Archive | February 2005

You Shall Not Murder, Exodus 20:13

Feb16

I will never, ever forget the story of a young black girl I met at an abortion clinic in Los Angeles one Saturday morning. I was protesting near the clinic when I saw the young lady approach the front door. I talked to her, and tried to encourage her to put her baby up for adoption. She said it was too late to make that decision. The young lady then told me her story. She said she had gone into the clinic that Thursday. The doctor had injected something into her womb. For three days the baby KICKED AND GASPED FOR LIFE. On the third day, the baby died. She told me that when the baby expired, it was devastating to her. She also told me she would never ever be able to overcome the experience.
I asked the girl why she chose to go through the process. She said she was encouraged to do this by her mother and boyfriend. That employees in the clinic told her she wouldn’t feel anything. They said that she was carrying a fetus and NOT A BABY and that she could not afford to take care of a baby at her age. I asked how old she was. She replied that she was thirteen!

This story comes from an essay on abortion and black men by Jesse Lee Peterson. I am reminded that we don’t live in George W. Bush’s “culture of life,” but rather we live in a culture of death. We de-humanize those who are inconvenient and helpless, and then we try to live with what we have done.
Terri Schiavo will become a victim of this culture of death next week unless something happens to stop those who are determined to starve her to death. She, too, has been de-humanized, called a vegetable, by those to whom she is an inconvenience and a liability. According to the website, Terri’s Fight,

Terri is purposefully interactive, alert, curious, lovely young woman who lives with a very serious disability. She lives free of any life support machines and receives nutrition through a tube that is connected only at meal times.

What kind of culture allows unborn babies and disabled adults to be murdered, and not only murdered but put to death in a torturous, slow, and painful way? A culture that worships death, of course. We may talk about progress, and enlightenment, and compassion for the weak all we want to, but if this death happens to Terri Schiavo and as long as thirteen year old girls are encouraged by lies to kill their own children, we are no more progressive or enlightened or compassionate than the Islamic terrorists we fight in Afghanistan and Iraq. May God have mercy on us all.

February 16th Birthday

Feb16

LeVar Burton, actor and host of Reading Rainbow, b. 1957. LeVar and I are about the same age. We really enjoy Reading Rainbow around here. I have many of the old episodes on video tape, and I use them to supplement my curriculum. I wish I had an index to all the episodes and their subjects so that I could pull out the right one at the right time. For instance, we’ll be studying the transcontinental railroad in history soon, and I know there’s an episode of Reading Rainbow about that event. Many of the others are just as educational.
I also wish I could find a list of all the titles of the American Experience TV show also on PBS. I tried to find such a list on the internet once, but I could only find partial lists, even at the PBS website.

February 15 Birthdays

Feb15

Galileo Galilei, scientist and astronomer, b. 1564.
Jeremy Bentham, eccentric philosopher,b. 1748.
Susan B. Anthony, women’s rights advocate and abortion opponent, b. 1820. “Guilty? Yes, no matter what the motive, love of ease, or a desire to save from suffering the unborn innocent, the woman is awfully guilty who commits the deed. It will burden her conscience in life, it will burden her soul in death; but oh! Thrice guilty is he who, for selfish gratification, heedless of her prayers, indifferent to her fate, drove her to the desperation which impels her to the crime.”
Lucy Beatrice Malleson, author of murder mysteries using the pseudonym Anthony Gilbert, b. 1899. Her most popular detective character was “beer-drinking Cockney barrister Arthur G. Crook, an overweight detective like Nero Wolfe, who drives in Rolls Royce and comes on stage when it is time to solve the case.” I’ll have to try one of these. Maybe I’ll find a new mystery author to add to the list.
Norman Bridwell, author of Clifford the Big Red Dog, b. 1928.

