OK, I admit it--although I've been the librarian in charge of the audiobook collection at the library where I work for over 8 years, I don't listen to them at all.
There are a couple of reasons for this. The first is primarily the time involved--I am a fast reader, and read much faster than normal human speech. Consequently it usually takes me a lot less time to read a book than it would take to listen to the audio equivalent. And I'm not above speed-reading or skimming when I get to any boring parts--over-long descriptions, or when the narrative has switched to the interior thoughts of a character I don't particularly like, or in some romances the mushy parts, that sort of thing. There is no equivalent of speed-reading or skimming available for audiobooks--even though most CDs are split into tracks every three minutes, if you jump to the start of the next track you don't hear what's in between.
Even though I don't listen to audiobooks--someone reading a book out loud--I do listen to, and am very fond of audio theater, full-cast productions with music and sound effects. The ones of which I am most fond are those produced by the folks over at ZBS.
They are a reseller of audio productions done by other folks, but they also offer several other series created and produced entirely in house. The two biggest series are the ones involving Jack Flanders and the science fiction series featuring Ruby the Galactic Gumshoe (I just ordered the latest installment in that series today). Both the Jack Flanders and Ruby series incorporate wonderful music and sneak in very interesting elements of magic, mystery, mysticism, philosophy, and social commentary.
I've been listening to these productions for decades. My first exposure to them came late one night over 30 years ago when I tuned in to the college radio station at the University of Puget Sound, where I was a student, into the middle of one of the episodes of "The 4th tower of Inverness" and was hooked. I had to call the station and find out what they were playing, and I think I made sure I tuned in and listened to the succeeding episodes. Many years later, after I had moved back to Portland, I was driving around one day and had tuned into the PBS station at a time I didn't usually do so and had no idea what they played that time of day anyway and caught an episode of "Moon over Morocco"--and had to pull over and listen to the rest of the episode.
Over the years I've collected each episode of both the Jack Flanders and Ruby series, and have listened to the entire cycle of each yearly.
I love them--they are wonderfully done, and manage to be a bit weird but very interesting, often thought provoking, and highly absorbing and entertaining. I love listening to them on head/earphones. (I admit it--although I've been listening to stereo almost all of my life, when I'm listening to really well done stereo on ear/headphones I often feel like looking around me to see where the noise is coming from.)
There are a few negative things I could say about the ZBS productions--side-effects of their interesting, entertaining, and absorbing qualities, if you will. When you're listening to them, especially if you're using ear/headphones, do not try to read or indeed do anything involving using language creatively like writing. You will not want to be interrupted while listening, so if you have family living with you tell them not to bother you until you tell them the episode is finished. If you try listening to them in a car with other people you'll find yourself asking everyone else to please shut up.
Listening while working out works very well. You might find yourself doing so for longer than usual, though, because you'll want to listen through to the end of an episode. I copy my CDs as CDs to my iPod through iTunes, and not just as the individual tracks. The CD-equivalent I was listening to today while using the treadmill has 2 episodes, each about 25 minutes long. I hadn't been on the treadmill for a while, and today I wasn't sure I'd make it to a half-hour; when I got to the end of the first episode at 25 minutes, I thought "Hmmmm....maybe I'll just keep walking until I get to the end of the CD"--and did, another 25 or so minutes later.
I highly recommend either of the two series.
ZBS
SMC
Friday, May 22, 2009
Flying Karamazov Brothers
In a world with disorder and chaos all around us, where crime and disasters and drug addiction and violence--ethnic, random, or domestic--and things way out of our personal control can all have devastating consequences on families and lives, you have to find your own order, meaning, beauty and happiness where and when you can find it.
That's one of the reasons I derive such fun and pleasure from updating all my various lists of books I've read, and new authors and books I find out about, as well as keeping my playlists of the Celtic music podcasts I listen to updated--almost as much as I get from reading or listening to the music themselves.
That's also why every now and then I need to watch the only FKB video my library system owns (and it's also the only copy)--the "FKB video scrapbook, 1973-2001".
For those of you who don't know these guys, they have been juggling together--in one lineup or another--since 1973 and are still in business. They have gone from performing at Ren Faires to being able to sell out performances in theaters in Seattle and other metropolitan areas, and on Broadway and on London's West End. Their longevity alone is a source of order and continuity in a way few other performing groups can provide.
