Why Hermione Wound Up in Griffindor & the Current Insanity
I've been rereading the Harry Potter books. When I first read them, I wondered, as others have, why is Hermione in Griffindor instead of Ravenclaw? She's so smart and book-oriented, that seems wrong.
Indeed, Hermione seems fit for any of the four houses as described by the Sorting Hat in book 1. She is loyal and true to her friends as a Hufflepuff. She is the smartest witch of her year and is constantly reading as a Ravenclaw should be. She is a woman of her convictions (remember S.P.E.W. and her other campaigns for social justice?) who doesn't back down so she's brave enough for Griffindor. And she's ambitious enough in her own way for Slytherin. Her will to succeed in all her classes is its own type of ambition.
Yet the Sorting Hat sings a very different song in book 5, one that gives a different spin to the houses and where Hermione fits in. Slytherin wanted only pure bloods, so Hermione could not be in that house. Hufflepuff said she would take the ones the other houses didn't want, so that's not really appropriate for Hermione either. She does value wit and intelligence highly so Ravenclaw still seems to best fit. Yet she wound up in Griffindow.
Now one explanation could be that, as Harry was told by the Sorting Hat that he would do well in Slytherin but could choose Griffindor, she may have been in a comparable situation. Maybe the Sorting Hat recommended Ravenclaw to her but she chose to be in Griffindor.
Despite her brilliance, Hermione's defining characteristic is courage. Maybe she did not want to be just known as a bookish nerd all her life. She had more to offer, as she frequently exhibits through all the books. If she were truly only interested in knowledge, she would not have let Harry and Ron copy her work so frequently. She valued their friendship more and realized that they had other non-intellectual things she could learn from them.
The clincher, I think, is that she chooses to not return to Hogwarts in book 7, instead traveling with Harry and Ron, looking for horcruxes. This is a young woman who could easily have passed her N.E.W.T.S. with flying colors and had her pick of jobs. At least in any other year.
I still think, though, that leaving Hogwarts was the braver option. She stood up to the cruciatus curse by Bellatrix. I don't know how many true Ravenclaws would have come through that ordeal so well. Brilliant, yes, but her courage shone even brighter than her intellect.
===================================== Here There Be Dragons - be warned
Of course, reading all the Harry Potter books has not helped me escape from reality but has served as a dark parallel. I feel like I'm living in the last book when the Death Eaters have taken over the Ministry of Magic.
I do not understand how that orange baboon got into the White House. I read WHITE TRASH and HILLBILLY ELEGY, just to try to understand it. In my opinion, the people in those books were shooting themselves in the foot by voting for that creature.
I do not understand how he could have come up with such outrageously awful cabinet picks. Why didn't someone tell him, sorry, those are totally ridiculous. Make a different list. Racists and billionaires and anti-science stooges. A Secretary of Education who does not believe in public schools and who thinks guns are okay in schools because you might need to protect the kids against a grizzly bear? Hello? I'll bet the parents of Sandy Hook are really buying that. And the Columbine parents. And all the schools which have had shooting tragedies. A climate-change denier in charge of the EPA? What are they, meshugenah?
I feel that he purposely chose the most inappropriate people he could find for some arcane reason. Of course, I also believe there is something seriously wrong with him mentally as well as morally.
When I turned 60 a couple of years ago, the hubby threw me a small party. I asked for just a few people, those I was fondest of who lived nearby, to come. These were one of my sisters and her husband, a couple of ladies from our book group. and two former co-workers with their spouses.
Analyzing that guest list you have: sister - husband is half-Mexican. His mother never learned to speak English. Their son-in-law is half-Chinese. The two ladies from our book group are a lesbian couple who were so happy to be legally married a few years ago. They have been a couple since high school and are retired now. Co-worker #1 is mixed race (Asian and European). Both she and her straight CIS-gender husband were born in other countries. She has many health problems. Co-worker #2, one of the most outspoken women I know, married a man a few years ago. I was a little leery because while I liked him, I was not very comfortable with how anti-religion he was. Co-worker #2 has the same spouse, but this angry and unhappy man is now a happy, church-going woman. So pretty much all the people I am fondest of are now targets of the new government.
The new regime is determined to overturn Roe v. Wade. As a faithful Catholic, I am supposed to cheer such a thing, but I can't. I know that will just create more misery.
Ivanka Trump will always be able to get a safe abortion if she wants, regardless of the law in this county. Jane Average won't, and that is not liberty and justice for all.
