bearing blog

Synch and swim.

I blogged a bit in the last post about learning as an adult to enjoy swimming.  As I wrote there, lately I've been reading about swimming, trying to get better at it in part by understanding its fundamentals.

One skill that I never mastered in lessons is sculling.  It was in books, not lessons, that I first encountered that word applied to swimming.  As far as I can tell, "sculling" refers to the type of motion you're supposed to be doing with your arms when you tread water properly.   The distinguishing feature of that motion is that  the forearm travels in one plane, driving the water perpendicularly through that plane:  the arm is more like a turbine blade than like a paddle or oar.  My swimming instructor described the treading-water arm motion as a "figure eight," and that's what the books mostly said about sculling too.  I tried and tried to get it to work and it never felt right.  What finally got the point across was an article that described sculling as "a bit like spreading icing on a big cake with your hand".   OK, that motion made sense to me.  I guess because I've iced cakes before.  Whereas I've never, you know, been a fan blade, even though I've seen plenty of them.

Anyway, I bring this up just to point to a really cool video that shows a synchronized-swimming athlete using sculling to keep herself in a variety of positions.  I guarantee you will never think of this sport as frivolous again, if indeed you ever did.

Y not?

A couple of years ago, when I signed my oldest child up for swimming lessons at the YMCA where our family has a membership, I signed myself up for swimming lessons too.

Until then, I could only dog paddle.  I'd never properly learned to swim.  I grew up hating sports, gym class, anything to do with physical activity, and always thinking of myself as clumsy and unskilled.    My family reinforced it neatly:  I was the "smart one" and my younger brother was the "athletic one."   My school reinforced it too -- the phys ed curriculum emphasized team sports, with plenty of opportunity for screwing up and ruining the game for everyone else, and hardly ever forayed into lifetime-fitness (when it did, boys took weightlifting and girls did aerobics, not exactly inspiring).

Once out of college, and married, I discovered that, removed from competition with adolescents, humiliation was not a necessary part of physical.   I got the first bicycle I'd had since I was nine or ten and found that I enjoyed even long, hilly rides.   I tried strength training with free weights and liked the way it was easy to see that I could lift more each session.   Long walks with my new husband became a habit of outdoor hiking.   

But I still would comment from time to time about what a poor swimmer I was until a friend pointed out that, you know, they had these newfangled things called lessons.

I took lessons for a year, at the same time as my oldest son's lessons, while Mark cared for the younger one in the YMCA lobby.  When my lesson was done I would take the baby and Mark would leave to run around the track.   After a year of lessons I could swim a decent front crawl and backstroke (I never could get the hang of the breaststroke; maybe I'll take some more lessons later).   A couple of years after that, swimming is my favorite weekday-evening workout.  It's not so convenient for when I've got all three children on my own, because if the baby cries in the gym nursery it's easier to be fetched from, say, a treadmill than from the pool.  But it's great for "Family Gym Night" and for leaving the kids at home with Mark. 

Just recently I decided to try to get better at it -- that is, instead of just swimming comfortably until my time's up, I would push myself to go faster or farther, and try various drills to develop my skills.  I got a couple of books about swimming and read them and started to apply what I read.  I learned something that might be obvious to others but was new to me:   that when you're actually trying to get better at something, it makes for a less boring workout.   The time in the pool just flies by now and I wonder where it went.

Anyway, if there's hope for me to become comfortable with any physical activity, I guess there's hope for anyone.  I can't praise the YMCA enough (that's with the M, not the W) -- they gave me great aquatics education at a good price, and they're a wonderful organization that does a ton of great stuff and deserves support. 

Vow of silence.

A few days ago I went to the clinic for a throat culture.  The nurse came back to me with a serious face.  "I'm afraid it's strep throat," she said.  Why was she so puzzled when I reacted with glee?  Surely she's seen this before?  Surely she knows that You have strep throat means We have penicillin for that?

Even though the penicillin made the really painful, red, sore throat go away, it seems that in the last few days of shouting to make myself heard over the children I had irritated my throat some, and it still hurt (in a raspy, mechanical sort of way) to talk.  So on my way to the restaurant where I sometimes eat breakfast on Saturday mornings before anyone else in the family gets up, I decided not to talk for a whole day.  I knew that if I talked even a little, eventually I'd be shouting, reading books to the kids, and otherwise overdoing it.  It would have to be all or nothing.

