Month: March 2009

  • Third World, Cheerios and Little Things

    Here are a few tasty morsels that I’ve relished in my reading:

    The world came apart into three segments –
    the “First World: of free market trading nations,
    the “Second World,” or Communist bloc,
    and the economically underdeveloped
    but politically emerging “Third World.

    ~ from Coming Apart, Coming Together  by Edward Kantowicz

    [Do you know how many years I have wondered
    about Third World countries?  If they are Third,
    who is First and Second?  Never had it make sense
    until this week. This is a ta-da! aha! wow! moment.]

    ~     ~     ~

    The name Cerignola meant land of cereals,
    and it was thus the origin of the word “Cheerios.”
    It grew hard wheat, the best in Italy and possibly
    the best in the world for making pasta.
    The Romans stored the wheat in the ground,
    silos in reverse.

    ~ from The Wild Blue by Stephen E. Ambrose

    [Think c as in ciao!  I had to Google Earth Cerignola.
    It is just south of the the spur on the back of the boot.
    I zoomed in, trying to find the Roman holes in the
    ground, but, alas, they are too small. ]

    ~     ~     ~

    A little thing is a little thing,
    but faithfulness in little things is a very great thing.

    from A Chance to Die, The Life and Legacy of Amy Carmichael,
    by Elisabeth Elliot

    [How encouraging is that?  I'll write a full review when I finish.]

    The photo reflects my craving for spring.
    We’ve awoken to snow for the last ten (?) days.
    These are “four season days”. 
    If you don’t like the weather, just wait an hour or two.
    It will change.

  • The Invisible Heart, An Economic Romance

     

    “In popular culture, business is always portrayed
    as monstrous because that’s what sells.  People like
    feeling victimized so that they can hate their oppressor.
    But monsters don’t often succeed in business.
    The sweeter competitor offering good service
    and low prices is a better bet.
    There’s an invisible heart at the core of the marketplace,
    serving the customer and doing it joyously.”

    “After all,” continued Sam,
    “under capitalism, man oppresses man.
    But under socialism,”-here Sam paused-
    “it’s the other way around.”

    In The Invisible Heart: An Economic Romance romance takes back seat while economics drives.  Laura Silver, an English Literature teacher is in turn intrigued, repelled, astonished, and ultimately wooed by Sam Gordon, a free-market libertarian who teaches at the same school. 

    George Will calls this book “Delightfully didactic.”   It is 100% didactic (instructive) but is clearly delightful.  If economics has intimidated you, this is a book to read.  The book was fun, engaging and winsome.   

    “Welcome to the wonderful world of economics.
    Everything precious in life has a cost.”
        

  • Fine Art Friday – Sir George Clausen


    The Girl at the Gate, 1889


    Head of a Young Girl, 1884

    Gathering Potatoes, 1887

    Aren’t these magnificent?
    Sir. George. Clausen. 
    My new favorite artist.

    Here’s some wonderful synthesis:
    I’ve been listening to Barbara Tuchman’s
    The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War, 1890-1914   
    (Tuchman is my new favorite historian…close your ears David McCullough!).
    How lovely to focus on art made in the same time frame.

    Come back next Friday.
    There are many more treats waiting.

    Sir.
    George.
    Clausen!

  • Bibliolexicon

    This fun list is taken from a list found in A Passion for Books : A Book Lover’s Treasury of Stories, Essays, Humor, Love and Lists on Collecting, Reading, Borrowing, Lending, Caring for, and Appreciating Books.  This book is warmer than a down comforter, cuddlier than a teddy bear, more fun than a trampoline, and meets all the daily minimum requirements for your vitamins. 

    Bibliolexicon

    Bibliobibule          One who reads too much
    Biblioclast            One who tears pages from or otherwise destroys books
    Bibliographe         One who describes books
    Biblioklept            One who steals books
    Bibliomane           One who accumulates books indiscriminately
    Bibliomaniac         A book lover gone mad
    Bibliophage           One who eats or devours books
    Bibilophile             One who loves books
    Bibliophobe           One who fears books
    Bibliopole              One who sells books
    Biblioriptos            One who throws books around
    Bibliosopher          One who gains wisdom from books
    Bibliotaphe            One who buries or hides books

       

  • The Herb of Grace

    After Hitler, Churchill, D-Day, Band of Brothers, Pearl Harbor, staggering holocaust memoirs — heaviness and grief — it was time for a change.  My son is hacking, coughing, aching … and just needs to rest.  I’m on the edge [insert well-placed sniffle, cough-cough] and want to land on the healthy side of the equation.  This is the one day this week I am not obligated to go anywhere.  Melting snow, crackling fire, a pot of tea…what to read?

