Daniel Silliman

12.4.02

Hot Stories update
Story number two, the faculty fight surrounding the bestowing a honorary degree on comencement speaker Dr. Laura, has died. The faculty voted to confirm the honorary degree and thus has rubber stamped the administrations decision. As bad or crazy as the idea might have been it is no longer a controversy.

I talked to the Dean of Faculty today and he confirmed that the policy of those meetings is the exclusion of all non-faculty. They want to talk openly and have their controversies well concealed. I understand this even if as a journalist closed meetings gall me.

by Daniel Silliman @ 9:53 PM. : Comments 1

The Crazy Angels in all their Crippled Glory
I have recently finished The Milagro Beanfiled War, a good if long book, by John Nichols. The book, as I mentioned before, has the feel of being something handed down through the oral tradition, that is to say it captures well the air of the Mexican-American culture of the Southwest.

My favorite passage of the book is well toward the end, after the good guys have won but before they are certain of it and before they know what to do about it, when a minor figure in the book (a one armed man) explains who is looking over the people of Milagro. It is outrageous and enjoyable. Read it for yourself:

“You know what Bernabe, you know who’s looking over us people in this town?’
Bernabe frowned, sensing more trouble, and tried to glower in both a no-nonesense and also a semifriendly way: “No, what?”
“You mean ‘No, who?’”
“Okay: No, who?”
“The Angel of Mud, that’s who,” Onofre blurted, tipping back and almost over. “And the Angel of Skinny Cows. And the Angel of Eighty-nine Cents a Six-pack Cerveza. And the Angel of Dysentery. And the cross-eyed, greasy Angel of Broken Trucks. And the Angel of Bad Luck—”
Onofre paused, blinking as he tried to focus on Bernabe.
“Oh brother, you never saw such a bunch of motley angels as we got hovering over this town,” he crowed. “In fact, you know what? If Jesus himself was up there he’d have thistle burrs stuck in his beard and scars from an old bullet wound in his belly and only three and a half fingers on his right hand and no more than four teeth in his mouth.”
Bernabe felt like laughing, yet instead he set his face in a glower, hoping to drive this one-armed poet back into the heart of the revelry where he belonged.
But Onefre was only just getting started. Flinging his visible are starward he babbled on: “We got the Angel of Leaky Outhouses up there, and we got the Angel of Overgrazed Pastures up there and the Angel of Always Being Broke up there—why, we got so many offbeat grizzled angels floating around over this little town that sometimes I get claustrophobia from all their wings rustling—from them that have any feathers left in their wings, that is. And from their stink, too. Why, I bet there ain’t another town on earth with so many sweaty angels hanging around on top of it. There’s the angel of Going Crazy up there, and the Angel of All the World’s Cripples. You ask me, this town is like a pile of horseshit attracting every kind of ugly fly and winged insect in the neighborhood, only what we got every kind of deformed, outcast, feathered ghoul from heaven looking after our people and their earthly affairs. Lame, half-blind, one-armed like me, retarded—you name it. This place just reeks of crippled glory!"

by Daniel Silliman @ 6:25 AM. : Comments 0

Trying in vain to write
I've been beating my head against a research paper for four days. It just doesn't want to be written.

Actually I think I am intimidated by this professor, a hard, hard man who believes good teachers don't give out good grades. I'm working on a journalism topic I am interested in and should be fine. If only I wasn't writing for him. I think I will have to ignore him and the "research paper" aspect of this paper and just write the blasted thing.

by Daniel Silliman @ 5:52 AM. : Comments 0

The Way to the Top
I have recently been told that I have the News Editor position on the Hillsdale Collegian next year. I will be in the number two position on the paper under Seraphim, fellow journalist, student, blogger, etc.

If I keep mentioning him I am going to have to come up with a shorter description.

I look forward to holding the position. I will be glad to be in the editors seat again.

by Daniel Silliman @ 3:16 AM. : Comments 0

Hot Stories
I’m working on three large stories for the school paper this week (making my life crazy though I enjoy the craziness).

