Month: July 2007

  • I Used to Think

    I used to think ... that a woman who lost a day of productivity each
    month due to her cycle was a wuss and lacked gumption.

    I used to think... that the persistent taking off and putting on
    of reading glasses was vanity over appearances,
    not simply because one cannot see some things with them,
    nor can one see certain things without them.

    I used to think ... utility trumped beauty every time.

    I used to think ... liturgy in worship was mechanical, cold, and dead.

    I used to think... painted toenails were pointless.

    I used to think ... if you listened to country music, you were a moron to be pitied.

    I used to think ... because it was fruit, I could eat all I wanted.

    I used to think ... cloth napkins were a waste of time.

    Forgive me, Lord.

    How have you changed?

    What did you use to think?

  • Monday Miscellany

    ~ Gambling is stealing from yourself.

    I've never thought of it this way, but a few stanzas in The Inferno caught my attention. 

    Man can raise violent hands against himself
    and his own goods; so in the second round,
    paying the debt that never can be paid,

    are suicides, self-robbers of your world,
    or those who gamble all their wealth away
    and weep up there when they should have rejoiced.

    While throwing away money isn't a sin I struggle with, throwing away time is a form of stealing which I participate in.


    ~ Pish! Drivel! Waffle! Balderdash!

    Quote of the weekend from the series To Serve Them All My Days.  These words were one master's description of student exams as he returned them, graded, to his students. 

    ~ A fun resource

    There are several books in this genre, but of the ones I own, this is my favorite.  Friday night DH and I were reviewing the next day's duties shortly before we slipped into sleep. One of us said, "You can count on me."  My husband wondered aloud how counting came to mean depending. That was it!  No sleep for me until I looked it up.  He teased me that I wouldn't be able to sleep without telling him what I discovered; which was just enough of a dare that I clammed up in fits of giggling.  Then he squirreled the word "count" into every other sentence for the next two days. 

    My first foray into phrase origins came from a fellow word bird who explained the phrase "there's more than one way to skin a cat."  Kelly told me that cat was short for catfish, which is a prickly, difficult to handle fish. 

    ~  Why is *finishing* such a challenge to people like me?

    The kitchen project is 90% completed.  It is the matter of one evening or one afternoon to finish it.  Yet, I hold back.  Part of it is perfectionism: this isn't done to the highest standard, it never can be, so I am very hesitant to say with authority, "It's done!"  But mostly it is a character flaw.  It is fairly easy to begin a new project with enthusiasm and oomph;  it's a whole 'nother ball of wax to put it to bed.

    ~  Any ideas on managing email? 

    I manage my email the same way I grew up managing my bedroom: let things pile up and then deal with Mt. McKinley in one long cleaning frenzy.  Certain friends respond immediately to each email.  I bet they wake up at 5:00 a.m. every day too.  Others may never respond.  I fall in the middle.  I try to respond to each email but it could be weeks later.  And then I might send four or five emails replying to four or five former messages.   It must frustrate them and clog up their system.

    My son taught me to use folders and I have a folder for each sender/recipient.  These are where store emails I want to keep.  I don't move a message from the Inbox to personal folder until I've responded and there is no further action to take.  I've recently been working through my Sent folder which had over 1,000 items. I'm deleting ephemeral messages and distributing more substantive emails to personal folders so correspondence back and forth is in one place. 

    Neil Postman is right:  we're drowning in information.  How dost thou deal with such things, dear reader? Is there anyone out there who just deletes them ALL?  Yikes!

  • Going Somewhere, Limbo

    George Grant's book Going Somewhere makes a cameo appearance within itself (!), explaining its purpose .  Dan (Dante Alighieri Gylberd) is working on four manuscripts while he is traveling.

    The third manuscript was a contemplative novel.  Because it contained
    only two characters, a very limited frame of reference, and a strict linear
    plot, it was essentially a novel of ideas. There was hardly any dialogue,
    virtually no sensory descriptions, no significant character conflicts, and
    no mystery or intrigue.  More than anything, it was an anthology of
    cultural critiques set upon a modern stage after the pattern of Dante's
    Inferno or Thoreau's Walden. If Seinfeld had been a television show
    about nothing, this was a book about everything.  (p.26)         

    Anthology of cultural critiques.  That's it!

    So the story is simply the platform for the stuff Grant wants to write about.  And it is great stuff!  Books (50 are cited), bookstores (specific stores in different cities), newspapers, ethnic food (real restaurants still doing business), kitsch, architecture, work, worship, culture and brief local history of twelve American cities.

    If you know nothing about Dante's Inferno you need to begin by learning the famous opening line:

    Midway this way of life we're bound upon,    
    I woke to find myself in a dark wood,            
    Where the right road was wholly lost and gone.