A Couple of Books

Feb14

I read a couple of books while I was recuperating from the creeping crud last week, and I’m just now getting around to writing about them. The first was The God I Love by Joni Eareckson Tada. The book is basically a re-telling of Joni’s life with more emphasis on her childhood and her life after the publication of her first, very successful, attempt at spiritual autobiography, Joni, written about 30 years ago. For those who haven’t been running in evangelical circles for as long as that, Joni Tada is a beautiful Christian author and artist; she is also a quadriplegic, injured in a diving accident when she was still a teenager. Joni writes about growing up as the youngest of four daughters in a home where her father was “bigger than life.” She also remembers horseback riding and playing the piano, travel and discovering family secrets, teenage rebellion and, of course, The Accident. She gives hope to those dealing with depression by telling about her own bouts with depression and anxiety. And she ends the book with a statement of purpose:

“Ah, this is the God I love. The Center, the Peacemaker, the Passport to Adventure, the Joyride and the Answer to all our deepest longings. The answer to all our fears, Man of Sorrows and Lord of Joy, always permitting what he hates, to accomplish something he loves. And he had brought me here, all the way from home–halfway around the earth–so I could declare to anyone within earshot of the whole universe, to anyone that might care, that yes—
There are more important things in life than walking.”

The other book I read doesn’t really fit in the same post with this one, but I suppose the contrast could be instructive. I discovered the name Olivia Manning while researching author’s birthdays a few months ago. She was an Englishwoman who married a British Council lecturer in Bucharest, Romania just before World War II. She later wrote The Balkan Trilogy (The Great Fortune, The Spoilt City, Friends and Heroes) based on her experiences during the war. The back of my library paperback copy of the trilogy says that Masterpiece Theatre made this story into a TV series called Fortunes of War starring Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson. This information sounded hopeful; I can’t imagine Kenneth Branagh and EmmaThompson making a bad movie. Unfortunately, I also can’t imagine what even those two could have done with the material in this book. There are a few intriguing characters: Prince Yakimov is an impoverished White Russian emigre who lives off his experience in aristocratic circles; Sasha is the sheltered son of a Jewish banker who is conscripted into the Romanian army. The main characters, Guy and Helen, are, like the author and her husband, a British lecturer and his new bride. The problem is that after 924 pages, I still didn’t really like any of the characters, except for maybe poor Yaki. I think the idea of the book is a “portrait of a marriage under stress,” but by the time I got to the end, my thought was that this marriage was one that should never have been consummated in the first place. I was as tired of Helen and Guy as they were of each other, and I doubt even Kenneth and Emma could breathe new life into these characters and make them interesting again. I wanted to tell these guys, “There are more important things in life than your personal convenience, and there were things going on in Europe at this time more important than the petty politics of a second-rate English school.”

February 14 Birthdays

Feb14

Richard Owen Cambridge, poet, b. 1717.  He had “a penchant for writing verse and building boats.”
George Henry Kingsley, physician and world traveller, b. 1827. He wrote about his travels and also educated his daughter, Mary Henrietta Kingsley, at home and allowed her to help him in his scientific studies until his death in 1892. After her father’s death, Mary Henrietta became a world traveller in her own right, especially making several trips to Africa. She wrote Travels in West Africa about the animals, plants and people she encountered in her travels. She died in Africa nursing soldiers during the Boer War.
Graham Hough, literary critic and scholar, b. 1908. “The fact that poetry is not of the slightest economic or political importance, that it has no attachment to any of the powers that control the modern world, may set it free to do the only thing that in this age it can do -to keep the neglected parts of the human experience alive until the weather changes; as in some unforeseeable way it may do.”
George Washington Gale Ferris, engineer and inventor, b. 1859. He developed the Ferris wheel for the World Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. Robert Lawson wrote a children’s fiction book called Ferris Wheel that tells the story of this event .
Paul O. Zelinsky, Caldecott award winner and creator of the book The Wheels on the Bus. b. 1953. He has illustrated some beautiful fairy tale books. Rapunzel is the one he won the Caldecott for, and he’s also done versions of Rumplestilskin and Hansel and Gretel.

Happy Valentine’s Day

Feb13

My sister-in-law gave me this recipe, and I don’t know where she got it. So if I’m violating anyone’s copyright, I apologize in advance. Anyway, this cake is the one I usually make for Valentine’s Day because it’s pink. It’s also very, very rich.

Strawberry Cake

Cake:
1 box yellow cake mix
1 box strawberry jello
1/2 cup water
1 cup oil
3 Tablespoons flour
4 eggs
1/2 (10 oz) pkg. frozen strawberries
Topping;
1 box powdered sugar
1/2 pkg. frozen strawberries
1 stick melted margarine

Directions:
Mix together cake ingredients. Bake in layers or in 13 x 9 inch pan. Makes a large heavy-bodied cake. Bake at 350 degrees until done. While baking make topping. Mix together topping ingredients and pour over cake while still warm.