When I got to the restaurant I wrote on a pad of paper I brought from the car:  I lost my voice - can't talk today :-( . Bistec criollo, 3 eggs over easy, no toast, grapefruit juice, coffee.  The waitress, who has waited on me many times before, was kindly sympathetic -- but she reacted as if I had also become deaf!  Pointing at my coffee and miming filling it up, for instance.  Very funny.

I got home before anyone had gotten up.  My 7yo was the first to come downstairs.  I wrote, My throat is sore.  It hurts to talk.  I am going to rest my voice.  Please help me talk to the little ones because they can't read.  I will probably have to talk to them some but I am going to try not to talk to you and Dad.  He felt important!

It was strangely peaceful not to talk.  I did school planning, and some household chores.   I let my husband shout at the kids.  I managed to teach the 7yo how to fold a fitted sheet without speaking or writing, a feat for which I probably deserve national recognition.   Milo kept coming up to me and screaming "TALK!" in my ear.  I smiled, mimed zipping my lips, and pointed at Mark.  Several hundred times maybe. 

I broke my silence around dinner time, still a little raspy but not as pain-wracked.    It was on the whole a pleasant day.  Maybe I'll try it again sometime.

Asymmetric coverage.

This article in the Star Tribune about "Buddhist Christians" (or was it Christian Buddhists?) is one of many I've noticed in the last fifteen years about Christians co-opting Buddhist-style meditation techniques.  Not ever having tried it myself, and not really knowing much about Buddhist-style meditation, I won't offer any comments about the practice itself --- except to note that Christianity already has a long and diverse history of meditation techniques, and I often wonder how much of these have been explored by Christians who eventually turn to techniques drawn from other faiths.

But the thing that I really noticed about this particular article was what was missing from it, and what begged to be covered.  The article includes numerous references to Christians who are critical of this thing embraced by "Christian Buddhists" (or "Buddhist Christians"), and answers the criticism like this:

What Meadow [a retired religious studies professor] will explain to her critics -- at least the ones who do her the courtesy of letting her respond -- is that there's a distinction between Buddhism as religion and Buddhism as a meditation technique. One is a belief system; she doesn't teach that. The other, the one she focuses on, is a process.

So what I want to know is:  What do Buddhists think of this?  Of Christians, who say they don't believe in Buddhism, taking up meditation technique and calling themselves "Buddhist?"  Not a single Buddhist is quoted in this article, nor is there any information in it about Buddhism as a religion.  Talk about a dropped ball!

Oh, and there's one more thing that I just can't let go by.  We have in this article -- completely unchallenged by the journalist -- a quote from the featured "retired religious studies professor," described as "one of the world's foremost experts on Buddhist Christians," as follows:

"Christianity includes a call to meditate, but it never provides a method of meditating, a step-by-step guide on how to do it," she said.

That is, um, bullshit.   Off the top of my head I can think of two methods of Western Christian meditation that have provided a step-by-step guide, for, oh, at least a few hundred years.  Lectio Divina anyone?   That dates to 220 AD.   Rosary?  Since the 1200's at the latest, and it's had a "step by step" form since 1569.  There are of course upstarts like the Divine Mercy Chaplet, very timely since the feast is tomorrow, born in Poland in the early part of this century.  And then there's Eastern Christianity.  Hello?  Icons? 

Journalists should beware of the word "never," and not let it slip by unchallenged.

Making up.

I have always followed a simple cosmetics regimen that works well for me.

1. Plan a particularly special date night with spouse
2. Think -- Gosh, maybe I'll actually wear a little makeup or something
3. Realize at the last minute that everything I have expired months ago. Throw it all away.  Go out looking like I usually do.  (Note to self -- spouse does not seem to mind)
4. Next time I'm out, buy one lipstick, one eye pencil, one mascara, one bottle of the beige stuff
5. Zip it all up in the free little bag and put it on the shelf in my closet
6. Repeat

Nevertheless, I enjoyed this brief interview in the Star Tribune with Paula Begoun, author of Don't Go To The Cosmetics Counter Without Me.   Apparently it's her mission to let people know when the stuff they're buying is overpriced, crappy, or dangerous.   People like that are a force for good.

Check out the sidebar article, Paula Begoun's Five Rules for Skin Care.  "Never buy anything packaged in a jar."  Speaking as someone who just this year began to need a facial moisturizer in the Minnesota winter, and had to do some shopping around -- take that, Burt's Bees.

UPDATE:  Woo-hoo!  The inexpensive moisturizer I decided I liked best months ago is, according to Begoun's compilation of free online product reviews, not a rip off at all!   (It costs about a third as much as the stuff Begoun sells from her own website.)

