, my hands are doing the steno of the lyrics. I'm on lesson 26 of 32 in Phoenix theory before I begin speedbuilding in earnest -- going from somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 words per minute to - [You have just stepped into . . .](https://janvbear.com/you-have-just-stepped-into/) - . . . the Twilight Zone.So I was at class the other night, and we finished our speed drills about 6:45 or so, and I went to the break room for a cup of tea and came back and started writing sentences, and all of a sudden I felt bad. Headache, upset stomach, chills, malaise. - [Valleys of Mariner](https://janvbear.com/valleys-of-mariner/) - Photos from Mars continue to astound, this one looking for all the world like water used to pour through those gullies.This would have been where Ransom found the hrossa. - [Benefits of being at kicking level](https://janvbear.com/benefits-of-being-at-kicking-level/) - I know a woman, not a bad woman, but difficult, whose communication style is such that she engenders wailing and gnashing of teeth wherever she goes. She has a manner that pokes wounds and punctures buoyancy. People dread hearing her voice.I don't believe she's aware of it. I think she sees herself as witty, compassionate, - [Or maybe not](https://janvbear.com/or-maybe-not/) - I want to start a blog for techies and call it "Geek-seeking missals."Too bad I don't know squat about technology.You can have the title. - [Why we get so mad at our kids](https://janvbear.com/why-we-get-so-mad-at-our-kids/) - I've discovered that it's at least partly because they put me in touch with myself. Oldest daughter, the one I'm worried about, very nearly missed an opportunity to take a trip she really wanted to take. Some people had made great sacrifices to make this possible, and through her own folly, she almost missed it. - [Great point, Basil](https://janvbear.com/great-point-basil/) - Basil makes such a good point in answer to yesterday's Shameless Plug that I want to pull it out and answer it here. A great discussion aired several years ago on Mars Hill Radio about sentimentality. The Bridges of Madison County was preparing to open in theaters, and the book had already been selling like - [Shameless Plug](https://janvbear.com/shameless-plug/) - If you're in the Portland, Ore., area and interested in writing, you might like an upcoming workshop: Saturday, March 5, in Portland, "Emotion-Driven Fiction" by Eric Witchey. This award-winning short-story writer will teach participants to make emotion drive the plot and to display emotion in text. He will also teach a tool called ED ACE - [Parody Ad](https://janvbear.com/parody-ad/) - OK. I'm evil. But I thought this was funny. Especially since VW is hopping mad about it. h/t: Jeff Jarvis, who draws some useful conclusions about Cluetrain marketing from the kerfluffle. - [Battle Hymn of the Republic](https://janvbear.com/battle-hymn-of-the-republic/) - I don't know why, but the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" always brings tears to my eyes. I just got a disc of Gene Harris (jazz piano) playing spirituals with a rockin' soul version of the Battle Hymn. Classic. - [How are the kids?](https://janvbear.com/how-are-the-kids/) - We've all heard the complaints about the perfunctory How-are-you?s, the What-do-you-think-about-the-weather?s, the How-about-them-Yanks?es. Well, give me the meaningless inquiries about my health (which is fine, thanks), the weather (which I never quite know how to answer), or sports (which I don't follow) over the bright, cheery, quick and indifferent "How are the kids?" The requisite - [An Olympic prankster defrocked](https://janvbear.com/an-olympic-prankster-defrocked/) - An Irish priest who changed the outcome of the 2004 Olympic marathon was defrocked. At first I was going to blog this little gem of a quote for its overwhelming clericalism: I now cannot preach, I cannot give out communion -- I am little more than a pagan. After all, if not being able to - [A Daring Daylight Rescue, Not](https://janvbear.com/a-daring-daylight-rescue-not/) - It was a quiet day in the Appalachians (?) when our intrepid hero, attorney/seminarian/cassock wearer, came upon a roadside disturbance: In any event, I was moseying along when I noticed a crowd -- 10 or 12 people -- standing on the side of the road looking into the river. Among the on-lookers were at least - [A brief note to American retailers](https://janvbear.com/a-brief-note-to-american-retailers/) - Dear Retailers -- For the past few weeks I've heard again and again that you've become afraid of Christmas. Lileks calls it "the holiday that dare not speak its name." Schools have outlawed red and green decorations; the Post Office issues stamps for Hannukah, Kwanzaa, and Eid and "Traditional Holiday" (h/t: Lileks), Target has chased - [Getting in touch with my inner geek](https://janvbear.com/getting-in-touch-with-my-inner-geek/) - The New York Times has an article about how the Mozilla Firefox browser is eating into MS Explorer's market share. Scott Ott at Scrappleface has hit on the same theme. From the NYT: With Firefox, open-source software moves from back-office obscurity to your home, and to your parents', too. (Your children in college are already - [Random ramblings](https://janvbear.com/random-ramblings/) - War stories are the best part of learning a new job. We had our Christmas party at school last evening, and after a half-hour of jollity went back to our workstations to continue learning the theory of realtime transcription (it's hard to express that without any brand names). As frequently happens at such events, we - [The Real St. Nicholas](https://janvbear.com/the-real-st-nicholas/) - If scientists in Manchester, England, are correct, Arius may have hit back. The reporter calls Nicholas, the fourth-century bishop of Myra in Lycia (now a pile of rubble in Turkey), "saint with a broken nose": An anatomist was given access to his tomb by the Vatican half a century ago when repairs were being carried - [Bus people 10, Singing with the Rainbow Man](https://janvbear.com/bus-people-10-singing-with-the-rainbow-man/) - It was a long ride in to work this morning; traffic was bumper to bumper, and my bus ride that normally takes an hour was more like an hour and a half. It was OK: I polished my weather post and started next week's Onion Dome piece as the skies cleared and the sun came - [Weather](https://janvbear.com/weather/) - He got on the elevator wearing Oregon business casual, which is not the chinos and polo shirts of other places' business casual, but blue jeans, nice shirt, denim jacket. He had the tan face and wide jaw and high cheekbones of someone who might be an Indian, and his wavy hair, pure white, had been - [Highway people](https://janvbear.com/highway-people/) - A 1970s-vintage Honda Civic (they looked a little like Gremlins, only smaller) preceded me off the I-205 exit yesterday. As we slowed to the left turn, I noticed something odd about the car (yes, beyond its being 25 years old with an aluminum engine block). It had hay scattered on its bumper, hay that wasn't - [Bus people 9](https://janvbear.com/bus-people-9/) - The Loud Family gets on at a bus stop in West Linn where we usually pick up zero to one person: 11 people with the gross mass of about 18 and with a combined IQ of about 900. They carry on their conversations, about Mom's shoes, Sis's socks, marriage regulations in Utah (whether or not - [A psychiatrist explains BDS](https://janvbear.com/a-psychiatrist-explains-bds/) - Dr. Sanity explains Bush Derangement Syndrome: This psychological defense mechanism is referred to as 'displacement'. One way you can usually tell that an individual is using displacement is that the emotion being displaced (e.g., anger) is all out of proportion to the reality of the situation. The purpose of displacement is to avoid having to - [Tracking the wily Evangelicals](https://janvbear.com/tracking-the-wily-evangelicals/) - Portland's alternative weekly ran a feature story on Evangelicals this week. Its slant was "They're here, they're having an effect, and we'd better get to know them." The writer, Zach Dundas, came across like an anthropologist studying a strange and foreign race, but at least he accepted them as being of the same species as - [Bus people 8](https://janvbear.com/bus-people-8/) - He climbed on the bus with a slow gait, walking with a cane, lumbering up the steps of the bus, which knelt for him at the stop. He was in his 70s, I think, quite fat, too heavy for his muscles to carry. He wore a black beret at a rakish angle, and carried a - [I'm back](https://janvbear.com/im-back-2/) - I didn't know I was going to take a vacation when I pushed "Publish Post" last Monday, but that's what it turned out to be. The odd thing is, the longer I stayed away from blogging, the less I had to say. It will be a few days before I work