MaybeToday.org

One of the benefits of my recent living space changes has been the opportunity to revisit my library cataloguing scheme.

For years, I used Dewey Decimal Classification coding to organize my books. The Dewey system has the advantage of having had the majority of books already catalogued within the system – and most of the newer volumes include a Dewey number assignment within the Library of Congress cataloguing information after the title page, meaning that not only would I not need to go through the process of categorizing and assigning lookup numbers to the books, but I would often have the cataloguing information readily at hand, without even having to look them up in another library’s holdings. It’s a ready-made system that can be implemented with very little effort – and, furthermore, knowing the system makes it very easy to find works in many other libraries.

However, I decided a few years ago to move to a simpler system – and lacking ready access to a suitable alternative, I resorted to making up my own. The problem I had with the Dewey system was that it made too fine a distinction,for a library as small as mine, among subjects. I find it very useful in larger libraries that the Dewey system co-locates books based on fairly precise subject matter (all within a simple framework of basic disciplines), but it tends to scatter multiple books by the same author, which is pretty non-intuitive. Moreover, in a small library, there won’t be a lot of exact duplication of call numbers among the various volumes, unless the collection is quite topically focused. The end result is a library that seems inadequately grouped.

A library ordering scheme needs to implement two organizing functions: grouping and sequencing. For a personal library like mine, I think a broader categorization at the subject level is appropriate, facilitating the co-location of most or all of a writer’s body of work. For example, Thomas Oden wrote a three-volume systematic theology, where one volume focused on God the Father, a second on the Word of God, and a third on the Spirit of God. One could argue that these belong together as a set regardless, but apart from that, in a large theological library, one could justifiably locate the second volume among Christological works, the third volume among Pneumatology, etc. But this would hardly make any sense in a library with few if any other pneumatological works.

Sequencing the collection is equally important, as good sequencing not only makes a logical path through a collection to facilitate finding things, but should also serve the grouping principle so as to keep somewhat more loosely related works near each other. But sequencing, done well, should also reflect the order of knowledge. One of my beefs with the Dewey system is that it fails to reflect any concept of the hierarchical ordering of knowledge in its sequencing – even though it does a pretty decent job of reflecting such a hierarchy in it grouping. To wit, the Dewey system basically places miscellany at the head of the order of knowledge, very much reflecting the modern era’s loss of any sensibility of teleology. Ironically, this “General” section has of late largely been taken over by Computer Science – a perhaps ominous development.

My system, in contrast, reverts to the pre-Enlightenment recognition of theology as the queen of the sciences (and their necessary unifying principle), and goes even further, recognizing Revelation as the source of all knowledge (including, of course, theology). The following table reflects the differences between my ordering and the Dewey system, at the highest level:

If I had more books in the higher numerical ranges, I would break up the 7000s into hard and soft science (making soft science and technology an 8000 range), but there’s no point in doing that given the content of my collection – especially since I’ve thrown out the vast majority of my IT books, which have no lasting value.

The system is still far from perfect. For starters, there are many works that could fit into more than one classification – even at the highest level (e.g. should Aquinas be classified under theology or philosophy? I chose theology, but that’s certainly debatable). An electronic “tagging” system would be an ideal means of classifying (so that works could easily fall into multiple categories), but there’s no way that’s going to help me arrange the shelves.

However, having all the books in the same room is helping me see how I could improve some of the inner sequencing. I’ve already made minor revisions to the scheme at least twice since moving everything in here in late May. But I still have refinements to make, and I’d like to complete them by my birthday. I’ll post the detailed schedule when I’m done. Perhaps I’ll break up the empirical and pseudo-empirical sciences after all – I’d really like to find a way to sequence psychology to flow into fiction, it would be just.

Having a small family in an eight-room colonial tends to leave quite a bit of flexibility in terms of space – and this has certainly become quite a small family again since Kelly, and then Leigh, moved out. I’ve wanted for years to be able to offer a guest room, and it took quite a while to work through all the machinations necessary to reach that point. But six months worth of shifting, consolidating, lifting, and remodeling have finally borne fruit in a finished bedroom available to friends, family, and other passers-through.

