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June 30, 2009
Order of Narnia
A couple years ago I decided to buy a hardcover single-volume edition of The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis. Once upon a time when I was a kid (maybe when I was 8 or 10 years old??) I read through all seven books in the series, but beyond The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, I really didn't remember many details (or even broad strokes of the plot) from the series. With the new movies coming out, I wanted to refamiliarize myself with the novels. A side "benefit" was that I'd be more keenly aware of where I should be disappointed with the movies when they inevitably depart from the plot, haha.
Upon buying the book, I noticed that the first book in the volume was not The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, but rather The Magician's Nephew. I therefore had a bit of a quandry on my hands: should I read the books in the order in which they were published, or in Narnia-chronological order (which is how my single-volume edition had them)? Some people have strong feelings on the subject for sure. I'd always been kind of in the camp that publishing order was the order in which they should be read, mostly because that's how I read through them as a kid (though I didn't remember terribly much about them), and because I figured that C.S. Lewis wrote them in the order he wanted them read. This time around I figured I'd give the Narnia-chronological order a go, though.
I started reading sometime last fall, and one of the primary things I remember from reading The Magician's Nephew was that there were several places where Lewis clearly expected the reader to have prior knowledge of Narnia. That'd make sense, because it was the sixth book in the series that he wrote, even though it was basically a prequel to the entire series. And then in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Lewis spends a great deal of time introducing the reader to Narnia, which again makes sense because it was the first book he wrote, even though it's second chronologically in Narnia-time. Also, the only other book in which the creation of Narnia or the first human visitors to Narnia were mentioned was The Last Battle, which even though it's about the destruction of Narnia with several stories in between (chronologically, anyway). So on all those counts it seems like it'd make more sense to read through the series in the original publishing order. However, there are ways in which it was nice to read through the books chronologically in terms of the story. The primary benefit was that I thought it was actually easier to to follow the plot as a whole, especially when there'd be several weeks between times that I'd pick up the book. So what's my verdict on the "proper" order in which to read The Chronicles of Narnia? I guess I'd still give a slight nod to the publishing order, but I can definitely see why many people prefer to read them in the chronological order.
The other thing that clearly stood out to me as I read this series over the last few months (most often a couple chapters before bed, and I finished the last two-thirds of The Last Battle on Friday night because I was on a roll and getting so close to done) was how powerful a Christian allegory this series really is. It's something that mostly went over my head when I read it as a kid, but I can't not notice it now. The whole way through, from Aslan's creation of the Narnian world in The Magician's Nephew, to Aslan's sacrificial death and resurrection to save Edmund in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, all the way through to The Last Battle which, to mix metaphors, is absolutely dripping with echoes of Revelation, and several other moments in the stories in between involving either Aslan or the other characters, there are definite similarities and allegories to various accounts in the Bible. Is Aslan a perfect allegory for Jesus Christ? By no means! For Christ did far more than to die to save a single person, like Aslan did for Edmund -- Jesus died for the sins of the whole world, of all who would believe in Him. The Narnia books do point to Jesus though, even if it's not explicitly, and by learning about Aslan, you can see several characteristics of the God of the Bible. I think there's definitely value in reading them. The books are pretty easy reads as well, and are reasonably entertaining, though as a piece of literature I don't think Narnia is on the same level as The Lord of the Rings (they were written for different target age levels though, so maybe it's not a fair comparison). It was still a fun read. If you've never read the books, or if you haven't read them since your early childhood like was my case, I'd recommend picking it up from the library or buying your own copy and giving it a read. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader will be coming out in theaters before you know it, so it's timely as well.
Posted by Jared at 12:41 AM | Comments (1)
June 27, 2009
Sense of Community
With all the people who have recently graduated and/or moved on (or who plan to be gone by the end of summer), there definitely isn't as strong a sense of community in the meteorology department as there once was. Or, rather, I should say that I don't feel as a part of that community anymore, because so many of my friends have moved on, and for the most part I don't know the younger grad students. I have a great community with PSCG and E-Free, but it'd still be nice to feel more a part of my department again, since I spend so much of my time in the department. Last Friday night to celebrate Mario passing his PhD defense (so now he's Dr Mario!), Walter hosted a game night at his place. The only people to show up were me, Petters and Mario. We had a lot of fun playing a game of Power Grid, but nobody from classes behind us came, though. That's been a common theme for the last several months whenever we've tried to do stuff and invite people (except for Kent, he was in the class behind us and would come to stuff, but he just moved to Oklahoma earlier this month). It's been a puzzle for us to try to figure out how to get the other grad students to come hang out and do things (or at least to make sure they know they're welcome).
