Monthly Archives: November 2010

Cock Crowing: Greeting God’s Holy Light

By Robin Bates | Published: November 21, 2010

Joan Miro, “Le Coq” Spiritual Sunday This is the story of a student basketball player whose life has been changed by the mystic religious poetry of Henry Vaughan. Okay, so “changed” might be an exaggeration. But the 17th century metaphysical poet is helping Brian sort through a series of life reversals in ways that I […]

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Manning vs. Brady, Hector vs. Achilles

By Robin Bates | Published: November 20, 2010

Sports Saturday Tomorrow will witness the fiercest rivalry in American football—and maybe in American sports—as Peyton Manning of the Indianapolis Colts travels to Boston to play against Tom Brady of the New England Patriots. Many are beginning to believe that football has never seen a quarterback rivalry that matches this one. Which of the two […]

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Lee’s Film Has More Sensibility than Sense

By Robin Bates | Published: November 19, 2010

  Film Friday A while back I wrote about how Patricia Rozema’s film of Mansfield Park sells Jane Austen short. Today I accuse Ang Lee’s Sense and Sensibility (1995) of doing the same. When the film came out, I remember hearing an interview with Lee (maybe on National Public Radio) about how his affinity with Jane […]

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Read Your Kids Nonsense Poems

By Robin Bates | Published: November 18, 2010

I taught Alice in Wonderland a couple of weeks ago and found myself thrown back to wonderful childhood memories of my father reading me Lewis Carroll’s nonsense poetry.  Authority figures in the book are always ordering Alice to recite instructional verse, like Issac Watts’ “Against Idleness and Mischief” or Robert Southey’s “The Old Man’s Comforts […]

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Twain Was No Racist (Not Even Close)

By Robin Bates | Published: November 17, 2010

“I hope that like Mark Twain, 100 years from now people will see my work and think, ‘Wow. That is actually pretty racist.’” –Tina Fey accepting the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor Thanks to a visiting lecturer in our Mark Twain series, I have a new understanding of Huckleberry Finn that is exciting me […]

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Metaphors and the Brain

By Robin Bates | Published: November 16, 2010

I read a fascinating article in yesterday’s New York Times on metaphors and the brain. If I understand Robert Sapolsky’s piece correctly, the insula—which is the part of the brain that processes, say, disgust with rotten food—also processes “rotten” when it is used as a metaphor (as in “the very deep did rot” from Rime […]

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Palin, Mama Grizzlies, and the Wife of Bath

By Robin Bates | Published: November 15, 2010

There was a lot of talk about Sarah Palin’s “Mama Grizzlies” this past election season. The image, which conjures up mothers fiercely defending their threatened young, has never made logical sense to me as a rightwing symbol. After all, shouldn’t mothers be fighting fiercely for social safety net programs (which Sarah Palin attacks) and against […]

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Gifts that Come with Sitting in Church

By Robin Bates | Published: November 14, 2010

Spiritual Sunday When I was young, I could never understand why someone would want to sit for 90 minutes in church.  But when I became a man (to quote Paul) I got it.  There is something in the experience that grounds one, a peace that descends.  This can occur even if one’s mind is wandering […]

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Basketball’s Lyric Slipknot of Joy

By Robin Bates | Published: November 13, 2010

We can become jaded with professional sports.  This past off season saw LeBron James creating a three-ring circus out of his move from Cleveland to Miami.  The grand entrance of players into the arena on any given night seems almost parodic, more in the spirit of P. T. Barnum than epic invocation.  Therefore it’s good […]

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