Nastia and Yulia will occupy the room through most of July, and the space is earmarked during the coming school year for a Korean exchange student – a school-mate of Abby’s from the Montrose School, named Zoey. We will likely continue to host exchange students for most of the next decade as our girls complete their schooling, but sooner or later I would also like to be able to offer safe room and board on a transitory basis to some of the needy young mothers who come to the Church’s Pro-Life office seeking help.

That’s down the road, however, as the day-to-day lives of my two youngest children will dictate the pace of domestic living for several years to come. To that end, a major part of the reconfiguration I did in the house over the first half of the year was to prepare a room on the upper floor into which I consolidated the “office” space in the house – moving myself and most of my collection of about a thousand books out of a basement area I’d refinished when we bought the house at the beginning of the decade, as well as the remnants of Joyce’s former home office from a different room on the second floor. I liked the basement (especially the inherent coolness during the summer months, which I particularly miss on days like today), but I seem much less isolated up here from the rest of the family when I retreat to read, study, or work on something at my desk.

Getting that desk up here was a bit more of an adventure than I’d bargained for. I shouldn’t complain – it went well, after all. My friend Rich came over to help me with it, and we got it and all the bulky stuff moved in under an hour, but I ended up leaving work with chest pains a few days later, and it’s hard for me not to draw causal conclusions from that, given the overall lack of discomfort I’ve had since my second stent procedure last September. The desk is an old, post-WWII, green linoleum-topped steel office desk, a clunker I made a little less unpresentable some years back by painting the steel black and adding sleek drawer pulls. I’ve been lugging this thing around since I bought it for $10 in 1980, and it almost got me this time. Someone around here would like to see it gone, but it would cost me over $1,000 to replace functionally – and frankly, I’ve grown rather fond of it.

The third key driver for this project, apart from opening up a guest room and getting my work space out of the basement, was to move Abby and Rebecca out of the only bedroom in the house lacking a safe fire exit to an adjacent porch or garage roof. That was done by repainting Leigh’s old room, and moving them in there. I then remodeled their old room with enough shelf space to accommodate all my non-fiction. The finishing work included what I took at the time to be the supremely silly effort of sanding the hardwood floor with hand tools (and not very well, I should add). When I moved on to the final (guest) room, I discovered that I could do even sillier things, as I went out and rented a drum sander to handle that floor.

Whatever possessed me to think I would be able to get one of those things up to the second floor, two years (to the weekend!) after having a heart attack, I surely do not understand – I was afraid I’d trip the ticker just lifting the thing into the van to bring it home! I improvised a ramp to handle the bulk of the distance on the larger set of stairs, and otherwise just prayed it wouldn’t be my last act on earth – who, then, would apply the varnish, after all? Man, am I glad to finally have this job behind me.

But as I settle into this latest phase of my life – what with my new digs, my return to school, and the prospect of hosting lodgers – I need to think seriously about understanding my quickly changing limitations. I need to lean more on other people, so that I can do things I’ve never done before – or at least be around to try. Times change, indeed. Some doors open while others shut, as we all march relentlessly toward life’s final curtain.

Well, here we go. A few months ago, Joyce proposed that we should pick up on an old idea, and host a couple children from the Chernobyl Children’s Project this summer. Nasta and Yulia arrived this evening (pictured here along with Zoya, a very nice local woman with Russian roots who was serving as a volunteer translator for the evening). We managed to get them home, acclimate them somewhat to the house (including Mungus, our frisky young cockapoo), feed them a little something, settle them down, and get them into bed, but it sure is going to be an adventure dealing with the challenges of the language barrier between us.

Abby told me later in the evening that her life had changed today. Never lacking for melodrama, that one, but she’s right in a way. You don’t bring anyone – especially a child – into your life without being changed in some way. It is going to be very interesting to see how our family is changed over the next four weeks by these zesty little girls whom fate has consigned to grow up in an area poisoned by radiation – and who deal daily with the inevitable medical consequences of that misfortune.