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Perhaps that's started to turn though. This week on Tuesday night a bunch of us went to Jerry's house for a going-away party for Nat, who recently passed his PhD defense and landed a postdoc at the University of Hawai'i (not a bad place to spend a few years after your degree!). That was a lot of fun, and we haven't had a big hang-out party in a long, long time. A few of us even stayed until after midnight talking to Jerry and his wife Debra. I think that's probably the first time I've ever been at a party at a professor's house past midnight. :-) But hopefully that party will lead to others happening down the road.
Or maybe 25¢ wings can foster community. I found out that 797 Lounge (formerly the incompetent Sports Cafe) has a new special every weekday for lunch - 25¢ wings and 99¢ sliders. So on Thursday afternoon and Friday morning I made the rounds on 4th floor, and got a few people to come out for lunch there (me, Walter, Mario, Brett, David D, Raphael), and a few others who said they'd couldn't make it this time, but definitely wanted to in the future. When I said that I hoped this would become a pretty regular thing, a group of us going out for 25¢ wings for lunch, Ethan said he also liked the idea and that "it'd be fun to have something to look forward to every week." It's especially appealing when the weather's nice and we can sit outside for a bit. Back in my first couple years here, Daniel & I (and often Frame, Walter, Mario, Jacob or others as well) would come down to Sports Cafe every Tuesday for lunch to get 25¢ wings. It'd be nice if the tradition could be revived, and through the process get to know some of the other grad students in my department a bit better. It all takes time and effort, but you at least can't accuse me of not trying. :-)
Now it's time to go clean up the apartment a bit, in preparation for Anders to move in on Tuesday afternoon. And, you know, tidy up Tim's old bedroom and bathroom, since I've had friends stay there. Maybe I'll also go into campus and do some work this afternoon. I wouldn't normally do work on a gorgeous Saturday afternoon, but when a conference and comprehensive exams are coming up, some extra time is required, at least if I want to minimize last-minute stress. But hey, at least things seem to be coming along fairly nicely so far!
Posted by Jared at 12:13 PM | Comments (0)
June 20, 2009
The Spare Room
In addition to driving a ton in the last month or so to go visit friends, a couple friends have also come to visit me here in State College. The weekend after I went to Ithaca to see Carl & Seth, Seth swung through State College as the last stop on his east coast road trip before heading back to Waukesha, Wisconsin. He was only here for one night (31 May), but right after he got here we went disc golfing with Walter, Kent & Petters, and then after that some people from PSCG (David D, Lauren, Laurie, and then Ashley G a bit later) came by to hang out and play games. He came along to Sunday school at my church, but needed to get on the road before the worship service, as it's a bit of a drive back to Wisconsin from here. Even though he was only here for a few hours it was fun to hang out with him again and I was glad he could make it.
And then just over a week ago (just a couple days after I got back from Michigan), my friend Ryan drove up from Louisville for a visit. Sarah had to work, so she didn't make the trip, but Ryan came up primarily to go to graduation at Bald Eagle Area HS, where he taught physics for three years before moving to Louisville a year ago, so he knew quite a few of the kids that were graduating. Anyway, the Wednesday night that Ryan got into town a few of us (me, Ben, Chris, Julian & Suzanne) went out to Otto's for dinner. I absolutely love that place, especially on wing night! After dinner I had Ben, Chris, Adam & Ryan over to play Settlers, though Ben sat out and watched the Phillies game. Check out Ben's blog post about it (the photo is Ben's too); and apparently my apartment is a "lair," haha. It was actually one of the most even games of regular Settlers that I've played, with everyone about equal all the way through. I hadn't seen Ryan since he & Sarah moved away, so it was good to hang out with him for a couple nights. I'm glad it worked out for him to stay at my place too!
While I'll still have plenty of room (and a couple of couches), I won't have a spare room (complete with a bed) to host friends overnight for much longer, because I've found a roommate for next year! David D got me connected with an incoming meteorology grad student named Anders, who just graduated from Vanderbilt University down in Tennessee. He's going to be working with the ozone group at least for the summer with their field campaign (hence why David knew about him). It works out great that he's able to come up here for part of the summer too (he's moving in on 30 June), which means that Tim won't have to pay rent for July (he's been paying rent since he moved out). So it's only one month off the lease that Tim won't pay, but that's still good news for him. I've definitely gotten used to living by myself here in this apartment, and it'll be an adjustment to have someone always around again, but I'm looking forward to having a roommate once again. It's definitely a relief and an answer to prayer that I finally found a roommate after Alex found out he wasn't getting in to Penn State. And after the really weird housing inquiry that I got from some guy in the UK who worked for a Nigerian air cargo shipping company, I was just really glad to have someone contact me who seems normal and not completely suspicious. :-) Anyway, we'll see how it goes!
