Today’s comic strip on our Peanuts calendar goes like this:
Lucy: “If you give a mouse a cookie” . . . Snoopy, you should write a book like that.
Snoopy, typing: IF YOU GIVE A BEAGLE A BROWNIE
Only Computer Guru Son says it should be: IF YOU GIVE A BEAGLE A BAGEL
Because it’s funnier. 
I finished reading Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand today, and I must say it’s been a good read. I really like nonfiction that tells a story, is rich in detail but doesn’t get bogged down in meaningless facts and figures. Seabiscuit, as everybody already knows because of the movie, is the story of a race horse. Most of the action takes place just before World War 2, 1936-1940. The book is about the horse, his owner, Charles Howard, his trainer, Tom Smith, and his two jockeys, George Woolf and Red Pollard. They’re a colorful lot. Seabiscuit himself is almost deformed in the knees, a horse that loves to eat and sleep–and run. One of his jockeys is blind in one eye; the other has chronic diabetes. Smith the trainer is eccentric, to say the least, and Seabiscuit’s owner is a self-made millionaire from San Francisco who started out as a bicycle repairman. All of these characters come together to create an unforgetable episode in American history. I’ve never been interested in horseracing, but I am interested in people and in history. I thought Hillenbrand captured the personalities of the people in her book (and even of the horses) and made me want to know what happened to them. What decisions did they make? How did each of their life’s “races” turn out?
Pollard, for example, was a Canadian, “an elegant young man, tautly muscled, with a shock of supernaturally orange hair. . . he lived entirely on the road of the racing circuit, sleeping in empty stalls, carrying with him only a saddle, his rosary, and his books: pocket volumes of Shakespeare, Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat, a little copy of Robert Service’s Songs of the Sourdough, maybe some Emerson, whom he called ‘Old Waldo.’ The books were the closest things he had to furniture, and he lived in them the way other men live in easy chairs.” Don’t you already want to know what will happen to a man like that when he meets up with Seabiscuit, a championship horse with so many quirks that only Pollard, and his friend Woolf, understand him well enough to ride him to victory?
Seabiscuit showed me a whole subculture that I knew nothing about, the horse racing world. And it was a fascinating world.
Some other worlds you may want to visit:
One Child by Torey Hayden–The world of mentally disturbed children and their teacher.
Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder–The world of computer geeks and computer wizards.
Men to Match My Mountains by Irving Stone–The world of the Wild West; a readable history of Utah, Nevada, Colorado, and California.
Small Victories by Samuel Freedman–The scary world of public high school in New York City.
A Severe Mercy by Sheldon Van Auken–The world of a very special marriage.
The Conquering Family by Thomas B. Costain (and its sequels, The Three Edwards, The Magnificent Century, and The Last Plantagenets)–The world of medieval England and its royal family.
So there you have it, some of my very favorite nonfiction worlds.
Theophany: [n] a visible (but not necessarily material) manifestation of a deity to a human person
Orthodox Christians call the event of Jesus’ baptism Theophany because God appeared in Three Persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Catholic Christians celebrate the feast to remind themselves of their own baptism and the vows made at that baptism. I thought this was a meaningful prayer for all who have been baptized into Christ, even though I hold to believers’ baptism rather than infant baptism.
Almighty, eternal God, when the Spirit descended upon Jesus at his baptism in the Jordan, you revealed him as your own beloved Son. Keep us, your children born of water and the Spirit, faithful to our calling. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
See Matthew 3:13-17, Mark 1:9-11, Luke 3:21-22, and John 1:39-34 for accounts of Jesus’ baptism.
Cinderella. Sleeping Beauty. Little Red Riding Hood. Puss in Boots. Blue Beard. Hop O’My Thumb.
Choose one you love or one you’ve never read aloud, and share it with your children today in honor of Charles Perrault’s birthday. He was born in Paris in 1628 to a wealthy family, and he grew up to become a lawyer, a civil servant, and a man of letters. At age 55, he published a book of moral stories adapted from folk tales subtitled Tales of Mother Goose. The beloved tales above were included in this volume, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Beautiful picture book versions of Perrault’s fairy tales (probably adapted from the Perrault versions):
Cinderella by Marcia Brown
Cinderella by Susan Jeffers
Little Red Riding Hood by Trina Schart Hyman
Sleeping Beauty by Trina Schart Hyman
Puss in Boots by Paul Galdone
U.S. News and World Report article on James Dobson.
