fatherhood

The Second Third, Week 29: Expressive Reading

/ J. Thorp / 1 Comment

Tonight was six-year-old Trevor’s night to lead us in prayer. He opened with an Old Testament reading from our Children’s Bible and did an admirable job: it was chock full of Hebrew names and ancient places and Biblical expressions like “The LORD’s anger was kindled against them.” He navigated it all with remarkable patience and skill, his concentration was absolute — and he almost didn’t sound like himself, since (when he reads his own books) he is quite expressive. With less difficult books, already he is mastering the skill of reading just ahead of his voice with his eyes to pick up on the cues in the text: Is there a question ahead? An exclamation? Is the character frustrated? Scared? Excited?

I, too, struggle to read expressively, mostly because until recently, it had been a long time since I’ve done so — years, in fact, since I’ve read aloud even a classic Dr. Seuss.

Then this spring I picked up The Little Prince, which I had never read before, and decided on a whim to read it to our brood, a bit to a time, after supper. It went over well with all four Thorplets, but although I had the notion of providing voices to the handful of wonderful characters who populate the book, I found it impossible, primarily because much of the time I was to emotionally, uh…engaged…to do so.

Next I tried an old favorite, Ursula Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea, figuring a familiar tale might be suited to a more dramatic telling — but although I recalled the story and the characters, I quickly found the structure, style, and syntax of LeGuin’s sentences to require a great deal of concentration. At times, I had to back up and start sentences over!

I find that the more I read to the kids, the more I enjoy it. We finished the LeGuin’s book last week and will no doubt return to Earthsea again soon — but in the interim, I’ve resurrected a ghost of my own childhood, outdoor humorist Patrick F. McManus’s The Grasshopper Trap. For years growing up, every time a new McManus book came out (or a new edition of Outdoor Life magazine arrived), Mom or Dad, Jill or I, would read after supper. The first story in the book, “The Skunk Ladder,” is a classic, and the kids were quickly in stitches and begging for another. I remember these characters, too — Crazy Eddie Muldoon, Retch Sweeney, the old woodsman Rancid Crabtree, Pat’s sister the Troll — and tonight, after dinner, I began to have a little fun with voices. It was great fun, and good practice, too: in my Second Third, I intend to read aloud more often, to the older kids, to the new baby, and God willing, the grandkids. I need to hone my skills if I’ve ever going to tackle something like, of I dunno…The Hobbit?

The Second Third, Week 26: The Roots of the Family Tree

/ J. Thorp / 1 Comment

This particular Second Third post is 90 percent inspiration and 10 percent shameless self-promotion in the form of an opportunity to cross-promote a post I wrote two months ago — a post that I loved, but according to Blogger stat-keeping technology, was largely unread.

Back on St. Patrick’s Day, I posted a piece explaining precisely how Irish I am, and in what ways. (Go on, read it!) I talked about an ancestor who used to go looking for Catholics to fight. Dad reminded me over Easter that this ancestor supposedly became sheriff of Tuscola County, Michigan, during Prohibition, however, and supposedly ignored the moonshining operation of one of my mom’s ancestors in return for a package or two left in the culvert up the road from the farm. Mom’s family was 100 percent Polish Catholic, which just goes to show that a drink between adversaries can occasionally sew the seeds of peace and religious tolerance.

All at once, we fell to googling ancestral names. My sister pulled out a handwritten family tree she’d worked on with my Grandma Thorp, and I quickly turned up a few graves in the cemetery records of rural Tuscola County, then some old obits. Pretty soon we had learned that the sheriff was likely a deputy sheriff and was probably a brother to our brawling ancestor Dad had named at first. We also learned that the particular branch of the family we were investigating appeared to have moved in fits and starts to “the Thumb” of Michigan from a particular area of Ontario, Canada, and that their surname, Hutchinson, may trace back to English royalty in the Middle Ages.

