Archive | April 2007

Quick Tips for Cheap Books

Apr17

In May, Scholastic Book Distributors have their Customer Appreciation Warehouse Sales for educators, librarians, homeschoolers, and school volunteers at Scholastic warehouses all over the country (US). The books are the leftovers from the book fairs that they do in schools and libraries all year, and here in Houston the prices and the selection are pretty good. I’ve gone and spent money and come home with new books for the homeschool library.

Go here for more information and to find a sale near you.

Also, for those of you in the Houston (TX) area, the Friends of the Houston Library book sale is this coming weekend, April 20, 21, and 22 at the George R. Brown Convention Center. I hope to be there, but I have a full weekend and may have to sandwich in only a few hours browsing through the thousands of books at the sale. Go here for more information.

To This Great Stage of Fools: Born April 17th

Apr17

Thornton Wilder, b. 1897. What a great writer! I probably read The Bridge of San Luis Rey thrity years ago, but I remember it being fascinating in terms of the questions it raised. I should read it again. Then, there’s Our Town, a play I’ve always liked, and The Matchmaker, which is the source for one of my favorite movies, Hello Dolly!.

From The Matchmaker:
Money is like manure; it’s not worth a thing unless it’s spread around encouraging young things to grow.

Ninety-nine per cent of the people in the world are fools and the rest of us are in great danger of contagion.

From Our Town:
Oh, earth, you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you. …Do human beings ever realize life while they live it? Every, every minute?

“Miss Read” Dora Jessie Saint, b. 1913. I think I tried one of the Miss Read books a long time ago, but I don’t remember anything about it. Should I try again?

To This Great Stage of Fools: Born April 16th

Apr16

Gertrude Chandler Warner, author of The Boxcar Children was born on this day in 1890. It turns out she was a first grade teacher who never actually finished high school herself (although she did study with a tutor–homeschooled?). The bio I read said she taught 40 first graders in the morning and another 40 in the afternoon. And today’s teachers think they have a hard job! She wrote her mystery stories for her first graders who were just learning to read. (Today they’re recommended for third graders–another example of how American education has declined.) At any rate, I can remember still how intriguing the thought was of living in an old abandoned boxcar with only other children and using one’s ingenuity to earn enough to get food and other necessities. It was all so very romantic and adventurous. I must have read the books when I was six or seven, and I know I wanted to be one of the Boxcar children.

John Millington Synge, b. 1871. Irish dramatist, poet, and folklorist. I read his play The Playboy of the Western World a long time ago for a class in modern drama, but I can’t say I remember much about it.

Grace Livingston Hill, b. 1865. I read a few of Ms. Hill’s novels when I was a young adult, but I didn’t really enjoy them very much. Others do.
Review of Rainbow Cottage by Grace Livingston Hill from The Headmistress of The Common Room.
Review of Because of Stephen by the same author, same reviewer.
Review of Maris, again same author, same reviewer.
Neat and Dainty As a Flower is a blog dedicated to “feminine beauty and accomplishment as seen in the works of Grace Livingston Hill.”
Brenda of Coffee Tea Books and Me and Sallie of A Gracious Home also enjoy Ms. Hill’s fiction. So, if you do there’s company for you.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Apr15

Titania with her Fairies




Titania with her Fairies

Giclee Print

Rackham, Arthur


Buy at AllPosters.com

We were in Waco last night to see an English department production of this rather odd play in the Armstrong-Browning Library at Baylor University. Eldest Daughter played the attendant fairy Mustard-Seed.

Some disconnected thoughts that occurred as I watched:

***The play was staged in Victorian costumes partly because it was not revived in its entirety, after Shakespeare’s day, until the 1840’s. I think the costumes and setting worked quite well, or maybe I just like tophats and stiff collars.

***Shakepeare critic William Hazlit once said in an essay on a production of Midsummer: “A Midsummer Night’s Dream, when acted, is converted from a delightful fiction into a dull pantomime. All that is finest in the play is lost in the representation. The spectacle was grand; but the spirit was evaporated, the genius was fled.–Poetry and the stage do not agree well together. The attempt to reconcile them in this instance fails not only of effect, but of decorum. The IDEAL can have no place upon the stage, which is a picture without perspective; everything there is in the foreground.
I think it is difficult to get the dream-like effect on stage that Mr. Shakepeare was attempting to achieve. The whole play is full of dreams and even at the end Puck tells the audience:

If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber’d here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream . . .

Lots of sleeping and dreaming, dreams within dreams, weird dream-like sequences of events . . . Nevertheless, I still knew that I was in a building, sitting in stadium chairs, watching a play, not dreaming. That’s no insult to the acotrs nor to the production, but rather a comment on the difficulty of staging the play. (The same comment, abbreviated, was in the program notes, probably what made me think about it.)

