Ouch.

Statements made by my Western Civilizations professor at this point include:

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  "Christianity is hostile to the spread of knowledge."


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  "Hagar was black, that's why Christians and Jews are so racist and Muslims are not."


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  "Christians love to hate."


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  "You can't trust the book of Genesis. It's like legends, it's mythology."

Okeydoke. Tip of the iceburg. Starting from the top. "Christianity is hostile to the spread of knowledge." That's why we build schools overseas. That's why there's so much great Christian academia out there. That's why we focus on The Truth (because it's not knowledge?). Okay. Gotcha.

"Hagar was black." Nope. Hagar was Egyptian. "That's why Christians and Jews are so racist!" Jews racist? I'm sorry? There are, I am certain, racist people out there who call themselves Christians. And Jews. And Muslims. And people out there who fight for racial equality, abolition, etc. because they are Christian. And Jewish. And Muslim. That statement was so stupid it's almost unbelievable.

"Christians love to hate." If they love to hate they aren't Christian.

"You can't trust the book of Genesis...it's like legends, mythology." Fine. You believe that. But teaching it in a college class...really?

I have a genuine desire to just skive off the rest of the semester, have a "truant disposition" and not go. One more paper, one more test pertaining to information that she posted for us on the internet. There's nothing I'm going to learn for the rest of the semester about Christianity or Islam that I will not know, or that I can trust to be true.

Old Guard Workshop

This past weekend, my family (minus the big boy) traveled to Fort Myer in Virginia to attend the Army Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps's Junior Workshop. It was a great event. The drive was pretty long, but we stopped at some historical sites, slept, studied, slept, memorized, slept, and generally had a good ride. The plus sides of these activities were that we didn't lose too much sleep from getting up at four and at five to drive and that I now know all of my 363 lines (give or take a few).
We stopped at Antietam National Battlefield on the way. The size of the place is incredible. And how is it supposed to feel to stand in a beautiful space of land and know that thousands of men killed each other there? My older brother, who is fascinated by the Civil War (and can probably tell you the name of any private in the war, where he came from, who he fought with and who his mother-in-law was), was the one who couldn't be there. There was a funny moment, however, when my freckle-faced red-headed little brother found and tried on a mock Abraham Lincoln beard in the Visitor Center gift shop.
The workshop itself was two days long and was seriously great. The fife section covered everything from fife maintenance to sight-reading to rhythm. Jointly we all did marching. I have no idea what the drummer sectionals were like... I was with a group of seven (four of us were from my corps) and we worked with a couple of hilarious sergeants. (The Old Guard musicians receive the rank of sergeant immediately upon graduation from Basic.) They were really great and fun to work with, and it was funny watching one of them, in an on-duty Army uniform, blowing into a fife that had a balloon on the end while the other exclaimed, "Why hadn't we thought of this before?" (It was my foresaid little brother's idea.)
We also visited Arlington National Cemetery (again, the scope of it was enormous), went to chapel on base on Sunday (the first time we've ever had the vehicle searched on the way to church), visited the Lincoln Memorial, and spent time with some good friends of ours who currently live in DC and who were extremely gracious in letting us stay with them instead of at a hotel.
Overall, it was an excellent weekend. I was reminded why I love being a fifer so much and equipped better to deal with my promotion. Now, moving on with my life.

Western Civ gems

My professor of Western Civilizations I is sort of like the one I had for English Composition II a while back. She's extremely bouncy, says and thinks some pretty weird stuff, stands opposite me in many cases and isn't bothered when I show it.

"Yes, the 'Art of Love' by Ovid is about...how do you say...how to get the girl. And then how to cheat on her later, without her knowing. It is very good. You will like it."

"We women, we know how to influence men, and make the men think that it was their idea. We have that power, we have that influence."

"I think we should have one, a dictator, in Puerto Rico. It would be good because there's a lot of...how do you say it? Chaos? There's a lot of chaos in Puerto Rico, and a dictator could make the decisions."

It's going to be an interesting rest of the semester.

What a week!

Last week was extremely interesting for me. Honestly, most of it was average, but there were a couple incidents that simply blew my mind. (In a good way.)
Monday at fife and drum, the director pulled me out of rehearsal and explained to me the requirements for promotion to the Senior Corps. The best players of the group. And then he said to me, "I want you in the group. You play extremely well, you know the music, you know the drill. You don't need to audition, you just need to say yes." I was extremely surprised. Most people in it, albeit not all, have done this for much more than three years. And our fife sergeant seems to never miss an opportunity to criticize me. There isn't much that's more irritating than hearing my name randomly shrieked during a rehearsal and having to stop playing to figure out what I'm doing wrong. (I'm not trying to criticize her. I voted for her as sergeant a few years back and she does an excellent job, and she is trying to make sure we look and sound our best.)
Tuesday. Class. Great.
Wednesday was auditions. Everyone has/had parts that they really wanted - there are SO many good parts in The Tragical Historie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. We did our best to make sure the only one who took a line fall when we cut two and a half hours from the play was Hamlet himself, who went from over fourteen hundred lines to just over eight hundred. Still absurd.
The parts I had my eyes on were Horatio, the fourth-largest part and Hamlet's good friend, and Gertrude, either the fifth- or sixth-largest role and Hamlet's mother. Both are really excellent parts and I hoped that if I didn't get my first choice (Horatio) I'd get my second (Gertrude).
If you had joined us for auditions that day, you would have seen ghosts, furious young men, insane young women, jabbering fools, the Knights Who Say Ni, and gravediggers with a bad sense of humor. They were originally scheduled to be three hours long, but went an hour over.
Thursday. Class. Great.
Friday was kindergartenish. How do you explain to a six-year-old who speaks no English how to do an activity that requires you to do things that can need to be explained, not just mimed? Yes, I do in fact rely on the bilingual children in the classroom to translate for me.
Friday was also the day we learned what parts we got. I was understandably thrilled upon discovering that I received Horatio AND Gertrude. The acting opportunities are excellent. I get to be terrified of a ghost and oblivious of a ghost, to be a married woman and a teenage boy, to die and to hold someone else as he dies, et cetera, et cetera. Splendid to say the least.
So it was an interesting, good week. Now, moving on to my first Computers for Beginners test, my first rehearsal as Horatio and/or Gertrude and/or a non-speaking gentlemen (the third cast), a drive to learn from the Old Guard at Fort Myers, and...uh...homework.