Archive | August 2009

The Best Bad Luck I Ever Had by Kristin Levine

Aug22

Moundville, Alabama. 1917. Harry Otis Sims, nickname Dit:

“I’ve been wrong before. Oh, heck, if I’m being real honest, I’ve been wrong a lot. But I ain’t never been so wrong as I was about Emma Walker. When she first came to town, I thought she was the worst piece of bad luck I’d had since falling in the outhouse on my birthday.”

Dit is an engaging narrator, the middle child in a family of ten children, shaped by his culture and upbringing in rural Alabama, but willing to learn and to accept change. And change he does as he becomes friends with the new postmaster’s daughter, a girl, and what’s even more shocking, a “nigra” girl.

I liked the way this book was written with nuance and recognition of the complications of race relations in the Deep South. I wasn’t there (I’m not that old!), but this book describes the people of a small town in Alabama the way Harper Lee describes them in her classic, To Kill a Mockingbird. The people in Moundville are not all bad, not all racist to the bone, but they are crippled and held back by their heritage and their innate conservatism. Only Dit and his new friend Emma are able to see past the cultural racism that has ruled Moundville society since the Civil War, and they are able to right a wrong that could cost an innocent man his life.

This wonderful slice of life from the World War I era mentions several historical events and works them seamlessly into the story: the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918, the lynching of black men in the South during the 1910’s, the double standard for employing blacks even in the postal service, the young men going off to war to fight the Hun, a banana train from New Orleans, learning to drive a Model T, seeing one’s first airplane flight. I loved the way the history “lessons” blended into the story, and I can see this book being useful and beloved inside and outside the classroom.

Target ages: 10-14.
Could be enjoyed by readers age 10 through adult. Hey, I liked it.

Poetry Friday: Animal Crackers

Aug21

Z-baby is memorizing this old chestnut by Christopher Morley for her first poem of the new school year:

Animal crackers and cocoa to drink,
That is the finest of suppers I think;
When I’m grown up and can have what I please
I think I shall always insist upon these.
What do YOU choose when you’re offered a treat?
When Mother says, “What would you like best to eat?”
Is it waffles and syrup, or cinnamon toast?
It’s cocoa and animals that I love most!

The kitchen’s the cosiest place that I know;
The kettle is singing, the stove is aglow,
And there in the twilight, how jolly to see
The cocoa and animals waiting for me.

Daddy and Mother dine later in state,
With Mary to cook for them, Susan to wait;
But they don’t have nearly as much fun as I
Who eat in the kitchen with Nurse standing by;
And Daddy once said, he would like to be me
Having cocoa and animals once more for tea!

Christopher Morley (1890-1957)

I had in my mind that this one was a Robert Louis Stevenson poem; it rather sounds like something of his. However, Mr. Morley was an American poet and writer, “one of the founders and long-time contributing editor of the Saturday Review of Literature” and also founder of the Baker Street Irregulars, the American Sherlock Holmes fan club. FDR and Harry Truman were both members of the BSI. Christopher Morley wrote two bookshop novels, Parnassus on Wheels(reviewed at Kate’s Book Blog) and The Haunted Bookshop. I’ve read the latter, but not the former, and I found it a bit Chestertonian, somewhat obscure at times but fun to read nevertheless.

From John Wesley’s Diary, 1768

Aug20

Greatly disgusted at the manner of singing. 1. Twelve or fourteen persons kept it to themselves, and quite shut out the congregation: 2. These repeated the same words, contrary to all sense and reason six or eight or ten times over: 3. According to the shocking custom of modern music, different persons sang different words at one and the same moment: an intolerable insult on common sense, and utterly incompatible with any devotion.” Excerpted from Abide With Me: The World of Victorian Hymns by Ian Bradley.

Mr. Wesley wrote this criticism after a preaching visit to a parish church in Neath. He sounds just like the twentieth and twenty-first century critics of contemporary praise and worship music. There’s nothing new under the sun, is there?

***********

I’m in a fine pickle as far as this hymn project is concerned—the reason you haven’t seen any new hymns in the Top 100 Hymn Project in the past few days. My computer, with the list of the survey results, died and won’t turn back on. The Apple store is holding my Mac hostage, and they say it may or may not be reparable. In the meantime, not only have I lost the survey results, I’ve also lost the syllabus and plans for the Texas history class that I’m supposed to teach for our homeschool co-op. I can’t get to our household budget, which was in dreadful need of revision anyway. All of my best recipes are inside that computer. All of the hymns I bought and loaded into iTunes as a result of the hymn project are trapped inside my Mac. I am bewildered and bumfuzzled, and I find myself exasperated with my own computer dependence.