I’ve been reading a book about Anne Bradstreet, the Puritan poet. The book is Beyond Stateliest Marble: The Passionate Femininity of Anne Bradstreet by Douglas Wilson. I plan to send a copy of this poem to Engineer Husband tomorrow:

If ever two were one, then surely we.
If ever man were lov’d by wife, then thee.
If ever wife was happy in a man,
Compare with me, ye women, if you can.
I prize thy love more than whole Mines of gold
Or all the riches that the East doth hold.
My love is such that Rivers cannot quench,
Nor ought but love from thee give recompetence.
Thy love is such I can no way repay.
The heavens reward thee manifold, I pray.
Then while we live, in love let’s so persever
That when we live no more, we may live ever.

The Ministry of Keith Green

Feb12

When I was a young adult and I listened to CCM, it was mostly Amy Grant and Keith Green. And Keith Green was the best. He was also, as far as I could tell, real. Christian musicians are almost required to say that they sing in order to minister to other Christians and to the lost. Keith Green said:

The only music minister to whom the Lord will say, “Well done, thy good and faithful servant,” is the one whose life proves what their lyrics are saying, and to whom music is the least important part of their life. Glorifying the only worthy One has to be a minister’s most important goal!

The difference is that he seemed to mean it. He and his wife Melody opened their home to the homeless and to those who were spiritual seekers. After his recordings became popular, he tried out a controversial experiment of giving his albums away in return for whatever one could or would give. (I remember ordering the album So You Wanna Go Back to Egypt and praying over what payment I should send in return.) Keith Green and two of his four small children died in a plane crash on July 28, 1982 (my birthday), not long after I had seen him in concert in Abilene where I was going to school. I believe these lyrics were his prayer, and his music is still influencing Christians and others today.

Make my life a prayer to You,
I want to do what you want me to,
No empty words and no white lies,
No token prayers, no compromise,

I want to shine the light you gave,
Through Your Son, you sent to save us,
From ourselves and our despair,
It comforts me to know you’re really there.

Oh, I want to thank you now, for being patient with me,
Oh, it’s so hard to see, when my eyes are on me,
I guess I’ll have to trust and just believe what you say,
Oh, you’re coming again, coming to take me away,
I want to die, and let you give,
Your life to me, so I might live,
And share the hope you gave to me,
The love that set me free,

I want to tell the world out there,
You’re not some fable or fairy tail,
That I made up inside my head,
You’re God, The Son, you’ve risen from the dead.
Oh, I want to thank you now,
For being patient with me,
Oh, it’s so hard to see,
When my eyes are on me,
I guess I’ll have to trust,
and just believe what you say,
Oh, you’re coming again,
Coming to take me away.

I want to die, and let you give,
Your life to me, so I might give,
And share the hope you gave to me,
I want to share the love that set me free.

copyright Sparrow Records

To Garden or not to Garden?

