12 Projects for 2014

Jan26

I love projects. Even if I don’t finish them, even if the list itself reproaches me and makes me feel guilty for my broken promises to myself, I still love projects. So, here are my projects for 2014. May this be the year of finishing, or at least starting, all of my projects to the glory of God.

1. West Africa Reading Project. I intended to read a great many books last year that were set in West Africa (Benin, Biafra, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, CÃ´te dâ€™Ivoire, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Togo). I did read some. The stand-outs were Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and I Do Not Come to You by Chance by Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani. I’m feeling as if I only scratched the surface of the literature set in this part of Africa, however. So I’m planing to devote another year to the books of West Africa. Any suggestions for can’t-miss books set in the countries of this region?

2. I have a Restore the House Project that has been forced upon me by the fire we had at our house. I’m choosing to think that it will be fun to see my forty year old house made new again and to participate in the planning and the restoring and the remodeling. In particular, we will be remodeling the kitchen. Any advice?

3. Homeschool Library Project. My plans for a private lending library for homeschoolers in my area have been put on hold by the fire, but I’m hoping to resume work on that project as soon as #2 is completed.

4. Bible Study Project. I am hoping to do some intensive Bible study this year, first on the Bible study I’m writing for my churches’ women’s retreat in April, a study of Jesus’s I AM statements in the book of John (I AM The Light of the World, I AM The Bread of Life, etc.). Then, I’m not sure what will be next, but I am open to suggestions.

5. Prayer Project. I’d like to deepen and enrich my prayer life, maybe spend a set amount of time each day in prayer. I’m curious: do you pray at a set time(s) every day, or just “on the fly”? How do you organize your prayer life? How do you stay motivated to pray consistently?

6. Picture Book Around-the-World Project. Iâ€™ve been working on a follow-up to my Picture Book Preschool curriculum (for several years Iâ€™ve been working, ruefully), called Picture Book Around the World. I’d like to really bear down and finish this year. If I do get to work on this project, expect to see lots of picture book reviews for books set in countries all over the globe. Again, recommendations?

7. Cybils Challenge. Iâ€™ve decided Iâ€™m going to at least TRY to read all of the Cybils nominees, although there are a few (mostly YA) that Iâ€™m fairly sure I wonâ€™t like well enough to finish.

8. Homeschool Co-op Project. I am one of two head coordinators for a homeschool co-op that ministers to over 100 families in this area. We offer parent-taught classes one morning a week, and we provide fellowship opportunities for homeschooling moms. It’s a time-consuming project, but I love serving there where God has called me to help parents follow their calling to homeschool.

9. U.S. Presidents Reading Project. I may only read one or two books for this project, but slowly, surely, I should manage to read a book about each president before my reading days are over.

10. Century of Books Project. I read about A Century of Books here at the blog Stuck in a Book (and here is Stuck in a Book’s 2012 Century of Books completed project). I couldn’t resist. The idea is to read one book from each year of a century, whatever century you choose, to total 100 books. Simon at Stuck in a Book chose the century from 1914-2013. I’m going to choose the century from 1851-1950. I’m using my subscription to Forgotten Books digital library to get copies of many of the books on my list.

11. Poetry Friday Project. I’d like to participate in Poetry Friday this year, at least most Fridays.

12. Bible Note-Taking Project. I continue to take notes in my Bible during Bible study, sermons, and other Biblical endeavors. I’m planning to transfer many of the notes in my current Bible to a new one that I got last year and start using the new one for future note-taking. I just jot down whatever the Holy Spirit brings to mind with the intention of giving each of my Bibles to one of my children someday.

Too many projects, especially reading projects? Probably, but I go to this list whenever I tire of what I’m working on at the time, and I can always find something else worthwhile to replace the project (or housework) from which I need a break. So in that way my project list is a blessing. I just don’t get too stressed about finishing the reading projects in particular.

The 22nd Gift of Christmas in Plymouth, Massachusetts, 1820

Dec22

From Daniel Webster’s Plymouth Oration, delivered at Plymouth, Massachusetts, December 22, 1820:

Our fathers were brought hither by their high veneration for the Christian religion. They journeyed by its light, and labored in its hope. They sought to incorporate its principles with the elements of their society, and to diffuse its influence through all their institutions, civil, political, or literary. Let us cherish these sentiments, and extend this influence still more widely; in the full conviction, that that is the happiest society which partakes in the highest degree of the mild and peaceful spirit of Christianity.