myself back into the - [Kill Tinkerbell](https://janvbear.com/kill-tinkerbell/) - Our dog Sadie has a thing about light. When the sun on a watch dial sends light glimmers dancing across the wall, Sadie jumps for it. We call the game "Kill Tinkerbell," and it has afforded us a lot of cheap entertainment. Well, last week, our daughter hung the St. Nicholas stockings and plugged in - [The Orthodox Church](https://janvbear.com/the-orthodox-church/) - The classic overview of Orthodox history and theology, by Bishop Kallistos (Timothy) Ware, is online. - [Bus people 7](https://janvbear.com/bus-people-7/) - The gaggle of women stand at the bus stop downtown, one of them yelling, her tone echoing down the canyon of the street, but her words lost in the roar of traffic. When the No. 19 arrives, my bus, they get on it. There are five of them, finished with a Twelve Step meeting, and - [Post-modernism](https://janvbear.com/post-modernism/) - A professor came to our parish to discuss post-modernism in the 21st-century church. It's hard to get a handle on what we learned, and maybe I'll collect my thoughts for another post. As an introduction, our priest ran a couple of clips from the movie (or should I say "film"?) Derrida, a biography of the - [Bus people 6](https://janvbear.com/bus-people-6/) - He's dressed in black, with a black ponytail, and he smells of cigarettes. He's looking at his cell phone as he boards the bus and finds a seat in the front, side-facing seats. I'm in the front front-facing seat (my favorite, because of the good laptop space). It's Election Day, and after a word about - [Bus people 5](https://janvbear.com/bus-people-5/) - They're cute, they're young, they're high-school students. The blonde tells her friend that she's giving up coffee, because she only makes $400 a month, and she spends $100 a month on coffee and another $100 on junk food. She's only got $200 in the bank, she says, and she owes her parents $260. She peppers - [Bus people 4](https://janvbear.com/bus-people-4/) - A guy in his 20s sits in the back of the bus exchanging crime stories with two white-haired women, twins and identically dressed. Sitting toward the front of the bus, I hear his voice spinning yarns about his brothers' and sisters' run-ins with the criminal element, and the women respond with stories they've read in - [Bus people 3](https://janvbear.com/bus-people-3/) - He's a black man in his late 30s, six feet four, 280 or more, wearing a gray and red Columbia Sportswear jacket and an Oakland Raiders watch cap, with hoop earrings. He carries on a loud conversation with the bus driver about where to get a good steak. He whistles the Ray Charles song, "You - [Blogiversary](https://janvbear.com/blogiversary/) - Blogiversaries are a good time for reflection, time to ask ourselves what we're doing here in front of the keyboard in our pajamas (OK, sometimes it's true) while the floors go unswept and the to-do lists grow longer. Mine is coming up on Oct. 29, and on my first day, I wrote "This is an - [On history and stories](https://janvbear.com/on-history-and-stories/) - Our priest gave a sermon today about the difficulty of ascribing meaning to specific events in history, whether national or personal, especially events of loss. Why does a child get cancer? Why do terrorists destroy the Twin Towers? Why does America declare war on Iraq? Why (not his example, but I doubt he would disagree - [Bus people 2](https://janvbear.com/bus-people-2/) - The No. 35 Macadam bus stopped outside an elementary school and picked up 27 fourth- and fifth-graders on their way to the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. There were parents with them, each with six kids to keep count of, and a teacher in his mid-30s, carrying a clipboard. They were good kids--they weren't - [One author's utopia is another author's hell](https://janvbear.com/one-authors-utopia-is-another-authors-hell/) - The "wise" Macintosh in Spider Robinson's The Callahan Touch has a utopian recipe for existential misery, if not species suicide. I dream of a world where humans have so little fear, so little to fear, that fear loses its obsessive fascination for them, its addictive rush. A world without superstition and ignorance and the ever-present - [Library people](https://janvbear.com/library-people/) - She comes to the library table, huge in her green coat and overfilled leggings, wheezing like a fireplace bellows, and looks at me uncertainly. I've allowed the book I was looking at to wander outside my territory on the table. I move the book and tell her that no one is sitting there, and she - [Bus people 1](https://janvbear.com/bus-people-1/) - He(?) got on the bus downtown, and he wore a uniform for [Acme] Transport with various Kerry-Edwards campaign buttons. His hair was cut in reverse mullet--short around the back and sides but the top pulled into a ponytail that hung down to the nape of his neck. There was a youthful, immature, even innocent quality - [What we get instead of hurricanes](https://janvbear.com/what-we-get-instead-of-hurricanes/) - When we were in Louisiana, my daughter said she'd couldn't understand why anyone would live in Florida because of the hurricanes. I said they could be bad, though not usually this bad, but ecverywhere you go has its own share of disasters. When we got home, Mount St. Helens was in the news. The first - [Quotidian detailia](https://janvbear.com/quotidian-detailia/) - Today I rode the bus to work for the first time in years. Before the girls arrived, I worked downtown and couldn't afford the parking. I loved the bus, despite its occasional inconveniences, like being caught seemingly for hours in sweltering heat with windows that didn't open, aside from the occasional loudmouth bore, aside from - [Conspiracy theories exposed!](https://janvbear.com/conspiracy-theories-exposed/) - Paranoid conspiracy theories are more prevalent than ever in culture and politics--vast right-wing conspiracies and left-wing fever swamps, billionaires with plans to "RULE THE WORLD" and chillingly suspicious corporations. Only the initiated few know about the dire strategems, along with a lonely protagonist who accidentally discovers and fights against the overwhelming evil. These stories--or theories--have - [A lesson in composition](https://janvbear.com/a-lesson-in-composition/) - Stanley Fish, dean emeritus at the University of Illinois at Chicago, takes side-by-side speeches of Kerry and Bush and deduces the following object lesson: Words are not just the cosmetic clothing of some underlying integrity; they are the operational vehicles of that integrity, the visible manifestation of the character to which others respond. And if - [Back from America](https://janvbear.com/back-from-america/) - After spending two weeks on a journey from the West to the South and back, I have a few scattered observations about flyover America (in no particular order): You often get the sense that it's still the Sixties, driving the remaining stretches of the old Route 66 or driving the mile-long stretch of highway in - [Dinners, stories and gossip](https://janvbear.com/dinners-stories-and-gossip/) - My uncle was preaching at a tiny church in the town of Eros, La. He's my mother's little brother, and he looks more and more like my grandfather every year. The church meets in a remodeled house trailer on a lot about a block off the Highway 34, behind the abandoned school. It's an old - [Hiatus](https://janvbear.com/hiatus/) - I may have wiped my hard disk today--taking out calendars, addresses, e-mails, passwords, fiction, nonfiction, poetry, blogs in process, photos, music and more. I am, on the one hand, verklempt. I am, on the other, philosophical. Maybe it's time for a fundamental re-evaluation. I'll be out of town for two weeks, and I can't predict - [Sadie's lumps](https://janvbear.com/sadies-lumps/) - When we last met Sadie, she had fallen asleep after an exciting day in Oregon City. Today, she was decidedly lumpy. She came into the house with a welt the size of a ping pong ball on her muzzle just below her eye and other lumps of various sizes all over her back and sides. - [Horror movie](https://janvbear.com/horror-movie/) - On your desktop. It's an animation of a T4 bacteriophage eating through a cell wall. It's like the creepy creatures in the Matrix, only more so because it seems to be covered with diamonds and emeralds, and because it's as close as the scientists can get to reality. I don't know if it's a "good - [Friday!](https://janvbear.com/friday/) - It's been a bad week for blogging what with family celebration (31st wedding anniversary) and writing a long article that turned out to be a narrow footpath around some delicate sensibilities. But I'm done now, and my mind is mush. I'll come up with something tomorrow, maybe with photos. - [Priest sentenced to bread and water for 