These guys have always been amazing. They combine grace and skill and split-second timing and group coordination with technical innovation and an inspired silliness much like Monty Python at their very best. And from the beginning they have always combined the juggling with a very strong musicality, are excellent musicians themselves, and often include musical performances in their acts.
I have been fortunate enough to see them perform a few times. Back in the 80s they sometimes showed up at outdoor festivals in Portland and Seattle such as Seattle's Folklife Festival, which is going on this weekend. And back when I was in Library School in Seattle, before moving here to my current job in S Florida, I caught their theater show "L'Universe" (pronounced loony verse).
"L'Universe" was incredible and was a brilliant example of how these guys combine technical wizardry with their juggling wizardry. They had designed the show with the assistance of MIT's Media Lab. This allowed them do things like a routine where they were juggling in front of a projected video of themselves juggling, which they interacted with. For the most amazing routine, the entire stage had been digitally scanned, and they were wearing sensors all over their bodies so the computers knew exactly which part of their body was where, and they actually juggled a computer-generated image which had been programmed to mimic a physical, 3-dimensional body interacting with them and the set. You could see it bouncing off the floor, walls, and peformers.
I haven't seen these guys live since then, but as I said they are still around and still performing. They have a Web-presence of their own, and there are also several videos of them on YouTube. Check them out.....
The Flying Karamazov Brothers
SMC
That's one of the reasons I derive such fun and pleasure from updating all my various lists of books I've read, and new authors and books I find out about, as well as keeping my playlists of the Celtic music podcasts I listen to updated--almost as much as I get from reading or listening to the music themselves.
That's also why every now and then I need to watch the only FKB video my library system owns (and it's also the only copy)--the "FKB video scrapbook, 1973-2001".
For those of you who don't know these guys, they have been juggling together--in one lineup or another--since 1973 and are still in business. They have gone from performing at Ren Faires to being able to sell out performances in theaters in Seattle and other metropolitan areas, and on Broadway and on London's West End. Their longevity alone is a source of order and continuity in a way few other performing groups can provide.
These guys have always been amazing. They combine grace and skill and split-second timing and group coordination with technical innovation and an inspired silliness much like Monty Python at their very best. And from the beginning they have always combined the juggling with a very strong musicality, are excellent musicians themselves, and often include musical performances in their acts.
I have been fortunate enough to see them perform a few times. Back in the 80s they sometimes showed up at outdoor festivals in Portland and Seattle such as Seattle's Folklife Festival, which is going on this weekend. And back when I was in Library School in Seattle, before moving here to my current job in S Florida, I caught their theater show "L'Universe" (pronounced loony verse).
"L'Universe" was incredible and was a brilliant example of how these guys combine technical wizardry with their juggling wizardry. They had designed the show with the assistance of MIT's Media Lab. This allowed them do things like a routine where they were juggling in front of a projected video of themselves juggling, which they interacted with. For the most amazing routine, the entire stage had been digitally scanned, and they were wearing sensors all over their bodies so the computers knew exactly which part of their body was where, and they actually juggled a computer-generated image which had been programmed to mimic a physical, 3-dimensional body interacting with them and the set. You could see it bouncing off the floor, walls, and peformers.
I haven't seen these guys live since then, but as I said they are still around and still performing. They have a Web-presence of their own, and there are also several videos of them on YouTube. Check them out.....
The Flying Karamazov Brothers
SMC
Friday, May 8, 2009
Arnold Johnson: The witching voice
I rarely don't finish books I start--mainly because I don't even add a book to my to-be-read list, let alone actually start reading it, unless I'm pretty sure it's one I'll enjoy. Long ago, though, I gave myself permission to stop reading a book if I didn't like it after a reasonable trial--say half a dozen chapters or 75 to 100 pages. Arnold Johnson's "The witching voice", a new novel about Robert Burns, is one that I just could not get into, and I did make a good faith effort.
Why do I think I couldn't get into it? It's rather slow and tedious, and not a lot happens--except for at least three sexual encounters--in the 100 or so pages I read. Not only that, the use of Scottish dialect makes it necessary to frequently refer to the glossary at the end of the book, which for me does not make fluid or particulay enjoyable reading.