The hours of this day are rapidly flying, and this occasion will soon be passed. Neither we nor our children can expect to behold its return. They are in the distant regions of futurity, they exist only in the all-creating power of God, who shall stand here a hundred years hence, to trace, through us, their descent from the Pilgrims, and to survey, as we have now surveyed, the progress of their country, during the lapse of a century. We would anticipate their concurrence with us in our sentiments of deep regard for our common ancestors. We would anticipate and partake the pleasure with which they will then recount the steps of New England’s advancement. On the morning of that day, although it will not disturb us in our repose, the voice of acclamation and gratitude, commencing on the Rock of Plymouth, shall be transmitted through millions of the sons of the Pilgrims, till it lose itself in the murmurs of the Pacific seas.

We would leave for the consideration of those who shall then occupy our places, some proof that we hold the blessings transmitted from our fathers in just estimation; some proof of our attachment to the cause of good government, and of civil and religious liberty; some proof of a sincere and ardent desire to promote every thing which may enlarge the understandings and improve the hearts of men. And when, from the long distance of a hundred years, they shall look back upon us, they shall know, at least, that we possessed affections, which, running backward and warming with gratitude for what our ancestors have done for our happiness, run forward also to our posterity, and meet them with cordial salutation, ere yet they have arrived on the shore of being.

Advance, then, ye future generations! We would hail you, as you rise in your long succession, to fill the places which we now fill, and to taste the blessings of existence where we are passing, and soon shall have passed, our own human duration. We bid you welcome to this pleasant land of the fathers. We bid you welcome to the healthful skies and the verdant fields of New England. We greet your accession to the great inheritance which we have enjoyed.

We welcome you to the blessings of good government and religious liberty. We welcome you to the treasures of science and the delights of learning. We welcome you to the transcendent sweets of domestic life, to the happiness of kindred, and parents, and children. We welcome you to the immeasurable blessings of rational existence, the immortal hope of Christianity, and the light of everlasting truth!

Note that Mr. Webster assumed that future generations would value certain ideals: science, learning, good government, religious liberty, domestic life, rationality, truth, hope, and most of all Christianity. If he were to travel through time and see us here, what would he think of our stewardship of the pleasant land of the fathers and of the blessings of liberty and of the immortal hope of Christianity?

Today’s Gifts from Semicolon:
A story: about Daniel Webster, just for fun: The Devil and Daniie Webster by Stephen Vincent Benet.

A song: On this day in 1808 Ludwig van Beethoven conducted and performed in concert at the Theater an der Wien, Vienna, with the premiere of his Fifth Symphony, Sixth Symphony, Fourth Piano Concerto (performed by Beethoven himself) and Choral Fantasy (with Beethoven at the piano).

A birthday: Edward Arlington Robinson, b.1869.

A booklist: Deliberate Reader with 31 Days of Great Nonfiction.

A verse:
A Happy Man by Edward Arlington Robinson

When these graven lines you see,
Traveller, do not pity me;
Though I be among the dead,
Let no mournful word be said.

Children that I leave behind,
And their children, all were kind;
Near to them and to my wife,
I was happy all my life.

My three sons I married right,
And their sons I rocked at night;
Death nor sorrow never brought
Cause for one unhappy thought.

Now, and with no need of tears,
Here they leave me, full of years,–
Leave me to my quiet rest
In the region of the blest.

Poetry Friday: The 20th Gift of Christmas in France, 1917

Dec20

Christmas Eve in France by Jessie Fauset
“Jessie Redmon Fauset (April 27, 1882 — April 30, 1961) was an American editor, poet, essayist and novelist.
Fauset was the editor of the NAACP magazine The Crisis. She also was the editor and co-author for the African American children’s magazine Brownies’ Book. She studied the teachings and beliefs of W.E.B Dubois and considered him to be her mentor. Fauset was known as one of the most intelligent women novelists of the Harlem Renaissance, earning her the name ‘the midwife’. In her lifetime she wrote four novels as well as poetry and short fiction.” ~Wikipedia, Jessie Redmon FaucetOH little Christ, why do you sigh
As you look down to-night
On breathless France, on bleeding France,
And all her dreadful plight?
What bows your childish head so low?
What turns your cheek so white?

Oh little Christ, why do you moan,
What is it that you see
In mourning France, in martyred France,
And her great agony?
Does she recall your own dark day,
Your own Gethsemane?