'punishing' sermon](https://janvbear.com/priest-sentenced-to-bread-and-water-for-punishing-sermon/) - How's a person supposed to write Orthodox satire when items like this appear in real newspapers? A Romanian orthodox priest is to live in seclusion for a month after delivering a five-hour funeral service. Agapie Aurel Rusu has also been ordered to live on just bread and water for the month as a punishment. The - [The narrative gift](https://janvbear.com/the-narrative-gift/) - I ran across this blog today, written by an infantry soldier in Iraq. In today's post he tells the story of being brought into the colonel's office and eventually congratulated on his writing. He starts out: I never even knew what a Blog was until I read about them in an article in Time Magazine, - [Greetings from across the pond](https://janvbear.com/greetings-from-across-the-pond/) - My boss's daughter (age 8 or so) stopped at my desk to say hello. I asked if the taller quiet girl behind her was her friend. "I'm from London," the girl said. "My dad used to work here."Her voice reminded me of boating on the Thames, cool, quiet cloisters at Oxford, tea in the drawing - [On conspiracies and coffee shops](https://janvbear.com/on-conspiracies-and-coffee-shops/) - My friend and I were at Papaccino's after church Sunday, talking about this and that, and I told her my search for the meaning of paranoid conspiracy literature. After listing some books and a lot of movies that fall into the genre, we talked ourselves into a answer about the audience that satisfies me, at - [Sadie's big day](https://janvbear.com/sadies-big-day/) - I took the puppy for her first big Oregon City walk today. Sadie's been out for a hike before with her big buddy, Mocha, but this was her first time walking the loud and scary sidewalks of Oregon City. Mocha had an invitation to go to the beach today, and Sadie stayed behind. We walked - [On placed and misplaced 'hope'](https://janvbear.com/on-placed-and-misplaced-hope/) - Thomas at Endlessly Rocking continues the discussion of politics and liturgy: This made me think a bit, and this is what I've concluded (remember, this isn't an argument with Jan - these are my own noodlings, for which no one else can or should claim responsibility). I know you've heard this here before, and that - [From this, much comfort](https://janvbear.com/from-this-much-comfort/) - Father Patrick Reardon's rant about a liturgical expert at a priests' conference has buttressed my hope for the Church (not that my hope for the Church was flagging at the moment, but it never hurts to buttress). In Touchstone Magazine - Mere Comments, he relates that the only annoying expert to speak at this particular - [Incarnation](https://janvbear.com/incarnation/) - Unvoiced the Godhead spoke the Word And unflesh hands made man. Time's Creator, not bound by time, More distant than the sky, Who willed to be in place and time Confined, who healed and spoke With hands and voice of matter born, Was one of us, though God. Closer now than one's own heart, Time - [French history lesson](https://janvbear.com/french-history-lesson/) - A moving account of genocide during the Reign of Terror appears at Godspy: Once, there was a rich and beautiful and remote land, a land of secrets and songs and story; a land of ocean and forest and river; of quiet marsh and deep paths. Its people lived as they had always lived, in their - [This is just plain weird](https://janvbear.com/this-is-just-plain-weird/) - Journalist and professor Terry Mattingly attended the North American Christian Convention in Phoenix. He writes: Here is what I saw. On one of the quieter halls of the convention center was a small room set aside for private prayer. Since this was a Protestant gathering, the room contained no traditional religious art. Yet there was - [Revenge of the scambaiters](https://janvbear.com/revenge-of-the-scambaiters/) - We get more than we can count of them every week, in the stilted English of someone who learned the language well, but not quite well enough: Esteemed Sir: I am the last of a wealthy family in [African country of your choice] and have $[???] billion dollars in [a named bank of that African - [Of blogs, bridges and mystery](https://janvbear.com/of-blogs-bridges-and-mystery/) - In a comment, Douglas says I should explain the significance of the bridge in the upper left corner of this blog. To begin with the basics, it's the Hwy. 101 bridge over Yaquina Bay at Newport, Oregon. It's a beautiful bridge, built in 1936 when Oregon was still a distant place and when Depression work - [Stories of conspiracy and paranoia](https://janvbear.com/stories-of-conspiracy-and-paranoia/) - Foucault's Pendulum, The DaVinci Code, Jonathan Rabb's execrable novel titled The Book of Q, Three Days of the Condor, Conspiracy Theory, Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Fahrenheit 911, Late Great Planet Earth, and its descendant Left Behind, Pinky and the Brain. The paragraph above is a mixed bag of great fiction, crackpot theories, movies - [Modifications done](https://janvbear.com/modifications-done/) - Several hours later, the modifications to the Blogger template are done. That's the Hwy. 101 bridge at Newport, Oregon, in the upper-left corner, instead of the generic Maine lighthouse. The rocks in the lower right are Blogger rocks, but they look a little like Oregon rocks. The font is Trebuchet, which I think is beautiful. - [Raise it up to throw it down to raise it up again](https://janvbear.com/raise-it-up-to-throw-it-down-to-raise-it-up-again/) - Thomas at Endlessly Rocking has helpfully posted a paragraph that leads into something I wanted to think some more about. [The Declaration of Independence] is our charter of liberty, and the Constitution is a workaday framework for daily governance crafted in compromise and cunning, and together they constitute this country as a rather weird experiment. It's - [More abandoned buildings](https://janvbear.com/more-abandoned-buildings/) - Kate from Saskatchewan has photos of an abandoned store. You know how I love abandoned buildings, especially shelves of spices and canned goods black and rusted with long disuse. - [The Literary agent as institution](https://janvbear.com/the-literary-agent-as-institution/) - "Publishers, reports The New York Times, are 'not overfond' of the wheelings and dealings of agents: 'They say he has been of advantage to the few writers of the first class, having made their work much more expensive, while he has been the ruin of all the smaller fry. The steady, old-fashioned relationship between publisher - [New at the Onion Dome](https://janvbear.com/new-at-the-onion-dome/) - The Onion Dome: Orthodox News with a Twist is up again this week. Here are the headlines: The monks of Mount Athos are protesting the reunification talks between "the Church Overseas of Russian Orthodox Christians (COROC) and the Patriarchate of Moscow, St. Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod, and All the Russias Besides (PMSPNNARB)," in which that excellent - [Two books worth hearing](https://janvbear.com/two-books-worth-hearing/) - I didn't know this was a young adult book when I picked it up at the library, and I was well into the book before I realized that it was. It doesn't matter, Coraline, by Neil Gaiman, and read by the author if you pick it up on audiobook as I did, is a splendid - [Nashville readers](https://janvbear.com/nashville-readers/) - Get religion does a great gotcha on a British snob who presumes that people in the Bible Belt don't read. Read the whole thing; it's worth it. But here's what snagged my interest. They did a seat-of-the-pants survey of the top books ordered from Amazon.com from regions inside and outside the Bible Belt (the Bible - [Scene to chapter to act to novel](https://janvbear.com/scene-to-chapter-to-act-to-novel/) - There's a parallel structure in fiction that runs from the overall arc of the novel down through act, chapter and scene--and, so I've heard, down through paragraph and sentence. There are a lot of different terms for these different aspects, but a central reality at the heart of all of them: Character starts in her - [Why can't 'fun' be an adjective?](https://janvbear.com/why-cant-fun-be-an-adjective/) - Dictionary.com/fun: "Usage Note: The use of fun as an attributive adjective, as in a fun time, a fun place, probably originated in a playful reanalysis of the use of the word in sentences such as It is fun to ski, where fun has the syntactic function of adjectives such as amusing or enjoyable. The usage - [Of Roasted Brians and Other National Cousins](https://janvbear.com/of-roasted-brians-and-other-national-cousins/) - I've got to run this morning, so I'll just send you off to a funny column in the Moscow Times about mangled English in Azerbaijan. Here's a taste (so to speak): In restaurants, menus offer weird and wonderful dishes, from "Hot