Oh well--I have plenty of other books I want to read.....
SMC
Why do I think I couldn't get into it? It's rather slow and tedious, and not a lot happens--except for at least three sexual encounters--in the 100 or so pages I read. Not only that, the use of Scottish dialect makes it necessary to frequently refer to the glossary at the end of the book, which for me does not make fluid or particulay enjoyable reading.
Oh well--I have plenty of other books I want to read.....
SMC
New books, new authors
The hard drive conversion kit I needed to get my old IDE drive to work with my new computer showed up Wednesday, and it proved pretty easy to install (once I figured out how to even get it out of the old computer), but unfortunately everything I had been working on the day before the old computer went down was gone. Fortunately that was only a few files, and although the comprehensive file containing all the details for new authors I wanted to add to my lists was one of them, all the individual e-mails I'd sent myself about those authors were saved.
I read the online reviews from "Publishers Weekly", "Kirkus", ALA's "Booklist", and "Library Journal" online at work between helping patrons at our public service desk. That works out great--since the reviews themselves are only a couple of paragraphs long I can usually read a couple between patrons, no matter how busy it gets. If I have time I look the authors up on Stop, You're Killing Me or Fantastic Fiction to see if they've written anything else, and then I send myself an e-mail at home with the info. I then go through the individual e-mails, check and see what books from each author the Broward County Library system actually owns, make a list for each author, which I usually combine into a large list, and then add the new books to my html lists. So, as I said, although the single comprehensive list was gone I still had the individual e-mails.
One thing those of us who do genre fiction reader's advisory at BCL, or are just fans of genre fiction ourselves, know is that BCL's collection is often not very complete, with often very gaping holes in series.
Although most of the authors I decided were interesting enough to add to my lists were indeed new authors, with only a book or two in the last couple of years, a couple of them have been writing for much longer without my having heard of them before. I've been reading the reviews pretty much weekly since 9/2001 so it always makes me think "How could I have missed this author?" when I find one like that.
I added about 45 new authors to my lists. A list, with anything I thought specifically interesting about them, follows.
Gordon/G K Aalborg--although his 1st book seems to have come out in 1981, there was nothing more until 2005
Cecelia Ahern--this contemporary romance author is the daughter of former Irish PM Bertie Ahern
Lou Allin
Linda Castillo--she's written 23 romantic suspense titles since 2000, which I find unbelievable
K C Constantine--although this mysterious author wrote for over 20 years, up until a couple of years ago, and BCL has most of the titles, I somehow missed this one
Claudia Dain
S J Day
Denise Dietz
John Drake
Leanna Ellis
Bill Evans
Duncan Falconer
Jane Feather
Charles Coleman/C C Finlay
Tom Gabbay
Sally Goldenbaum
Beth Groundwater
Kathryn Miller Haines
John Hart
James Huston
Jane Jackson
Nicole Jordan
Sophie Jordan
Jeanne Kalogridis
Raymond Khoury
Julie Kramer
Lora Leigh--she's written over 30 fantasy/romance titles since 2003, which I find hard to believe
Diane Wei Liang
Robert Littell--this author has written 15 spy thrillers since 1970, I missed him as well before
Jon Loomis
Jonathan Maberry
Robert Macomber
Monica McCarty
Natasha Mostert
Christi Phillips
Yrsa Sigurdardottir
Donna Lea Simpson--she's written 18 books since 1999 but I don't seem to have heard of her either
Gloria Dale Skinner
Joanna Campbell Slan
Anne Easter Smith
Tom Rob Smith
Michael Stanley
Jane Tesh
Shirley Wells
I also added a few of the above to the list of authors I really want to read.
I've got to say, when I find a new interesting author I want to add to my lists, I always like it when they've only written 2 or 3 at the most. Otherwise it's kind of like coming across Danielle Steel, Jayne Ann Krentz, or Nora Roberts/J D Robb for the first time and thinking "Do I really even want to get started on this author?" I decided a long time ago that even if I don't want to get started on reading an author like that, whom I've never heard of before, I probably should at least find out about them.