Maybe there is something new under the sun, computer dependency, and it’s not good.

The people at the Apple store say they’ll give me a diagnosis and a verdict within a week to ten days.

Graceling by Kristin Cashore

Aug19

I don’t need to do a regular review of this YA fantasy title; everyone and his dog have been there before me, and I agree: it’s a great debut novel, good story, intriguing characters, and themes that provoke both thought and emotion. Here are some reviews for those of you who haven’t read the book yet:

Carrie K: “In her debut novel, Ms. Cashore has created a fully formed world with authentic characters that breathe on the page. I loved Katsa, Po, Raffin, Helda, Bitterblue – these characters became real to me as I read, and I cared deeply about what happened to them.”

The Reading Zone: “This is a gorgeous romance set amid a fantastic fantasy. Cashore has given birth to a new world within these seven kingdoms, and the romance between Po and Katsa will leave your heart racing.”

Librarian Amy: “Katsa is an orphaned young woman, the niece of the king, who is graced with the ability to kill. As she matures, she becomes less comfortable with being the king’s bully and muscle, and part of the story is her quest to know herself, her grace, and her place in the world.”


So, relieved of the need to do a full court press review (whatever that is), I thought I’d write a little mini-essay about something I noticed while reading the book, even though it’s not the main point of the novel. The main point of the novel is that relationships are complicated, and that giftedness in whatever area can be both a liability and a “grace.” The remainder of this post assumes that you’ve already read Graceling.

Transition. (I can’t think of one.) Back in the seventies when I was a kid of a girl, I read a series of fantasy novels that became classics: the Dragonriders of Pern series by Anne McCaffrey. Since I was a teenager and more easily shocked back then, I was somewhat taken aback by the attitude of the Weyr-folk of Pern in regard to sex. Basically, without going into detail, they’re rather promiscuous. Their excuse is that the dragons make them do it. I won’t debate the morality or sustainability of such a society, but I did notice that the Dragonriders of Pern with their casual attitudes toward sexual liaisons appeared in literature at about the time that our society was tending toward casual sexual pairings and serial monogamy (and acceptance of homosexuality which is accepted and practiced on Pern). I don’t suppose it’s any great new insight, but McCaffery’s fantasy/sci-fi seemed to be trying out the same morality (or lack thereof) that the American society was trying out in the 1970’s. It works better in the books than in real life.

So what do all these dragon-riding ethical systems have to do with Kristin Cashore’s Graceling? I believe I see the same sort of playing out of the possibilities of a sexual ethic in Graceling. This time rather than promiscuity with excellent reasons, it’s the current rampant marriage-phobia that is being explored. Katsa and Po, the two main characters in Graceling, are in love, but for reasons that are unclear to me, something to do with fear of being controlled or of losing control, the two decide not to marry but to be lovers. How very twenty-first century!

I noticed this same fear of marriage (fear of commitment?) played out in the ever-so-popular Twilight series: Bella is willing and ready to go to bed with her vampire boyfriend, Edward, but she fears and resists the idea of marriage. Both Bella and Katsa are afraid that marriage will spoil the love relationship they have with their respective paramours; somehow marriage, instead of strengthening a relationship, is seen as a spoiler, a denier of freedom, and a trap. Perhaps some of this resistance to marriage is a way for the author to maintain the dramatic and sexual tension between her characters. After all, if your romantic leads get married on page 100, what kind of tension remains to be explored in the remaining 200 pages, not to mention sequels? And even if there is relationship-building and even sex after marriage, is it the kind of thing that Graceling’s and Twilight’s teen audiences want to read about?

However, this view of marriage as the problem rather than the solution, is also a popular one in our culture these days. Bella and Edward make their way to the altar over the course of the four books in the series; perhaps Katsa and Po will also come to understand the possibility for some kind of committed relationship that gives freedom because of its boundaries instead of living in fear of their own desires to belong to one another wholly in a physical and emotional and even spiritual sense. Old-fashioned twentieth century reader that I am, I call that relationship “marriage”, but if author Cashore and her characters want to call it “the grace of committed love,” I won’t complain about the nomenclature.