This lit a little fire under us due to a pair of old stories passed down among the Thorps: first, that we are somehow distantly related to an English Queen (Victoria is what I heard as a boy), and second, that a woman among our ancestors was alone in her cabin in the wilds of Canada, and killed an attacking bear with the butcher knife from her kitchen. An hour or so on the internet began to suggest that these stories could, in fact, be true!

We all have great stories and intriguing twists among the roots of our family trees, a few of which I remember (vaguely) and hope to verify:

  • My Grandpa Thorp was stationed in the Philippines, I think, at the end of WWII, and was crawling through the underbrush when he found himself beside the largest snake he had ever seen. He didn’t dare fall behind his crawling companions, and his heart raced as he prepared to encounter the head of the serpent, which appeared to be hidden in the foliage ahead…until he realized it was just the snake’s massive shed skin!
  • My Dziadzi (JAH-jee, or Grandpa Galubenski) was stationed on the Aleutian Islands in Alaska during WWII and was the company bugler, though he couldn’t play. He paid another guy with cigarettes to cover for him!
  • We had always thought my great-dziadzi, Bronislaw (BRONE-ee-swaff, aka Brony, Bruno or Brownie) Galubenski had come to America from Poland, but according the digitized documents on Ellis Island’s web site, he seems to have come by way of Russia, where they had been living. (Also, he may have been a bootlegger…)
  • We are rumored to have some American Indian blood in us; that, coupled with the fact that some Pacific Northwest Thorpes (with an “e”) traced themselves to us, has fueled speculation that I may, indeed, be related to the great Native American athlete Jim Thorpe, who, I just now learned, was given the name Jacobus Franciscus Thorp, was baptized Catholic, and was said to have French and Irish blood. Interesting…
  • One of my great(-great?)-grandfathers on my dad’s side rolled into Michigan from New York state in his 20s to start a grocery in the Thumb. He stopped by a local farm, introduced himself, stayed for supper, then stayed the night. In the morning, he told the farmer he was starting a business and was in need of a wife. He asked the farmer if he might part with his oldest daughter (age 13), and the farmer reckoned he would — ask, and ye shall receive. According to all I’ve heard, they had a long marriage and many children!
  • At Yale, a Polish language professor told me she had never heard of the name Galubenski (Americanized pronunciation: Gal-yoo-BEN-skee; Polish pronunciation should be more like Gah-loo-BEHN-skee). It’s a style of name that should have a meaning; you should be able to see Polish words or roots in it, but they aren’t there. Within our family, at least three different spellings of Galubenski have evolved based on how my great aunts and uncles were taught to write it (by grade-school teachers who didn’t speak Polish and just sounded it out as best they could, I think): Galubenski, Galubinski, and Galbenski. Googling any of these names turns up no results in the old country. These facts make me wonder if, in fact, the original misspelling may have happened on Ellis Island. Perhaps a more common Polish name, like Golubiewski (pronounced roughly Go-lum-BYEV-skee) was misheard and thus misspelled?
There are others, no doubt, which I will add as I can. The point is, our histories are rich with story and tradition, humor and adventure, if we can uncover it. My grandfathers and maternal grandmother have passed away, but in my Second Third, I have stories to gather!

There Be Dragons

/ J. Thorp / Leave a comment
Just returned from the movie in the trailer above, There Be Dragons, based on the early life of St. Josemaria Escriva, who founded Opus Dei (God’s Work). This post is not a review, and contains no plot spoilers — but lots of people in our parish are interested in the film and want to know how “strong” a PG-13 it is, and I wanted to capture a few thoughts before I lose them.

I would rate it a solid PG-13. It is violent and emotionally intense at times, and characters are juxtaposed to show virtue and moral ambiguity. Numerous people die in battle, and others die from assassination, murder, suicide, illness, and (thankfully) natural causes. Most of the deaths are not dwelt upon, however, there are a few relatively brief but bloody scenes. There is no nudity, relatively little sexuality (implied or actual), especially for a PG-13 movie in 2011, and a sprinkling of strong language throughout (it is a war movie, after all). Our 13-year-old, Brendan, will see it tomorrow with a friend of ours and her son. Our almost-11-year-old, Gabe, wants to see it, too, but despite his desire to be a priest, and the film’s beautiful portrayal of the priestly vocation, he will wait until we can rent it and I can watch and discuss it with him, pausing as needed.