SMC
I read the online reviews from "Publishers Weekly", "Kirkus", ALA's "Booklist", and "Library Journal" online at work between helping patrons at our public service desk. That works out great--since the reviews themselves are only a couple of paragraphs long I can usually read a couple between patrons, no matter how busy it gets. If I have time I look the authors up on Stop, You're Killing Me or Fantastic Fiction to see if they've written anything else, and then I send myself an e-mail at home with the info. I then go through the individual e-mails, check and see what books from each author the Broward County Library system actually owns, make a list for each author, which I usually combine into a large list, and then add the new books to my html lists. So, as I said, although the single comprehensive list was gone I still had the individual e-mails.
One thing those of us who do genre fiction reader's advisory at BCL, or are just fans of genre fiction ourselves, know is that BCL's collection is often not very complete, with often very gaping holes in series.
Although most of the authors I decided were interesting enough to add to my lists were indeed new authors, with only a book or two in the last couple of years, a couple of them have been writing for much longer without my having heard of them before. I've been reading the reviews pretty much weekly since 9/2001 so it always makes me think "How could I have missed this author?" when I find one like that.
I added about 45 new authors to my lists. A list, with anything I thought specifically interesting about them, follows.
Gordon/G K Aalborg--although his 1st book seems to have come out in 1981, there was nothing more until 2005
Cecelia Ahern--this contemporary romance author is the daughter of former Irish PM Bertie Ahern
Lou Allin
Linda Castillo--she's written 23 romantic suspense titles since 2000, which I find unbelievable
K C Constantine--although this mysterious author wrote for over 20 years, up until a couple of years ago, and BCL has most of the titles, I somehow missed this one
Claudia Dain
S J Day
Denise Dietz
John Drake
Leanna Ellis
Bill Evans
Duncan Falconer
Jane Feather
Charles Coleman/C C Finlay
Tom Gabbay
Sally Goldenbaum
Beth Groundwater
Kathryn Miller Haines
John Hart
James Huston
Jane Jackson
Nicole Jordan
Sophie Jordan
Jeanne Kalogridis
Raymond Khoury
Julie Kramer
Lora Leigh--she's written over 30 fantasy/romance titles since 2003, which I find hard to believe
Diane Wei Liang
Robert Littell--this author has written 15 spy thrillers since 1970, I missed him as well before
Jon Loomis
Jonathan Maberry
Robert Macomber
Monica McCarty
Natasha Mostert
Christi Phillips
Yrsa Sigurdardottir
Donna Lea Simpson--she's written 18 books since 1999 but I don't seem to have heard of her either
Gloria Dale Skinner
Joanna Campbell Slan
Anne Easter Smith
Tom Rob Smith
Michael Stanley
Jane Tesh
Shirley Wells
I also added a few of the above to the list of authors I really want to read.
I've got to say, when I find a new interesting author I want to add to my lists, I always like it when they've only written 2 or 3 at the most. Otherwise it's kind of like coming across Danielle Steel, Jayne Ann Krentz, or Nora Roberts/J D Robb for the first time and thinking "Do I really even want to get started on this author?" I decided a long time ago that even if I don't want to get started on reading an author like that, whom I've never heard of before, I probably should at least find out about them.
SMC
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Technidal difficulties
I came home from work this past Tuesday to discover that my old PC was displaying one of the blue screens of death, this one saying that it could not find the hard drive. Try what I may, nothing I could think of to do would work--but I'm more of a semi-educated user than a true techie.
I was faced with two choices. I could spend the money to buy a new hard-drive for my old computer, then re-install all of my old programs, or I could just buy a newer, faster computer with more RAM, a bigger hard drive, a newer, faster CD/DVD player/burner.
There was also the question of retrieving all my non-program files, including html, word processing, and database files. I had three backups. All of my photos are copied over onto CDs; my then-current comupter had a 2nd hard drive which I salvaged from the computer before that one, and I copied all the rest of my personal files over to that drive; and I also copy everything except my photos over to a USB flash drive.
I decided it would be more cost-effective to just buy a new computer, see if I could get the D drive from the old computer transferred over to the new one, hope that all my old programs (some pre-dating Windows XP) would work on my new machine, and if necessary copy all my photos back from the CDs and the rest of my files over from the USB flash drive.