I don’t agree very often with what Michael Paulson says over at the Articles of Faith blog at Boston.com – he doesn’t even ask the right questions, as a rule – but I had to concur with something he said the other day about President Obama’s address introducing Sonia Sotomayor as his nominee for Justice Souter’s Supreme Court seat: he said he was struck by “the language he used to describe the role of Catholic schools in offering children a path out of poverty.” Here is the quote from the President’s remarks:

“But Sonia’s mom bought the only set of encyclopedias in the neighborhood, sent her children to a Catholic school called Cardinal Spellman out of the belief that with a good education here in America all things are possible."

You won’t get any argument out of me by suggesting that the way to get your children a good education here in America is to send them to Catholic schools, but I have to wonder what the President’s good friends and supporters in the public school teachers’ unions (never mind management) thought about that remark.

Meanwhile, at about the same time this remark was made, the papers reported that the last Catholic parochial school in the Jamaica Plain section of Boston would be closing next year, due primarily to declining enrollment. And as true as it is that the academic performance is superior, and as important as a sound academic foundation is to the life of the intellect, you can believe me when I say that academics is about the least of the good reasons I send my children to Catholic schools.

It wasn’t very long ago that Catholic families were strongly encouraged by the faith community to utilize the parochial schools as an important element of providing their children a good Catholic upbringing. As the parochial school systems sags and slowly collapses under the weight of indifference, it strikes me that such encouragement is almost wholly lacking these days in parish life. Local sponsorship of the responsibility for Catholic education seems limited to bulletin notices of area open houses, and an occasional fair to provide schools tables from which to hand out marketing literature normally reserved in magazine racks in the back of the church.

This seems to be part of a trend among much of the laity of abandoning anything distinctively Catholic. People just want to fit in – and I don’t understand why the priests seem so disinterested in resisting the trend. Maybe they try harder than I give them credit for, but there is simply insufficient depth to the soil of parish life in the form of supportive and receptive laity – I don’t know. It just seems to me that if so many Catholics want to blend in seamlessly to the larger, secular, culture – without being willing at the same time to abandon their Catholic name, then they can’t possibly discern a necessary difference between Catholicism and the spirit of the age.

Regarding the schools, it is as if people view the parochial schools as nothing more than public schools with incrementally better academics, and unwanted tuition bills. Actually, the parochial schools offer an environment relatively free of the fashionable academic conceit of godlessness, as well as a moral seriousness that not only doesn’t nurture the narcissistic insolence prevalent among too many youth today, but refuses to tolerate it very far. I won’t even mention the sexual mores.

You can’t put a price tag on that, and if Catholics, on the whole, could get their act together around this, there is no good reason why the tuition bill for parochial education couldn’t be at least cut to a nominal stipend, if not avoided altogether. It is widely said that the parochial schools do their superior work while spending less per child than the public schools do. Whether it be through vouchers or some other method, it would only take political will to allow Catholics (or anyone: non-Catholics are at least a significant minority in most parochial schools) to choose to send their children to Church-operated schools instead of government-operated schools, without paying twice.

The easy answer to the acculturation puzzle is to make a distinction between “real” Catholics and nominal Catholics, and to expect the nominal Catholics to find the exits, but I think that attitude does a disservice to those we might call spiritually poor. From the bishops on down, we try too hard to get along, and, in consequence, we fail to make the case to the many that Catholicism has something radical to offer; that being a Catholic is different than anything else. The loss of interest in the schools is just an obvious example of the loss of Catholic meaning through the withering of Catholic culture – although, for all it’s worth, I have little confidence that Justice Sotomayor, if she is confirmed, will demonstrate how a Catholic education can help shape the moral character with Catholic meaning… I hope I’m wrong.

Still thinking tonight about the assassination of George Tiller; a few things have surprised me. I lead a busy life, and don’t spend a lot of time perusing news sources and other media outlets, so my sample size is rather small, but it seems from my limited perspective that the press coverage has been strangely muted. There is no serious debating that the journalistic class almost purely represents the cultural elite that embraces abortion, and I really thought they would be harping all over this.