    During a stint of jury duty, Bea reflects on how lost and fumbling many of us are:

    Bea was struck by how many of these jurors seemed to benefit
    little more than materially from their jobs. (snip) They were
    mercenaries, working merely for money with little or no
    sense of destiny, vision, or calling. (p.41)

    The emphasis on mercenaries is mine, but that popped out and bit me when I read it.  Oh, it is a sad commentary of our impoverished culture that for far too many people, life consists of dragging the body out of bed, numbly performing a task, guiding their cars through a snarl of traffic and the maze of drive-through windows, clicking the remote, falling asleep, cycling through the routine in a coma.

    Maybe that was why even she had taken to fantasizing
    about getting away from it all more and more lately--
    pondering what it might be life to actually do what
    Dan had always dreamed of doing: selling everything
    and heading off toward the blue horizon.  She read the
    wonderful     bestsellers of Frances Mayes and Peter Mayle--
    Mayes and her husband left their promising careers
    and moved to Italy, recounting their adventures
    in Under the Tuscan Sun, while Mayle and his wife
    had dropped out and moved to France, telling
    their tale in A Year in Provence.  She discovered
    that rather than inspiring her, they left her
    with a profound sense of yearning as well as
    a bit of melancholy over her maniac lifestyle. (p.60)

    Dan and his wife Bea (get it? Beatrice?!) decide to leave Limbo
    (humorously enough, Wheaton, IL) in their VW named Virgil and travel
    across the country on pilgrimage.  

  • One of My Heroes

    I fell in like with George Grant in 1995.

    My husband knows.  He likes him too. 

    1995 is the year we began to take World magazine.  Dr. Grant wrote book reviews in a column called Grant's Tomes.  His choice of words, his turns of phrase, his cadences - in short, his style - charmed and captivated me.  His themes of booklove, gardens, music, food, family and friends bounced around my soul making  happy echoes and haunting overtones.  He loved Scotland.  [really, I could end this essay right there.]

    Dr. Grant took me by the hand, so to speak, into a massive reading room.  As we moseyed by bookcases he began loading my arms with recommended books and filling my head with pithy quotes.  He taught me the lineup of his favorite big hitters: Chesterton, Chalmers, Buchan, Belloc, Kuyper, MacDonald, Lytle, Van Til, Roosevelt. He reviewed classics, ubiquitous and obscure.  Newly published books were spotlighted, but only the good ones.  He defended his practice of writing positive reviews. "I make no pretense of being a journalist or a professional critic of belles lettres,"  he wrote. "I am a reader who happens to enjoy sharing my favorite discoveries with others." I had imbibed the waters of popular Christian pulp fiction and was thirsty for a heartier ale.  Grant, more than any other living soul (with my beloved Latin teacher coming in a close second), influenced the choices, direction and purpose of my omnivorous reading.  

    I ripped those columns from their binding, snipped neatly around the borders, slipped them into page protectors and gripped them together in a binder labeled Book Reviews. 

    This overstuffed binder full of clippings (not just Dr. Grant's),

    crammed with book lists, loaded with scrawled notes on little bits of paper, interspersed with directions to used bookstores,

    tightened by essays on the bookish life, and containing a handwritten list written for me in answer to the question, 'where should I start reading?'  by the late Dr. Mary Jane Loso

    (the local university's English Chair extraordinaire) is my personal Fort Knox.  If I were my own heir, this is the item I'd covet, the one thing I would abandon all pleasant "no, you go first" murmurs for.  Each time I pick it up I comprehend more.  Grant reviewed Wendell Berry in 1996, but I didn't really meet Wendell Berry until 2006. 

    We went to several conferences where George Grant was a speaker.  My husband and I joined the asymmetrical semi-circle of people waiting for a word with the tall, bow-tied, bespectacled man close to our own age.  When it was my turn, I shook his hand and simply said, "Thank you. You've changed my life."    

    Some college friends of ours have recently moved from California to Franklin, Tennessee.  Our theological paths seemed parallel thirty years ago, but time has widened the differences. We gently recommended  Parish  Presbyterian where George Grant is pastoring, but haven't heard back.  Ain't no question about it: if we lived in Franklin, that would be our church.

    I picked up Grant's book Going Somewhere this week.  It is so jam-packed full of goodness, that my review will take several posts, starting tomorrow. Stay tuned.

  • The Bee

    The bee is more honored than other animals,
    not because she labors,
    but because she labors for others.

    ~ John Chrysostom (347-407)

  • Penny Plain

     

    The first book from PaperBackSwap arrived and has posed a perplexing problem. 

    This is 100 to 1 my favorite book to sit down and read in an evening or two.  It is a romance, but not at all the tawdry, gauzy stuff that is classified today as romance.  It is the kind of romance that C.S. Lewis would have enjoyed.  In my mind O. Douglas is a 20th century Jane Austen.