It turned out that my old D drive is so old that my new PC's motherboard doesn't even recognize it; I had to order a kit to convert the drive over to a USB-readable external drive. I hope that I remembered to copy whatever I was working on Monday after work over to the old D drive, because although I remembered to copy everything over to the flash drive on Sunday I don't seem to have done so Monday night.
Most of my old programs seem to work fine on my new PC under Windows Vista. The most costly exception was WordPerfect, which I've been using since version 4.0, and still think is the best word processor on the market. At first it seemed to work OK, but as soon as I tried to save the file I'd opened and then worked on, I couldn't do so. The second-most expensive program I had to pay to replace was an FTP program, and that was about $20.
I of course had to install iTunes on this new computer, and go through my list of podcasts I subscribe to and download all the relevant episodes I wanted. This was more time-consuming than anything else, but only in the sense that I just went and did something else while iTunes was doing the downloading (I was at the Greek fair for a couple of hours yesterday, for instance.)
For some reason the new version of Internet Explorer failed to import my bookmarks from the html file I'd saved them to as backup, so I had to just go thtough that file bookmark by bookmark, create the new folders and subfolders in Explorer, and save each and every one all over again. It was a bit tedious, but I just listened to some of my podcasts while doing so. This gave me the opportunity to get rid of any bookmarks that were no longer in service, or replace them with the new, correct URLs.
The conversion kit for my old drive should arrive in the next couple of days. I hope I remembered to copy what I was working on Monday night over to it; if not, I only lost a day's worth of work. I'd been going through the separate files I'd sent myself about books by individual authors I wanted to add to my lists, and combined them into one comprehesive list. I don't have that one combined list yet--I hope it's on the D drive--but I do have all the single, separate source files.
SMC
I was faced with two choices. I could spend the money to buy a new hard-drive for my old computer, then re-install all of my old programs, or I could just buy a newer, faster computer with more RAM, a bigger hard drive, a newer, faster CD/DVD player/burner.
There was also the question of retrieving all my non-program files, including html, word processing, and database files. I had three backups. All of my photos are copied over onto CDs; my then-current comupter had a 2nd hard drive which I salvaged from the computer before that one, and I copied all the rest of my personal files over to that drive; and I also copy everything except my photos over to a USB flash drive.
I decided it would be more cost-effective to just buy a new computer, see if I could get the D drive from the old computer transferred over to the new one, hope that all my old programs (some pre-dating Windows XP) would work on my new machine, and if necessary copy all my photos back from the CDs and the rest of my files over from the USB flash drive.
It turned out that my old D drive is so old that my new PC's motherboard doesn't even recognize it; I had to order a kit to convert the drive over to a USB-readable external drive. I hope that I remembered to copy whatever I was working on Monday after work over to the old D drive, because although I remembered to copy everything over to the flash drive on Sunday I don't seem to have done so Monday night.
Most of my old programs seem to work fine on my new PC under Windows Vista. The most costly exception was WordPerfect, which I've been using since version 4.0, and still think is the best word processor on the market. At first it seemed to work OK, but as soon as I tried to save the file I'd opened and then worked on, I couldn't do so. The second-most expensive program I had to pay to replace was an FTP program, and that was about $20.
I of course had to install iTunes on this new computer, and go through my list of podcasts I subscribe to and download all the relevant episodes I wanted. This was more time-consuming than anything else, but only in the sense that I just went and did something else while iTunes was doing the downloading (I was at the Greek fair for a couple of hours yesterday, for instance.)
For some reason the new version of Internet Explorer failed to import my bookmarks from the html file I'd saved them to as backup, so I had to just go thtough that file bookmark by bookmark, create the new folders and subfolders in Explorer, and save each and every one all over again. It was a bit tedious, but I just listened to some of my podcasts while doing so. This gave me the opportunity to get rid of any bookmarks that were no longer in service, or replace them with the new, correct URLs.
The conversion kit for my old drive should arrive in the next couple of days. I hope I remembered to copy what I was working on Monday night over to it; if not, I only lost a day's worth of work. I'd been going through the separate files I'd sent myself about books by individual authors I wanted to add to my lists, and combined them into one comprehesive list. I don't have that one combined list yet--I hope it's on the D drive--but I do have all the single, separate source files.