Noel DeVries says kinda sorta what I’m saying here. Only she’s much more straightforward and comprehensible.

Main Street by Sinclair Lewis

Aug17

This is America–a town of a few thousand, in a region of wheat and corn and dairies and little groves.
The town is, in our tale, called “Gopher Prairie, Minnesota.” But its Main Street is the continuation of Main Streets everywhere. The story would be the same in Ohio or Montana, in Kansas or Kentucky or Illinois, and not very differently would it be told Up New York State or in the Carolina Hills.
Main Street is the climax of civilization.

So begins Sinclair Lewis’s novelistic critique of the manners, mores, traditions of Main Street, USA. Published in 1920, Main Street is proto-feminist, liberal in its politics (to contrast with the no doubt conservative politics of 1920’s small town businessmen), and agnostic in its religious views. Our protagonista, Carol Kennicott becomes the wife of a small town doctor, and finds, to her dismay, that she cannot find a place for herself at all in Gopher Prairie. At one point she calls herself a “hexagonal peg.” (“Solution: find the hexagonal hole,” she says.) She tries to reform the town, to bring culture and refinement to her neighbors and to her husband, then to reform herself to appreciate village life, but all to no avail. For 479 pages Carol struggles, fights, regroups, hides, ventures out again, runs away, and finally resigns herself to being the perpetual aginner, in an overwhelming sea of mediocrity and traditional (hypocritical) family values.

“I do not admit that Main Street is as beautiful as it should be! I do not admit that Gopher Prairie is greater or more generous than Europe! I do not admit that dish-washing is enough to satisfy all women! I may not have fought the good fight, but I have kept the faith.”

Through the entire book, Carol mostly stays just this side of being an obnoxious, supercilious snob, and when she crosses the line, she knows it, admits it, and laughs at herself. It’s worth reading the book for those moments of self-deprecation and realism. Carol never will admit that anything about Main Street or anyone who lives on Main Street is worthy or objectively beautiful, but she finds that city people and office life are much the same as Main Street and its denizens. The best parts of the book are Lewis’s observations, voiced through Carol, of the contradictory ways we think about ourselves and others. His psychological insight into the mind of a young married woman is keen and humorous. Carol tries to read poetry with her prosaic doctor husband, makes various people she meets into heroes, and then finds that they, too, are rather prosaic and ordinary. She’s something of an idealist and unwilling to become a cynic.

The writing and the tone are well done. It’s no wonder that Lewis won the Nobel Prize, ten years after the publication of Main Street, in 1930. However, Lewis’s inability to see any good at all on Main Street makes the book and the world it inhabits a rather unhappy and tedious place to spend reading time. Which Carol Kennicott would say is a good description of Main Street and of Gopher Prairie.

But I still maintain that there are a few kindred spirits in the wasteland, that some church-goers are both thoughtful and sincere, that there is more depth, and even poetry, to the average Main Streeter than Lewis and his mouthpiece would credit. Sinclair Lewis became an expert at showing up the limitations and hypocrisies of American life (see Babbit, Elmer Gantry, Arrowsmith), but he never got past that antipathy to traditional American values to see anything worth appreciating and preserving in the American experience.

Interesting side note from Wikipedia: “Main Street was initially awarded the 1921 Pulitzer Prize for literature, but was rejected by the Board of Trustees, who overturned the jury’s decision. The prize went, instead, to Edith Wharton for The Age of Innocence. In 1926 Lewis refused the Pulitzer when he was awarded it for Arrowsmith.”

Hymn #36: My Jesus, I Love Thee

Aug16

Lyrics: William Featherston, 1864.

Music: Adoniram Gordon, 1876.

Theme: The third time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, “Do you love me?” He said, “Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.” Jesus said, “Feed my sheep. John 21:17

Center for Church Music: “My Jesus, I Love Thee” was written by a sixteen year old boy, William Ralph Featherston, at the time of his conversion to Jesus Christ. He sent a copy to his aunt who encouraged him to have it published. It appeared anonymously in The London Hymn Book in 1864. . . . William wrote no other hymns that we know of and his brief life ended just before his twenty-seventh birthday.

My Jesus, I love Thee, I know Thou art mine;
For Thee all the follies of sin I resign.
My gracious Redeemer, my Savior art Thou;
If ever I loved Thee, my Jesus, ’tis now.

