The longer I’m in graduate school, the less I feel motivated to finish. Unfortunately, it’s also true that the longer I’m in graduate school, the more urgent it becomes that I finish soon. The end of this academic year would be great, says my long-suffering advisor who just wants me to graduate already. When are [...]
Archive for the ‘language’ Category
procrastination=disaster!
Posted in language, life, music on September 9, 2008 | 2 Comments »
imagine all the towels
Posted in culture, language, life on September 2, 2008 | 2 Comments »
Kenji and I amused ourselves in Strasbourg by making this video. It’s kind of an inside joke involving one of Kenji’s PC friends and a John Lennon impersonation caught on video, but we also made it because the French are so darn dramatic. Germans hotels would have been entirely more direct about towel protocol, but [...]
the great european train adventure
Posted in culture, language, life on August 19, 2008 | 4 Comments »
Here I am in a swank French hotel in Strasbourg, listening to the cars go past below the open window and watching the people coming and going from the train station. There’s wireless internet here, so I’m taking the opportunity to write more about my globetrotting summer.
Kenji and I made it to Vienna last Thursday [...]
we don’t need no stinkin’ change!
Posted in church, culture, language, theology on April 15, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Another interesting quote as I sit here at Steve’s reading and writing about North American German Lutherans. This one is from an article entitled Singing from the Right Songbook: Ethnic Identity and Language Transformation in German American Hymnals by Otto Holzapfel:
Songbooks and church prayer books are among the cultural goods that persist most conservatively in [...]
killing time
Posted in church, culture, language, pop culture on April 2, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
While waiting for yet another couple of cheesecakes to solidify to the point that I can turn off the oven and go to bed, I have been browsing random books on the bookshelf. Nerdy, I know. Anyway, I came across this quote from the articulate Rodney Clapp that relates to my previous post on cultural [...]
hymns, hymns
Posted in church, language, music on February 20, 2008 | 2 Comments »
Strange things make me happy. For example, the fact that an 1897 copy of the Kirchen-Gesangbuch Fur Evangelisch-Lutherische Gemeinden (Church-Songbook for Evangelical Lutheran Worship) published by Concordia (ie, Missouri Synod) should be appearing in my mailbox in the next couple of weeks. Admittedly, it’s for a paper and ultimately for my thesis, but aside [...]
old title, new meaning
Posted in language, music on January 22, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
As evidence that the meanings of words change over time, I offer the title of a hymn found in the American Lutheran Hymnal (1930)—Before Jehovah’s Awful Throne. I don’t know about you, but when I say something is awful, I don’t mean “filled with awe.” Unless I’m filled with awe that it’s, well, so awful.
cultural differences
Posted in culture, language on August 8, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
In Germany, everything that is not allowed is forbidden. On the other hand, in the US everything that is not forbidden is allowed. For example, you can turn right at a red light in the US as long as there is not a sign prohibiting you from doing so. In Germany, you can’t turn right [...]