SMC
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Heritage
I just got back from spending a couple of hours at the annual fair at the St George Greek Orthodox Church just down the road from my house. Dinner was OK--I had the shish kebab/souvlaki, which was tasty but a bit dry (tomorrow I'll have the gyros, I think--the meat smelled wonderful!)--the pastries I'm saving for later look wonderful, and the music, and the dancing from the teen/young adult group were excellent. (OK, the youngest kids and the slightly older kids were cute.)
The guys in that group have to be some of the smartest in the congregation--all the young ladies in the group are lovely. And they're all--guys and girls--very good dancers.
Being part of a community event at a church made me think a lot about my own religious and cultural heritage.
Even though my Mom's own mother was French, and my Dad's grandparents were Irish on both sides, my siblings and I were raised fully assimilated Catholic Americans. We never heard anything about Irish or French heritage or culture. It wasn't until I was in my teens that I started learning anything about either heritage on my own; shortly after that my parents and most of my siblings decided they were also interested, and have remained at least mildly interested since then. This is also when I discovered I was also interested in other cultures and heritages and music based on those folk/ethnic traditions as well. And I decided I didn't have to understand the lyrics of a song to like it as a piece of music--this applied to rock and pop music in English as well, by the way. I'm not sure when the last time I really understood a song by Paul Simon or Joni Mitchell was, for instance.
(Maybe it has something to do with my full name--Stephen, from the Greek Stephanos, crown; Michael, Hebrew, meaning "who is like God?"; Robert, Germanic in origin, meaning "bright fame"; and Conroy, which is often thought to have entered Ireland with the Normans and to be derived from "con roi" or "with the king". Side note--when it was time for me to choose a saint's name for confirmation, my parents wanted me to choose Robert, which meant that my own full name, Stephen Michael Robert, would be a variation of my Dad's full name, Robert Stephen Michael, which I've always thought was pretty cool.)
(Another side note about names. I have introduced myself as Stephen since I turned 21, which was a long time ago now. People who call me Steve either are friends of my parents, or someone who never paid attention to what my nametag at work says or to how I answer the phone. Although I do not usually answer to Steve and always introduce myself as Stephen, I will answer to Stephanos if you're feeling Greek, Stefan if you're feeling Slavic or Eastern European, Esteban if you're feeling Spanish, or Etienne if you're feeling French.)
We were raised in the Roman Catholic church, and until we moved from the Chicago area, we were all comfortable in the parish to which we belonged, and my parents were both active in the church there. I did learn while quite young, though, that I seemed to have a lot more in common with a lot of the reformers and "heretics" than I did with the Roman Catholic hierarchy. I never quite agreed with "this is true because the Pope/bishops/nuns/clergy/Confraternity of Christian Doctrine says so". (As if Roman Catholics are the only true Christians.)
I was also interested in Judaism, since a lot of the kids I knew in school were Jewish (both Reform and Orthodox, I think) and there was a synagogue down the road from our house. I often went to community events at that synagogue and was occasionally invited by my Jewish friends to things at their synagogues as well.
When we got to Portland OR, though, we found that the culture in the Roman Catholic church there was a lot more conservative, and my family as a whole stopped going. I had several friends from school who went to the nearby Presbyterian church and I went to choir practice with them one day after school senior year, and wound up joining them for the rest of the school year. When I got to the University of Puget Sound up in Tacoma WA most of the people I met who went to church went to the main United Methodist church downtown, so I did as well, and went regularly for almost three years. (I still sang with the choir at First Presbyterian for a couple of Christmases, though, and it's still my favorite place of all for the late Christmas Eve service.)
My undergraduate major was in Comparative Religion, which increased my intellectual tendency towards skepticism. I came to the conclusion that although I am open to religious experience of the holy and sacred, I don't really believe in and am skeptical of organized religions--and for me, that also includes most organizations, professional sports teams, governments, and political parties. I am also not much of a joiner of organizations, either. (I also decided in college that although I still have a lot in common with reformers and "heretics", and would probably have liked Martin Luther, and really liked John Wesley, I don't think I'd have liked John Knox.)
All the same, I can see the comfort offered by belonging to some organization of which you feel a part, whether it's hobby- or interest-based, a political or social action group, or a faith-based group. I can understand how my youngest brother could agree with my sister-in-law that their kids not only would be raised in the Roman Catholic church but would go to parochial school, through high school, and that they themselves would participate as parents.