I knew very little about Fr. Escriva, Opus Dei, and relatively little about the Spanish Civil War, and yet followed everything well enough. The structure of the movie, which features a handful of complex relationships between people shown at different ages and times, and used flashbacks and a present-day narrator to convey the story, can be a little disorienting, but again, I followed well enough. I was struck early on that this is a film shot in an old way: somehow it looks to me like a classic film of the 1960s, and some of the scenes (particularly of the main characters as children) seem more deliberately acted, almost theatrical. It occurs to me that this may help convey the sense of a young boy’s memories, but I will admit, I noticed it as film-making (assuming it was intentional).

Two final thoughts:

  • First, another friend at the same showing said he enjoyed watching it so soon after Blessed John Paul II’s beatification. I missed the beatification coverage, but not long ago, listened to the JPII biography Witness to Hope, and you can definitely see parallels between the lives and priesthoods of the late Fathers Escriva and Wojtyla.
  • Second, there is a powerful scene following a heartbreaking act of violence in which Fr. Escriva teaches his followers how close the edge truly is, and how any one of us might slip into darkness and violence. On the heels of Bin Laden’s death, that scene was particularly thought-provoking to me.

The reviews I’ve seen for this movie have been mostly mediocre to terrible.* I thought it was a very good movie, but I’m Catholic and had some idea what I was getting into and what I hoped to get out of it. See it!

—–

*The USCCB has a complete review of the film online, which may also help parents decide which kids to take. I find they are more conservative than me, and they suggest that older teens could see it, so I think we’re in the ballpark…

The Second Third, Week 24: Less TV Is Good TV

/ J. Thorp / 2 Comments

Fraggarackincarklefargis…

Remember when your parents told you TV would rot your brain? I think perhaps the most compelling evidence of the truth of this statement is what passes for TV today. Those who are passionate enough about television to choose to make it their career were likely exposed to it as children, and the fact that their brains were affected negatively is evidenced by what they produce.

For example: until I rented a Looney Tunes DVD, my kids didn’t know TV cartoons were meant to be laugh-out-loud funny. Everything they had seen up to that point either A) taught them Important Life Lessons and Thinking Skills, B) counteracted A with brainless humor and bodily functions, or C) was primarily meant to sell collectible cards and toys. Bugs Bunny, Yosemite Sam, Daffy Duck, and the Roadrunner were comic revelations (not to mention the music)! They laughed until they fell from the futon, laughed until tears fell from their eyes, laughed until they hurt and begged between great gasping breaths for more.*

Then we sent the DVD back, and they returned to Blue’s Clues, Dragon Tales, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and Sponge-Bob.

Earlier in our marriage, Jodi and I watched a handful of shows regularly. Most were sitcoms: Seinfeld and Friends, the short-lived Sports Night, Mad About You, Everybody Loves Raymond. We were hooked on Alias for a few years, and I used to love This Week (with Sam Donaldson, Cokie Roberts, and George Will) each Sunday morning, just to get the juices flowing.

I remember the Seinfeld finale: how the joke was on us; how it drove home that we had spent countless hours over the past countless years watching four awful people behaving like selfish children and hurting those around them. The friends on Friends were also whiny and self-centered, and Raymond made a career out of the miseries of married life. Don’t get me wrong: I laughed at these shows — but sometimes afterward I wondered why.

Today my bride and I watch two sitcoms: The Office and Community. We used to watch 30 Rock, but found the humor less and less to our liking. Community is now in the same tailspin for me. It’s still funny at times, but some of the jokes are beginning to clog my filters. Like 30 Rock this year, next year I suspect I won’t miss missing it. The Office edges into that territory from time to time, then redeems itself…we may stick with that one.

So this spring we found another show. They hooked our whole family with a free burrito at Chipotle. (Good bait.) We watched America’s Next Great Restaurant on NBC, a reality show in which people with ideas for a restaurant competed for the chance to partner with four chef/restauranteur/investors to open a new chain of restaurants in NYC, LA, and (yes!) Minneapolis. Aside from about 43-too-many jokes about the Joey’s original name for his meatball shop (Saucy Balls, which ultimately became Brooklyn Meatball Company after the 43-too-many jokes), the show was clean, the food was good, the winner had a great story: his father rescued him from a bad spot with his mother when he was little, and the soul food recipes that helped him win were his Dad’s. The winner was the favorite of all of us except Trevor (he was Trevor’s second pick); a great cheer went up in the Thorp house when he won; and Emma has asked that her belated birthday dinner be at the new Soul Daddy in Mall of America.

And now it’s over. We enjoy a few other shows that we watch online or on demand — History Channel’s American Pickers and Top Shot and Travel Channel’s Man v. Food, in particular. They are fun, interesting, educational…but they insist (in the case of Pickers and MvF) to edge toward adult humor at least once an episode, or (in the case of Top Shot), machismo and obscenities (bleeped and unbleeped). I used to watch Nature on PBS as a kid, which was narrated with a sense of wonder and mystery; the recent LIFE series on Discovery Channel (with Oprah narrating) seemed to relish describing the mating habits of the creatures they filmed as though both the subjects and audience were lusty teenagers.

I want a TV show in which I never have to say, “Okay, gang — what that guy just said? Never say that.” Or, “Yeah, you don’t need to worry about what she meant just yet.” Or, “Sorry, Trevvy, if he was your favorite character; nice people don’t act like that.”

Yeah, I know. I’m getting older, and older-fashioned. The good news is, in my Second Third, we watch way less TV than we used to. And I don’t miss it.

Now get off my lawn.

The Second Third, Week 22: Stay-At-Home Dad, Part 2

/ J. Thorp / Leave a comment

Last week’s Second Third post (posted just yesterday) touted the family-related advantages a new job that will enable me to telecommute. As the count currently stands, this new opportunity will give me a flexible schedule in which to complete some of my own writing, and will substantially cut down on time stuck in traffic and away from home so I can do more of the fun fatherly things I ought to do with my brood.

In this post (Part 2 of yesterday’s), I turn from my brood to my bride.

I’m not the perfect husband and father. (I know: shocker!) I generally think I’m right, I’m overly emotional, I change plans only with reluctance, and I like to be in charge. I can be diplomatic (with effort), but can also have a short fuse. And as I’ve said before, I’m also a bit of a navel-gazer — I know these things about myself because I spend a lot of time snooping around the corners of my mind. But I’ve been a bit near-sighted for a long time now, so I see things through my own lenses, and assume that others see and react to situations the same way I do. And I’ve never been quick, so when I make a cosmic leap — such as If I were in that situation, I’d be irritated, therefore, she said that because she’s irritated! — I usually realize 30 seconds too late that I’ve reacted wrongly, or at least prematurely.

Unfortunately, my current job demands extraordinary levels of restraint, consultation, and patience. Everyone has an opinion, and at a university, multiple opinions are given more or less equal weight and consideration. This can be a great strength, but it also exhausts the mind and saps the soul. I’ve trained myself to jump through hoops during my work day, with mane neatly combed and a domesticated grin. As a result, I come home with much roaring and gnashing of teeth. The best of me is spent on my colleagues and the issues of the day, and my bride gets the leftovers. Not pretty.

It’s not right that my very best friend takes the brunt of all my worst characteristics. It is a strangely beautiful thing that I feel comfortable enough, confident enough, loved enough to let down my guard and turn off my filters around her. But I should love her better than that.

So here’s the theory: if my work is at home, and my circle of colleagues is reduced, I will spend less on others and have more…tact? discretion? charity! to spend on Jodi. In my Second Third, God willing, I’ll treat at least as well as my co-workers…and hopefully even better.