“The poor and needy are important,” he says. “But . . . with the killing of 43 million babies, it’s not in the same league–we’re talking the unborn holocaust.” The only other issue on par, for Dobson, is banning same-sex marriage. “You have to decide the things that matter most,” he says. “. . . If that makes us sound extreme, I’ll take it.”
“My purpose in living is not to take a good reputation to the grave,” he says. “I want to do what I think God wants me to do, and I want to do it as wisely and judiciously as possible and let the chips fall where they may.”
The article mentions The Arlington Group, something I had never heard of. I looked for a list of members, but couldn’t find anything except mentions of this member or that one. Anyone know were to find a complete list, or is that a secret? Just curious.
Classics in the Slums by Jonathan Rose is mostly about reading among the “working classes” (servants, millworkers, coalminers, etc.) in Britain in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. I was pleasantly surprised to read about fellow readers who seemingly needed to read as much as I do.
The Workers’ Educational Association, founded in 1903 (and still a going concern today), brought university-level adult courses in literature, history, science, and economics to the mill towns. The students were intensely dedicated: they had to be, given the realities of their lives. One pottery engineer recorded that, over a 26-week period, he worked an average of 74.5 hours per week, then wrote 14 essays for his WEA course, and also delivered a total of 25 lectures to various other classes.
The WEA offered no grades, no degrees, and no vocational courses. The only motive for study was the disinterested pursuit of learning, and the students vehemently rejected any kind of occupational training.
They just loved the books.
This great South African author was born in 1903. He wrote Cry, the Beloved Country a novel about the tragedy of apartheid in South Africa. The book is a classic in what I would call Christian literature. I don’t know if Paton was a Christian or not, but some of his characters certainly were. The book tells the story of an Anglican priest whose son has run away and fallen into a life of crime. It’s a story of redemption, but the redemption doesn’t come easily.
Here’s some more information from last year about Paton and his writing. I highly recommend Cry the Beloved Country.
Do you know who it was that said, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely?”
Last year at this time, I wrote about this bibliophile who was born on January 10, 1834.
I found this website. It’s really just a list of projects, meaningful ways to spend time, submitted by various people. Here’s an example:
Project 98
Buy a book of perforated postcards that are of an interest to you and a friend (Beat poets, Monet paintings, etc.). Send one every day to your friend. On the back make up a story about the picture on the card, or reflect on a time when something about the picture had some relevance to the two of you (did you see the painting featured on the card together at a museum?). Push the envelope in coming up with unique interpretations of the picture and its meaning for the two of you.
Do this until you have sent all the cards.
Michael K. Gause
Minneapolis, MN
I think I’ll try it.
We are not Catholic. We are Southern Baptists who recently joined an Evangelical Free Church. I was raised in a church that did not celebrate any holidays except for Christmas and Easter. However, a long time ago I read two books by Martha Zimmerman, Celebrate the Feasts and Celebrating the Christian Year. These books changed my whole perspective on holidays and celebrations. Jewish holy days were meant to be teaching times, reminders of what God did for the nation Israel and of his continuing mercy, and the Christian liturgical year and the holy days celebrated in connection with that calendar were instituted for the same purpose. I love celebrating and remembering amd learning, and I don’t mind borrowing from the Jewish calendar or from the Catholic or mainline Protestant liturgical calendar to do so. I believe God can use these special days to remind me of his everlasting goodness. So this year I added both Jewish holy days and Christian liturgical feasts and holy days to my iCal calendar And I’ll be sharing some of those with my blog readers–in addition to authors’ birthdays which I see as more occasions for celebration and remembrance. We can celebrate The Great Story, as C.S. Lewis called it, and the many stories that are pale reflections, but nevertheless reflections, of the creative power of the Living God. And it behooves us to learn to celebrate and remember for that is what we are called to do for all eternity as Christians at the Great Banquet of our Lord.