I love Thee because Thou has first loved me,
And purchased my pardon on Calvary’s tree.
I love Thee for wearing the thorns on Thy brow;
If ever I loved Thee, my Jesus, ’tis now.

I’ll love Thee in life, I will love Thee in death,
And praise Thee as long as Thou lendest me breath;
And say when the death dew lies cold on my brow,
If ever I loved Thee, my Jesus, ’tis now.

In mansions of glory and endless delight,
I’ll ever adore Thee in heaven so bright;
I’ll sing with the glittering crown on my brow;
If ever I loved Thee, my Jesus, ’tis now.

There are a few hymns that I find myself singing while in prayer without even thinking about it: Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, Oh, How I Love Jesus, How Great Thou Art, and this one, My Jesus, I Love Thee. I think these three, and probably a few others that I’m not thinking of, are just spontaneously prayerful hymns. They express the the thoughts of my soul, and I sing them to the Lord without prompting, unless it’s the prompting of the Holy Spirit. What songs do you sing to the Lord when you’re alone with Him?

Hymn #37: For All the Saints

Aug15

Lyrics: William Walsham How, 1864.

Music: SARUM by Joseph Barnby (original tune).
Or (my favorite) SINE NOMINE by Ralph Vaughan WIlliams, 1906.

Theme: This calls for patient endurance on the part of the saints who obey God’s commandments and remain faithful to Jesus. Then I heard a voice from heaven say, “Write: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.”
“Yes,” says the Spirit, “they will rest from their labor, for their deeds will follow them.”
Revelation 14:12-13.

1. For all the saints, who from their labours rest,
Who Thee by faith before the world confessed,
Thy Name, O Jesus, be forever blessed.
Alleluia, Alleluia!
2. Thou wast their Rock, their Fortress and their Might;
Thou, Lord, their Captain in the well fought fight;
Thou, in the darkness drear, their one true Light.
Alleluia, Alleluia!
3. For the Apostles’ glorious company,
Who bearing forth the Cross o’er land and sea,
Shook all the mighty world, we sing to Thee:
Alleluia, Alleluia!
4. For the Evangelists, by whose blest word,
Like fourfold streams, the garden of the Lord,
Is fair and fruitful, be Thy Name adored.
Alleluia, Alleluia!
5. For Martyrs, who with rapture kindled eye,
Saw the bright crown descending from the sky,
And seeing, grasped it, Thee we glorify.
Alleluia, Alleluia!
6. O blest communion, fellowship divine!
We feebly struggle, they in glory shine;
All are one in Thee, for all are Thine.
Alleluia, Alleluia!
7. O may Thy soldiers, faithful, true and bold,
Fight as the saints who nobly fought of old,
And win with them the victor’s crown of gold.
Alleluia, Alleluia!
8. And when the strife is fierce, the warfare long,
Steals on the ear the distant triumph song,
And hearts are brave, again, and arms are strong.
Alleluia, Alleluia!
9. The golden evening brightens in the west;
Soon, soon to faithful warriors comes their rest;
Sweet is the calm of paradise the blessed.
Alleluia, Alleluia!
10. But lo! there breaks a yet more glorious day;
The saints triumphant rise in bright array;
The King of glory passes on His way.
Alleluia, Alleluia!
11. From earth’s wide bounds, from ocean’s farthest coast,
Through gates of pearl streams in the countless host,
And singing to Father, Son and Holy Ghost:
Alleluia, Alleluia!

William How was a bishop in the Anglican church in Yorkshire. He served, appropriately enough, at the Cathedral of All Saints in Wakefield, and he was known for his work with the poor. He was known as the “omnibus bishop” because he preferred public transport to a private carriage. He also wrote over fifty hymns; the only other one I knew was Jesus, Name of Wondrous Love.

I love this hymn, mostly because of Vaughan Williams’s music which is absolutely beautiful and tuneful. The lyrics, too, are quite inspiring and memorable, but has anyone ever heard all eleven verses sung at one sitting?

Sources:
Clavis Regni: For all the saints who from their labors rest.
Wikipedia: For All the Saints.
Hymntime: For All the Saints.

Hymn #38: Like a River Glorious

Aug14

Lyrics: Frances Havergal, 1876.

Music: WYE VALLEY by James Mountain, 1876.

