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At a seminar in a computer lab where I’m typing this, I learned, believe it or not, the seven cardinal sins can effectively apply to writing. I think I’ll use this with my composition students in the future. You have to know that it made sense with the definitions and examples given. Trust me on how powerful it was to think about how NOT to write! The following is a very quick summary:
1. Vengeance – tell fresh stories, not the same old ones from the past
2. Gluttony – Stay focused, don’t tell all you know by spewing all out from over abundance of details
3. Sloth – don’t do the “just get by” kind of writing, seek excellence in details
4. Pride – Focus on the person you are telling the story about, not on yourself
5. Envy – Write freshly, don’t use old patterns that worked last time
6. Lust – verify stories, make sure there is truth in your quotes, don’t make them sizzle with falsities
7. Greed – selfishness in putting self in story and not glorifying God.
Much to learn about writing and what sins to stay away from! Help me not to error for my future reading audience!!!
Missed my blog yesterday because we were either eating out at restaurants with Ken’s Colorado relatives in Larkspur and Denver or driving up to Cheyenne, Wyoming to find that the rodeo had taken over that town. So, back to Ft. Collins to meet up with our friend Jeannie Tabb for a conference that has been in full swing and will continue into next week. Things being as they are, we were only going to stay for one day for this conference that takes in over 5,000 people from all over the world and the U.S. but we have now decided to stay for three days. The messages and music are so good and networking with people is the key. I wish I could show photos of what I’m taking in but for whatever reason, I cannot access Internet on my laptop computer. It shows that I can access my wireless yet I’m unable to get on to Internet Explorer. I am discovering there is a reason for everything, even this delay in getting home to NW MN. For now, even though it is hot in Colorado, the fellowship is warm and this is the refreshing that we need to continue for the fall semester!
We left the 150 year old stone house south of Lawrence yesterday morning with Liam, Ken’s son to go to St. John, Kansas. The day before we had toured the Kansas University campus and taken in the new Bob Dole Institute of Politics. Impressive place. We will always wonder how different our country’s history would be if Dole would have become president instead of Clinton’s second term.
But our mission for this day was to get to St. John, where Ken’s dad grew up, south and west from KU Jayhawk territory. On the way we stopped in a small town of Abilene where President Eisenhower grew up, they have a big library and museum building on the 20 acre premises. We bought “I Like Ike” buttons and then filled up with gas at the cheapest place we have seen along the road, $2.94 per gallon. Saw a cheaper place of $2.87 but we were happy to find this because gas has been about $3.29 or so along the freeway.
After we arrived to St. John’s library, we went through old photos that Ken’s great grandpa had taken as a professional photographer, then went to the family’s old studio that is in sad disrepair. We parted ways with Liam who had a 4 hour trip back to Kansas City and we continued on to Greensburg. If you recall several months ago on the evening of May 4th, a tornado ripped through this small town. As we entered from the east side it didn’t look too bad, we began to doubt the photos we had seen. But going along we could see the twisted metal or blown out buildings as we went west. THEN, we saw what used to be the residential area and it was clearly devastated. The big trees were void of all their branches and green leaves after the tornado looked “furry” because they were trying to grow back their green branches. It looked surreal to see the openings of basements but no houses, only tree trunks.
Enough of seeing the destruction and taking pictures, we moved on into the sunset horizon to stay with Ken’s cousin in Ashland. Our new adventure today will be to tour the town Ken grew up in in Ulysses before we head to Colorado. So many people to see, so many miles to roam. It has been a very good trip so far. Praise the Lord!
A continuation of what I wrote yesterday about art and postmodernism after reviewing my notes, I see that the people who write about art are different than those who DO art. The gallery is divorced from the artworld academy. Safe to say that academics don’t know anything about art and James Elkins tried to be the spokesman and set down the criteria of what the New Religious Movement (NRM) should look like. Essentially it meant that postmodern artists were supposed to exhibit second thoughts about religion and clearly were supposed to put down anyone who showed faith in Christianity. Supposedly Christians are not supposed to exist in the art world. However, what postmodernism has done has splintered the art world so much in its own self destructive path that it is not monolithic in its movement. Elkins has no power over what the artists are doing, thankfully.
On our way down to Kansas City for this conference about “Truth under Deconstruction” we stopped in Waterton, South Dakota. I love going to the Terry Redlin museum and seeing his art. Every time I see his paintings, I start tearing up. He shows a nostalgic view of America in the early 1900s with the warm glow of light from inside homes or from street lights or yard lights. It has the Rembrandt kind of darkness with the illumination glowing where the focus of attention should be. He shows deer, ducks, geese and is a real huntsman, loving nature. Some paintings he will show an American flag and perhaps because I have lived overseas so many years, I love seeing even a hint of it. Redlin loves not only nature and simple Rockwell kind of people but also he is patriotic. I’m glad that Redlin has not paid any attention to the NRM era of postmodernism. Redlin just retired last month, June 2007 and now his paintings will be worth much more. Many of the prints are already worth $500 to $1,000 right now, the originals are in the Terry Redlin museum to be viewed.
Some of the books that were mentioned in the seminars were the following: “Real Presences” by George Steiner and “After Theory” by Terry Eagleton and “Art Since 1900” by Rosalee Goldberg and others. I suppose hyper-modernism are the academicians who try to dictate what the artists are supposed to DO according to a certain dogma, however there are lone rangers like Terry Redlin who will have enduring art because he painted what he loved. Long live the free spirits!!!