I’m following up the story on the student who was arrested for stealing two credit cards from a fellow student. He will be sentenced Wednesday morning. The guy was charged with five felonies but it looks like he will be convicted for the bit (1 ounce) of marijuana they found in his pocket and let off the felonies. Such is justice.

I’m going to do a numbers story on the college’s finances after I receive their tax report on the 15th. I should be able to do some interesting stuff on the increase or decrease of the endowment, the salaries around the campus and other such information.

I’m uncovering a faculty fight with the administration surrounding the move by the administration to give Dr. Laura Schlessinger (this years graduation speaker) an honorary Hillsdale doctorate. The administration want to give her one (the give away quite a few, mostly to big donors or people connected with the school they want to claim) but the faculty doesn’t see why she deserves it. We are paying her well to speak here. I wasn’t allowed in a faculty meeting this morning but I think the faculty passed something against the honorary degree. Because they didn’t let me in I have to write the story the hard way and hope to get in quite a few interview with faculty tomorrow.

At last things are hopping.

by Daniel Silliman @ 3:15 AM. : Comments 0

Philosophy vs. Journalism
I am either going to stay with journalism or shift into philosophy, earning my PhD and become a professor. I haven’t decided which and am continually weighing the two futures against each other.

I love journalism. I have been a journalist at two school papers and one daily. It looks like I will write for that daily again this summer. My time has been exciting and diverse and I have covered important stories. I love the variety and the daily influence in the workings of society and the pressure from the deadlines and the stories.

I love philosophy. If I go for a few days without a discussion of substance I miss it and look for intellectual stimulation. I love dealing with the big ideas that form the foundations we live on. I love to take ideas back, finding their origin, and extend them out, discovering their consequences.

I would be good at either profession.

If I go with philosophy I might imitate my heroes, impact the culture in a lasting and immediate way and influence the generations of the future. But I would miss journalism. I would miss the immediacy and the push and press of the daily and the adrenaline. I would miss the force of the written word and the ability to inform on a daily basis. But if I had all that I would miss my philosophy; I would be sorry to see it as a mere hobby, something to do on the weekends.

The strange thing is I mentally shift careers from day to day. Some days I feel like a philosopher and I want to spend my life dealing with interesting epistemological questions of discuss the philosophy of science. And then I wonder if I would miss journalism every morning when I picked up a newspaper. Other days I feel like a journalist and the fire is in my belly and I am hot on a story and I am breaking news and directing the public conversation.

I am certainly undecided. Maybe I’ll make a move one day when I am feeling a tendency toward one career, and I will do that for the rest of my life. Maybe I’ll find a way to keep both parts of my interest central to my career. Maybe (probably) I will get an offer somewhere and then I’ll just take the offer. I really don’t know how this is going to happen.

by Daniel Silliman @ 2:43 AM. : Comments 0

11.4.02

The Nearing End
"From time to time, as we all know, a sect appears in our midst announcing that the world will very soon come to an end. Generally, by some slight confusion or miscalculation, it is the sect that comes to an end."
—G.K. Chesterton, 1927

Thanks to razormouth.com for the quote.

by Daniel Silliman @ 3:10 AM. : Comments 0

10.4.02

Philisophical Physics
Seraphim, fellow student, blogger, journalists etc. answers an e-mail of mine questioning his comment about the relationship of physics and philosohy. As someone majoring in philosophy and fascinated by physics and currently studying the philosophy of science, I enjoyed and agreed with his answer.

by Daniel Silliman @ 10:40 PM. : Comments 0

Holding Forth on my Theory of Art: My response to Dr. Arnn
Dear Dr. Arnn,

Thank you for your letter. I appreciate the way you have handled your disagreement with me both in our discussion and in your letter. The way you have responded reaffirms my choice in Hillsdale College. Even if we disagree I appreciate that this has been discussed with openness and reason.

