Quitting Facebook… Again

January 8, 2021 Sarah Hinlicky Wilson

This is the second time I’ve quit Facebook.

The first time was in 2016, as our family was making the move from France back to the U.S. It was a nice neat time to ditch a bad habit, with the added incentive that I didn’t really want to broadcast my reverse culture shock to the world.

But that wasn’t actually why I quit. I remember vividly the exact moment I realized I had to do it. I was crossing the bridge over the river from the center island of Strasbourg to our street. It was a clear day, but cold, in the winter. And I suddenly realized that I was ransacking my day to forge yet another pithy, memorable one-liner to post on FB.

In fact, my life had become nothing but fodder for pithy one-liners on FB. I wasn’t living life; I was scavenging it…

A Conversation between a Theologian and Her Dad—Thirty Years Ago

December 22, 2020 Sarah Hinlicky Wilson

Paul R. Hinlicky (aka Dad) and I have just wrapped up two years’ worth of episodes on the Queen of the Sciences podcast, which boasts the tongue-in-cheek subtitle “Conversations between a Theologian and Her Dad.” I’ve recently rediscovered a “conversation” we had thirty years ago, when I gave him a notebook full of questions to fill in at Christmas 1990. What follows is an exact transcription (including eccentric spelling and punctuation) of the original. You can also listen to us read it (nowadays, not thirty years ago) on the podcast proper. Merry Christmas!

Did you travel around a lot with your parents when you were a little kid?
Before we bought the farm — yes. Every summer we went to Chicago to see Gramma’s family. When I was five we went to Florida. But that was so miserable with five kids and no AC that I think it was one of Grandpa’s motives for buying the farm.

What were your elementary school grades like? high school?
I always did well in school. Like you, I learn to read early and really like to read. I didn’t work as hard as I could have in high school.

What is one of your most vivid memories of Grandpa Paul?
Sitting on the couch with him in his living room in Byram, his arm around Mark and I, watching TV as he smoked his big cigar, filling the room with blue smoke. He loved us.

What sort of food did your mother make for dinner when you were a kid?
Spaghetti
Spaghetti
Spaghetti
chuck steak once in awhile…

The Meta-Cookbooks of Niki Segnit, Part II

December 8, 2020 Sarah Hinlicky Wilson

When we last saw our heroine, she was departing France in a blaze of glory, forever unleashed from bondage to the strictures of cookbooks and their hidebound recipes.

Well, not really, to be honest. I still have a great big cookbook collection and I still use them all the time, though I am considerably less obedient than while I was acquring the skills and concomitant instincts of an intuitive cook.

However, the intuitive-cook-skills-and-instincts have, over time, resulted in a great deal of grumpiness about cookbooks. (See some of that grumping here.) Excessive fussiness, no attention to streamlining the use of bulky pots and pans, taste bought for a huge sum instead of through skillful execution, and constantly reinventing the wheel rate high on my list of complaints.

Which is why Lateral Cooking was a game changer all over again…

The Meta-Cookbooks of Niki Segnit, Part I

November 23, 2020 Sarah Hinlicky Wilson

Sometime in 2012 I was languishing in France because I had nothing good to read. Still weirdly resistant to ebooks, unwilling to pay the postage for overseas delivery, and having reread everything on my own shelf, I searched with faint hope through the selection of English novels available in the local bookstore. They were (pinch nose here) “literary.” Beautiful sentences about nihilistic individuals, containing nothing so bourgeois as a plot. I resolved never again to pick a work of fiction sight unseen off the shelf and resigned myself to reading through all seven volumes of Harry Potter again because nothing else was worth the trouble.

Then hope twinkled anew, because I found The Flavour Thesaurus…

Slovak Novels in English #32: Unconquerables

November 9, 2020 Sarah Hinlicky Wilson

This “novel” doesn’t really add up to a novel, and a prefatory note admits as much: “For reasons of personal security, it has been necessary to present some of the characters under fictional names. The basic structure of the work, however, is factual; only several minor details are imaginary.” In other words, what we have here are 225 pages of reporting of communist atrocities against Slovak Catholics, loosely connected in a structureless narrative. As far as I can tell, it was composed in Slovak but published first in English translation in the United States, with a Slovak edition appearing in 1961 but also only in the U.S.

A structureless narrative recounting atrocities wouldn’t necessarily be the worst thing in the world, even from a literary perspective. Fiction has long served the purpose of telling the world truths that are otherwise too hot to handle, as the translator of this book alludes to by comparing it to Uncle Tom’s Cabin (a gross overstatement, but point taken). Slovakia has long been overlooked on the world stage, and the persecution of the Catholic church—which reached a nasty peak in 1950 and saw huge numbers of imprisonments and tortures especially of priests, monks, and nuns—remains relatively unknown in the annals of communist crime.

Author Jozef Paučo had left his native country in 1945 but kept close ties, which is why he wanted to alert citizens of his new nation as to what horrors were happening behind the Iron Curtain. He seems in retrospect a bit absurdly optimistic that the U.S. would listen and do something about all the Slavs under the Soviet thumb, but you can’t blame him for trying.