Theme:

For this is what the LORD says:
“I will extend peace to her like a river,
and the wealth of nations like a flooding stream;
you will nurse and be carried on her arm
and dandled on her knees.
As a mother comforts her child,
so will I comfort you;
and you will be comforted over Jerusalem.”
Isaiah 66:12-13
Frances Havergal: “Writing is praying with me. You know a child would look up at every sentence and say, ‘And what shall I say next?’ That is just what I do; I ask Him that at every line He would give me not merely thoughts and power, but also every word, even the very rhymes.”

Like a river glorious is God’s perfect peace,
Over all victorious, in its bright increase;
Perfect, yet it floweth fuller every day,
Perfect, yet it groweth deeper all the way.

Refrain:
Stayed upon Jehovah, hearts are fully blest
Finding, as He promised, perfect peace and rest.

Hidden in the hollow of His blessed hand,
Never foe can follow, never traitor stand;
Not a surge of worry, not a shade of care,
Not a blast of hurry touch the spirit there.

Every joy or trial falleth from above,
Traced upon our dial by the Sun of Love;
We may trust Him fully all for us to do;
They who trust Him wholly find Him wholly true.

Thanks to Rebecca at Rebecca Writes: The North Valley Baptist Church Men’s Choir sings Like a River Glorious.

Sources:
Center for Church Music: Like a River Glorious.
Frances RIdley Havergal by LIzzie Alldridge at Wholesome Words.

Ya Gotta Laugh . . .

Aug14

From Israel: The following joke is making the rounds in the Prime Minister’s Bureau these days: What do Americans do when something breaks down in their home – when the sink is blocked up, the toilet overflows, a fuse burns out?
Simple: They ask Barack Obama to give a speech and the problem is solved.

Marie Antoinette said, “Let them eat cake.”
Barack Obama says, “Let them eat arugula.”

From “The Late Show with David Letterman,” July 24, 2009:
Anybody see President Obama’s press conference last night on television about the health plan? Here’s the deal: it will cost a trillion dollars, but that will be in three easy payments of $330 billion a month, so it’s not that bad.

Obama Health Care reminds me of this old joke, slightly reworked for the New Era of Change:

The Pope, a boy scout, and Barack Obama are in an airplane. The pilot comes running back and tells them, “The plane is going down, and there are only 3 parachutes.” He takes one and jumps overboard. Obama says, “I’ve got the best brain in the world, and must be saved.” He grabs a chute and jumps. The Pope looks at the boy scout and says, “I’m an old man, but you have many years to live. You take the last chute.” The boy replies, “No, there are still 2 chutes. That guy with the great brain took my backpack instead of a parachute.”

What’s the problem with Barack Obama jokes?
His followers don’t think they’re funny and other people don’t think they’re jokes.

Hymn #39: The King of Love My Shepherd Is

Aug13

Lyrics: Henry Baker, 1868. Mr. Baker was the editor of the standard Anglican hymnal in Victorian England, called Hymns Ancient and Modern, first published in 1860. Although he was primarily a collector of hymns, Baker also wrote his own lyrics, translated lyrics, and composed tunes. The various editions of Hymns Ancient and Modern sold more than 60 million copies.

Music: ST COLUMBA, Ancient Irish Melody.
Or DOMINUS REGIT ME by John Bacchus Dykes.

Theme: Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Does he not leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? Luke 15:4

Barbara at Stray Thoughts: “I think the third stanza is my favorite, though all of it is good.”

The King of love my shepherd is,
whose goodness faileth never;
I nothing lack if I am his,
and he is mine for ever.

Where streams of living water flow,
my ransomed soul he leadeth,
and where the verdant pastures grow,
with food celestial feedeth.

Perverse and foolish oft I strayed,
but yet in love He sought me,
and on his shoulder gently laid,
and home, rejoicing, brought me.

In death’s dark vale I fear no ill
with thee, dear Lord, beside me;
thy rod and staff my comfort still,
thy cross before to guide me.

Thou spread’st a table in my sight;
thy unction grace bestoweth;
and O what transport of delight
from thy pure chalice floweth!

And so through all the length of days
thy goodness faileth never:
Good Shepherd, may I sing thy praise
within thy house for ever.

While researching this hymn, I found this website which looks like a nice resource. It has a downloadable version of the Dykes tune for this hymn in addition to other hymns available for free download or for purchase on CD.

I’m not familiar with this particular hymn, based on Pslam 23, but here is the Westminster Abbey Choir singing at Princess Diana’s funeral, The King of Love My Shepherd Is to the tune Dominus Regit Me. Descant on the last verse: