Sing Joyfully

Last night I went to the annual United Methodist district hymn sing, and to open one of the pastors read John Wesley's directions for singing (John Wesley is the founder of Methodism). They're printed at the front of the United Methodist Hymnal, but if you're not Methodist you've probably never heard them. Which is a real shame, because nobody says it quite like John Wesley. Therefore I would like to share them with you now:

Wesley's Directions For Singing

I. Learn these tunes before you learn any others; afterwards learn as many as you please.

II. Sing them exactly as they are printed here, without altering or mending them at all; and if you have learned to sing them otherwise, unlearn it as soon as you can.

III. Sing all. See that you join with the congregation as frequently as you can. Let not a single degree of weakness or weariness hinder you. If it is a cross to you, take it up, and you will find it a blessing.

IV. Sing lustily and with good courage. Beware of singing as if you were half dead, or half asleep; but lift up your voice with strength. Be no more afraid of your voice now, nor more ashamed of its being heard, then when you sung the songs of Satan.

V. Sing modestly. Do not bawl, so as to be heard above or distinct from the rest of the congregation, that you may not destroy the harmony; but strive to unite your voices together, so as to make one clear melodious sound.

VI. Sing in time. Whatever time is sung be sure to keep with it. Do not run before nor stay behind it; but attend close to the leading voices, and move therewith as exactly as you can; and take care not to sing too slow. This drawling way naturally steals on all who are lazy; and it is high time to drive it out from us, and sing all our tunes just as quick as we did at first.

VII. Above all sing spiritually. Have an eye to God in every word you sing. Aim at pleasing him more than yourself, or any other creature. In order to do this attend strictly to the sense of what you sing, and see that your heart is not carried away with the sound, but offered to God continually; so shall your singing be such as the Lord will approve here, and reward you when he cometh in the clouds of heaven.

I'm afraid I have trouble seeing that my heart is not carried away with the sound, but for the most part I find these instructions very apt, and pricelessly phrased. Take heed, all you choral singers!

Nepotism in Action

My parents have been self-employed in the printing and publishing business (The Insite Group) since before I was born, which has meant various things to my family and me over the years. It has its perks, like free printing on anything from birthday invitations to science fair displays, advertising trade accounts with local businesses and restaurants, and the occasional free copy of Adobe Creative Suite. It also means being recruited to help with bulk mailings, sorting archives in the filthy attic, and having a mom who doesn't have time to cook dinner during magazine deadline week. In our photogenic childhoods, my siblings and I would crop up with relative frequency on the cover of Insite. Amusing family stories became fair game for mom's PubDesk column, and even occasionally for the cover story, like the week my family was Amish (in retrospect, I'm not sure why I agreed to that). I've been proofreading and editing magazine stories since high school, but this month is the first time I've gotten to try my hand at writing something of my own (and, even more miraculously, getting paid for it). It's also the first time I've been on the cover since I was about nine. I guess being a college student has its perks too.

Check out this month's issue of Insite - I'm on page 39.

Musings

There's still quite a buzz about the new logo, but it seems to have shifted away from the design itself to the issue of lack of student input in the decision-making process. Now, I am honestly not trying to be condescending or inflammatory or what-have-you, and I certainly welcome anyone's opinion who cares to give it, but this whole thing has had me wondering: exactly how much right do we, as students, have to expect that the administration will consult with us before administrating? Not having experienced any college other than Middlebury, I don't have any authority for anything I'm about to say, but it seems to me that it wouldn't be practical anywhere any larger than Middlebury to try to let students have a hand in decision-making processes unless it was something really major. (Yes, you've guessed it, I don't consider a change of logo really major, but that's more or less beside the point.) One of my best friends goes to Texas State, and it continually surprises me how little she has to do with her school. She lives in a dorm and goes to classes, but she and her friends just don't seem as involved in the school - there are plenty of other things to do around town. Maybe it's another effect of our Midd bubble; there's nothing to do other than get involved. And our size does make us better suited to a more collaborative approach. I'm really of two minds about the whole thing. I think it's great that the administration listens to the student body as much as it does; on the other hand, the adminstration's job is to administrate, and I'm not sure they owe it to us to let us help them do their job. We students seem to feel that we have some inalienable right to be involved in the administrative process, but I'm not convinced that's the case. I guess some people might come to Midd for that opportunity, but to be honest that's not something I ever thought about or expected from the college experience. I mean, by all accounts, if we were at university in Europe and tried to get involved in college decisions like this, we'd be laughed at. Big universities don't necessarily even need to care about their students as individuals with opinions - there are plenty more who would be happy to get in. Maybe places like Midd are the way of the future, with education becoming more of a collaborative effort and less of an adult-student hierarchy. Or maybe it's an effect of our generation. I've been reading a lot of magazine articles about Gen Y lately. It's kind of amusing to see myself and my friends generalized like that, but there are some grains of truth. The consensus seems to be that we dislike hierarchy and being told what to do, but value cooperation and getting involved with causes we care about. Oh, and we feel the world does actually owe us something. All those things seem pretty symptomatic of the recent reaction to the logo. Maybe we're misguided and maybe we aren't. I realize I haven't actually concluded anything. If you'd like to conclude something for me, leave a comment.

The Revolution is Coming

The customary forewarning: this post is unlikely to interest those of the male persuasion.

In my first real post on this blog, I ranted about the dearth of knowledge about proper bra fitting and the difficulty of finding proper bras. I noted particularly the abysmal range of bra sizes offered in department stores. I can now quite happily rescind that criticism, at least in part. I walked into Dillard's today to buy shoes, which happened to be just across from the lingerie department. I decided to browse through it, not particularly hopefully, and was extremely suprised to see formerly hard-to-find sizes on the rack, including some quite respectable brands like Le Mystère. There wasn't a lot of selection outside the "normal" (i.e. firmly established) size range, but finding a 32G in a department store is a formerly unheard of phenomenon and is definitely cause for celebration. There's still a ways to go - for example, the sales staff didn't quite know what to do with the new sizes. The "fit specialist" I approached seemed to think the bra alphabet went straight from DDD to G (for future reference, the badly designed and rather ambiguous system goes: AA A B C D DD DDD/E F FF G GG H and so forth). Still, there is undoubtedly progress! "Nonstandard" body types of the world, rejoice!

Academic Snobbery

Since everyone has been weighing in on the new Middlebury logo all day, I'll throw in my two cents' worth. Personally, I think the reaction is silly. I checked Midd's home page out of idle curiosity when I saw a reference to the new logo on Facebook, and I can't say I'm a big fan, but I didn't think about it again until it started cropping up on people's blogs. I laughed out loud when I got an invite to a Facebook group protesting the new logo. Of all the "causes" you could devote your time and energy to, why pick one protesting a mere logo that isn't negatively affecting anyone in any material way?

I understand that a school's logo is in some sense its face to the outside world, but I really think people are overestimating its importance. There are two or three schools whose logos I could immediately identify (UT's Hook'Em and A&M's Gig'Em spring to mind), but they're all within a close radius of my home and are inextricably linked with sports. The academic reputations of schools are linked to their names, not the pictures that appear on their t-shirts. I got piles of mail from colleges when I was applying and I don't remember a single logo, even from the schools that I ultimately visited. My point is, for a college at least, a logo is a fairly meaningless graphic that happens to appear on a lot of college material. It may attract some loyalty in its immediate environs or among its sports fans, but it would take a heck of a campaign to for a college to embed its logo in the national consciousness the way, say, Apple or Nike have. A college and its reputation are identified by the name. If all someone can associate with a college is a picture, what have we gained? To have a high opinion of Midd's academic standing, there are already thoughts involved that have to be expressed in words.

Even allowing a logo to have slightly more importance than I've made out, a change in logos in no way warrants the sort of vociferous reaction it has received. I reiterate: find a new cause. If you have that much hate to spare, take it out on world hunger, disease, war, politics, anything that actually matters outside the Midd bubble. I think we MiddKids are so used to having our opinions matter that we rush to have an opinion on everything and make mountains out of molehills in our self-important opinionatedness. Some things just aren't worth having this violent an opinion about.