    My friend Lynne suggested Elizabeth Goudge.  I haven’t yet read The Herb of Grace, purchased at Oxfam (charity shop) last year in England for £1.  It is such a treat, such a balm, such a comfort.  I’m too impatient to wait until I’m done with the book to write a full review.  One must share quotes.  I found the attitude to telephones fascinating in light of our recent pop culture technology discussions.

    And she [Sally, the protagonist] vastly preferred writing a letter and walking with it to the post to using the telephone and hearing with horror her voice committing itself ot things whe would never have dreamed of doing if she’d had the time to think.

    All the water-sounds are unforgettable, he said gently.  The best sound of all, I think, is the sound of ripples slapping against the hull of a boat.

    And the smell of Damerosehay was just the same: the mingled scent of wood smoke, flowers, furniture polish, dogs and oil lamps.

    She [Grandmother] had always been beautiful, was beautiful now, and had every intention of remaining beautiful until the end of her days, and she did not in the least begrudge either the spending of a great deal of time and trouble upon the outer facade of beauty, or the curtailing of her activities by the elimination of those which she could no longer accomplish with grace. It seemed to her children and grandchildren that she did not mind growing old.  There was nothing of desperation in the firm hold she kept upon her beauty, it was rather that she appeared to be taking good care of something entrusted to her care, but did not seem to regard it as an integral part of her.  [Don't you know an older lady, always put together like this?] 

    Lucilla knew always, and Nadine knew in her more domesticated moments, that it was home-making that mattered.  Every home was a brick in the great wall of decent living that men erected over and over again as a bulwark against the perpetual flooding in of evil.  But women made the bricks, and the durableness of each civilisation depended upon their quality; and it was no good weakening oneself for the brick-making by thinking too much about the flood.

    Her feeling for her mother-in-law swung always between reverence and exasperation, according as the selflessness of Grandmother’s autocracy, or the autocracy of her selflessness, was uppermost.

    Her [Grandmother's] voice was full of distress.  She hated these modern inventions, telephone and wireless; they did nothing but make a noise and pour out information one was generally better without.

    Lady Eliot is afraid you will not be willing to live in London?  ~ I’ll be perfectly willing, Madam.  I did tell Lady Eliot, when she asked me, that I liked the country best; but of course wherever the children are I will make myself contented. [Jill interviewing for Nannie position, emphasis mine.]

    This book was published in 1948.  It’s gentle, unsentimental narrative seems appropriate post-WWII literature. Elizabeth Goudge.  A light but nourishing read.  [Don't get confused: Eileen Goudge, Elizabeth's niece, writes romance novels.  I know nothing about their quality.] 

    Other Elizabeth Goudge books I’ve enjoyed: The Little White Horse, Green Dolphin Street, Linnets and Valerians,  The Scent of Water, The Dean’s Watch.  

         

  • All But My Life & The Hours After

       

    All But My Life begins at 9:10 a.m. on September 3, 1939, when the Nazis invaded the Weissmann’s home town of Bielitz, Poland.  Immediately her family lost any sense of safety and security.  About the beginning of October there was a timid knock at the door.  It was not the ominous thump of the Gestapo, but a hesitant, tired signal.  It is strange how many feelings a knock can express, if you listen carefully. The book chronicles the progressive losses which accumulate one after another after another through the days after the end of the war.  It is staggering.  Layer by layer, everything Gerda treasures is stripped away. 

    When she is liberated the only valuable thing she owns are the ski boots her father insisted she wear on the June day three years ago when Gerda was transferred out of the ghetto to a labor camp.  Her love and admiration of her older brother Artur, made his loss one of the heaviest of all. 

    At our final parting, when I was fifteen and my brother nineteen, he asked me to be brave and take care of our parents.  My promise to him was my most sacred vow.  And during the years that followed, I did the best I could–always, I suppose, in the hope that he would praise me when we next met.  How could I have imagined that on a snowy winter’s night many decades later, in a suite at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York, Prime Minister Menachem Begin of Israel would express the fulfillment of part of that irrational hope when he took me into his arms and said, “I have waited so long to meet Arthur’s little sister.” As I wept, he stroked my hair and said, “You have been very brave.”  He had never met my brother but had read what I wrote about him, and with uncanny sensitivity he had identified with us; thus he gave me the praise I had hoped to hear from my brother.

    Gerda’s story continues with The Hours After: Letters of Love and Longing in War’s Aftermath.   The first American soldier to see Gerda on Liberation Day was Kurt Klein.  In spite of her filthy, broken down, ematiated figure, there was a spark in Gerda which immediately attracted Kurt.  A Lieutenant in the Army, Klein was also  Jewish, born and raised in Germany before he emigrated to America.  Two months after meeting her and the evening before he was shipped to another location, Kurt asked Gerda, alone in the world, to marry him.  Their letters during their year of separation before they could marry form the framework of this book. 