Accommodation.

More-or-less local story:   Wisconsin court upholds sanctions for pharmacist who refused to dispense birth-control pills. 

Noesen, 34, of St. Paul, Minn., told regulators that he is a devout Roman Catholic and refused to refill the prescription or release it to another pharmacy because he didn't want to commit a sin by "impairing the fertility of a human being."

The Pharmacy Examining Board ruled in 2005 that Noesen failed to carry out his professional responsibility to get the woman's prescription to someone else if he wouldn't fill it himself.

The board reprimanded Noesen and ordered him to attend ethics classes. He was allowed to keep his license as long as he informs all future employers in writing that he won't dispense birth control pills and outlines steps he will take to make sure a patient has access to medication.

The board also found Noesen liable for the cost of the proceedings against him — about $20,000 — but the appeals court ordered the board to reconsider that decision.

I think the trend on the Catholic blogosphere is to support lawsuits like these -- lawsuits that aim to restrain pharmacists' employers from disciplining their employees who refuse, on religious or moral grounds, to fill prescriptions for birth control pills.

So maybe I'll take flak for it -- but I don't agree.

A medical professional of any type has a right to act according to his or her conscience.  He or she has a responsibility to do so.   And if carefully considered conscience concludes that to fill a certain prescription is material and proximate cooperation with evil, well, then, the principled pharmacist won't fill it.

And might be fired, of course, because the job contract specifies that you're going to do the work you're assigned.  And might have trouble finding a job later, because the only job you'll be fit for is one that doesn't require you to violate your conscience.  Might even have to change careers in the end.

Such is the way of the cross.   

The board acted very reasonably in requiring the pharmacist to inform potential employers, in advance, in writing, that he would not fill or transfer certain prescriptions on moral grounds.  It hardly seems charitable for him to keep that a secret until it becomes an issue.  He's not truly being "forced" to fill prescriptions.  He is, after all, free to quit.

It reminds me a little bit of another local kerfuffle:  The airport cabbies who wouldn't carry alcohol or seeing eye dogs (4800 people were refused service from 2002 to 2007). The cabbies were threatened with discipline (losing their airport-service license if they refused to serve a customer). They argued "religious discrimination."  But the Airport Commission stuck to their guns, and rightly so.   Nobody says you have to work driving taxis to and from the airport.  If you don't like who or what the job requires you to drive around, you can get another job.  This was not a case of religious discrimination.  Rather it was a case of refusing religious accommodation.     Not at all the same thing -- in fact they're close to opposites.  The airport commission wanted everyone to play by the same rules regardless of his religion. 

There's a place to fight for the right of conscience, because some proposed restrictions on people and institutions are quite unreasonable.  The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education in 1995 required all OB/GYN residency programs to provide routine abortion training.  Most OB/GYNS (90% was the 1997 estimate by the president of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists) don't routinely perform abortions; everyone is perfectly aware that there are plenty of doctors -- and medical students -- who don't want to perform elective abortions; everyone is also perfectly aware that there are a number of medical schools whose institutional values are opposed to them; surely, schools ought to be left free to say "We don't do elective abortions here, so if you're really itching to learn by doing, go apply somewhere else."   

But it's just not unreasonable for an employer to fire someone who won't do the job they're explicitly hired to perform.    If the job requires you to violate your conscience, don't take the job.  No job is worth it. 

Pageantry.

From a thoughtful post by SDG at Jimmy Akin's blog, in response to a reader's story of his wife's discomfort with Catholic "pageantry."

Ritual and ceremony are not contrived and unnecessary, except in the sense that all human culture and experience is contrived and unnecessary. Wedding rings, shaking hands, Christmas trees, birthday cakes, napkin on the left, pallbearers, tuck the children in at night, floral arrangements in church or at a wedding or a funeral, Easter eggs, “Hail to the Chief,” bride and groom cut the cake, stand up for the judge, mortar boards at graduation, hold the door for the lady, kiss each other hello and goodbye and good morning and good night — none of these are pragmatically necessary, and all of it is how we human beings order our lives — if not with these symbols, then with something else....

[The] world into which Jesus was born was full of pageantry and symbolism.  And then, when our Creator favored our race by taking on our flesh and offering us so great salvation, He left us with symbols and gestures chosen by Himself and not matters of human convention. He took bread and broke it, and wine, and pronounced them to be His body and blood. He commissioned His disciples to go about immersing people in water in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. When the Holy Spirit fell on Pentecost, He did not proceed to liberate the people from pageantry and symbolism: Three thousand people were ceremonially dunked in water on the first day alone, and they immediately proceeded to devote themselves to the business with the breaking of the bread...