Oh little Christ, why do you weep,
Why flow your tears so sore
For pleading France, for praying France,
A suppliant at God’s door?
“God sweetened not my cup,” you say,
“Shall He for France do more?”

Oh little Christ, what can this mean,
Why must this horror be
For fainting France, for faithful France,
And her sweet chivalry?
“I bled to free all men,” you say
“France bleeds to keep men free.”

Oh little, lovely Christ, you smile!
What guerdon is in store
For gallant France, for glorious France,
And all her valiant corps?
“Behold I live, and France, like me;
Shall live for evermore.”

The 4th Gift of Christmas at Wounded Knee Creek, 1891

Dec4

Despite heart-warming stories such as the Christmas Truce of 1914 and the redemption of Scrooge in A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, Christmas and its message of “peace on earth, goodwill to men”, does not always bring about compassion nor does it everywhere restrain evil.

“In late 1891, Tibbles and Susette [La Flesche] traveled to Pine Ridge, on of the Sioux reservations in southwestern South Dakota. Many had fled the reservation, fearful of the soldiers who’d come to quell any disturbances aroused by the Ghost Dance. Starving Indians danced to bring the savior, to se departed loved ones living again, and to see the whites driven away and a new earth returned, once again home to free Indians, the buffalo, the elk, and the antelope.

On Christmas Eve, soldiers slaughtered a band of Indians camped near Wounded Knee Creek; they were under Chief Big Foot and included men, women, and children. In one of the darkest moments of her life, Susette helped care for the survivors that escaped to Pine Ridge.”
~Women of the Frontier by Brandon Marie Miller

And this episode and other like it illustrate why we need more than a message from angels, more than the moral law that we know to be true: we need a Savior.

Today’s Gifts from Semicolon
A song: “I understand Christmas as I understand Bach’s Sleepers Awake or Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring. . . When I am able to pray with the mind in the heart, I am joyfully able to affirm the irrationality of Christmas.” ~Madeleine L’Engle

A booklist: A Madeleine L’Engle Annotated Bibliography

A birthday: Nick Vujicic, Serbian Australian evangelist and motivational speaker, b. 1982.

A verse: God Knows by Minnie Louise Haskins.

“The President Has Been Shot!” by James L. Swanson

Nov27

On the evening of November 22, 2013, I was reading, not an unusual activity for me. But instead of reading C.S. Lewis or any of the many novels that I want to finish, I was reading one of the Cybils YA nonfiction books that was nominated this year. “The President Has Been Shot!” The Assassination of John F. Kennedy by James L. Swanson was the sad story of what happened in Dallas fifty years ago, and I was reminded of the fragility of human life and the sinfulness of mankind.

Yes, I remember where I was when I heard the news of Kennedy’s death. Unfortunately for my reputation for perfect recall, I remember incorrectly. I was in first grade in 1963, but for some reason I have a vivid memory of being in my second grade classroom with my second grade teacher, Mrs. Bouska, announcing to us that the president had been shot. I’m not sure why my first grade memory has transposed itself in time into second grade, but there it is. Memory is unreliable.

So we have books—to record the memories and the events and keep us honest. A lot of the information in this book I either never knew or I didn’t remember. I had no idea that Kennedy was shot through the back of the head and his head either fell or was pulled into Jackie Kennedy’s lap where she held pieces of his brain in her hands all the way to Parkland Hospital. Gruesome. Then, it was also rather grisly and horrific to read that Jackie refused to change her blood-stained clothes all that day, saying repeatedly, “I want them to see what they’ve done.” People certainly do grieve and react in different ways to shocking, appalling events.

“History is more than a narrative of what happened at a particular moment in time—it is also the story of how events were reported to, and experienced by, the people who lived through them.” (For Further Reading, p.240) Mr. Swanson does a particularly good job of giving readers a feel for the time period and the way newspapers, magazines, radio, and television reported on the death of the president. Black and white photographs interspersed throughout the book add to the verisimilitude of the story, transporting readers into the early 1960’s when color television was still not in widespread use and newspapers and many magazines were filled with black and white photographs.

Swanson’s 2009 nonfiction tale of an assassination, Chasing Lincoln’s Killer, was adapted from his adult book, Manhunt. “The President Has Been Shot!” was written specifically for the YA market, and it shines as an example of a nonfiction history narrative that doesn’t talk down to teen readers and yet keeps the detail to a level that suits young people who may be new to the subject of the Kennedy assassination. I highly recommend the book for students of history and politics who want a simple but thorough summary of the background of Kennedy’s presidency and the events surrounding and leading up to his assassination.