You asked me how is art progressive and how progress is to be measured. I am afraid the answer will not be as brief as the question.

From my study of art history I understand art to be progressive in two ways...

Continue...

by Daniel Silliman @ 3:54 PM. : Comments 0

9.4.02

Spelling
I’ve been criticized for my spelling on the site, which is certainly fair. Mostly the errors were typos—dropping a letter or transposing something—but it was sloppiness anyway.

I am a big supporter of copy editors. I have trouble reading my own work immediately after I have written it. With newspapers this is fine because after I do my best and catch what I can a copy editor, a page editor and a news editor. Alas, no such safety net system exists for blogs, papers or other daily writing.

I am now typing in word and pasting over to my blog and, while nothing I’m working on will be perfect, with the advantage of my automated copy editor we should stop the slips from coming through.

by Daniel Silliman @ 4:21 PM. : Comments 0

Monkey Business shuts down school

The Opinion Journal did a story today on a how monkeys are cause one school to close in Darjeeling, India. Read the piece for yourself:

Monkeys: A Sacred Cow
"Scores of monkeys have swamped a girls' college in the hill resort of Darjeeling in eastern India, destroying thousands of books, stalling classes, clawing and slapping the students," the Indo-Asian News Service reports. "The monkeys have torn to shreds at least 6,000 books in the library and broken furniture. The damage to property caused by them exceeds Rs.60,000 [$1,200]."

Local authorities "say their hands are tied as local residents oppose any action against the monkeys, considered scared by Hindus."

Now why couldn't we get a break like that at Hillsdale? How come we couldn't get a story like this? Oh the headlines we could have if only we lived in eastern India!

by Daniel Silliman @ 2:54 AM. : Comments 0

8.4.02

Next Term's Classes
Working out my schedual for next term's classes and preparing to preregister. It looks like I will be taking begining Latin, art history, prose writing, Dante's Divine Comedy, Greek Orthodoxy, and New Testament Ethics.

by Daniel Silliman @ 10:05 PM. : Comments 0

The Pleasure of Rain
I think our Midwestern winter may have broken. It is supposed to be in the 60s all week and today we are having an enjoyable, steady drizzle. It is raining in the comfortable way--contemplative and relaxed. It is the kind of day to read a book or have a long talk.

The natives here are complaining about the rain. They like the snow, live with it and consider those unused to it strange and soft people, hidden from the reality of life. They curse the rain because it is wet, because they have to carry umbrellas or raincoats, because it slows the pace of everything and makes the earth beneath their feet quite sloppy.

I love this rain. It is warm and gets one only a little wet. It feels like a nice winter day in Seattle or, closer to home, Port Angeles. It is not a force of nature with violence and destruction. It is easy to live with this weather, easy to swing into the slower mood of a rainy day. It is a day to settle into a big chair and read a book, a day to listen to the patter of the falling water, a day to feel it on your upturned face.

by Daniel Silliman @ 10:01 PM. : Comments 0

Highly automated collision monitoring system
Back home we had our own doomsday prophet. Mr. Dobbs ran a copy shop but his real passion was the end. He predicted (constantly) that a tsunami, created by the earth's shifting plates, was going to wash out our Olympic Peninsula. In his spare time he talked about ice ages, mastrodons, global warming, earthquakes, asteroids striking earth and all that good eco-horror.

Now their is a NASA created doomsday site for all those with an unquenchable interest in the possibility of coming doom.

by Daniel Silliman @ 8:47 PM. : Comments 0

Assets and Liabilities
Andrew Sandlin has an excellent piece today on the assets and liabilities of the Reformed Church. He has good points and they will benefit those of us willing to work with them.

by Daniel Silliman @ 4:28 PM. : Comments 0

7.4.02

The courage of El Cid and the idealism of Don Quixote
A great story about a great man: a tough Spanish judge, a law-and-order Leftists, a man fighting crime, corruption and injustice.

by Daniel Silliman @ 8:19 PM. : Comments 0