The whole post is worth reading. 

Via dolorosa.

Last Friday I was staying at a high-end casino and spa in Las Vegas, part of a vacation we take with Mark's family, on his parents' dime, every couple of years.  (Vegas was chosen for its something-for-everybody nature.  Even though I don't think any of us did any gambling.)

  You know how when you're on vacation you lose track of the days?  The point when I remembered it was a Friday in Lent was in the middle of a first-thing-in-the-morning facial at the spa.  Real penitential of me, I know.    (Hey, it was the first facial I ever had in my life.  Now I get why people like them so much.)

So I thought to myself, well, it's quiet here, soothing music is playing -- I can meditate, right?  I started to prepare my thoughts for a Rosary and then stopped -- well, it just seemed obscenely inappropriate to be having steam gently wafted at my pores while meditating on the Sorrowful Mysteries.   I was struggling with the logical equivalent (so is it obscenely inappropriate to meditate on the Sorrowful Mysteries while having steam gently wafted at my pores, or indeed anywhere?) when it occurred to me --   at the same moment that the therapist lifted my left hand and began to massage my palm -- that I should meditate instead on the Way of the Cross.   

Oooooookay.   This isn't a devotion I do much and I don't even remember all the stations, but I went with it anyway.  I started by trying to see if I even could remember all the stations.  Mentally placing myself next to the wall in my parish church, holding my four-year-old by the hand, I pointed to each of the fourteen paintings in turn and listened to his piping voice recite the titles.  Probably not in the right order.  Jesus is condemned to death.  Jesus is made to bear His cross.  Jesus meets His mother.

And then came the small thought, one that doesn't require me to remember all the stations in the correct order:  The traditional Way of Sorrows is also a Way of Kindnesses.  Six of the fourteen stations recount encounters of love and help.  Jesus meets his mother.  Simon of Cyrene carries the cross.  Veronica wipes the face of Jesus.  Jesus meets the daughters of Jerusalem.  Jesus is taken down from the cross and laid in the arms of His mother.  Jesus is laid in the tomb. 

Almost half the Sorrows are stories of people physically helping Christ or expressing love for Him.

That was it, nothing more profound than that, and after it came I had the sense that my meditation was done.  "You can go now."  So, well, I enjoyed the rest of my facial, and then I went back to my family.  Huh.  Stranger things have happened, I suppose.

How to make dinner the day you get back from vacation without having to stop at the grocery store on the way home from the airport.

Before you leave, for each four people in your family, have this stuff in your freezer:

• One pound of ground beef

Have this stuff in your fridge:

• 1 big yellow onion
• 2 cups or more shredded bagged sharp cheddar cheese (put this in your freezer if you're going to be gone long enough that it'll mold before you get back.)
• Your favorite beer

Have this stuff in your pantry:

• One 28-oz can crushed tomatoes with added puree
• One 6-oz can tomato paste
• Two 16-oz cans chili beans, your favorite brand and spiciness level
• 2 tbsp chili powder
• 1 tbsp ground cumin
• 1/2 tsp garlic powder (seriously, don't bother with fresh here)
• 1 box spaghetti (for us, a 13.25 ounce box of Ronzoni Whole Wheat Blend.  If you have small children, elbow macaroni will be much tidier.)

First, set a pot of salted water on to boil for the pasta.  Then, defrost the meat while you chop the onion fairly finely.  Measure out one cup of this onion, then chop the rest even more finely and transfer it to a small bowl; set aside.  In a large saucepan or small soup pot, saute the one cup of onion with the defrosted meat; if the meat's pretty lean, add a bit of oil.  Break up the meat with a spatula as you cook.   

When the meat is browned and the onions are translucent, stir in the spices and then the canned ingredients.  Salt to taste.  Bring to a boil, reduce heat to low, cover and simmer for as long as you want.  (The meat's already cooked so it really doesn't matter how long.)

When the water comes to a boil cook the pasta according to package directions, then drain it and toss with a little oil so it won't be sticky.

Serve the chili in bowls on top of the spaghetti, and pass hot sauce, shredded cheese, and chopped raw onion at the table.

You know what to do with the beer.

I'm back!

Sorry to disappear without warning, but I don't like to tell the Internets when I'm going on vacation for ten days. 

More to come soon.