and Cold Snakes" to "Blins under Cold Sores." My personal favorite is "Roasted Brians." - [Oregon Berries](https://janvbear.com/oregon-berries/) - It all started when a Dutchman named Maarten asked blogger Matt about Oregon. Douglas referred him to my site, which wasn't particularly Oregonian at the time. But I had talked about Charles Williams, and Matt is a fan, so he mentioned this site on his. Well today, we went berry picking, and to my readers - [The Onion Dome is up](https://janvbear.com/the-onion-dome-is-up/) - This week's Onion Dome is posted. Alex discovers a convert who doesn't like Way of a Pilgrim, I've covered this week's lineup on The Orthodox TV Network, and Marie visits But and Mary Jane and Her and Alice at the Summer Festival at St. Serious of Radonezh Retreat Center. - [As I Lay Lying](https://janvbear.com/as-i-lay-lying/) - This is the last you'll see about the Clinton memoir here, but The Minor Fall, the Major Lift has a brilliant parody in the style of William Faulkner: Here are a few paragraphs: There was a fire in it and Vince squatting in his shirt tail in front of it, chunking Rose Law Firm records - [From grammar to voice](https://janvbear.com/from-grammar-to-voice/) - I haven't read the best-selling grammar-advocacy book, Eats, Shoots, and Leaves, not for any reason of taste or principle, but just because it hasn't risen to the top of my stack (it's a tall stack). Now Louis Menand in his New Yorker review of the book says I haven't missed much. I've got some disagreements - [Garage sale](https://janvbear.com/garage-sale/) - I was out yesterday tending our garage sale. A great day for it--hot, in the sun at least. But in the breezy shade under the tree in the front yard, I communed with Charles Williams (+), Elmore Leonard (-) and then Umberto Eco (!) as the people came, looked over our stuff, bargained it down, - [Damick does it again](https://janvbear.com/damick-does-it-again/) - Andrew Damick poses a question that has puzzled me a lot over the years: Why Should the Devil Get All the Good Music? Instead of bemoaning the incroachment of rock 'n' roll into the "sanctuary" or observing that the melody to "The Star-Spangled Banner" came from a drinking song, he actually gets at the philosophy - [They should withhold their next payment](https://janvbear.com/they-should-withhold-their-next-payment/) - Bloggers are outraged that Dave Winer pulled the plug on their blogs without warning. He'd been hosting 3,000 blogs on his server for free, beginning in 2000. Now, because of time, financial and health demands, he decided that he couldn't do it any more. So he stopped. People woke up Monday morning to discover that - [Horror story settings](https://janvbear.com/horror-story-settings/) - Amazon.com WidgetsAbandoned buildings talk--they laugh and gibber and shriek like crazy old ladies. The folks at Dark Passage hear them, too.It's a tour of some of the creepiest places around, like the tunnel that eats light and comes up under the house that used to hold the funeral home that processed H.P. Lovecraft's body.I don't - [I feel better already](https://janvbear.com/i-feel-better-already/) - I swear it's not schadenfreude. The author at debcentral (sorry, I've got my wrong glasses on and can hardly see the screen, much less read small white type against a black background) has kindly posted a gallery of her rejections. I've got more of those than she shows on the web. Altogether, I may have - [The Storrow Drive Venus](https://janvbear.com/the-storrow-drive-venus/) - If Charles Williams were blogging in the 21st century, he might sound something like Stephen Baldwin: . . . as the discarded soda and beer cans bobbed along in the water's edge like rusting buoys in a brown foam so disgusting that it seemed even the seagulls disdained to get their feet wet, I thought - [Do you think anyone would notice if I started talking like this?](https://janvbear.com/do-you-think-anyone-would-notice-if-i-started-talking-like-this/) - In his Telegraph UK column, Oliver Pritchett has struck a chord for grace and elegance in language. Think how much more beautiful our airports would be if this message told us to mind our bags: "Put not thy trust in bags that are unattended, for it may be the work of thine enemies who seek - [Orthodox radio on the Web](https://janvbear.com/orthodox-radio-on-the-web/) - I love Incarnation Broadcast Network, which is why it's so maddening that it's so charmingly wonky. (I listen by way of Live 365.) A Liturgy in fine Byzantine chant is interrupted suddenly by a whiney-voiced woman giving an honestly inspiring reflection about the Fatherhood of God. When she finishes, a Liturgy begins that has the - [Emigres and immigrants](https://janvbear.com/emigres-and-immigrants/) - In his New York Times piece titled A Russian Émigré Finally Gets His Russian Passport, Serge Schmemann tells about his uncle's receipt of a Russian passport after decades of living as an emigre in France. Serge (I guess I can call him Serge, since he gave my newly adopted daughters and me a ride from - [Manalive](https://janvbear.com/manalive/) - Just finished reading G.K. Chesterton's novel Manalive, a story about the pursuit of joy. Innocent Smith is a man with two legs, who discovered in college the truth behind the pessimistic philosphies of pre-World War I England: that the professors could talk gloom and despair all they wanted, but if bullet whizzed past their heads, - [Bravo!](https://janvbear.com/bravo/) - We've had this discussion in our parish and have come down on the side of a reserved and thoughtful silence. Once, somebody gave a gift to our matusha, a woman who deserves our respect and, yes, applause, if anyone does. But people talked to the priest about it. I didn't hear the comments, but I - [I am such a geek](https://janvbear.com/i-am-such-a-geek/) - I spent hours last night updating to OSX, moving my files from the System 9 documents to System 10 documents folder, discovering the joys of the OSX browser, Safari (I haven't ever read the well-known Little Green Footballs weblog because it took too long to load, and now it just appears. And my Power Structure - [Is music more culturally translatable than humor?](https://janvbear.com/is-music-more-culturally-translatable-than-humor/) - I think so. A Ethiopian man, Haile Amde Haymanot, signed the guest book over at the Onion Dome thus: besime ab, weweld, wemenfes qidus; ahadu amlak; Amen! Hello there! Yes, the Orthodox might not be laughing about themselves... It's because we take our religion very seriously. Our religion is theocentric and not anthropocentric as some - [But who smites sleeping proofreaders at the LA Times?](https://janvbear.com/but-who-smites-sleeping-proofreaders-at-the-la-times/) - Important rule for headline writers, especially at one of the top metropolitan dailies in the country: Don't use a verb unless you're sure about the difference between the infinitive form and the past tense: They're Called to Smote Typos From the Good Book Proofreaders prevent such errors as 'thou shalt commit adultery' from making it - [Where are the readable books about books?](https://janvbear.com/where-are-the-readable-books-about-books/) - Writing in the London Review of Books, James Wood takes a pen to this question in his review of The Oxford English Literary History, Vol. XII: 1960-2000: The Last of England? by Randall Stevenson: This absence of a general, non-academic literary criticism is the speaking void which tells us that writers, though apparently closer than - [OK, I'm the silly goose](https://janvbear.com/ok-im-the-silly-goose/) - Turns out that Elena the Chernobyl motorcyclist is a hoax. I hope none my readers took her advice about riding motorcycles through a death zone. Apparently, Elena herself did not. Cue laugh track. - [Cousins "Left Behind" Hatfield and "Harry Potter" McCoy](https://janvbear.com/cousins-left-behind-hatfield-and-harry-potter-mccoy/) - Steven Waldman at Slate finds essential similarities between the Harry Potter series and the Left Behind series. I think a number of them are overdrawn, but he finally has a point worth considering. Waldman observes that people who like Harry Potter don't like Left Behind, and vice versa; in fact, the people who like Harry - [Making Light: Bad advice on cover letters](https://janvbear.com/making-light-bad-advice-on-cover-letters/) - Making Light: Bad advice on cover letters: " " Teresa Nielsen Hayden fisks some writing advice from Todd James Pierce. It's always good to get the reaction from someone in the field. - [The Tears of Things: The Prisons Behind Lisa Sette Gallery: Cuban Art Series #6](https://janvbear.com/the-tears-of-things-the-prisons-behind-lisa-sette-gallery-cuban-art-series-6/) - The Tears of Things: The Prisons Behind Lisa Sette Gallery: Cuban Art Series #6 http://www.goarch.org/en/news/NewsDetail.asp?id=1057 While in Havana, in addition to numerous meetings with local government officials, the Patriarch also visited a children’s hospital and a school for children with special needs, giving small crosses to the children as a blessing related to his visit. - [Poem in the style of a troparion to Mother Maria Skobtsova (Tone 3)](https://janvbear.com/poem-in-the-style-of-a-troparion-to-mother-maria-skobtsova-tone-3/) - The poor found in your face the love of Christ, O Mother Maria, And your compassion washed the streets of Paris like rain. You stood with God's little ones chosen for death And set aside the Now for the Eternal.