Archive | December 2004

Abigail–A Father’s Joy

I found a link to this story in the Houston Chronicle (thanks to Daryl Cobranchi at Homeschool and Other Stuff) about a young couple from Atascocita and their very special baby girl, Abigail. Abigail was born September 22, 2003 with a portion of her brain protruding from her skull; the condition is called encephalocele, and it’s fairly rare and usually fatal. The parents, Jonathan and Elizabeth Rugulieski, are both graduates of homeschools, and both exhibit a maturity not found in mnay couples twice their age.

The Ruguleiskis credit home-schooling for the maturity others see. Jonathan finished high school early and completed one semester at Kingwood College before Abigail’s birth; he hopes to return to college soon.
Elizabeth says spending so much time with her mother helped her to grow up. “My mom was like a best friend. Instead of her coming down to my level, I went up to her level.”

That’s where they came from. Then, there’s this quote that tells where the Ruguleiskis are now:

“He’s my best friend,” Elizabeth says of her husband.
Jonathan nods. “We believe there’s nothing we couldn’t handle together,” he says. “There were a lot of hard times, but it was very minor compared to the good times.”

Somebody ‘Splain

Dec5

Two of the offspring and I went to our favorite hangout, Barnes and Noble, this afternoon. I found the following books in one particular section where I was browsing:

Confessions of a College Freshman by Zach Arrington
Creating Money by Samantha Stevens (On the back of the book the author was described as “a trance channeller, tarot and aura reader.”)
Autobiography of Malcolm X by Alex Haley
Angels and Demons by Dan Brown (author of The DaVinci Code)
Jewish Displaced Persons in Camp Bergen Belsen (I really think this one was misshelved, but it was there.)
The Act of Marriage by Tim LaHaye
Caring for Aged Loved Ones (published by Focus on the Family)
Courting Disaster by Pat Robertson (about the Supreme Court)
Illuminata by Marianne Williamson
Christian Family Guide to Parenting Toddlers
Christian Family Guide to Surviving Divorce

What do all these books have in common? What section of the bookstore was I looking through?
If you guessed “Christian Inspiration,” you would be, amazingly, right. Now I thought about accusing B&N of creating a Christian ghetto for books written from a Christian perspective, no matter what the subject. I was even more convinced of the segregation of books with a Christian worldview when I checked out the “Self-Improvement” section and found these books:

My Grandfather’s Blessings by Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D. (The grandfather of the title was an orthodox Jewish rabbi and student of the Kabbalah.)
Dianetics by L. Ron Hubbard
The Book of Secrets by Deepak Chopra

But there were no self-help books from a Christian perspective that I could find. So we have a “Christian ghetto” for Christian books—or rather for books that are perceived to be Christian. When I look again at the first list of “Christian Inspiration,” I note that several of the books are not Christian at all. No, I don’t think it’s a big conspiracy to protect the pagans from Christianity and infiltrate the Christian world with “aura readers” and Da Vinci codes. I do think that B&N doesn’t “get religion” any better than the mainstream media does. And I do wonder why they can’t shelve the parenting toddlers book from a Christian publisher with the rest of the parenting books, Pat Robertson’s book on the Supreme Court with the other books about American government or current issues, and the aura reader’s book with the rest of the nut cases. Whoops, sorry about that last suggestion. Creating Money belongs in the financial section, of course.
Or alternately, (although it’s not the best solution), B&N could put only Christian books in the “Christian Inspiration” section. I fear that policy would require a level of discernment that’s not easily found in the average bookstore employee.
Next time we visit the bookstore: Semicolon checks out the “Christian Fiction” section of Barnes and Noble to determine whether these fiction books would actually contaminate the “Fiction” section.

Christina Georgina Rossetti

Dec5

Poet Christina Rossetti was born in London December 5, 1830. She was homeschooled, devoutly Anglican, and she never married. Her brother, Dante Gabriel Rossetti was both a poet and a painter. Together with William Morris, John Ruskin, William Holman Hunt, and others, Christina and Dante Gabriel Rossetti were leaders in what came to be called the Pre-Raphelite movement. The Pre-Raphaelites were concerned with medievalism, religious symbolism, and passion and realism in art. I think Eldest Daughter could have been a Pre-Raphaelite.

A Christmas Carol
by Christina Georgina Rossetti

In the bleak mid-winter
Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak mid-winter
Long ago.

Our God, heaven cannot hold Him,
Nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away
When He comes to reign:
In the bleak mid-winter
A stable-place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty
Jesus Christ.

Enough for Him whom cherubim
Worship night and day,
A breastful of milk
And a mangerful of hay;
Enough for Him whom angels
Fall down before,
The ox and ass and camel
Which adore.

Angels and archangels
May have gathered there,
Cherubim and seraphim
Thronged the air,
But only His mother
In her maiden bliss
Worshipped the Beloved
With a kiss.

What can I give Him,
Poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd
I would bring a lamb;
If I were a wise man
I would do my part, –
Yet what I can, I give Him,
Give my heart.

Birthdays Commemorated by Me and by Others

Dec1

There were lots of great authors’ birthdays this week that I just couldn’t get around to memorializing.

C.S. Lewis, b. 11/29/1898.
Louisa May Alcott, b. 11/29/1832 Her best books are Eight Cousins and its sequel Rose in Bloom, by the way IMHO.
Madeleine L’Engle, 11/29/1918 I really should have blogged about this one. I really like Madeleine L’engle, especially her books The Love Letters (out of print) and A Severed Wasp. I’m planning on reading A Wrinkle in Time to the children as soon as we finish Johnny Tremain
Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens), b. 11/30/1835
Winston Churchill, b. 11/30/1874.
Jonathan Swift, b. 11/30/1667 Swift should be recognized for writing the essay A Modest Proposal in which he proposes that the poor of Ireland eat their excess children so as to put an end to their poverty. Unfortunately, I am told that some college students who read this proposal in these benighted times do not understand that it is satire and that JS was not seriously advocating the wholesale slaughter of infants for the convenience and enrichment of their parents.
L.M. Montgomery, b. 11/30/1874 Montgomery, of course, wrote the beloved Anne of Green Gables and seven more Anne books in addition to three books about another heroine, Emily of New Moon and various and sundry other books–all of which are favorites among the females around here. Eldest Daughter tried to get her dad to read Anne of Green Gables, but he never quite got into it.
Finally, for today, the author is one of my three favorite mystery writers. (The other two are Dame Agatha and Dorothy Sayers.) I think he’s the best American mystery writer, creator of that dynamic duo, Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin. Nero is a 300+ pound genius, and Archie is his legman. Nero is a great detective, but he needs Archie to run errands since The Big Man seldom leaves his brownstone in New York City. The thirty-one Nero Wolfe novels and the multiple short stories are just pure fun–no socially redeeming value at all. If you’ve never read any of these books, I’d suggest you start with Prisoner’s Base or The Mother Hunt, a couple of my favorites.