Still in Kansas City and enjoyed a zany game of Balderdash with Ken’s son and his girlfriend. Ken won this game of bluffing, he ordinarily doesn’t win games. So that must mean he is very good at bluffing. We enjoyed many of the speakers we heard at the conference titled “Truth Under Deconstruction.” I went to academic tracks that focused on the art world and postmodernism. I was relieved to find out that P.M. is so last century, it was self destructive such as the piece entitled “Felt Suit” by Joseph Beuys. It merely was an artist hanging up a suit on a hanger and declaring that as art. After a while it became moth eaten and they had to make 100 copies of the suit.
Another instance of “art” was a bag of garbage that the janitor of a museum mistook as a bag of garbage and promptly removed. So, postmodern art was destined to immediately self-destruct by its very nature of seeking an audience response of anger, shock or disbelief. We had heard this earlier from a friend of ours who is an architect. Buildings are meant to hold up and there are certain rules that have to be obeyed so that the weight of beams do not come crashing down on occupants below some postmodern quirk of “artsy” architecture. One PM theorist was challenged on his blueprint to actually build his edifice and it could not be accomplished without caving in.
Pragmaticism rules the day as does gravity when theories on making postmodern architecture do not work. We saw a photo of a PM art museum in Denver and it looks worse than the one on the University of Minnesota campus in Minneapolis. I didn’t think that could be possible, for I hate the Weisman art museum though I have never been inside it. How can one judge a building by its exterior? Turns out that the “creative” angles inside the Denver museum detract attention and make the placement of art very difficult to view inside. Absurdity mounted upon absurdity.
The one salient point I took away from this conference was that Postmodernism is dead. I say, good riddance! and don’t come back again!!!
At a conference for three days and I have a full notebook and a fuller head. Many stories from people all over the world about what they have been doing in the academic setting. Some are going to teach in North Korea, I know a family who will be going to Sudan to minister there. It is incredible where God is calling people. Glad that I will be going to Kazakstan in one month, somehow that feels safer!!! More later, I’m on someone else’s computer and will download photos later. Stay tuned!
Guess where we are? Cornfields surround our motel like “Field of Dreams” movie where the famous quote was “If you build it, they will come.” I think they built this two story motel instead of a baseball field and the truckers have come. We are surrounded by big trucking rigs that hail from Canada, Kansas, Missouri, Dakotas, Minnesota, Nebraska and of course Iowa. I’m in the lobby doing my computer work instead of our room because our Internet connection doesn’t work, thus no photos today. The corn looks different from what I’m used to seeing, it looks like it stands taller as if at attention. Minnesota and North Dakota’s corn looks more relaxed and supple that wave as you go by. Iowa corn looks inflexible but businesslike. Difference of 500 miles geography south and different corn seed I guess. BTW, we are at Sidney, IA or is it Nebraska City, Nebraska? Soon we will be in Kansas City, Missouri or will that be Kansas? How confusing! Being surrounded by cornfields can do that to you.
In many years gone by, this was a common sight to see flax in the fields. It is rare to see this beautiful sight now. These are the rolling hills of North Dakota and see the rock pile off to the left? At my Mom’s farm where she grew up, they had to pick rocks. Fortunately where I am from in the Red River Valley there are no rocks, only black earth. The rocks could damage plow shares and other equipment. Off for points south! We plan to stop in Watertown, South Dakota to see the Terry Redlin musuem (LOVE that place) then to Omaha, Nebraska. Should be a fun time at our conference in Kansas City. I’ll write from the road!
Usually people around these parts love to have a cabin or “house on the lake.” (must be the Scandinavian tradition) In this “house in the lake” photo, it would have qualified in years past. But now Devils Lake has taken over much of the farmers’ acreage, farm buildings, houses, and wooded areas. The lake, which was named by the Indians, translates better as “Spirit Lake.” Somehow the native Americans must have known there was something mysterious about the ebbs and flows of the lake’s waters. When I was a little girl going to visit my grandparents in Sheyenne, we would take the Hwy. #2 route and Devils Lake as a lake was merely a smelly pond of little consequence. The earth had sucked in all its water, but now it looks like Lake Superior because of all the area it has overtaken is vast. Water, water everywhere. God superintends all of this in His creation. I took several shots of the sunset the other night back at our farm, I didn’t see the cloud formation of two eyes looking down at the turning wheat. “Turning” means from green to gold, making it ready for harvest. Can you see the two eyes in the clouds?
What a great time I had in North Dakota yesterday. I visited with Aunt Izzie who works as a volunteer at the museum in New Rockford after my folks and I had attended a little Lutheran church service in Sheyenne. Note the rural theme in the stained glass window. After the reunion with Gilderhus relatives, my folks and I toured the area where S.A. Olsness would have walked and skied. Just one mile north of his place was this old abandoned granary on a once prosperous little farmstead. We also saw the Sheyenne River that wound and twisted on the northwest part of SAO’s section of land. So much history is just laying out in the open, exposed to the elements. Who cares about what happened 100 years ago? Who cares about what happened 2,000 years ago? I do.
True History Matters 