// Therefore, O saint who shone in Ravensbruck, pray to Christ our God to save our - [Plot point or pinch point?](https://janvbear.com/plot-point-or-pinch-point/) - I wrote about this topic earlier, but it keeps coming up. Suddenly, when I face my own troubles, I find myself asking, "Is this a plot point or a pinch point?" A plot point is when the protagonist comes to the end of his resources, when the goal he has been pursuing has gone irrevocably - [Insights from the Profile page](https://janvbear.com/insights-from-the-profile-page/) - The New! and Improved! Blogger! has added a profile page, which provides a piece of information that is at once encouraging and scary: In the 7-8 months I've written this blog (since October '03), I've posted 52,932 words in 196 posts. If it were a novel, I'd be halfway through the first draft (they're not - [A novel without those tiresome verbs](https://janvbear.com/a-novel-without-those-tiresome-verbs/) - A new French "novel"--more accurately a 233-page book of non-nonfiction--makes the news because it's written without any verbs: "I am like a car driver," the author said, "who has smashed the windscreen so he cannot see into the future, smashed the rear-view mirror so he cannot see the past, and is travelling in the present." - [About that trip to Ashland](https://janvbear.com/about-that-trip-to-ashland/) - I wanted to recommend a couple of plays from the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. For those who aren't familiar with the festival, it happens from late February through October in Ashland, a town in the southwestern corner of the state. The 2004 season has 13 plays running in three theatres--large and small indoor theatres and a - [Note to junk callers: Enunciate](https://janvbear.com/note-to-junk-callers-enunciate/) - When I picked up the phone, a woman's voice started right into her message. I thought she said--though I'm sure I'm mistaken--"Stop the Catholic takeover. Vote 'no' on Measures [something] and [something]." I said, "Ooooookay," but the call was over. What I think I heard is often way funnier than what was actually said. I - [Fiction: Call Your Mother](https://janvbear.com/fiction-call-your-mother/) - When I got back from Ashland, I found a note in my e-mail box that my short story, Call Your Mother, has been posted at Literary Mama. It's a great site, and I'm pleased to be included. - [Fr. Vasiliy holds forth on missionary dating](https://janvbear.com/fr-vasiliy-holds-forth-on-missionary-dating/) - "Ask Father Vasiliy" in The Onion Dome has this gem: In general I discourage this “missionary dating.” Was it missionary dating in Nineteenth Century Russia? I am meaning outside of Royal Family, of course. Actually I am meaning outside of Royal Family and heretitary priesthood families. Outside of Royal family, heretitary priesthood families, and persons - [Margarita evangelism](https://janvbear.com/margarita-evangelism/) - It's a light day for readers, so I'll sneak in a story that may scandalize some people. We had a great retreat at Cannon Beach this past weekend. Friday afternoon, the seven of us walked to a nearby restaurant for margaritas. We had a grand time and laughed enough to chase away the gloom that's - [Plot points and conflict](https://janvbear.com/plot-points-and-conflict/) - My lessons in fiction: I've finally figured out what a plot point is. It's a place where the character must either change goals or radically change the means of pursuing those goals. If it's at the beginning of a story, it's the inciting incident. At that point, the character's everyday life is over, whether it's - [Doing my part](https://janvbear.com/doing-my-part/) - I got a call today from the Department of Homeland Security. A nice man, whose name I didn't catch, wanted to ask about some attempted credit card fraud against us last year. In December someone tried to use our Visa card to buy something in Indonesia. We heard about it from the credit card company. - [The Swan](https://janvbear.com/the-swan/) - My friend Anne blogged about the new reality show, The Swan, last week: I'm outraged by the continual message that only one type of body is beautiful and the rest of us need life-threatening measures in order to get one. I watched the first episode with my daughter and kept asking what they were doing - [Can someone help this man?](https://janvbear.com/can-someone-help-this-man/) - He's drowning, and I can't swim well enough to save him (metaphorically). Pejman, an Iranian-Jewish attorney and one of the best voices in the blogosphere, has innocently walked into dangerous country. He asks: How does the Trinity work, exactly?and Jesus died for our sins, according to Church teachings. Does that mean that we are now - [Kenai](https://janvbear.com/kenai/) - Kenai sleeps in the back yard with her head on her front paws and her back legs lying useless under her. She is more than 16 years old, and her face, which once had the expression of a mischievous racoon, is now gray. Every few hours she barks her distress. She's not in constant pain, - [Suffering child](https://janvbear.com/suffering-child/) - There's a lot going on in the world -- stuff I would blog about, stuff I would leave to others, stuff that's important or funny or both -- but when your kid is suffering, it doesn't seem to matter. If you're praying people, and I believe a lot of you are, please remember Vera, 19, - [Fitzgerald's film-writing career](https://janvbear.com/fitzgeralds-film-writing-career/) - Not. A collection of F. Scott Fitzgerald's screenplays goes to the University of South Carolina after being dug out of a file cabinet in Warner Brothers Studios somewhere. (I have an image of the scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark when Indiana Jones sees where the Lost Ark might be warehoused.) Apparently, Fitzgerald wasn't - [The Onion Dome is up](https://janvbear.com/the-onion-dome-is-up-2/) - I neglected to mention that The Onion Dome is up. Our intrepid editor has a story about the, shall we say, dark underside of Pascha. I reported on an Orthodox answer to Left Behind, and Marie told of the triumph over sexism in her parish. Father Vasiliy gives us the true and correct response to - [Silmarillion in 1,000 words](https://janvbear.com/silmarillion-in-1000-words/) - I've confessed recently to a short attention span. It was longer, once upon a time, and I'm glad I took the opportunity when I had it to read the Silmarillion. If my attention span ever gets longer again, I might read it again. In the meantime, J. the Honourary Canadian gives us the Silmarillion in - [A virtual gathering of the female Orthobloggers](https://janvbear.com/a-virtual-gathering-of-the-female-orthobloggers/) - Karl expresses happiness that so many Othodox women are joining the blogosphere. He helpfully lists a few of them (us). I know that we women are taking a little longer to warm up to the blog forum than the guys. I think it's a technology thing. Heaven knows, if you give us a platform, we'll - [The Fool](https://janvbear.com/the-fool/) - I've posted a short story titled "The Fool" at The Fellowship of St. Caedmon. I'd be interested in feedback, whether in the comments over there or here. "It's a sensitive case," Mark Radcliffe said. Eugene Peters watched the senior deputy district attorney get up from his long mahogany desk and go to the window. "We - [Chinese ice festival](https://janvbear.com/chinese-ice-festival/) - Take a quick trip to Harbin, China, where R Todd King has taken some splendid photos of ice sculptures in this formerly Russian city in China. Don't miss the nighttime photos, of ice palaces ablaze with lights. ONE MORE THING: Notice the three-bar crosses on the "Thai Ice Palace." (Open the image in a new - [About that Sindarin Paschal greeting](https://janvbear.com/about-that-sindarin-paschal-greeting/) - If you've checked out the Onion Dome this week, you've seen the Elvish Paschal greeting: "Si Cuielen na i hiro o coi!" and the response "Ele, Si Cuielan!" My friend Barbara researched it for me, and her background information didn't fit the Onion Dome piece, but it's much too good to waste. She used Ruth - [Short story accepted](https://janvbear.com/short-story-accepted/) - My short story, "Call Your Mother," has been accepted