Feb12

I’m trying to decide whether or not to plant a garden this year. Right now our backyard is a mess. We have a broken down, but still functional trampoline in the middle of the yard, a lot of shrubs and weeds in the corners, and various and sundry items around the perimeter that we wanted to get out of the house, but someone just coudn’t bear to get rid of completely. There’s very little grass because of the trampoline, and the picnic table I forgot to mention, and because of the building project that finally got finished last fall which made a shambles of what was left of our yard. The building project, a small house/room for my brother-in-law, was erected right on top of my old garden. (Don’t worry; it wasn’t much of a garden, really.) So, in order to have a garden this year, we’d need to start all over again.
First, we’d need to get rid of the weeds. I haven’t ever figured out an easy way to do this. Maybe the problem is that I’ve always been looking for “easy.” Pulling all the weeds out of the clay soil by hand just doesn’t sound like fun, and I’m not very good at it. However, those herbicides don’t really work very well, do they?
I live in Houston, and the soil’s clay, so the next part of gardening is preparing the soil. I have spent a lot of time in past years trying to break up the clay in my garden space and bringing in dirt to mix with it. (I can’t believe I’ve actually paid money to buy dirt, more than once.) I can grow tomatoes if I bring in soil, but if I’m not careful to pick them while they’re still green.the tomatoes literally burn up in the heat, cooked on the vine or they rot from an over-abundance of rain. I get beautiful squash plants–until the squash bugs get them. I have grown some small, but pretty bell peppers, not very sweet. Blackeyed peas will grow wild. As you can see, I’m a vegetable gardening girl. That’s mostly because I like to feel as if I’m doing something productive when I garden, and I can’t usually tell the flower plants from the weeds when they’re first growing. So I end up weeding out all the flowers. (Is there a parable in there somewhere?)
In Phase Two of my past gardens it gets too hot in Houston to garden or to weed the garden. Houston’s hot, by the way. (The city of Houston used that phrase, “Houston’s hot,” as an advertising slogan for a while, but I think they gave it up. It was much too obvious, and I doubt if anyone ever thought past the primary meaning of the word hot to consider having a “hot time in the old town tonight.” It just made me think about sweat.) I have good intentions about getting up early in the morning and weeding and harvesting, but my intentions usually pave the road to garden hell. The garden turns to chaos full of squash bugs, rotting tomatoes, strawberry plants that never produced, blackeyed pea plants running wild, and many, many weeds. Also in there somewhere are all the plants and seeds that the children begged to buy and plant that never grew or got weeded out with the weeds or buried by the weeds that didn’t get weeded out.
Maybe if my past gardening attempts sound pitiful enough to some of you, I’ll get some comments that tell me what I’m doing wrong. Why isn’t it easy? A curse on the ground, you say, what curse? And should I plant a garden or give it up?

Sound of My Grandmother

Feb11

Here’s a short piece that my mother wrote about her mother whose birthday would be today:

Mary Eugenia Thomas Stewart, b. 1907
One sound in particular that I remember is that of my mother playing the piano and singing. She usually did this when she felt no one else was around, because even though she had the voice of an angel (or what I feel an angel would sound like), I’ve never known her to try to elicit applause or special recognition for the bountiful talents that she possessed. To go along with these extraordinary gifts that God endowed her with, was the fact that her love for music landed her a job as public school music teacher, which she held for many years.

Not only did her love for music endear her to her students but to adults as well. Many times when her friends would have a musical engagement, they would come to the house and ask my mother if she would assist them at the event where they performed. On more than one occasion a man by the name of Russell Cothran would spend an afternoon playing his violin while my mother accompanied him on the piano. Now, Russell lived and breathed for the sole purpose of playing that violin! At least, it seemed that way to the rest of us. Needless to say, he was a violinist personified! I often thought when I was much older, that he chose my mom to complement the music he reveled in because she never faltered in rising to the occasion, no matter how difficult the music was that he presented to her.

The fact that I deemed my mother as one who would not admit defeat easily was ingrained in me at an early age, and it enabled me to try harder against my surmounting difficulties because of her steadfastness.

Anyway, that is what I thought of immediately when you asked me to describe a “sound” from my childhood. I can’t think of any better one than that !

The musical talent skipped a couple of generations. Although my mother and I can both carry a tune, Eldest Daughter and some of the other urchins inherited the real musical ability, either from my grandmother or from Engineer Husband’s mother who was also an accomplished pianist. My favorite memory of my Mema is this one I posted a few weeks ago:

I used to spend the night with my Mema every Friday night. We watched The Jack Benny Show and ate pink beans (pork and beans) and hamburger patties. Every Friday.

Tales from Shakespeare

Feb10

Charles Lamb was born on this date in 1775. With his sister Mary, he wrote Tales from Shakespeare, a book of Shakespeare’s plays adapted to story form for children. We always read the Lamb prose version before we go to see a Shakespeare play so that the children can follow the plot without being to frustrated by the archaic language. I recommend it.

By the way, I found out while browsing books at Barnes and Noble that Mary Lamb stabbed her mother and killed her in a fit of temporary insanity. She also attacked and wounded her father. She was “in care” for three years after which she lived with her brother Charles for the rest of his life. She helped write Tales from Shakespeare in one of her more lucid periods, and it was the work that gave them the most fame. I wonder:
How much of the book was Mary’s work and how much was Charles’s?
Mary continued to struggle with recurring bouts of mental illnes for the rest of her life. She outlived her brother by thirteen years. Who took care of her after he died?
What did her father think about Mary? Did he see her after she attacked him and killed his wife?
Did Mary deal with remorse over her actions?