Posted by Jared at 06:20 PM | Comments (0)
June 16, 2009
To Mackinac and Back
And once again, I've had a severe lack of bloggish activity lately. As usual, real life has been a bit busy of late. I'll try to catch up, starting with this post.
I've sure been putting the miles on my car the last month. Five weekends ago I drove to Valpo to visit Alex, four weekends ago I drove to Ithaca to visit Carl & Seth, and then two weekends ago I drove to northern lower Michigan to visit Alex again. Now I've got well over 231,000 miles on my Mazda, and it's still ticking (well, mostly -- more on that in a bit). I wanted to go visit Alex some weekend this summer at the University of Michigan Biological Station (UMBS), where he's doing research until mid-August, and that was the weekend that looked like it'd work out best overall. His project at UMBS hadn't really started in earnest, he didn't have specific tasks to complete over the weekend, and neither did I with my project. I also had never been to that part of Michigan before, so I was looking forward to visiting a new part of the country.
It's a really long drive from State College to UMBS, about 650 miles, or about 11 hours (counting stops). Basically, drive about 6 hours west to Toledo, then about 5 hours north to UMBS. With it being such a long drive, we arranged for me to stay up there for two full days and three nights. It's still not a lot of time, but two days is better than one! So once Alex got confirmation from his supervisor that he could have the weekend off, I headed out from State College around 10am on Friday morning the 5th, and got to UMBS at 9pm. I had a bit of a backache from helping move a couple of couches on Thursday (Kent was moving to Oklahoma and graciously donated his couch to upgrade the craptastic one in our office in Walker, the one that was so bad and old that the foam was turning to powder!), and also had a wee bit of a sore throat, so the drive felt like it was taking longer, at least the first half to Toledo. With UMBS being a bit more than 4 hours north of Ann Arbor, I quickly became glad that Alex will be going to grad school in Ann Arbor, and not way up at UMBS. :-)
One humorous thing is that I threw away part of my car on the way up there. I was at a rest stop near Gaylord, Michigan, and when I came out I noticed not one but two things hanging down from my car. I knew what the first one was (a piece of rubber lining or insulation along the bottom of my rear passenger door), but the second one was new. Turned out it was a rusted piece of metal, perhaps from my heat shield. It came right off when I grabbed it, so I threw it in the trash can at the rest stop. Clearly, Michigan is part of the rust belt. :-) So my car was a bit louder from then on, but still worked fine (and then there was a second piece of rusted metal just like it hanging down that I removed Monday night).
After I got there Alex gave me a quick tour of UMBS (gotta love long summer daylight north of 45°N!), and met some of the other students who were living there. It's a small campus, in the middle of the woods, and several miles from the nearest town (Pellston, a town of maybe 300 people), and about 20 miles from any reasonable-sized city (Petoskey, Mackinaw City, Cheboygan). It's a campus primarily for students in ecology and environment-related majors at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor to take a class or two, in a setting that's not far removed from camping. Most of the students stay in little one-room, two-person, un-insulated huts that have a wood stove and no bathroom. Oh, and no locks. Pretty rustic. 
Alex had nicer accommodations, in a cabin at the top of the hill above the rest of the campus. When I was there he was the only one staying in the cabin, but eventually this summer there'll be anywhere from 9-12 people in there (there are 3 beds in each of 4 small rooms). That's another reason I went there when I did, because there was still room for me in the cabin and wasn't anyone else around (even though I still had to pay UMBS each night to stay there...). The campus also has a central dining room, but each meal is only served for one hour, so everyone gets on a pretty regimented schedule. It's also a bit on the expensive side for guests, so we didn't eat there at all on Saturday.