Time to go make some coffee to go with my Greek pastries.....
SMC
The guys in that group have to be some of the smartest in the congregation--all the young ladies in the group are lovely. And they're all--guys and girls--very good dancers.
Being part of a community event at a church made me think a lot about my own religious and cultural heritage.
Even though my Mom's own mother was French, and my Dad's grandparents were Irish on both sides, my siblings and I were raised fully assimilated Catholic Americans. We never heard anything about Irish or French heritage or culture. It wasn't until I was in my teens that I started learning anything about either heritage on my own; shortly after that my parents and most of my siblings decided they were also interested, and have remained at least mildly interested since then. This is also when I discovered I was also interested in other cultures and heritages and music based on those folk/ethnic traditions as well. And I decided I didn't have to understand the lyrics of a song to like it as a piece of music--this applied to rock and pop music in English as well, by the way. I'm not sure when the last time I really understood a song by Paul Simon or Joni Mitchell was, for instance.
(Maybe it has something to do with my full name--Stephen, from the Greek Stephanos, crown; Michael, Hebrew, meaning "who is like God?"; Robert, Germanic in origin, meaning "bright fame"; and Conroy, which is often thought to have entered Ireland with the Normans and to be derived from "con roi" or "with the king". Side note--when it was time for me to choose a saint's name for confirmation, my parents wanted me to choose Robert, which meant that my own full name, Stephen Michael Robert, would be a variation of my Dad's full name, Robert Stephen Michael, which I've always thought was pretty cool.)
(Another side note about names. I have introduced myself as Stephen since I turned 21, which was a long time ago now. People who call me Steve either are friends of my parents, or someone who never paid attention to what my nametag at work says or to how I answer the phone. Although I do not usually answer to Steve and always introduce myself as Stephen, I will answer to Stephanos if you're feeling Greek, Stefan if you're feeling Slavic or Eastern European, Esteban if you're feeling Spanish, or Etienne if you're feeling French.)
We were raised in the Roman Catholic church, and until we moved from the Chicago area, we were all comfortable in the parish to which we belonged, and my parents were both active in the church there. I did learn while quite young, though, that I seemed to have a lot more in common with a lot of the reformers and "heretics" than I did with the Roman Catholic hierarchy. I never quite agreed with "this is true because the Pope/bishops/nuns/clergy/Confraternity of Christian Doctrine says so". (As if Roman Catholics are the only true Christians.)
I was also interested in Judaism, since a lot of the kids I knew in school were Jewish (both Reform and Orthodox, I think) and there was a synagogue down the road from our house. I often went to community events at that synagogue and was occasionally invited by my Jewish friends to things at their synagogues as well.
When we got to Portland OR, though, we found that the culture in the Roman Catholic church there was a lot more conservative, and my family as a whole stopped going. I had several friends from school who went to the nearby Presbyterian church and I went to choir practice with them one day after school senior year, and wound up joining them for the rest of the school year. When I got to the University of Puget Sound up in Tacoma WA most of the people I met who went to church went to the main United Methodist church downtown, so I did as well, and went regularly for almost three years. (I still sang with the choir at First Presbyterian for a couple of Christmases, though, and it's still my favorite place of all for the late Christmas Eve service.)
My undergraduate major was in Comparative Religion, which increased my intellectual tendency towards skepticism. I came to the conclusion that although I am open to religious experience of the holy and sacred, I don't really believe in and am skeptical of organized religions--and for me, that also includes most organizations, professional sports teams, governments, and political parties. I am also not much of a joiner of organizations, either. (I also decided in college that although I still have a lot in common with reformers and "heretics", and would probably have liked Martin Luther, and really liked John Wesley, I don't think I'd have liked John Knox.)
All the same, I can see the comfort offered by belonging to some organization of which you feel a part, whether it's hobby- or interest-based, a political or social action group, or a faith-based group. I can understand how my youngest brother could agree with my sister-in-law that their kids not only would be raised in the Roman Catholic church but would go to parochial school, through high school, and that they themselves would participate as parents.
Time to go make some coffee to go with my Greek pastries.....
SMC
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