for the Mother's Day edition of the online mag Literary Mama. Literary Mama is a good publication, close to the bone, not the sunshine-and-daisies motherhood that disappeared 50 years ago if it ever existed. I was wondering about motherly perfection during Holy Week. Motherhood is hard, - [I wasn't going to post until Pascha, but . . .](https://janvbear.com/i-wasnt-going-to-post-until-pascha-but/) - I owe you this one. I saw The Passion this evening and give it a 2 (out of 4). I liked the languages and the costumes. I like the fact that someone in Hollywood has produced a religiously serious movie. I like the fact that it has engendered so many discussions. But . . . - [Holy Week Hiatus](https://janvbear.com/holy-week-hiatus/) - I won't be blogging this week as we finish our journey to Pascha. Brethren, let us love the Bridegroom and prepare our lamps with care, shining with the virtues and right faith; that, like the wise virgins of the Lord, we may be ready to enter with Him into the wedding feast. For God the - [The eternal life of dogs](https://janvbear.com/the-eternal-life-of-dogs/) - Bioethicist and Orthodox priest Father John Breck talks about having to put a beloved dog to sleep. After Father Breck and his wife rescued and lived with Poker for several years, the dog developed kidney failure with no real chance for improvement. They made the difficult decision to have the dog put down, and then - [Tell me a story](https://janvbear.com/tell-me-a-story/) - A new site is offering recordings of copyright-free classics for under a dollar. Call it iTunes for lovers of the spoken word. Telltale Weekly has "A Dog's Tale" by Mark Twain, "Give me Liberty or Give Me Death" by Patrick Henry, "The Magic Shop" by H.G. Wells, "A Modest Proposal" by Jonathan Swift, and "Leaves - [Blogging advice](https://janvbear.com/blogging-advice/) - Salon blogger Dave Pollard tells what it takes to build a blog in "The Top Five Ways to Improve Your Blog" and "The Five Top Ways to Attract More Attention to It." Here are the tips for improvement, stripped of their explanatory material: Provide something unique Provide something valuable Be first Do your research Learn - ['What is a friend anyway?'](https://janvbear.com/what-is-a-friend-anyway/) - Ze Frank asks this question along with other penetrating observations in his online video "small world" that satirizes online "friends" networks. He raises good questions about exclusivity and how friends prove themselves. But don't miss his summary of the book of Esther. (People of delicate sensibilties about language should probably give it a miss.) Source: - [What's all this about Romanians?](https://janvbear.com/whats-all-this-about-romanians/) - I know a few Romanians here in Portland. They're normal, decent people who make delicious cabbage rolls and a polenta that will knock your socks off. But over the past year or so, I've read two horror novels (don't ask) in which the "monster" is Romanian. I thought, "Ha ha--likely story," and since then have - [Mother Maria Skobtsova](https://janvbear.com/mother-maria-skobtsova/) - Our priest gave a sermon yesterday on Mother Maria Skobtsova, cigarette-smoking nun, poet, former Bolshevik and martyr of the Nazi yoke. When she became a nun, her bishop gave her a unique charge: that the world would be her monastery. She opened her home to every sort of poverty--hunger, alcoholism, mental illness, disease. When the - [Kursk Root Icon of Our Lady of the Sign](https://janvbear.com/kursk-root-icon-of-our-lady-of-the-sign/) - Fellow blogger Douglas tells me that the Kursk Root Icon of Our Lady of the Sign is on display in Minneapolis-St. Paul. I've been Orthodox 14 years this Pascha, but I've spent my life in a remote backwater of the Orthodox world and have never been to see a pilgrim icon. The Stroganoff Exhibit at - [Dumb as fish](https://janvbear.com/dumb-as-fish/) - I've got a lot of stuff to do today, but I want to report my favorite line from the Akathist Hymn last evening: "Eloquent orators we see dumb as the fishes in thy presence, O Theotokos, . . . ." It goes on to make profound theological points, but I loved the part about their - [Those funeral directors and morticians are funny guys](https://janvbear.com/those-funeral-directors-and-morticians-are-funny-guys/) - Harper's Magazine gives a helpful list of "theme funerals" ("staging areas") for that loved one whose identity was something outside himself. Was he a pilot? Rent a hangar at the local airport and have local pilots fly out of the hangar and line up their planes in order of the age of the craft. Banker? - [Lena's back](https://janvbear.com/lenas-back/) - Lena, the Chernobyl ghost town biker, has brought up her site again with more pictures, sharper design, and the same eerie and compelling story. The photo shown here is cropped down from one of hers. I picked this up from The Politburo Diktat. - [Shameless plug for The Blackbird's Nest](https://janvbear.com/shameless-plug-for-the-blackbirds-nest/) - My friend Jenny Schroedel's new book is out from St Vladmir's Seminary Press. The Blackbird's Nest is the story of St. Kevin, who spent Lent like a tree, holding up a blackbird's nest. I've read earlier versions of the story--haven't seen this one yet--and it's funny and charming and inspiring. Jenny is a heck of - [Fellowship of St. Caedmon](https://janvbear.com/fellowship-of-st-caedmon/) - Andrew Stephen Damick tells why I became Orthodox in "Notes towards a Definition of Orthodox Christian English Literature," for the Fellowship of St. Caedmon. It sounds weird, maybe heretical, even to me, converting on the basis of a literary theory--a literary theory I have never heard so well summarized till now. Damick captures the literary - [This explains a lot](https://janvbear.com/this-explains-a-lot/) - Joe Strupp at Editor & Publisher relates how The Onion almost won a Pulitzer for its 9-11 coverage: The longtime editor of The Philadelphia Daily News was on the committee choosing finalists in the commentary category in 2002 when a submission from The Onion, the irreverent humor newspaper, came before the group. "As it went - [Bad news for brainiacs (or wanna-bes)](https://janvbear.com/bad-news-for-brainiacs-or-wanna-bes/) - Brain scientist Barry L. Beyerstein breaks the bad news in "Do we really use only 10 percent of our brains?" All told, the foregoing suggests that there is no cerebral spare tire waiting to be mounted in service of one's grade point average, job advancement, or the pursuit of a cure for cancer or the - [Seven basic plots](https://janvbear.com/seven-basic-plots/) - I've always wondered about the seven basic plots. John Leary lists and describes them here: 1. Man v (Wo)man 2. Man v Nature 3. Man v Environment 4. Man v Machine 5. Man v The Supernatural 6. Man v Self 7. Man v God The distinction between "nature" and "environment" may not be clear, and - ['Anything, Mr. Frenkel'](https://janvbear.com/anything-mr-frenkel/) - Teresa Nielsen Hayden tells a great story on her blog, Making Light: It seems that Tor editor Jim Frenkel was approached at a convention by an attractive young lady, who said, "Golly, Mr. Frenkel, I'd do anything to be a published author." "Anything?" "Anything." "Then write me a good book." I love it. Writing a - [Like the new look?](https://janvbear.com/like-the-new-look/) - If you notice anything different, it might be the color pallette here. I've been stretching my html skills and this site was a big help in visualizing the colors. - [But at least he spelled your name right](https://janvbear.com/but-at-least-he-spelled-your-name-right/) - It's probably evidence of my bad character that this amuses me so (or maybe it's the photo). "Deborah Schoeneman reports that Richard Ford spat on Colson Whitehead (The Intuitionist) at a Poets & Writers party, having nursed a grudge for two years over Whitehead's negative New York Times review of A Multitude of Sins." Author - [Blog of the Day](https://janvbear.com/blog-of-the-day/) - Thanks to Albert McIlhenny for naming this his Blog of the Day for March 15. Albert's blog looks at issues of the day through the lens of what he calls the historical churches -- "as defined in the traditional formularies of the Christian Faith." Have a look. - [More on Bishop Seraphim](https://janvbear.com/more-on-bishop-seraphim/) - To yesterday's post on Bishop Seraphim, Havdala replies: I loved that post! One of my favourite painters is the Celtic revivalist, John Duncan. Many years ago the Orthodox priest in Edinburgh told me he had met Duncan when he was a child, 'But of course,' he said smoothing his beard, 'he believed in faeries.' There - [Seraphim's Journal](https://janvbear.com/seraphims-journal/) - I just discovered that one of my favorite bishops is blogging at Live Journal. It can be dizzying to follow Bishop Seraphim's March 13 post from Celtic saints to Bodidharma crossing