    O. Douglas is the pen name for Anna Buchan, the daughter of a Presbyterian minister and sister of John Buchan, a Scottish novelist and all around Renaissance man.  I used to call Penny Plain my favorite cotton candy book, but that is misleading.  It is sweet but substantial, soothing but strengthening -- a solid joy.  Literary and biblical allusions abound making it such a joy to re-read: Oh! now I get that one that slipped by me before. 

    Here are a few random quotes to give you an idea without giving away the story.

    She did not offer to help, for she knew that every
    man knows best how to pack his own books...

    You see, Biddy, I quite suddenly saw myself growing
    old, saw all the arid years in front of me, and saw that
    it was a very dreadful thing to grow old caring only for
    the things of time. It frightened me badly. I don't want
    to go in bondage to the fear of age and death. 
    I want to grow old decently,
    and I am sure one ought to begin
    quite early learning how.

    She is the most happy change from the ordinary, modern
    girl.  Her manners are delightful - not noisy, but frank and
    gay like a nice boy's. She neither falls into the Scylla of
    affection nor the Charybdis of off-handness.  She has been
    nowhere and seen very little; books are her world, and she
    talks of book-people as if they were everyday acquaintances.
    She adores Dr. Johnson and quotes him continually.

    He won't read a book that contains love-making
    or death-beds. 'Does anybody marry?' 
    'Does anybody die?'
    are his first questions about a book,
    so naturally his reading is much restricted.

    "It's a beastly business putting away a dog," said
    Lewis Elliot. "I always wish they had the same lease
    of life as we have.  Three score years and ten.
    And it's none too long for such faithful friends."

    What do I do with such a treasure?  The book is rare but not impossible to find. Fetchbook.info shows a few copies.  I'm thankful that this edition is large print.  I'll need that when I grow old.  In the meantime, I think I'll start a one book lending library.  If you would like to borrow this book to read (no due dates), please send me a message with your address.  I'll keep a list in my journal and send it out to you as it becomes available.  I'd love to share this treasure with as many as would like to read it. 

     

  • The Tasks of This Day

    Send me, O Lord, into the tasks of this day rejoicing.

    Teach me that I labor to Thee,
    that I eat and drink to Thy glory,
    that I think and plan to the ends
    which Thou hast laid before me.

    Do Thou strengthen me that I may
    become willing to sacrifice for others.

    Teach me to look upon my life today
    as given me to help my fellowmen.

    Let me see in my profession,
    in the need of those who depend on me,
    in the want and struggle of the world about me,
    my field for loving service.

    Remind me again that my life,
    my speech, my faith
    is nothing without love.

    Grant that I be ready to forgive,
    quick in sympathy,
    earnest in my rejoicing with those who are happy,
    and zealous in bearing the burdens of my fellow-men.

    In Jesus's name, Amen.

    ~ from the Lutheran Prayer Book

  • The Search for a Beautiful Life

    I remember with shamed face my attitude towards my bridal registry.  We were not china people at all.  So impractical!  So materialistic. So unnecessary.  So frou-frou.  It was stoneware for us.  Not local, hand-thrown pottery, just an ugly orange and yellow flower on a beige and brown background.  It was the 70s.  We had no patience with spending money on beautiful things.  "You can be just as hospitable with a paper plate as with a china plate."  Yep, those words came from my mouth.  True statement, but the problem was that I truly thought paper was more spiritual than china.   Now I shudder at the arrogance. 

    The times they are a changing.  Really, our minds are changing. 

    My mother in-law and I had our annual garage sale.  The sale this morning was slow, so I went around my MIL's neighborhood to the other 10-15 sales.   I bought a couple bags of books, 6 for a dollar, to post on PaperBackSwap.   Then I saw it.  A complete set of china in Christmas colors.  But there were only 8 place settings and we often have large gatherings for holiday meals.  I argued with myself about all the reasons not to get it and walked away.

    After the sale was over, I told Mom about the dishes. 

    "Oh," she sighed, "I've always thought it would be fun to have Christmas dishes, but at my age we're getting rid of stuff, not acquiring it ."

    "Talk me out of it," I challenged her.

    "Does the set have serving dishes?"

    "Yes, a bowl and a platter; it even has creamer and sugar bowl."

    "Where would you keep it?" she continued.

    "I just cleaned a space in the garage cupboards."

    "How often would you use them?"

    "They would be my everyday dishes starting the First Sunday of Advent. I'll use them through Christmas."

    "Let's go look at them."

    When we arrived her eyes got large.  "Oh my yes, they are lovely."

    Guess what?  The set, called Magnolia, includes two extra dinner plates!  We can easily have ten adults, and kids can use salad plates. The seller was asking $40.  I offered her my entire profit from my own garage sale, $27.  Sold! 

    The First Sunday of Advent is December 2.  I can't wait.