***The actor who played Bottom was actually, according to Eldest Daughter, a librarian at Baylor. He was magnificent, stole the show. The comedic parts of the play were hilarious. Bottom was indeed an ass, in the funniest, Charlie Browniest sense of the word.

The Dream in a nutshell:
Act 1, Scene 1
Lysander: The course of true love never did run smooth

Hermia of Demetrius: I give him curses, yet he gives me love.

Act 1, Scene2
Bottom: Ready. Name what part I am for, and proceed.

Act 2, Scene 1
Titania: What, jealous Oberon! Fairies, skip hence:
I have forsworn his bed and company.

Helena to Demetrius: I am your spaniel; and, Demetrius,
The more you beat me, I will fawn on you:
Use me but as your spaniel, spurn me, strike me,
Neglect me, lose me; only give me leave,
Unworthy as I am, to follow you.

Act 2, Scene 2
Lysander to Hermia: One turf shall serve as pillow for us both;
One heart, one bed, two bosoms and one troth.

Act 3, Scene 1
Bottom: I see their knavery: this is to make an ass of me; to fright me, if they could.

Act 3, Scene 2
Hermia to Helena: O me! you juggler! you canker-blossom!
You thief of love! what, have you come by night
And stolen my love’s heart from him?

Act 4, Scene 1
Titania: My Oberon! what visions have I seen!
Methought I was enamour’d of an ass.

Act 4, Scene 2
Bottom: Masters, I am to discourse wonders: but ask me not what; for if I tell you, I am no true Athenian.

Act 5, Scene 1
Quince: Gentles, perchance you wonder at this show;
But wonder on, till truth make all things plain.

Puck: So, good night unto you all.
Give me your hands, if we be friends,
And Robin shall restore amends.

To This Great Stage of Fools: Born April 13th

Apr13

It’s the birthday of Thomas Jefferson (b.1743) and of poetry lover and promoter Lee Bennett Hopkins.

Jefferson: “The most valuable of talents is never using two words when one will do.”

Genevieve Foster, b.1893, wrote several books of history for young people including Augustus Caesar’s World, The World of Columbus and Sons, The World of Captain John Smith, The World of William Penn, George Washington’s World,and Abraham Lincoln’s World. These are wonderful living history books that correlate events around the world with US history in a fascinating way.

Marguerite Henry, b.1902, wrote Misty of Chincoteague and other horse stories.

Samuel Beckett, b.1906, Nobel prize-winning author of Waiting for Godot and other plays.

Eudora Welty, b.1909, American Pulitzer prize-winning author of short stories, novels, and nonfiction. She was born and lived most of her life in Jackson, Mississippi.

Reading Suggestions?

Apr12

I am involved in a conspiracy to turn a fourteen year old young friend of mine into a reader. He is a pleasant and intelligent young man, but he does not read books. He can read, but he doesn’t. I like this young friend and think he should be reading more than the occasional street sign, menu or assigned reading for English class.

So do any of my bright blog visitors have any suggestions on how to trick, cajole, or persuade my friend to begin the wonderful adventure of reading?

Of Mice and Men

Apr12

“While modern Darwinists may wince, eugenics clearly drew inspiration from Darwin’s theory. In fact, Galton was Darwin’s cousin. He took evolutionary theory seriously, arguing persuasively that hospitals, mental institutions and social welfare all violate the law of natural selection. These institutions preserve the weak at the expense of the gene pool. In the wild, such people would die off naturally, thus keeping the human race strong. As Darwin himself declared in ‘The Descent of Man,’ ‘No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this has been highly injurious to the race of man. … Hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.'”

And so as we continue as a nation to debate the ethics and efficacy of embryonic stem cell research, it might pay to remember the history of the eugenics movement. Read here for a reminder of what can happen when we decide that some people are dispensable and not worth perpetuating or even living.

Hat tip to Amanda at Wittingshire.

To This Great Stage of Fools: Born April 12th

Apr12

Johanna Spyri, b. 1827. I have found birthdates of April 12, June 12, and July 12, all in 1827, for this author of the beautiful story Heidi. Take your pick, but read Heidi. It’s a wonderful story about a feisty little girl, Heidi, and her friend Peter and how they are tempted to do wrong, confused about spiritual things, and finally loved and forgiven. The themes of the story—broken relationships, reconciliation, forgiveness, sin and temptation–are woven into the story in a way that teaches and entertains at the same time. Modern writers of “Christian fiction” could learn a few things from reading and emulating Johanna Spyri’s classic book.

Henry Clay, b. 1877. He ran for president and was defeated three times. Always a bridesmaid . . .

Hardie Gramatky, b. 1907. Author of Hercules: The Story of an Old-Fashioned Fire Engine and Little Toot.

Beverly Cleary, b. 1916, is 91 years old today, and the celebration includes D.E.A.R. Day. Do all you children’s literature aficionados know what D.E.A.R. stands for? Have you D.E.A.R.-ed today?