    This book grew on me, the second half more absorbing than the first.  Gerda’s daily letters offer a mosaic of life in Munich immediately after the war.  How can she reconcile the kindness of her landlords with the fact that they were Nazi party members since 1933?  Her plight underscored the difficulty displaced persons had in proving who they were, getting visas, with so little documentation available.  Gerda worked for a while with the Bavarian Aid Society.  Her descriptions of the people seeking help are either full of sorrow or ironic humor. 

    Because Kurt and Gerda are both so articulate, their letters, which they translated for the book, are rich reading. They cover daily life, problem solving, hope for their future, acknowledgment of painful realities, yearning for the miraculous appearance of a family member, and, at their core, a deep love for one another.   

    Thanks to my friend Frankie (who lived in London during the war) for turning me on to Gerda Weissmann Klein’s books.        
     

  • Fine Art Friday – Sir George Clausen

    Sir George Clausen  is a delightful discovery of my week.
    If you are a fan of Bouguereau’s art, you will like Clausen.
    He studied under Bouguereau.
    Does he remind you of Millet? 
    Remember my Millet in March fiasco two years ago? (giggle)

    I haven’t been able to find the print I wanted to highlight,
    French Peasant Girls Praying.

    But here are three paintings to enjoy this Friday.
     


    Straw Plaiter, 1883


    Brown Eyes, 1891
    This could be a portrait of my niece.
    You can see the impressionist influence in this one.


    Head of a French Peasant Woman
    [Her hands, particularly her little finger strike me.]

    Clausen’s forté was landscape and peasant art.
    He believe that the subject of landscape art
    wasn’t the landscape,
    but the light. 

    I could do a month of Clausens.  They are lovely.

  • Thankful, Spring Edition

    photo credit: dharperino (my brother)

    Thankful, Spring Edition

    Fair sunshine and small flecks of green,
    revealing treasures in the ground,
    an opened window, freshened air,
    the deep inhaling of this grace.

    Sorrow distilled,
    ache and agony
    poured in one vessel,
    yearning for relief;
    You who gather tears in a bottle,
    hear our prayer.

    For reunions in the produce section,
    full-exposure answers to politely worded questions,
    so satisfying an exchange
    that we wonder why
    we ever let our friendship
    drift…

    For a cataract of books,
    flooding my shelves,
    swamping my senses.
    I splash
    and sing
    and scoop them up,
    drenched in delight,
    mesmerized by the mist
    of so many nourishing words.

    Balsamic vinegar,
    fresh-squeezed lime,
    tangy smooth yogurt,
    crumbled cashews,
    aroma of cilantro,
    pan-fried asparagus,
    savory lamb,
    sweet oranges,
    a cup of cold water.

    For a well-placed chord or two,
    a progression that knocks down
    any preconceived notions,
    a new way of hearing
    a familiar tune.

    For nicknames and
    the way they worm their way
    through apathy and passivity.
    The current that keeps cracklin’
    when I hear his voice say
    “Hey, Babe!”

    The foreshadow of Easter
    in the springtime cycles:
    awakening,
    arising,
    blooming,
    growing,
    lightening,
    warming,
    returning,
    rejoicing.

    The song of the crocus and daffodil,
    the squeaks and chirps and outside noises,
    The solid joy of this abiding truth:
    Winter is past.
    Death is dead.

    Joy to the world!

    ~

    “Ten thousand thousand precious gifts
    my daily thanks employ;
    nor is the least a cheerful heart
    that tastes those gifts with joy.”*

    * Joseph Addison

     More Thankful posts.

  • St. Patrick’s Prayer

    Christ be with me, Christ within me,
    Christ behind me, Christ before me,
    Christ beside me, Christ to win me,
    Christ to comfort and restore me.
    Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
    Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
    Christ in hearts of all that love me,
    Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.
    ~  St. Patrick

    Happy St. Patrick’s day!  What a man.  What a blessing.
    Patrick, Brigit, Athanasius, Columba, Augustine, Ambrose….
    some of my heroes, dead and gone, still livin’ on.  

  • Inventory and Evaluate

    As we approach the twenty-first century,
    popular culture is taking the lead
    in establishing a sensibility,
    not of intense involvement,
    but of cool detachment.