Poetry Friday: Charlotte Zolotow and the Poets

Nov22

The recently deceased children’s author Charlotte Zolotow was also an editor and a poet herself. She edited many of the most gifted authors of poetry for children of the twentieth century during her tenure at Harper and Row.

Lee Bennet Hopkins wrote of his editor Charlotte Zolotow: “Charlotte was editor-supreme. Her respect for an author, her insight, foresight, her vision of what could be — become — has been a highlight of my career. Lucky is one to be caught in the true Charlotte’s web.”

Paul Fleischman, winner of the 1989 Newbery Medal for Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices was also edited by Ms. Zolotow. In a tribute to her editorial skills, he says: “In matters of larger scope, her vision was truly exceptional. She was an astounding discoverer of talent. Once she’d found you, she didn’t rewrite you any more than she did your sentences. Ideas for books weren’t thrust upon you. The latest trends in publishing were never bandied about. Charlotte operated on the theory that the best book you had inside you was the one you most wished to write, no matter what happened to be selling at the moment.”

Poet Karla Kuskin, also a friend and protege of Ms. Zolotow, wrote a poem for a 1990 celebration of Charlotte Zolotow’s work:

There is that smile
that warms us like the sun.
There is the ouevre
(fine work done,
fine work yet to come).
There is all this, and more
combined
with that well honed and stainless
steel trap mind…

Mind and imagination combined made Charlotte Zolotow a formidable and talented author and editor and poet. Here are a couple of poems by Ms. Charotte herself:

Ladybug by Charlotte Zolotow

Little ladybug
With your
Glazed red wings
and small black polka dots
you look like a porcelain statue
until suddenly
you
fly
away.

People by Charlotte Zolotow

Some people talk and talk
and never say a thing.
Some people look at you
and birds begin to sing.

Some people laugh and laugh
and yet you want to cry.
Some people touch your hand
and music fills the sky.

Women of the Frontier by Brandon Marie Miller

Nov19

Women of the Frontier: 16 Tales of Trailblazing Homesteaders, Entrepreneurs, and Rabble-Rousers by Brandon Marie Miller.

This collective biography/history was a fascinating book, although I found myself skimming the explanatory material at the beginning of each chapter to go directly to the stories of the women themselves. Some of the women I knew something about: Margret Reed, a survivor of the ill-fated Donner Party; Narcissa Whitman, missionary to Oregon; Carry Nation, prohibition campaigner; and Cynthia Ann Parker, captive of the Comanches and mother to Quanah Parker, famous Comanche chief.

Even about these women I learned new things:
According to the author, Narcissa Whitman grew to nearly despise the Native Americans she traveled to Oregon to minister to and convert.

After years of “smashing” saloons to protest the evils of alcohol, Carry Nation settled in Eureka Springs, Arkansas and opened a home for the (abused) wives of alcoholics. The home was called Hatchet Hall.

Indian captive Cynthia Ann Parker was taken back from the Comanches when her son Quanah was only twelve years old, and she thought he was dead. She did not know that he became a great warrior chief of the Comanche.

Then, there were the many seemingly ordinary, actually extraordinary, women who managed to survive a life of hardship and vicissitudes that would have put me into an early grave. Amelia Stewart Knight traversed the Oregon Trail, “out of one mud hole into another all day.” And she was four months pregnant when she and her husband and their seven children left Iowa to head for Oregon. Luzena Wilson learned that she could make more money by cooking and cleaning for the 49ers in the California gold fields than she or her husband could by mining. Then, she learned by experience with both that a fire or flood could destroy everything she had built and earned, and she learned to start all over again.

Mary Lease fought for government regulation of the railroads, the graduated income tax, the direct election of senators, and suffrage for women. She lived to see all of these things enshrined in law. Sarah Winnemucca and Susette La Flesche, on the other hand, both championed the rights of Native Americans, but lived to see most of the promises of the U.S. government to the Native peoples broken and the Native people themselves mistreated and disrespected.

I was inspired and a bit humbled by the stories of these ladies. Again, I’m not sure how I would have done, given their circumstances and faced with their choices. I’d like to say that I would have persevered and made a life despite the difficulties and adversities they faced, but I don’t really know.