On Saturday Alex needed to get a bunch of supplies for the research lab, so we went to the local hardware store in Pellston for a bit. While we were there I was able to find a screw for my camera's "gorillapod," as I'd lost the screw a few months ago somehow. 17 cents isn't a bad price to pay to have a working tripod again, that's for sure! Then it was time for lunch, and we went to Mackinaw City, after poking our heads in a roadside saloon in Levering and realizing that we were definitely, umm, outsiders. Aside from nobody noticing that we were even there, all the NASCAR flags adorning the inside of the establishment indicated it was a bit too "hey buddy." So we moved on. After lunch we drove across the Mackinac Bridge (my first time seeing the world's longest suspension bridge) and walked around Straits State Park for a bit -- my first time being in the Upper Peninsula. That day, incidentally, also happened to mark one year since we first met, so it was fun for us to reflect on our friendship for the past year. A lot of good memories. :-)
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Then on Sunday the 7th we played some piano for a bit, as the lecture hall/auditorium had two (slightly out of tune) cabinet pianos. My cough was really starting to bother me at that point though, so we had to cut that short. :-( Fortunately by then the sun had surprisingly come out, and with it all of a sudden being a nice day, we decided to walk a mile or down the shore of Lake Douglas, to check out a different part of the lake (and a seagull colony). There were plenty of fun downed or leaning trees to climb too. We both slipped and almost lost our balance at different times, but somehow neither of us fell into the lake. :-)
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It was time to hit the road at 9am on Monday the 8th. I was a bit tired, however, because I only got 2-3 hours of sleep Sunday night. I woke up in the middle of the night and then just could not get back to sleep (partly because I was starting to come down with a cold?). Those nights are pretty frustrating when they happen. I made it back to PA safely, but not without a small adventure a couple hours into the drive... That rest stop came at a fortunate time, let's just say that. (But I'm okay, Mom! Don't worry!)
At any rate, it was a really good visit, and good to hang out with Alex again. I'm glad I made the trip. It was a really long drive, but I thought it was well worth my while. It was cool to see where he's living and working this summer and to climb the tower and everything, and to take in some pretty scenery in northern Michigan. (And as an extra bonus, I'll get to color in several more counties on my map, haha.) It was definitely a long enough drive that I won't be making another trip up there this summer, however, unless it's on my way through to Wisconsin after I'm done with comps in August. I think I'll definitely appreciate the substantially shorter drive to Ann Arbor when I visit this fall and beyond!
Posted by Jared at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
June 01, 2009
New Season, New Team, New Numbers
It felt really good to play softball again. Softball has become probably my favorite sport to play, as it seems like it's the sport I'm probably best at (note that I didn't claim that I'm actually *good* or anything like that), and because I'm such a fan of baseball. E-Free didn't field a team this year, because of doubts that we'd be able to get 9 or 10 people to show up on a consistent basis every week all summer long. Sad face. So I've decided to be a "ringer" on Calvary Baptist's team, as a couple PSCGers are on their team and told me about it (prior to this year Calvary didn't have a team). Tonight was the first game I made, against Penns Valley Community Church (several people from their team recognized me from previous softball seasons because of my E-Free shirt I had on). The only person I knew on the Calvary team tonight was Dan. I hadn't ever met the Calvary organizer before either, and he didn't know I was coming, but he still got me plugged into the lineup.
There were 13 of us so we kept rotating in and out of the field to different positions from inning to inning (I played all four outfield positions and catcher, plus sat two fielding innings on the bench), and had a batting order 13 deep. I had one rather adventuresome catch in the outfield (as was my norm while playing for E-Free!), where the ball popped out of my glove as I was charging to get to it, but I managed to grab it out of the air with my bare hand. Phew! I also went 3-for-3 at the plate on three singles to left-center, with four RBIs (I knocked in Dan all three times I batted) and one run scored. I scraped up my knee a bit in the first inning, too. I was on 2nd base (another runner was on 1st), and a grounder was hit to deep 3rd. The 3rd baseman tried to tag me, but I barely eluded it and got to the base -- but couldn't stop. When I tried to stop I fell on the really hard infield (that's how my knee got scraped and was bleeding most of the game) and got tagged out as I was scrambling back to the base. I didn't exactly want to slide on that infield, and I think if I would've slid I might've been tagged out before I got to the base. Oh well. I can live with that result because I was hustling.
In any case, it was still my best offensive game in a long time (maybe ever), and I'm happy to be batting a thousand on this very young season. I also didn't make an error, though one ball in right was rocketed over my head. Let's see how long I'll be able to keep it up, and I hope I made a good impression. :-) Oh, and we (Calvary) won 17-11, in a fun game. It was just really fun to play again. I almost certainly won't be at next week's game though, because I'll be on my way back from visiting Alex in northern Michigan for the weekend! :-D
Posted by Jared at 11:58 PM | Comments (0)