The Gates of the Alamo by Stephen Harrigan

Apr12

Three separate blurbs in the front of my paperback copy of The Gates of the Alamo by Stephen Harrigan compare Harrigan’s Alamo epic to Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove and to other tales of Texas by Mr. McMurtry. The comparison occurred to me independently, too, but I thought Mr. Harrigan’s novel was much better than the portion of Lonesome Dove I managed to struggle through a couple of months ago.

In fact, even though The Gates of the Alamo is obviously designed to appeal to the mostly male fans of historical war sagas and even though I could have done without some of the violence and crude behavior of some of the characters, I read the book in two days, absorbed in the narrative, the characters, and the history.

Mr. Harrigan says in his author’s note at the end of the book that he “made a pledge of absolute fidelity to the truth of the events.” He goes on to say: “That is a naive pledge, though, as any historian will tell you.”

The Alamo is to Texans what Gettysburg is to unreconstructed Confederates —sacred ground, a loss that became a victory, full of mysterious significance, a mythology not to be tampered with or revised. Mr. Harrigan’s book both tampers and revises, but as a die-hard Texican I was fascinated by the new perspectives on the story and characters of the Alamo myth, not offended or disturbed. If you’re a big fan of Sam Houston, you may want to skip The Gates of the Alamo. Harrigan’s Sam Houston is a drunkard (true) with imperial dreams of taking Texas as his own fiefdom. (I’m not so sure about Houston’s being such a grandiose blowhard who won at San Jacinto by luck, but I’m willing to grant that Mr. Harrigan has done more research on the subject than I have.) Travis and Bowie don’t come off as unadulteraed heroes either, although both, as portrayed by harrigan, have more redeeming features than does Houston. Davy Crockett, always the consummate politician even in Texas, seems to be Harrigan’s favorite of the Texian heroes.

Texas history buffs, those who enjoy war stories and Westerns, and probably all those McMurtry fans out there, will be entertained and informed by The Gates of the Alamo. The fictional characters, Edmund McGowan, a botanist who has devoted his life to the study of Texas flora and fauna, and Marry Mott, a widowed innkeeper with an obdurate and unquenchable character, weave themselves into the saga of the Alamo and the beginning of the Texas Republic as seamlessly as if they had really been there. Mr. Harrigan also presents fictional and true characters on the Mexican side of the battle who give the narrative a balanced and well-rounded panorama that is more satisfying and illuminating than a one-sided account would be. (I still can’t work up any sympathy or justification for Santa Anna, the Mesican general and dictator. He’s just a villain.)

The Alamo fell on March 6, 1836. I read The Gates of the Alamo the first week in March of this year, 2007, one hundred seventy-one years later. It was a good way to “remember the Alamo.”

To This Great Stage of Fools: Born April 11th

Apr11

Christopher Smart, b. 1722. English poet and song-writer, he was sometimes confined to the madhouse for praying in the streets and at other times arrested and thrown into jail for debt. Here’s a Kit Smart poem for the cat lovers among us (of which group I am not a member, but I like the poem):

Jubilate Agno (excerpt)

For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry.
For he is the servant of the Living God duly and daily serving him.
For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his way.
For this is done by wreathing his body seven times round with elegant quickness.
For then he leaps up to catch the musk, which is the blessing of God upon his prayer.
For he rolls upon prank to work it in.
For having done duty and received blessing he begins to consider himself.
For this he performs in ten degrees.
For first he looks upon his forepaws to see if they are clean.
For secondly he kicks up behind to clear away there.
For thirdly he works it upon stretch with the forepaws extended.
For fourthly he sharpens his paws by wood.
For fifthly he washes himself.
For sixthly he rolls upon wash.
For seventhly he fleas himself, that he may not be interrupted upon the beat.
For eighthly he rubs himself against a post.
For ninthly he looks up for his instructions.
For tenthly he goes in quest of food.
For having consider’d God and himself he will consider his neighbour.
For if he meets another cat he will kiss her in kindness.
For when he takes his prey he plays with it to give it a chance.
For one mouse in seven escapes by his dallying.
For when his day’s work is done his business more properly begins.
For he keeps the Lord’s watch in the night against the adversary.
For he counteracts the powers of darkness by his electrical skin and glaring eyes.
For he counteracts the Devil, who is death, by brisking about the life.
For in his morning orisons he loves the sun and the sun loves him.
For he is of the tribe of Tiger.
For the Cherub Cat is a term of the Angel Tiger.
For he has the subtlety and hissing of a serpent, which in goodness he suppresses.
For he will not do destruction, if he is well-fed, neither will he spit without provocation.
For he purrs in thankfulness, when God tells him he’s a good Cat.

Dr. Samuel Johnson on Christopher Smart.