    ~  Kenneth A. Myers, AGCaBSS

    sen•si•bil•i•ty   The quality of being affected by changes in the environment
                      Acute perception or responsiveness toward something.
    I can’t forget the frustration I felt whenever I talked to a certain childhood friend.  She never really focused on my eyes, but looked hither and yon.  Dialog was always staccato as she interrupted me and interrupted herself – on the slightest pretext.  I never felt like she was actually listening to me.  For me, my friend is the prototype of the detached style of communicating which, today, is the norm.  Face to face conversations are punctured by incoming text and incoming calls, our own personal version of “breaking news.” 

    Sensibility is the key word in Myers’ final chapter, Where Do We Go From Here?  We are urged to not be dominated by the sensibility of popular culture (self-centered, obsessed with the new, immediate, sensuous, spectacular) but to build a culture of transcendence (truth, goodness, beauty, permanence, long-term rewards). 

    Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

    But what does that look like?  Because these are wisdom issues there isn’t a clear-cut method of evaluation.  Wouldn’t it be nice if we could have a weekly pop culture weigh-in that would indicate our over-consumption? Even that wouldn’t measure how we are being affected by the technology or if we were deliberate or thoughtless in our engagement.   

    Like so many areas in life, we need reminders.  It was a wake-up call for my husband and me on our last family backpack that 85% of the conversation revolved around quoting movies and television shows.  Where we used to sit around the table and talk (!) we often stand around the screen and show each other the latest You-Tube wonder.  We voice our concerns to our grown children; they make their own choices.  

    Our rule with television has always been that people are more important than programs.  If someone stopped by for a visit, the TV went off and we focused on people.  What message does it send when you visit someone, they look over and say hello and then turn back to the tube?  I think we need to train our children in the etiquette of cell phones.  Do you take a call anytime?  How can we use technology in a way that doesn’t separate real life relationships?

    Here is my own pop culture checkup:

    •  Blogging  I started blogging in 2005 to stay in touch with my son at college.  Blogging in 2009 has nothing much to do with communicating with my family (I think my brother is the only family who might read it); but I enjoy the connections across the country.  Has my family benefited or suffered with my blogging time?  I am guilty of neglect.
    •  Facebook  I joined Facebook because that is the medium my kids prefer to communicate the stuff of their lives. Face it: I like Facebook!  It can be trite, it can be banal.  But I do like the way I can check in my friends overseas, see pictures of my grandson, eavesdrop on clever repartee and see small segments of friends’ lives.  It eats time like Godzilla eats women.  (does Godzilla eat women?  I really don’t know!)
    •  Movies and DVDs  I love Netflix.  It allows me to be more deliberate in my viewing (I detest roaming the aisles of Blockbuster wondering what to watch) and gives me access to films which are out of the mainstream, particularly indies and foreign films.  I find it really helps to dovetail our movies with our studies.  In the winter we get one-at-a-time unlimited; in the summer we switch to the $4.99 plan. 
    •  Telephone  We have Caller ID but still take blocked calls.  Getting on the National Do Not Call list was the best phone decision we’ve had.  We also have Call Waiting, but it serves to tell us someone else tried to call.  I call back after the current phone call is completed.  We decide to take or not take a call during dinner on a case-by-case basis. 
    •  Magazines  I’ve become more suspicious of general magazines.  We take World and Cooking Light.  There are several I would enjoy but their ephemeral nature and my to-be-read pile push me toward books.
    •  Newspaper  If I lived in a metropolitan area, I could very easily see myself immersed in the daily reading of the paper.  The ephemeral nature applies here, too. Our local paper lets me know who died and what’s on sale and can be read in ten minutes. 
    •  Television  If I wasn’t married to my husband this would be a problem.  If it didn’t take up so much time, I could lose myself in the baseball season.  I really hate being in homes where the TV is on during every waking hour.  I cringe at the thought of TV being the default noise in the home. 
    •  Radio  I enjoy streaming classical stations on the internet.  I could devote hours to Pandora or magnatune.com.  When we take car trips we usually listen to a bit of talk radio. 
    •  Cell Phone  It’s become a badge of honor, a matter of pride to see how long we can go without getting one.  The great thing about this medium, unlike Facebook, is that I can connect with people with cell phones without needing one myself.  I can think of a dozen great applications for cell phones, they just don’t apply to our family.  If we had a daughter driving, she would have a cell phone faster than you can say Verizon Wireless. 

    I don’t expect your list to remotely resemble mine.  But I do believe it is a good thing to think over the reasons why you do or don’t use the technology available to us.  Inventory and evaluate.  One thing is clear to me.  If I don’t want to be distracted, I need to turn the computer off.  We use the computer for school, but there is much we can do before we turn it on.  I lose/loose my focus too easily with it. 

    There are many spin-offs of this discussion.  How important is it to have a pulse on popular culture?  Is it necessary to read best-sellers and watch top shows in order to have “talking points” with our neighbors?  Where is the balance?