Happy Memories

When Father Carves the Duck

E. V. Wright

We all look on with anxious eyes
When father carves the duck,
And mother almost always sighs
When father carves the duck;

Then all of us prepare to rise,
And hold our bibs before our eyes,
And be prepared for some surprise,
When father carves the duck.

He braces up and grabs a fork
Whene'er he carves a duck,
And won't allow a soul to talk
Until he's carved the duck.

The fork is jabbed into the sides,
Across the breast the knife he slides,
While every careful person hides
From flying chips of duck.

The platter's always sure to slip
When father carves a duck,
And how it makes the dishes skip!
Potatoes fly amuck!

The squash and cabbage leap in space,
We get some gravy in our face,
And father mutters a Hindoo grace
Whene'er he carves a duck.

We then have learned to walk around
The dining room and pluck
From off the window-sills and walls
Our share of father's duck.

While father growls and blows and jaws
And swears the knife was full of flaws,
And mother laughs at him because
He couldn't carve a duck.


HT: To Kristen, who introduced me to this poem.

Ten reasons to be in academia

I will post something educational-philosophically-related one of these days, but a conversation earlier today inspired the following list (not in order of importance, necessarily):

1. Constant immersion in ideas (good, bad, or indifferent) from the wide range of human experience
2. Constant contact with people who also have constant contact with those ideas (meaning that one can actually converse with them instead of having to explain everything)
3. A heightened appreciation for ever-subtler jokes (mostly puns – and then there is Bales, which is not a purely intellectual reference)
4. Having the pleasure of talking about the stuff one enjoys every week while school is in session
5. Related to that, the pleasure of having people pay attention to what one says (mostly)
6. For those who tend towards the sadistic, there is the pleasure of wielding power embodied in the red pen
7. Professors have .edu email addresses. That sort of email address can get lots of fees lowered.
8. One can justify favorite books because “I’m doing research.” (provided one doesn’t have a mid-life crisis in the middle of a semester)
9. One can justify having shelves and shelves of books – they’re one’s livelihood, after all
10. One has access to ILL services!

The Truth is in the Laughter?

There are numerous verses in the Bible that baffle me as to why they exist: some I think are just extraneous detail, some I think are just there to confuse mankind, and some I think are there just for poetic effect. This is one of the latter…the Proverbs 31 verse about the virtuous woman that laughs at the day to come. I used to think that was just a poetic figure—a way to describe her lighthearted take on life and its challenges. Then I entered the real world. My world is periodically quite distressing. Cars break, my financial plan blows up because I forgot a $29.00 charge, and I discover house hunting can be a challenge. Yet, I read of the Proverbs 31 woman, and she not only worships God and manages her household, but she also laughs at all the challenges to come. She neither worries not frets, but treats them with a casual unconcern that is utterly confident that the future will be managed by God, and his management will be good. This woman has such faith in a time and a place where “the days to come” may very well bring a horde of angry Amorites pouring over the hills to slaughter the town. I had accepted the sign that laughter shows a truly joyful heart, but the connection that laughter demonstrates a heart fully surrendered to the will of God had escaped me before. New area of sanctification—the discipline and faith of laughter.