(Y)our Traditions & Connections

Had the absolute joy of eating Texas barbecue yesterday at lunch in Fort Worth with my brother who's visiting briefly from London, where he lives and works. (He's off to Paris this weekend for a three-day meeting; the food may be better most places in France but it's just not the same as at the rustic Railhead joint here.)

We talked all the "traditionally" taboo subjects: sex, death, religion, American politics, and family secrets that have tried to stay suppressed. And we laughed. together. (Blogs may be a better place to put "traditionally" questionable stuff out there but it's wonderful when you can speak some of the same languages with a kid who you've grown up with).

This morning I hear Jane telling the story of her "story of hope, justice and love; a story the text of which is continually being torn up and scattered, rewritten and writen against - but a story which I still try to piece back together, make sense out of, on my own and with others; coping all the time with maybe only perceiving fragments of meaning." (And I'm struck by how Carolyn Osiek has written something very similar, something that's going into the dissertation draft:

[I]t is my conviction that the illusive entity that we call “tradition” is the all-encompassing movement that contains within itself the biblical text and the factors leading to its production. It contains as well the reflective interpretation of that articulation in subsequent generations, including our own, as persons in concretized life situations bring the text to bear on their own experience and, no less important, their experience to bear on the text. In other words, tradition is not a boundary but an open road that connects us with the past and points us in the direction of the future [pardon my, JKG emphases here]).

Then I imagine you reading this blog, yes you. (And you remind me of Nancy Mairs who says something out loud, thinking about her daughter and her writing and what that means for connections and tradition and us. together:

"Publication of any sort is an intrinsically social act, 'I' having no reason to speak aloud unless I posit 'you' there listening; but your presence is especially vital if I am seeking not to disclose the economic benefits of fish farming in Zäire, or to recount the imaginary tribulations of an adulterous doctor's wife in nineteenth-century France, but to reconnect myself—now so utterly transformed by events unlike any I've experienced before as to seem a stranger even to myself—to the human community....lending materiality to my readerly ideal, transform monologue into intercourse.")

What YOU Make of this Blog

Stefan's blog is having a birthday. Dave's is having a gender-identity crisis. (Go say Happy Birthday and go help with the confusion. Go on.)

This blog of mine is trying (unsuccessfully) to stay quiet while I start drafting page three of the fourth of five dissertation chapters.

But since it's talking (again) and since you're listening (again)...

this blog had it's happy first anniversary back in February...

and its most-read post looks like this...
This is a wordle (HT Lingamish) of the most-read post on this blog.

So what's the most-read post on this blog? Well, YOU, you readers have decided that (not the blog itself or, heaven forbid, its writer/s). (And we do say, Thanks for stopping by and Thank you so much for commenting from time to time.)

Here's your best baker's dozen, your top-most-read posts of this blog since it's happy birthday:

1. Sexism: A Multiple Choice (Quiz)

2. Are We Ready for a Woman President?

3. The Resounding Bible (Women)

4. Same Kind of Different As Me

5. Possessions and Positions of the Translator

6. Aristotle's Sexism: the Two Best Contemporary Resources

7. Jobes on Better Bibles

8. translation method: better Bibles

9. Oh my! Opinions are subjective. Oh my!

10. Our English Hosts Their ελληνικοις

11. Women Influencing (Aristotle)

12. Suffering Suffixes: "-ική" and "-ic"

13. Why (You Can’t Ask Me Why) I Am A Feminist: Some Frank Thoughts

Bloggin in 1969 (when other things are goin on)

Ha ha world

Every day I used to write you a letter

But you never wrote back

And you never made me feel any better

Always sittin’ here frettin’ and gettin’ confused

Half-way desperate for a headline of hope in the news

When the telephone rang

I spilled it all over my sweater

(oh yeah)

The call was for me

And I answered the phone in the kitchen

(ha ha world, ha ha world)

But the room was too hot

I forgot I was cookin’ my chicken

(ha ha world, ha ha world)

I was burning like Hell

But the stove wasn’t on

Then the voice on the line says,

“The chicken is done.”

The receiver goes dead,

And it honks while the plot starts to thicken

(oh Oh, yeah, AHHH)

Would I have hung up the phone

Had I known the whole room would start swayin’?

(ha ha world, ha ha world)

I was instantly cold

And I knew why my life wasn’t payin’

(ha ha world, ha ha world)

I had money, and fame,

But my wealth wasn’t wise.

What good are the coins

on a dead man’s eyes?

And the ringing of chimes in my head said,

“It’s time to start prayin’”

(oh Oh, yeah, AHHH)

I’ve been sittin’ here prayin’

And layin’ up treasures in heaven.

(ha ha world, ha ha world)

I was home and the front door was locked

When the clock struck eleven.

(ha ha world, ha ha world)

I heard the bride outside yell,

“Millennium.”

Though the sun was still up

The twelfth hour had come.

The Bible says,

“Without a vision the people perish.”