I suppose it’s early yet, and it could still become a cause célèbre over the next few days, but it seems odd to see it low on the ratings totem pole of major liberal news outlets. Of course, that could very well be explained by the likelihood that the web site layouts, unlike the newsprint of old, are driven much more by visitor interest – by clicks – rather than by pure editorial agenda. That would suggest that the readers of these sites have more interest in plane crashes, and in Susan what’s-her-name who sings on British television. Strange, that, and it doesn’t fill me with a new optimism for my country or my countrymen.

The biggest surprise, though, was reading yesterday that Tiller had been killed while serving as an usher at church. In what kind of church could such a man possibly be a member in good standing, one might reasonably be tempted to ask? A community of devil worshippers? We’re not talking here about some clueless, complicit politician without moral spine, or something like that, we’re talking about a man who actually killed the babies with his own hands – thousands of them – and who was proud of what he’d done. But no, this was a Lutheran church. That is just staggering. Was the money he made from abortions put into the collection basket as the Lord’s portion? Did this guy have it in his head that he was a disciple of Jesus Christ? How could the condition of the Church ever have been brought to such scandalous woe?

So, “Tiller the Baby Killer” has met his demise – assassinated this morning during church services. I can only groan over the anticipated avalanche of righteous indignation cascading from the heights of the pro-abortion ranks. Like the proverbial mandatory pinch of incense for Caesar, everyone who is publicly pro-life will be required to preface any and all remarks on the matter by condemning the assassination. I am not an advocate of violence – assassination or otherwise – so I have no personal  problem with condemning the act, but I do have a problem with the screwball notion that apologists for the legal and shameless murder of literally millions of “unwanted” innocents can somehow paint as morally irredeemable anyone who fails to sufficiently condemn the extra-judicial killing of a mass murderer. That is simply perverse. I’m sorely tempted to say “I’ll condemn his murder as soon as you condemn his daily murders-for-profit.”

There is no doubt, however, that abortion proponents will quickly and loudly hoist the flag, charging hypocrisy against not simply the man who carried out this act, but the pro-life movement as a whole. This is an absurd assertion, for even if the entire pro-life movement endorsed assassinating notorious abortionists (as opposed to just the tiny fringe who do see their way clear to such lethal vigilantism), it is surely faulty logic to assert that it is hypocritical to resort to murdering a mass murderer in order to protect countless further innocent victims.

Bonhoeffer, for example, is not considered a hypocrite for his involvement in the attempt to assassinate Hitler, but is rather admired for his courage and conviction – regardless of the rightness or wrongness of the act itself. Furthermore, history hardly finds fault with him, despite the gross violation of legal and moral norms his actions represented from the perspective of the Nazi system of thought. He (rightly) saw Hitler as a mass murderer and lethal threat to civilization, and (rightly or wrongly) determined that the best way to deal with him, under the circumstances, was to assassinate him. Was he right?

There is a vicious war being waged against the innocent unborn, and it should come as no surprise that some folks are tired of talking about it; tired of waiting for a political solution that never seems to really get any closer, but often seems to be permanently hardening into the kind of legal insanity that turned Bonhoeffer’s Germany into the textbook example of evil that it serves as today. Frankly, given what is at stake, I think it is a real testimony to the moral quality of the pro-life movement that this sort of thing is not much more commonplace.

This killing may not have been righteous, it may not have been wise, it may not have been prudent, it may not have been faithful to the spirit of the pro-life movement, it may have been an instance of despair triumphing over hope, but it sure isn’t a sign of hypocrisy. The basic pro-life principle is that human life is sacred, and must be defended from exploitation and destruction. That means that exploiters and destroyers must somehow be stopped. The ends cannot justify the means, but we should not be conned into believing (let alone declaring) that the killer has violated the core principles of the movement – therein confusing the guilty and the innocent. It is sufficient to say that there is a better way.

Hypocrisy? …The murder of unborn babies is a “personal choice” matter that we should all be able to disagree over amicably, while the murder of a notorious abortionist is beyond the pale? I don’t think so… talk about hypocrisy!