Said one Kansas woman:

“It might seem a cheerless life, but there were many compensations: the thrill of conquering a new country; the wonderful atmosphere; the attraction of the prairie, which simply gets into your bloom and makes you dissatisfied away from it; the low-lying hills and the unobstructed view of the horizon; and the fleecy clouds driven by the never failing winds.”

Maybe those things, and more, were enough.

Breakfast on Mars, edited by Rebecca Stern and Brad Wolfe

Nov4

Breakfast on Mars and 37 Other Delectable Essays: Your Favorite Authors Take a Stab at the Dreaded Essay Assignment, edited by Rebecca Stern and Brad Wolfe.

These 38 essays by children’s and YA authors such as Elizabeth Winthrop, Rita Williams-Garcia, Kirsten Miller, Laurel Snyder, and Wendy Moss, are not your average English assignment, get it written and turn it in, essays. These essays sparkle. From the introduction to this collection:

“For too long, we have held essays captive in the world’s most boring zoo. We’ve taken all the wild words, elaborate arguments, and big hairy ideas found in essays, and we’ve poached them from their natural habitat. We’ve locked essays in an artificial home.

********
Essay, we must tame you We must squish you into five paragraphs, and we must give you so much structure that you cower in the corner, scared for your life.

The essay’s fate has long looked bleak. But do not despair, for change is brewing. In the following pages, you’ll catch a glimpse of something most people have never seen in the wild. We’ve let essays out of their cages, and we’ve set them loose. We’ve allowed them to go back to their roots.”

So, in this collection we have a variety of essays, all written with creativity and flair.

How about a personal essay: Ransom Riggs on “Camp Dread, or How to Survive a Shockingly Awful Summer”? It’s a new twist on “What I Did Last Summer.”

Or perhaps a persuasive essay on why we should (Chris Higgins) or shouldn’t (Chris Higgins again) colonize Mars or why the author (Kirsten Miller) believes “Sasquatch Is Out There (And He Wants Us to Leave Him Alone)” or “Why We Need Tails” by Ned Vizzini.

A character analysis essay on Princess Leia (Cecil Castellucci, who is a female, by the way) or Super Mario (Alan Gratz).

The authors take on subjects such as memories (Rita Williams-Garcia), time machines (Steve Almond), life before television (Elizabeth Winthrop), invisibility (Maile Meloy), humpback anglerfish (Michael Hearst) and names (Jennifer Lu).

Did you know you can write graphic essays with pictures (“Penguin Etiquette” by Chris Epting) or cartoons (“On Facing My Fears” by Khalid Birdsong)?

My favorite essay of the bunch, because it spoke to me as a parent, was Lena Roy’s “Sex, Drugs, and Rock ‘n’ Roll”. I won’t tell you the details of Ms. Roy’s adolescent adventures with being “cool”, but I will refer you to the essay in which her dad makes some very wise parenting decisions and gives the young Lena some very wise words to live by:

“Words matter, Lena. What we say about ourselves matter. The words we use to represent ourselves matter. You know that. We only have so many ways we can express ourselves, and words are the most powerful.”

These essays are examples for teens (and adults) of how words can matter in a good way, how, to use the title of yet another essay in this collection, “A Single Story Can Change Many Lives” (Craig Kielburger). It’s time for us all to start writing those stories— in un-squished, wild, and powerful essays.

What a great tool for teachers and what a great illustration of what the essay can be for students of all ages!

Sunday Salon: Books Read in October, 2013

Nov3

Children’s and Young Adult Fiction:
Navigating Early by Clare Vanderpool.
Listening for Lucca by Suzanne LaFleur.
The Incredible Charlotte Sycamore by Kate Maddison.
The Edge of Nowhere by Elizabeth George. (YA)
A Song for Bijou by Josh Farrar.
Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock by Matthew Quick. (YA)

Adult Fiction:
Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand by Helen Simonson.