the Himalyas to planetary scientist Michael Allison to Thomas Merton to Alaska to Henri Nouwen to Tolkien's poem on the Death of Brendan, but - [Ebooks hit the big time in Japan](https://janvbear.com/ebooks-hit-the-big-time-in-japan/) - Japanese school girls are part of what may be a trend as they read a new novel on their cell phones. An entrepreneurial genius named Yoshi delivers the romantic novel about 17-year-old Ayu in small daily installments: Mobile phones can receive e-mail of up to 1,600 characters. While this is more than adequate for most - [How do we respond?](https://janvbear.com/how-do-we-respond/) - Friend and fellow blogger Karl comments on yesterday's post: ""And by next week most of the world will have forgotten and 'moved on.'" It's true, of course, "most of the world." A lot of it never stopped in the first place. But most isn't all. When I came to understand the enormity of what happened - [Another last and final word on The Passion](https://janvbear.com/another-last-and-final-word-on-the-passion/) - St. Vladimir's Seminary assistant professor Peter C Bouteneff is so eloquent in his review of Gibson's The Passion that I can't let it pass unnoted. Money quote: Yet in a time when the top five grossing films were "The Passion of the Christ," "50 First Dates," "Twisted," "Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen," and "Dirty - [New Onion Dome](https://janvbear.com/new-onion-dome/) - The Onion Dome has more than just a twist this week. Our intrepid editor reports that Patriarch PATRIARCHUS the Nth insists that he did not have a wardrobe malfunction when he showed the Turks what he really thought of them. Our man in Moscow caught "the last" recording session of the great retired Orthodox rapper - [What's in Our Pascha Basket](https://janvbear.com/whats-in-our-pascha-basket/) - Here's a good article about the contents and symbolism of the traditional Pascha basket. It's beyond my domestic skills, but it's a valueable resource: What's in Our Pascha Basket by Nichola Krause: "When I was young, I never knew why we were eating these strange 'basket foods' after fasting for Lent. I didn't like ham; - [How News Travels on the Internet](https://janvbear.com/how-news-travels-on-the-internet/) - Stephen VanDyke has created an illustration that addresses a question that's been niggling at my brain for a while: Where do bloggers get this stuff? Now I know. Pull it from Google news or e-mail, lift from other bloggers, quote, comment, modify, parodize. Hmmm. Same thing I do (like this), except that I throw in - [Prison rape](https://janvbear.com/prison-rape/) - A compelling article about an unpeasant topic is at Legal Affairs, "The Problem of Prison Rape": ON A RECENT AFTERNOON, I visited the home of Edward Tuddenham in Austin, Tex. He showed me to a seat in his study, where the walls were adorned with American Indian weavings and his framed Harvard Law degree. Tuddenham - [Choir as community](https://janvbear.com/choir-as-community/) - I sometimes think directing an a cappella choir must be a little like playing an organ in which all the keys have their own wills, their own ideas about what they ought to play, who sometimes aren't paying attention and sometimes don't know or can't hear the part. The sections have their own personalities, too. - [Writing seminar](https://janvbear.com/writing-seminar/) - I just got back from an all-day writing workshop with Cricket Pechstein, sponsored by Oregon Writers' Colony. If you ever get a chance to take a class with her--and it's quite possible, because she does workshops and writers' conferences all around the country--I highly recommend it. She's sharp and funny and well-organized. We covered a - [Seraphim Rose](https://janvbear.com/seraphim-rose/) - Havdala at Doves and Pomegranates does a short review of Seraphim Rose's The Soul After Death (here's the first part). I never got through the book and developed a deep suspicion of it and its author because I found it so nearly unreadable (I developed this habit trying to read Gurdjieff; by the end of - [Yea, though I ride my Kawasaki through the valley of the shadow of death . . .](https://janvbear.com/yea-though-i-ride-my-kawasaki-through-the-valley-of-the-shadow-of-death/) - Allow some time for this tour through the nuclear deadzone around the Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine. The guide is a young woman named Lena, riding on a "kawasaki zzr 1100 cc sport touring motorcycle." Here's part of her introduction: The word CHERNOBYL scares holly bijesus out of people here. If I tell someone that I - [skopos: a little latin](https://janvbear.com/skopos-a-little-latin/) - A big thank you to Chrysostomos for this little Latin lesson: "Each finger had a special name: the thumb was called pollex, the next index, meaning 'to point;' and the middle finger was called infamis, meaning 'infamous' or 'evil.' Apparently, that gesture goes back a ways..." Thanks also for the link. - [How can history be boring?](https://janvbear.com/how-can-history-be-boring/) - Joanne Jacobs, whose blog I'm reading for the first but not last time tonight, has a great post on boring history texts. She quotes a Fordham Institute reviewer as saying: The books reviewed in this report range from serviceable to abysmal. None is distinguished or even very good. The best are merely adequate. In the - [Visit the Onion Dome](https://janvbear.com/visit-the-onion-dome/) - Intrepid editor Alex is in fine form this week with Controversy looms at Orthodox channel over new reality show. The show, which I've been waiting to see, is Who Wants to Marry a Seminarian? Marie follow up at St. Sergius of Radonezh Center, and I've learned about a HAHA bishop's rejection of the new film - [I wish I had written this](https://janvbear.com/i-wish-i-had-written-this/) - The Onion | Jesus Demands Creative Control Over Next Movie - [OK, one last thing and then I'm really done](https://janvbear.com/ok-one-last-thing-and-then-im-really-done/) - I keep thinking I've overdone this Passion question, but I owe it to the Greek Archdiocese to say how much I appreciate its official statement on the film, especially after excoriating the the Metropolis of Chicago for this statement earlier this week. Here's the nut graph from the national archdiocese: We have already heard many - [Plastic: Tower Of Babel II?](https://janvbear.com/plastic-tower-of-babel-ii/) - Over at Plastic, they're having an interesting discussion of the decline of English as a first language. Scientists note the eroding population of English speakers and the financial ascendency of such places as India and China. People here in Oregon have been focusing on Spanish, because we have so many Hispanic immigrants, but these language - [Churchman speak with many-forked tongue](https://janvbear.com/churchman-speak-with-many-forked-tongue/) - This isn't about the Orthodox Church, but it's funny anyway: "In a spirit of servanthood, GetReligion offers the following template to the presiding bishop, which should assure a sufficient pluriformity of dialogical voices. Each relevant paragraph includes three equally true and heartfelt choices." - [An update](https://janvbear.com/an-update/) - Just as I was beginning to think that all Orthodox Christians were nuts, I ran across this piece by John David Powell, The Passion Of The Christless: Interpreting The Words Of Fear, a well-written and well-grounded look at The Passion brouhaha. - [Passionate about The Passion](https://janvbear.com/passionate-about-the-passion/) - Greek Orthodox leaders tell flock 'Passion' isn't accurate The sources quoted in this piece exhibit some of the maddening isolationism that so often characterizes the Orthodox. This part is probably a good idea, since so many Orthodox are uninformed about their faith and since the Western Christian paradigm is so dominant: Leaders of the Greek - [Elmore Leonard writes about writing](https://janvbear.com/elmore-leonard-writes-about-writing/) - Crime novelist Elmore Leonard joins forces with Mark Twain in Easy on the Adverbs, Exclamation Points and Especially Hooptedoodle. Great advice from two novelists with some characteristics in common--humor, knack for dialogue, fine sense of story. Never mind that Twain broke at least one of Leonard's rules--he gets a pass because he did eye dialect - [Mars Orthodox](https://janvbear.com/mars-orthodox/) - OK, you've got to take a look at this week's Onion Dome: Russian Lander Finds Orthodox Life on Mars, for two reasons: One, because it's dead-on funny: "In what could be the most earth-shattering news of the past few millenia, Russian scientists released controversial photographs of Orthodox beings living on Mars." The other, because it's - [It's only a movie](https://janvbear.com/its-only-a-movie/) - I know it's heresy in these waning days before the "post-Passion of the Christ era begins, but I