I love taking the bus. Last night I took a two hour jaunt from Harrisburg to Reading so I can wish my mother a happy birthday today. Two main conclusions of the trip. south-central PA has serious issues and I really need to learn how to speak spanish. If I spoke spanish I could have conversed with the other two passengers on the trip. Instead I finished up Graham Ward's True Religion, listened to some music, and read a little Wendel Berry.

There are some nice downtown districts in Annville, Cleona, and Lebanon however sadly it looks as if no one cares to up keep them. Churches look old, store fronts are dirty, and buildings that once were impressive i.e. The Fred Astaire Dance studio now just seem bizarre.

After awhile we enter Berks county "Home of Redners Warehous Markets" the sign proclaimed. Can something be a warehouse and a market? Maybe it's confusing these two that is the root of many of our problems. Without fail decrepit downtowns are paired wth shiny new Wal-marts. And without fail we choose standardization over beauty convience over heritage.

as we rolled through Conrad Weiser I was listening to some Coldpaly. It was duk when "Yellow" came on so I looked for some stars. The only yellow I saw was the time and temp on the bank building.

If you want to read some good travel writing:
www.xanga.com/fromtheclovis

"There is a line among the fragments of the Greek poet Archilocus which says, 'The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.'"
—Isaiah Berlin

"To see one's point of view as relative to that of others means tolive in concrete relationships and to think of one's own ideas in relationship to the thought of others. To have no relationship would be death. This 'relationality' can transcend the absolutism of a single ideology and the totalitarian aspect of relativism"
~Jurgen Moltmann

I have always found the top quote intriguing possibly because I have always wondered if it is actually saying anything. How can we know many thinga outaide the context of one big thing? Or conversely how can we know one big thing without an intimate knowledge of the many little thing that make it up?

This is why I find the Moltmnann quote so brilliant. Believeing something is only worthwhile in relationship to its intellectual forbeares from which it differentiates itself. Why am I reading Barth if I'm not taking the time to read Schliermacher? Is it possible to be a post-structuralist if one is not intimately familiar with Levi-Strauss?

The bottom line is that I have come to the conlusion that learning is a never ending process of making connections (I think Ernie Boyer said something like that?). That is why it takes so much time and effort. It is important not just to read someone but to read alot of some one. To carefully examine not just the structure of someone's argument but to examine how they argue...how they reason.

Now if only I can go to grad school so I can get paid to do this...

Harry Potter

Unemployment is really getting old. Hopefully by the end of the week I will know for sure about Allison Hill. And driving down to Hearts and Minds makes sense to me a couple days a week but not every day. 40 minutes each way is a little absurd.
So anyone let me know if there are any jobs available in the Harrisburg area.

I have officially joined the wider world. I am now a devouted reader of the Harry Potter books. I found the books to be very stimulating. I am a long time lover of fantasy and sci-fi and I appreciate anyone who does the careful and creative work of creating an alternate universe. And Rowling is truly impressive because she is careful to make it wholly credible that this universe could actually be our own. But what I found most exhilirating in the books was the moral imagination of the protagoinists specifically Albus Dumbeldore.

By the end of the most recent book Dumbledore is a tragic figure undone by his desire to trust and give second chances. But what really fascinates me is Dumbledore's understanding of true poswer in the universe. It is his belief that what causes Harry to survive Voldemort's attacks was the love of his mother. To Dumbledore the root power that is holding everything togethor is love. Contrast this to Paulie's assertion in season three of the Sopranos that "Love don't make the world go round".

One of the reasons that I find Harry Potter so compelling is that the books celebrate a virtue that is hardly evident in our society: fidelity. In HP the heroes are those who remain faithful to their task and are not tempted by the dark arts. As the books go on we see that like our world the magical wrold is held togethor by simple people doing good things and in turn can be hurt by simple people doing bad things. Neville is not the greatest of wizards but by remaining faithful to his friends and what he thinks is right he has done great things and conversely Cornelius Fudge (the minister of magic) is not evil perse but his desire to maintain order at the cost of the truth allowed Voldemort to gain more strength then he should have. This higlites one of my favorite lines in the books when Dumbledore says "We must all choose between what is right...and what is easy" wow that pretty much says it

Connected to the cellebration of fidelity in the books is the relationship between wizards and humans (muggles), human like creatures, and the slave house elves. Many wizards consider "pure-blooded" wizards to be the best and then their is scale from mixed blood to human born through various part humans down to house elves. This is the commons perspective but the good wizards (like Dumbledore and the Weasleys) are those who see value in others and are fearful rather than celebrative of inbred wizards. For as my favorite character, Sirius Black, said "The measure of a man is not how he treats his equals but his inferiors"

My one main concerns is how, especially in the earlier books the kids ofetn save the day by disobeying school rules and strike out on their own. Maybe I am too much of a proponent of institutional structure but I guess that comes from having parents who woul not let me read Curius George because it taught bad lessons.

My Vocation
is to be a responsible steward of my household, to help others love their homes and communities, to show and teach the importance of a local economy and healthy civic networks based on responsibility not privilige, and to make beauty an expected element in any community or household.

Now, how do I do this?