Nonfiction:
Rapture Practice by Aaron Hartzler. I couldn’t review this one; it was too, too sad. It’s the reverse conversion story of a young man from a loving, but very conservative, Christian family who converts to become an atheist homosexual, full of grace for his messed-up parents. I’ll just piggy-back onto what Janie B. Cheaney said in World magazine.
Andrew Jenks: My Adventures as a Young Filmmaker by Andrew Jenks.
Bad Girls: Sirens, Jezebels, Murderesses, Thieves & Other Female Villains by Jane Yolen and Heidi E.Y. Stemple.
Lost in the Cosmos by Walker Percy. Well, I read half of it anyway.
Breakfast on Mars and 37 Other Delectable Essays, edited by Rebecca Stern and Brad Wolfe.
Dear Teen Me: Authors Write Letters to Their Teen Selves, edited by E. Kristin Anderson and Miranda Kenneally.
Bullying Under Attack: True Stories Written by Teen Victims, Bullies & Bystanders by Stephanie Meyer.
Emancipation Proclamation: Lincoln and the Dawn of Liberty by Tonya Bolden.
Helga’s Diary: A Young Girl’s Account of Life in a Concentration Camp by Helga Weiss.
Home Front Girl: A Diary of Love, Literature, and Growing Up in Wartime America by Joan Wehlen Morrison.
Lincoln’s Grave Robbers by Steve Sheinkin.
The Boy on the Wooden Box: How the Impossible Became Possible . . . on Schindler’s List by Leon Leyson.
Your Food Is Fooling You: How Your Brain Is Hijacked by Sugar, Fat, and Salt by David A. Kessler
C.S. Lewis: A Life by Alister McGrath.
Saving a Life: How We Found Courage When Death Rescued our Son by Charles and Janet Morris.

Lost in a Walker Percy Cosmos, Part 1

Oct26

A couple of months ago Eldest Daughter asked if I would like to accompany her to an academic conference in New Orleans in October. New Orleans in October with Eldest Daughter who is one of my favorite persons? Of course, I would love to go. Then, she told me the subject of the conference, “Still Lost in the Cosmos: Walker Percy & the 21st Century.”

Now I am not a fan, really, of Mr. Percy’s fiction. I say that, having read one, maybe two, books by Percy, The Moviegoer and another book long ago that I think was The Thanatos Syndrome. I remember people in trees(?) or sitting on flagpoles and something about poisoning the water supply and a priest and a doctor. It sounds like the beginning of a bad joke, and unfortunately that’s all I remember of the novel. The Moviegoer I read more recently, and according to Eldest Daughter herself, who is a fan, I just didn’t get it. I concur: I didn’t get it. The main character, Binx Bolling, was the kind of person who, if I were to meet him, I would feel strongly impelled to shake until he spits, as my mother would say. Existentialists (Percy had a thing for Kierkegaard) affect me that way, oddly enough.

Still I am a fan of Eldest Daughter and of a trip to New Orleans, and I like to feel as if I know what people are talking about when I listen to them speak. So in preparation for the conference I began reading Mr. Percy’s book, Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book. Lost in the Cosmos is not a novel, but rather a parody of the myriad of self-help books that tell us that we can categorize our angst and work it out in six easy steps or by repeating one mantra or by listening to the author who will tell us who we really are. The first part of the book is really quite clever as Percy gets the reader first to admit that “it [is] possible to learn more in ten minutes about the Crab Nebula in Taurus, which is 6,000 light-years away, than you presently know about yourself, even though you’ve been stuck with yourself all your life.” Then, through a series of “thought experiments”, Percy leads his readers to recognize the existential lostness that afflicts each of us: we are indeed lost in the cosmos.

So far, so clever. In the middle of the book, however, Percy stops for an extended tour of the science of semiotics, a word I had to look up in my handy, dandy dictionary. Semiotics is “the study of signs and symbols, and their use or interpretation.” (Clear as mud? No? You obviously need to undertake a serious study of semiotics.) This part of the book is called “A Semiotic Primer on the Self.” The print becomes much smaller, and the text much, much more dense. Diagrams are inserted, and footnotes abound. Percy himself writes, “The following section, an intermezzo of some forty pages, can be skipped without fatal consequences.” I skipped. Not only did I skip, I also skipped out and never managed to finish Lost in the Cosmos before the conference in New Orleans. The consequences were not fatal, but perhaps were an inhibition to my understanding of the presenters at the conference.

So, there you have a synopsis of my preparation for the Walker Percy conference at Loyola University in New Orleans. My preliminary studies were inadequate at best. However, I went with the expectation that I would be enriched and challenged by the conference speakers and satiated and enlivened by the food and sights of New Orleans. And Eldest Daughter is still one of my favorite people, even if she does understand Walker Percy when I do not.

Tomorrow, read part 2, Amnesia, Moby Dick, Gulliver’s Travels, and the Shadow of Catastrophe, or How to Title an Academic Paper on Walker Percy.

Semicolon

Books we must have though we lack bread.

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