Throughout history, some women have always chosen to try to end unwanted pregnancy, regardless of the legality of it. I don't think anyone would say that abortion is preferable, but sometimes it looks like the only viable choice (no pun intended). Many women have died in these illegal abortions. What good is that? If she feels she must abort because she already has more kids than she can feed and then dies, who takes care of the kids then? Who heals those poor kids who have lost their mother?
As a Catholic, I acknowledge that yes, abortion is a grave sin. As a woman and a follower of Jesus, I say better a live sinner than a dead one. And I find it real hard to believe that Jesus would condemn a woman who chooses to end her pregnancy because she has such health issues that it could mean her death if she continued.
And I am enraged by the stupidity and hypocrisy of trying to both overturn Roe v. Wade and repeal the ACA. Yes, take away abortion from women and then don't let them have any health care. If they feel that they need to end abortion, they must also increase medical benefits to women and children and support programs to allow women to raise these children. Free and reliable/safe child care, educational assistance (both for the kids and for the moms if this unplanned pregnancy prevented her schooling or if she has no other resources), and major medical and social assistance for the children born with health issues.
So I'm angry. I'm hurt. I'm bewildered. I have pledged monthly donations to the ACLU. I'm becoming addicted to NPR. I have taken out a subscription to the Guardian so I can see news from outside the US. (Our local paper is very good at calling things as they are, but You-Know-Who and his Death Eaters are going to crack down on the press.) I was not strong enough to participate in the Women's March (the hubby went, though - thanks!) but I participated in a sidewalk protect on the inauguration day. Protestors lined El Camino from San Franciso to San Jose from noon to one that day. I stood in the rain, holding my sign: Not my president - he's Putin's puppet. Someone was across the street from me with a sign as well. We got some cheering from passing cars and pedestrians.
I have programmed my congressman and both senators into my cell phone as I'm calling them almost every day, asking them to block this and that. I'm too old for this.
I have dug out my old political CDs and tapes and am listening to them. I love Holly Near's "Singer in the Storm" album. Lines from some of the songs repeat in my brain: "We who believe in freedom cannot rest." "We are a gentle, angry people."
So okay, Betsy de Vos - push school vouchers for religious schools. You may get more people like me, taught by left-leaning nuns and Jesuits. The Religious Left is alive and well and looking to fight.
Indeed, Hermione seems fit for any of the four houses as described by the Sorting Hat in book 1. She is loyal and true to her friends as a Hufflepuff. She is the smartest witch of her year and is constantly reading as a Ravenclaw should be. She is a woman of her convictions (remember S.P.E.W. and her other campaigns for social justice?) who doesn't back down so she's brave enough for Griffindor. And she's ambitious enough in her own way for Slytherin. Her will to succeed in all her classes is its own type of ambition.
Yet the Sorting Hat sings a very different song in book 5, one that gives a different spin to the houses and where Hermione fits in. Slytherin wanted only pure bloods, so Hermione could not be in that house. Hufflepuff said she would take the ones the other houses didn't want, so that's not really appropriate for Hermione either. She does value wit and intelligence highly so Ravenclaw still seems to best fit. Yet she wound up in Griffindow.
Now one explanation could be that, as Harry was told by the Sorting Hat that he would do well in Slytherin but could choose Griffindor, she may have been in a comparable situation. Maybe the Sorting Hat recommended Ravenclaw to her but she chose to be in Griffindor.
Despite her brilliance, Hermione's defining characteristic is courage. Maybe she did not want to be just known as a bookish nerd all her life. She had more to offer, as she frequently exhibits through all the books. If she were truly only interested in knowledge, she would not have let Harry and Ron copy her work so frequently. She valued their friendship more and realized that they had other non-intellectual things she could learn from them.
The clincher, I think, is that she chooses to not return to Hogwarts in book 7, instead traveling with Harry and Ron, looking for horcruxes. This is a young woman who could easily have passed her N.E.W.T.S. with flying colors and had her pick of jobs. At least in any other year.
I still think, though, that leaving Hogwarts was the braver option. She stood up to the cruciatus curse by Bellatrix. I don't know how many true Ravenclaws would have come through that ordeal so well. Brilliant, yes, but her courage shone even brighter than her intellect.
===================================== Here There Be Dragons - be warned
Of course, reading all the Harry Potter books has not helped me escape from reality but has served as a dark parallel. I feel like I'm living in the last book when the Death Eaters have taken over the Ministry of Magic.
