E and I went to hear Max McLean give a dramatic presentation of the first 22 chapters of Genesis at Gloria Dei tonight. It was very good. It made me want to memorize scripture and also made me want to read aloud to the children with more drama and expression. When I came home, we did read from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and I and M went to bed wanting more. For my wish list: a CD of Max McLean reading Psalms and Proverbs in the NIV.

I’ve been reading about Anne Bronte (today is her birthday) here, and I found out several things I didn’t know. The author compares her writing several times to that of Jane Austen–less passionate and romantic, more calm and insightful than the novels of Charlotte and Emily. Since I’ve read Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights and never read anything by Anne Bronte, I didn’t know her writing was so different. Also, Charlotte Bronte apparently didn’t care for Jane Austen and so really didn’t appreciate her sister Anne’s novels either. Maybe I should read The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and see what I think. And Anne was only 28 years old when she died. What a short life!

I’m reading Peggy Noonan’s book A Heart, a Cross, and a Flag: America Today. The book is a collection of her columns from The Wall Street Journal–mostly those written after September 11, 2001. However, I’ve been most impressed with one essay written by Ms. Noonan before 9/11; it seems so prescient. She wrote this in 1998:

“We live in a world of three billion men and hundreds of thousands of nuclear bombs, missiles, warheads. It’s a world of extraordinary germs that can be harnessed and used to kill whole populations, a world of extraordinary chemicals that can be harnessed and used to do the same. Three billion men, and it takes only half a dozen bright and evil ones to harness and deploy.
What are the odds it will happen? Put it another way: what are the odds it will not? Low. Nonexistent, I think.
When you consider who is gifted and crazed with rage . . .When you think of the terrorist places and the terrorist countries . . . Who do they hate most? The Great Satan, the United States. What is its most important place? Some would say Washington. I would say the great city of the United States is the great city of the world, the dense ten-mile-long island called Manhattan . . .”

How could she predict all that three years before it happened?

Today is Moliere the French playwright’s birthday. No, I don’t know how to make the little mark above the e; I don’t even know what it’s called. Anyway, here are two quotations from Moliere that I found especially for your encouragement and edification.

“Of all the noises known to man, opera is the most expensive.”

“When someone blunders, we say that he makes a misstep. Is it then not clear that all the ills of mankind, all the tragic misfortunes that fill our history books, all the political blunders, all the failures of the great leaders have arisen merely from a lack of skill in dancing?”

It’s a good thing that ALL of my girls are learning to dance.

Today is Edmund Burke’s birthday (b.1729, d. 1797) He was a British politician, and his most famous speech here in the US was his Speech on Conciliation with the American Colonies. Famous quotations (not necessarily from that speech) are:

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.

Never despair; but if you do, work on in despair.

Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.

I finished reading The Last Jihad. There’s a sequel out in bookstores, The Last Days.

Today, according to my handy, dandy Booklover’s Day Book, is Lord Acton’s birthday. I had heard of him, but couldn’t place him. It turns out that he’s the one said this: “Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end…liberty is the only object which benefits all alike, and provokes no sincere opposition…The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to to govern. Every class is unfit to govern…Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
I had never heard the part about “every class is unfit to govern.” I like that. We are unfit to rule over others for an indefinite period of time. After a while, we do get power-mad. We enjoy playing God. Acton was a historian and also a book-lover. This website says that he owned over 60.000 books when he died, and many of them had passages marked that he thought were significant. I thought I had a lot of books!

I’m still reading Guns of August, but it’s on hold for a day or two while I read The Last Jihad by Joel Rosenberg. Written after 9/11 and before Operation Iraqi Freedom, the book is somewhat prophetic fiction about an attack on the world’s leaders by Saddam and his henchmen. It’s also sort of eerie because in stead of being what could happen, it’s what could have happened if we hadn’t invaded Iraq. I’m also reading The Essential 55: An Award-Winning Educator’s Rules for Discovering the Successful Student in Every Child. The first rule is: “When responding to any adult, you must answer by saying “Yes, M’am” or “No, Sir.” Just nodding your head or saying any other form of yes or no is not acceptable.” I LOVE IT. We’re going to work on this all week at my house, and then we’ll go to Rule #2 about making eye contact. If my children only knew how impressed everyone (possible employers, teachers, authority figures) would be if they followed this simple rule all the time! And then if they could learn to look directly at someone who is speaking to them or to whom they are speaking, they’d almost be set for life.

Yesterday was Tolkien’s birthday–gives me another excuse to talk hobbits and Middle Earth.

“I don’t know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.”
J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“It’s a dangerous business going out your front door.”
J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.”
J. R. R. Tolkien

“This is the hour of the Shire-folk, when they arise from their quiet fields to shake the towers and the counsels of the Great.” -Elrond

“My friends, you had horses, and deeds of arms, and the free fields; but she, born in the body of a maid, had a spirit and courage at least the match of yours… who knows what she spoke to the darkness, alone, in the bitter watches of the night, when all her life seemed shrinking, and the walls of her bower closing in about her, a hutch to trammel some wild thing in?”-Gandalf

“…And now leave me in peace for a bit! I don’t want to answer a string of questions while I’m eating. I want to think!”
“Good Heavens!” said Pippin. “At breakfast?”

“I will take the ring, though I do not know the way.” -Frodo

2004–Flylady’s motto for this year is “less is more in 2004.” De-cluttering our home is one of my goals for the year–in fifteen minute increments, of course. R is reading Euripides’ Trojan Women. I remember being told back in the 70’s when I read the play that it was an “anti-war play.” That was during Vietnam when everybody who was anti-war latched onto anything that they thought supported their position. I’m not sure Euripides was saying “make peace, not war,” though, as much as he was just showing how sad and horrible war is.

The other children are watching Pirates of the Carribbean–again. We’re going to have to hide that movie; this is the third time for them to watch it since Thanksgiving. I wonder what lessons they’re learning from it?

Today is the birthday of Arthur Hugh Clough (1819-1861). I remember him from my Victorian poetry class. He was a firend of Matthew Arnold, a student at Rugby which was run by Matthew’s father Thomas, and he was “an epitome of the sincere Victorian who abandoned orthodox religion, renounced his childhood beliefs.” He wrote this rather cynical poem that I remember reading in my class:

The Latest Decalogue

Thou shalt have one God only; who
Would be at the expense of two?
No graven images may be
Worshipp’d, except the currency:
Swear not at all; for, for thy curse
Thine enemy is none the worse:
At church on Sunday to attend
Will serve to keep the world thy friend:
Honour thy parents; that is, all
From whom advancement may befall:
Thou shalt not kill; but need’st not strive
Officiously to keep alive:
Do not adultery commit;
Advantage rarely comes of it:
Thou shalt not steal; an empty feat,
When it’s so lucrative to cheat:
Bear not false witness; let the lie
Have time on its own wings to fly:
Thou shalt not covet; but tradition
Approves all forms of competition.

As I look at it again, it seems applicable, especially the part about murder. Let’s not go to any great pains to keep anyone alive whose “quality of life” is likely to be poor in our estimation.