I had the radio on in the car one day, a couple months ago, when I caught part of an interview with a filmmaker named John Ziegler, who was promoting a film on the 2008 U.S. Presidential election called “Media Malpractice,” which he purported would demonstrate decisively just how in the tank the popular media was for Obama. I’m not sure a documentary is really necessary to make such a point, but the guy sounded funny, so I figured I’d check the local library system to see if there was a copy available I could request.

They didn’t have a copy of the documentary, but they did have a couple copies of a book Ziegler had written a few years ago, called “The Death Of Free Speech: How Our Broken National Dialogue Has Killed The Truth And Divided America,” so I requested a copy, and gave it a read.

The essence of the book is a demonstration of how the irrational moralism we call “political correctness” has eroded our culture’s appreciation for – and even understanding of – freedom of speech. I would add that it has also contributed significantly to a serious dumbing-down of our dialogue, as well as of a loss of respect for the truth – neither of which claims would be disputed by Ziegler. However, as much as I would have liked to like this work, it is simply not a good book.

No small part of the problem with the book is that it is really, first and foremost, about John Ziegler, and his trials and tribulations as a misunderstood and oppressed talk radio character. Furthermore, the entire book is just a series of anecdotes – some of which may be interesting, but the sum of which fail to constitute a rewarding whole, in much the same way a platter full of Twinkies would fail to constitute a rewarding meal. It might be unfair to criticize him for not writing the book he didn’t write, but when a book’s subtitle purports to tell “how” something comes to be, a little analysis might not be an unreasonable expectation. There’s simply not much there, despite ample subject matter. This book even has an index, though it is such a light-weight work that its inclusion seems unnecessary, if not a tad contrived.

Then there is the matter of the writing just not being very good. This guy’s not a writer, he’s a whiner, an agitator, and a wiseguy – and it shows. Even the editing is poor, with numerous sentences and paragraphs showing obvious traces of cut and paste procedures that nobody bothered to go back to clean up.

In truth, I was also put off by a number of his libertarian prejudices, as he perpetuates several of the hoary dogmas of the left as related to religious faith in the public square, such as the canard that “organized religion” is responsible for most of the world’s bloodshed. I’ve already returned the book, and cannot remember any specific examples off the top of my head except for one rather comical one.

Anyone who spends any time these days defending Catholicism in public is accustomed to having the recent clergy sexual abuse crisis hauled out by critics of the Church as a kind of talisman against having to take seriously anything someone in the Church says, regardless of how serious it might actually be. In discussing the outraged response of the Archdiocese of New York to an act of on-the-air sacrilege-for-entertainment within the sacred space of Saint Patrick Cathedral, Ziegler pulls out the obligatory talisman by saying something along the lines of “how can they waste their time complaining about this when THE CRISIS happened!” But then, incredibly, he goes on to claim that the clergy sexual abuse crisis is clearly the worst scandal in Church history!

Ignoring the irony that THE CRISIS as an issue specific to the Catholic Church (as opposed to an issue common to almost every institution during the “sexual revolution” and the rise of “therapeutic man”) is actually a product of the exact same anti-critical, obfuscating, politically motivated, media-driven left-wing group-think that Ziegler wrote this book to complain about, the claim that this is anywhere near the worst scandal in Church history just exposes a complete lack of historical credibility on his part.

In terms of scandal, a small fraction of priests committing grave sins and an episcopal bureaucracy that bungles the response would hardly seem to hold a votive candle to the spectacle of the “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church” presenting three rival claimants to the papal throne, to use just one of many possible candidates from the first half of the second millennium. Many other examples abound, and the current situation is really just a blip on the radar screen in the big picture – as outrageous as that undoubtedly feels to the happy consumers of “politically correct” moralism – where nothing is more important than having properly defined victims, except having appropriate scapegoats put in their place.

What might be unprecedented in history, though, is the public disregard for truth that simmers under the surface of Ziegler’s book, like volcanic lava threatening to erupt onto the surface of society with devastating toxicity and lifeless scorching ore. It’s just not clear to me whether Ziegler’s approach is more part of the solution, or the problem.