repeat: It's a movie. It's a movie by a man who cut his teeth in the action genre. This is not a put-down. I have no doubt of Mel Gibson's sincerity, and I know that any genre - [Crosswinds](https://janvbear.com/crosswinds/) - I pulled an LP out yesterday, Crosswinds, vintage 1974, by Billy Cobham. This jazz drummer literally plays up a storm on side one of this classic, which I haven't heard since, well, probably not since the '80s. (Funny how time flies when the technology leaves a favorite behind.) So I'm doing some home improvement in - [Forgiveness Sunday](https://janvbear.com/forgiveness-sunday/) - All of you who have been waiting to find out whether I enter Lent crippled this year will be pleased (or perhaps outraged) to learn that I am not. This is a good thing, a grace, actually, since once again I didn't do any of the exercises I resolved to do to prepare myself for - [Learn Writing with Uncle Jim - www.ezboard.com](https://janvbear.com/learn-writing-with-uncle-jim-www-ezboard-com/) - James D. Macdonald is running a writing course here. Lots of good advice, including this: write two hours of new stuff every day. Revise later. I wonder if I can get up at 5 a.m. and do that. I'll let you know tomorrow. - [Science Fiction definitions](https://janvbear.com/science-fiction-definitions/) - New member of the blogroll is this page: IF YOU LIKE THIS page of ULTIMATE SCIENCE FICTION WEB GUIDE. I'll have to take it in in small bites, because the background makes my eyes jitter. All the same, it's a perceptive look at the many subgenres of science fiction. - [The value of creativity](https://janvbear.com/the-value-of-creativity/) - A correspondent on a writing list said that a friend of his wasn't pleased with his recent success at selling his fiction. The friend thought that writing fiction was an intrinisically self-centered and selfish undertaking. I disagree. God creates the world in an ongoing outpouring of love. Artists participate in that creation and exercise an - [Speaking of Serbia](https://janvbear.com/speaking-of-serbia/) - The new Onion Dome is out, and "In a move which has been repeated repeatedly over the last year and a half, the Serbian Orthodox continued this week to be totally undisturbed about not being mentioned regularly in the online Orthodox satire weekly, the Onion Dome." I know it's shocking, but while you're there, you'll - [Goodbye HTML cheatsheet](https://janvbear.com/goodbye-html-cheatsheet/) - Wired News: Webmonkey, RIP: 1996 – 2004: "They finally pulled the plug. Webmonkey, the site that turned humble Web developers into attention-grabbing authors, said last week it is closing down following a round of layoffs in the U.S. division of its parent company, Terra Lycos (also the parent company of Wired News). " This is - [A gift for my mystery-writing friends](https://janvbear.com/a-gift-for-my-mystery-writing-friends/) - Here's one I ran across in connection with my day job. These guys happen to live in Roseburg, Oregon, and the more I read about them, the more I wish I were a mystery writer: 'Cold Case Cowboys' Ride Again Boyle is a member of the Douglas County sheriff office's cold case squad, which investigates - [Revising, revising](https://janvbear.com/revising-revising/) - Still revising the manuscript to send off the first 100 pages. I don't know if I'm improving it or just dinking around, but I think it's getting better. In the meantime, amuse yourself with this. ## Pages - [Home](https://janvbear.com/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ next_background_color=”#f7f7f7″ admin_label=”Hero Section” _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” use_background_color_gradient=”on” background_color_gradient_stops=”rgba(0,0,0,0.4) 0%|rgba(0,0,0,0.4) 100%” background_color_gradient_overlays_image=”on” background_color_gradient_start=”rgba(0,0,0,0.4)” background_color_gradient_end=”rgba(0,0,0,0.4)” background_image=”https://janvbear.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/IMG_9798_1040x780.jpeg” background_position=”center_right” custom_padding=”10%||16%|” bottom_divider_style=”slant” bottom_divider_height=”60px” global_colors_info=”{}” background_color_gradient_direction__hover=”180deg” background_color_gradient_direction__hover_enabled=”180deg” background_color_gradient_start_position__hover=”0%” background_color_gradient_start_position__hover_enabled=”0%” background_color_gradient_end_position__hover=”100%” background_color_gradient_end_position__hover_enabled=”100%” background_color_gradient_stops__hover=”rgba(0,0,0,0.4) 0%|rgba(0,0,0,0.4) 100%”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text admin_label=”Hero Section Title” _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” text_font=”|||on|||||” header_font=”Montserrat|600|||||||” header_font_size=”48px” header_letter_spacing=”3px” header_line_height=”1.3em” header_2_font=”Montserrat|700|||||||” header_2_text_color=”rgba(255,255,255,0.6)” header_2_font_size=”90px” header_2_letter_spacing=”3px” header_2_line_height=”1.1em” text_orientation=”center” background_layout=”dark” - [Book Genie](https://janvbear.com/book-genie/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ theme_builder_area=”post_content” _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” theme_builder_area=”post_content” column_structure=”3_5,2_5″][et_pb_column _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” type=”3_5″ theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_heading title=”Book Genie: Turning Manuscripts into Magic” _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” theme_builder_area=”post_content” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″][/et_pb_heading][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” theme_builder_area=”post_content” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″]For two decades, Jan Bear worked as an editor and page designer for a statewide newspaper. Today, this writer, editor, and book designer has published both fiction - [Books](https://janvbear.com/books/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ theme_builder_area=”post_content” _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” theme_builder_area=”post_content” column_structure=”1_3,1_3,1_3″][et_pb_column _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” type=”1_3″ theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_image src=”data:image/svg+xml;base64,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” _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” theme_builder_area=”post_content” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″][/et_pb_image][/et_pb_column][et_pb_column _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” type=”1_3″ theme_builder_area=”post_content”][/et_pb_column][et_pb_column _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” type=”1_3″ theme_builder_area=”post_content”][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section] - [About Me](https://janvbear.com/about/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ admin_label=”section” _builder_version=”4.27.4″ hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” custom_margin=”10px||||false|false” sticky_enabled=”0″][et_pb_row admin_label=”row” _builder_version=”4.27.4″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text” _builder_version=”4.16″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”] I’m Jan Bear, a writer, editor, and book designer with a passion for bringing stories to life. For over two decades, I honed my craft as a copy - [Mapping Your Book](https://janvbear.com/mapping/) - Download slides here. - [A World of Speculation](https://janvbear.com/world-speculation/) - [Contact](https://janvbear.com/contact/) - Welcome. I hope you're enjoying my book and media reviews, and I welcome any comments or suggestions you might have. Here are some that seem like possibilities: Based on my reviews, you've got a book to suggest. In that case, thanks. Send me the title and author (or a link to the Amazon page) and ## Categories - [Uncategorized](https://janvbear.com/category/uncategorized/) - [Reading](https://janvbear.com/category/reading/) - [Literary Art](https://janvbear.com/category/literary-art/) - [Writing](https://janvbear.com/category/writing/) - [Unorthodox and Orthodox](https://janvbear.com/category/unorthodox-and-orthodox/) ## Tags - [Neil Gaiman](https://janvbear.com/tag/neil-gaiman/) - [Neal Stephenson](https://janvbear.com/tag/neal-stephenson/) - [Connie Willis](https://janvbear.com/tag/connie-willis/) - [Martin Roth](https://janvbear.com/tag/martin-roth/) - [Jason Bannon](https://janvbear.com/tag/jason-bannon/) - [Jerome K. Jerome](https://janvbear.com/tag/jerome-k-jerome/) - [Steve Theme](https://janvbear.com/tag/steve-theme/) - [Romancing the Stone](https://janvbear.com/tag/romancing-the-stone/) - [Flannery O'Connor](https://janvbear.com/tag/flannery-oconnor/)