I do not understand how that orange baboon got into the White House. I read WHITE TRASH and HILLBILLY ELEGY, just to try to understand it. In my opinion, the people in those books were shooting themselves in the foot by voting for that creature.
I do not understand how he could have come up with such outrageously awful cabinet picks. Why didn't someone tell him, sorry, those are totally ridiculous. Make a different list. Racists and billionaires and anti-science stooges. A Secretary of Education who does not believe in public schools and who thinks guns are okay in schools because you might need to protect the kids against a grizzly bear? Hello? I'll bet the parents of Sandy Hook are really buying that. And the Columbine parents. And all the schools which have had shooting tragedies. A climate-change denier in charge of the EPA? What are they, meshugenah?
I feel that he purposely chose the most inappropriate people he could find for some arcane reason. Of course, I also believe there is something seriously wrong with him mentally as well as morally.
When I turned 60 a couple of years ago, the hubby threw me a small party. I asked for just a few people, those I was fondest of who lived nearby, to come. These were one of my sisters and her husband, a couple of ladies from our book group. and two former co-workers with their spouses.
Analyzing that guest list you have: sister - husband is half-Mexican. His mother never learned to speak English. Their son-in-law is half-Chinese. The two ladies from our book group are a lesbian couple who were so happy to be legally married a few years ago. They have been a couple since high school and are retired now. Co-worker #1 is mixed race (Asian and European). Both she and her straight CIS-gender husband were born in other countries. She has many health problems. Co-worker #2, one of the most outspoken women I know, married a man a few years ago. I was a little leery because while I liked him, I was not very comfortable with how anti-religion he was. Co-worker #2 has the same spouse, but this angry and unhappy man is now a happy, church-going woman. So pretty much all the people I am fondest of are now targets of the new government.
The new regime is determined to overturn Roe v. Wade. As a faithful Catholic, I am supposed to cheer such a thing, but I can't. I know that will just create more misery.
Ivanka Trump will always be able to get a safe abortion if she wants, regardless of the law in this county. Jane Average won't, and that is not liberty and justice for all.
Throughout history, some women have always chosen to try to end unwanted pregnancy, regardless of the legality of it. I don't think anyone would say that abortion is preferable, but sometimes it looks like the only viable choice (no pun intended). Many women have died in these illegal abortions. What good is that? If she feels she must abort because she already has more kids than she can feed and then dies, who takes care of the kids then? Who heals those poor kids who have lost their mother?
As a Catholic, I acknowledge that yes, abortion is a grave sin. As a woman and a follower of Jesus, I say better a live sinner than a dead one. And I find it real hard to believe that Jesus would condemn a woman who chooses to end her pregnancy because she has such health issues that it could mean her death if she continued.
And I am enraged by the stupidity and hypocrisy of trying to both overturn Roe v. Wade and repeal the ACA. Yes, take away abortion from women and then don't let them have any health care. If they feel that they need to end abortion, they must also increase medical benefits to women and children and support programs to allow women to raise these children. Free and reliable/safe child care, educational assistance (both for the kids and for the moms if this unplanned pregnancy prevented her schooling or if she has no other resources), and major medical and social assistance for the children born with health issues.
So I'm angry. I'm hurt. I'm bewildered. I have pledged monthly donations to the ACLU. I'm becoming addicted to NPR. I have taken out a subscription to the Guardian so I can see news from outside the US. (Our local paper is very good at calling things as they are, but You-Know-Who and his Death Eaters are going to crack down on the press.) I was not strong enough to participate in the Women's March (the hubby went, though - thanks!) but I participated in a sidewalk protect on the inauguration day. Protestors lined El Camino from San Franciso to San Jose from noon to one that day. I stood in the rain, holding my sign: Not my president - he's Putin's puppet. Someone was across the street from me with a sign as well. We got some cheering from passing cars and pedestrians.
I have programmed my congressman and both senators into my cell phone as I'm calling them almost every day, asking them to block this and that. I'm too old for this.
I have dug out my old political CDs and tapes and am listening to them. I love Holly Near's "Singer in the Storm" album. Lines from some of the songs repeat in my brain: "We who believe in freedom cannot rest." "We are a gentle, angry people."
So okay, Betsy de Vos - push school vouchers for religious schools. You may get more people like me, taught by left-leaning nuns and Jesuits. The Religious Left is alive and well and looking to fight.