    ~     ~     ~   

    A platter I picked up for $4 with this tablecloth in mind.

    A 5x7 sized art book which I got for a quarter.

    ...because I especially loved this Degas.
     

    which will go up in my small laundry room!

    The longer I live the more beautiful life becomes.
    If you foolishly ignore beauty,
    you will soon find yourself without it.
    Your life will be impoverished.
    But if you invest in beauty,
    It will remain with you all the days of your life.

    ~ Frank Lloyd Wright

  • Fine Art Friday & Grandparent Names


    Cottage Vincent van Gogh

    I'm doing a joint garage sale with my MIL today.  I had an oversized book of van Gogh prints in the sale for $2.  I started looking at it and pulled it off the table, putting it back in my stack.  I used to believe I didn't like van Gogh, and it's true there are some fractured paintings not to my taste, to quote my friend Dana (I miss you!).  But this Cottage just draws me in and seems to have a very long story to tell.  My house is small, but if I have to I will frame some of the pictures and hang them in the garage. 

    ~     ~     ~

    I was watching my grandson Gavin one day when his other grandpa dropped something off at our house. 

    "Hey Gavin," I called, "look who's here!"

    He came running and grinned the cutest grin and said, "DaddyDad!" 

    That's how I discovered Gavin's name for his other Grandpa.  He could never master Granddad...it came out DaddyDad.  So here's the lineup for the little guy, excluding the massive list of aunts and uncles:

    Daddy and Mommy

    DaddyDad and Grammy (my DIL's folks - I can't wait to give her a Grammy Award)

    Papa and Nana (that's Curt and me)

    Grandpa and Ma'am (the great grandparents)

    Granddad and Grammy (the other great grandparents who live out of town)

    It's silly, but names for grandparents fascinate me.  Some, like Opa, come from national origins.  Others, like my oldest brother, Grumpy, come from the limitations of a child's speech.  I remember recently when George Grant became a grandpa, he was amazed at how many choices there are in Grandma names and how few in Grandpa names. 

    I would love to hear from you, lurkers and all, either what you called your grandparents or what your grandparents call you, OR what names you've heard which delight or tickle you.

  • Medieval Movie Roundup

    Back in March, I wrote about a list of films with a medieval context.  Here are reviews of the ones we watched, our favorites listed first.

    A Knights Tale

    This was the last one we watched and, hands down, the favorite of the males of the house.  It corresponded with our reading of the Canterbury Tales.  It is goofy, predictable, and anachronistic (the opening scene has medieval crowds doing the pound-pound-clap to Queen's We Will Rock Them).  But it was fun and funny.  Chaucer is a clever character we meet walking down a path buck naked (from the back) because he has gambled his clothes away.  Brief nakedness and all, it was one of only two movies which did not require fast forwarding through scenes.  Guys and gals will enjoy this. ☺☺☺☺☻

    Ran

    (pronounced ron or rahn)  This is King Lear in a Japanese context.  It is a big movie, epic, and captivating.  If you have read King Lear you must watch this.  If you haven't read King Lear, you'd learn the story in a beautiful setting.  Like most of the movies on this list, the pace is slow.  There were some incredible horses galloping down the mountain sequences that almost match the scope of LOTR.  We FF through one scene. I recommend this for drama, cinematography, acting, and exposure to medieval Japanese culture. ☺☺☺☺☻

    The Name of the Rose

    Sean Connery, a period piece, a mystery...this was a stark, beautiful movie.  I had read Umberto Eco's book a few summers back so I knew what to expect.  It may be harder to comprehend without that background.  I was very grateful for the tip to FF through a kitchen scene.  My trigger finger was ready.  It appeared without much warning.  Besides that, some viewers might not want to see dead bodies in vats of liquid or at the bottom of a cliff.  There are several dead bodies in this mystery.  ☺☺☺☻☻

    The Seventh Seal

    The cinematography in Ingmar bergman's 1957 film reminded me of an Ansel Adams photograph.  Not just because they are both black and white: the play of light and shadow, the focus of the camera let you know a master was behind the lens.  You must be a patient viewer to get through this snail pace, contemplative film.  A bogus miracle worker has some funny lines, i.e.  "Whichever way we turn, our backside's behind us."  In one sense I was glad to have watched this just because it is a classic.  ☺☺☺☻☻

    Black Robe

    This movie combined highly excellent and ghastly elements together.  I could not recommend it.  The cinematography and music are glorious.  Sweeping vistas and  long distance river shots with full orchestra scores provided moments of sublime pleasure.  But it was not worth all the other stuff you had to wade through. Every time the camera was inside a tepee was reason to FF.  And the message of the movie bothered me.  The missionary was a bungling, ignorant fool.  The mission was a failure.  The final scene of death and misery seemed to underline a hopeless, nihilistic scorn.  ☺☻☻☻☻