However, if it’s going to be lousy as a novel, it has to at least be otherwise spotless in its reporting, and that’s where I have the second and larger problem with this book…

Slovak Novels in English #31: Seller of Talismans

October 27, 2020 Sarah Hinlicky Wilson

Ages ago, in the second entry for this Slovak Novels in English project, I reviewed Cíger-Hronský’s Jozef Mak, a tale from the perspective of a Slovak peasant perplexed by the forces around him. It has taken me all this time to track down the one other of his approximately ten Slovak novels that has been translated into English, Seller of Talismans. Now that I have it in hand I know why…

Lutheran Saints #17: Henry Melchior Muhlenberg

October 13, 2020 Sarah Hinlicky Wilson

He was sure that God intended him for a life of missionary service in India. His theological studies at Göttingen and Halle, establishment of a school for poor children, oversight of a hospital—all of these were to prepare him for the trials of far-off Bengal and its people in need.

But when the call came, on his thirtieth birthday, it summoned him west, not east. German Lutherans had been migrating to the American colonies for decades, but they were like sheep without a shepherd. Would young Henry go and serve them?

He agreed—reluctantly. Three years, he said.

He stayed until his dying day…

Slovak Novels in English #30: Kept by a Mighty Hand

September 29, 2020 Sarah Hinlicky Wilson

Though originally published in 1921, thus a few years after the end of the First World War, the story clearly reflects the prewar period—not only on account of the utter absence of destruction that said war brought on the Balkans but also because of its use of intact aristocratic estates. A few clues indicate that the action is set mainly in the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia, as it was then known, a product of ongoing turmoil in the political Kingdom of Hungary after the expulsion of the Ottomans.

More specifically, the two estates in questions are located “across the bend of the Danube into Slavonia,” the latter being the easternmost, inland area of Croatia. The protagonist is called Michael Hodolich, the English rendering of Hodolič, which is in turn the Slovak rendering of Hodolić, a surname from that very part of Croatia, centered on the city of Ilok, which indeed sits on the Danube. Michael inherits the Hodolich estate, located not far from Orlov or “Eagle Castle”—note that Ilok has an impressive castle on the hill—and it is said more than once that the principals speak “Horwat,” which oddly enough is the Polish word for “Croatian” (Hrvatski in Croatian itself, chorvátsky in Slovak). I have no idea what possessed Lukesh to use this word, as “Croatian” has existed in English since the 1540s! The only Polish connection in the book is that Lady Zamojsky of Eagle Castle “was married to a Polish nobleman and lived many years in London, where he was ambassador.” Royová adds, “There, also, she left the church of Rome,” a point that probably pleased Lukesh since he was, unfortunately, involved in an “Away from Rome” society in his native Czech Lands.

As you can no doubt tell, I enjoyed ferreting out these details from passing clues in the book, in part because it seems so absolutely unremarkable to the author that there would be so many languages and nations represented, reflecting the fluidity of the Austro-Hungarian empire in its various iterations before the nation-state fixed firm borders with aspirations of ethnic purity…

Lutheran Saints #16: Argula von Grumbach

September 15, 2020 Sarah Hinlicky Wilson

Eighteen-year-old Arsacius Seehofer couldn’t contain his excitement when he arrived as a university tutor in Ingolstadt, Bavaria, after a stint studying in Wittenberg. For there he had learned that faith alone is sufficient for our justification! God imputes His own righteousness to us regardless of our works! God pours His Spirit into us, so we should not place our confidence in any good work of our own—yet certainly our Spirit-granted faith will produce good fruit! And since this is known only from Scripture, no one should trust any church official, not even a bishop, unless it is certain that his teaching comes from the word of God.

Those who had ears to hear knew what they were hearing. Arsacius was spouting Lutheran ideas, which had already been denounced by local preacher Georg Hauer two years prior. The ducal government was actively suppressing nascent Lutheranism by means of censorship, the seizure of Lutheran books, and the arrest of participants in private discussion groups on Reformation themes.

Therefore, no theologically intoxicated youth was going to be allowed to flout the law without consequences. In August of 1523, Arsacius’s rooms were searched and his possessions seized. On September 7, he was forced to recant before the entire university in words prepared for him: “Everything that I have read out from the writings of Philip Melanchthon in my lectures, and everything else which was spoken or written by me, and has just been read out by the notary of this university, is the most awful arch-heresy and knavery. I will never again adhere to or make use of any of it; but will betake myself, body and soul, to the Ettal monastery, not to leave the same without being commanded so to do by our gracious Lords, so that I have no desire to read or spread Lutheran ideas. May God almighty help me!”

No man came to Arsacius’s defense; it was much too dangerous.

But a woman did…

Why You* Hate to Cook, or, What I’ve Learned from Snooping around in Your Kitchen

September 1, 2020 Sarah Hinlicky Wilson

*This “you” is a composite of the many people whose kitchens I’ve snooped in. Don’t worry, your identity is safe with me!

If I have spent any time at your house, then you have caught me rooting through your fridge.

Later, despite a puzzled look or even a rebuke, you have seen me give a guilty start when you found me in your pantry.

Then you caught me red-handed sorting your plastic storage containers and quite possibly trying to throw some of them out.

Yes, it’s a bad habit, but if I have been engaged in such nefarious activities in your kitchen, then you know that I also ended up cooking you dinner.

You liked this part.

The one is logically connected to the other. Please sit back, digest, and allow me to explain…