Contributing to my continually growing suspicion that I am an alien who ended up on this planet by mistake, I observed the world observing Earth Day yesterday. This seems like a harmless enough celebration, and at one time I probably thought it sounded like a good way to recognize the importance of acknowledging humanity’s responsibility as steward of creation, but somewhere along the line (and quite possibly right from the start), the notion of earth-stewardship was co-opted by hucksters of an astounding variety of stripes.

Everywhere I turned yesterday, there were people trying to sell me “green,” be it in the form of cynically marketed products, paternalistically proffered political ideology, or simply as a fashionable assertion of social conformity – lest I come to the abominable conclusion that some party wasn’t sufficiently “green.” But the pitch that takes the cake came in an email at work, from a newsletter aimed at selling professional services to project managers. Why this one? Because it simply cuts through the bull, and gets to the point:

The term "eco-friendly" shouldn’t make people roll their eyes anymore.they should see dollar signs.

I took the title of this post from the heading on the article blurb that began with the above sentence (punctuation irregularities in original). Really, I couldn’t agree more with this sentiment. In the end, this “movement” is nothing but another scam; another opportunity for the clever to despoil the gullible. But marketing scams are a dime a dozen, and I fear this one traverses some dreadful terrain before it cashes in.

My deeper problem with the “green” movement is in the way it is passed off by the cultural illuminati as a form of morality. It serves as a substitute for a serious moral vision, placing no demands upon individuals except to practice acts of cheesy piety, such as recycling or buying green-blessed goods, yet offering the illusion of having satisfied some grave public – and perhaps even cosmic – need. This would be comical if there weren’t so many people jumping on the bandwagon, because the illusion of goodness, being the essence of idolatry, is a much more formidable enemy to the genuine good than bald evil is. “Green” certainly has become nothing if not a weapon against sound reason.

I sat in a traffic light in Wellesley tonight on my way home from work, behind a station wagon bearing a bumper sticker that said: “Be responsible: shut your car off while waiting.” Also emblazoned on the car were various peace stickers, and an Obama campaign sticker. And then there was the pro-choice slogan. If this kind of “morality” is not the height of whitewashed bourgeois acceptability and self-satisfaction on the face of an inferno of injustice and inhumanity, then I don’t know what is.

Yet this inhumanity seems to be a part of the very paradigm of the green movement. Whether it be Malthusian hysterics, anti-technological eco-puritanism, or the wildly popular “global warming” apocalyptic, humanity always seem to get painted as the problem that must be overcome in order to “save the Earth.” About a year ago, I read a letter to the editor of the Boston Globe from a leading local executive of either the United Church of Christ or the Unitarian Universalist Association, making the astonishing claim that global warming is the most important moral issue of our time. Never mind the dubiousness of the “crisis” in and of itself, can any sane person really imagine that man-made climate change is the most serious moral issue in a world still staggering from the bloodiest century in its history, still armed to the teeth with weapons of unfathomable terror, slaughtering its own children in a frenzy of sexual idiocy, and recklessly embracing immoral political ideas that attack the very foundations of human community?

But this is not the isolated view of a single left-wing whack job. The Worldwatch Institute held an interfaith symposium on global warming back in September 2006, during which Episcopalian priestess Sally Bingham expressed the emerging view: “Global warming,” says Reverend Bingham, “is one of the greatest moral issues of our time, if not the greatest.” And these supposed thought leaders are only following Prophet of Environmentalism Al Gore, who had earlier claimed that global warming was a moral issue, not a political issue.

Well, as recent history has proven yet again, hang on for dear life any time a politician starts claiming that a pet issue is not a “political” issue. But the most sublime symmetry is provided to this claim – that global warming is a moral, and not a political, issue – by a web petition sponsored by the National Council of Churches Eco-Justice Program, which sought to generate political support for the belief that global warming is a moral issue. Ah, serendipity. Alas, though, they fell short of their goal of 10,000 signatures. That only would have taken one signature from every ten congregations from among their member communions, according to the parent organization’s web site. Perhaps their membership was overly confused as to what it means to vote on whether or not something is a moral issue? I think the notion would have perplexed me.