Born August 10th

Aug10

herbert hooverHerbert Hoover, b. 1874

Once upon a time my political opponents honored me as possessing the fabulous intellectual and economic power by which I created a worldwide depression all by myself.

My country owes me nothing. It gave me, as it gives every boy and girl, a chance. It gave me schooling, independence of action, opportunity for service and honor. In no other land could a boy from a country village, without inheritance or influential friends, look forward with unbounded hope.

What this country needs is a great poem. John Brown’s Body was a step in the right direction. I’ve read it once, and I’m reading it again. But it’s too long to do what I mean. You can’t thrill people in 300 pages. The limit is about 300 words. Kipling’s “Recessional” really did something to England when it was published. It helped them through a bad time. Let me know if you find any great poems lying around

Children are our most valuable natural resource.

Yes children are our most valuable resource, and do let me know if you find any great poems lying around.

Born August 9th

Aug9

Happy Birthday to Pamela L. Travers (b. 1899, d. 1996), author of the Mary Poppins series: Mary Poppins, Mary Poppins in the Park, Mary Poppins Comes Back, Mary Poppins Opens the Door, Mary Poppins in Cherry Tree Lane, and Mary Poppins and the House Next Door.

Some people don’t care for Mary Poppins for the same reason some people don’t like Harry Potter. Mary Poppins uses magic to both entertain and teach her young charges, and her creator, P.L. Travers, was in fact a disciple of several New Age mystics, including two guys named Gurdjieff and Krishnamurti. Some of this pagan nonsense did creep into the Mary Poppins books, but I think it’s easy to ignore. And I have a soft spot for Mary Poppins, a no-nonsense sort of nanny with a sort of prickly personality. Julie Andrews was much too twinkly and loveable in the movie to actually personify the Mary Poppins in the books. (I like the movie, too, though.) Anyway, for those who are still with me, here’s the transcript of a 2003 interview with Travers’ biographer, Valerie Lawson. I’ll bet you didn’t know that:

* Pamela Travers’ real name was Helen Lyndon Goff.
* P.L. Travers was born in Australia and grew up there; she died in London.
* In between, Travers lived for quite a while in Taos, New Mexico, of all places.
* She was a friend of the poet, W.B. Yeats.
* She never married, but in her late 30’s she adopted a baby and raised him as her child. Strange story:

Camillus was his name, and he had a twin. She consulted an astrologer about which twin she should adopt. If she’d take the other one, Anthony was his name, he was the sweet, non-crying one, so she was quite perverse in that way and she said, “No, I’ll take the noisy crying one.” And she actually went to Dublin on the ferry from England, brought him home, raised him, and it wasn’t until he was 17 that he found out he was a twin and he was adopted, and he found out not from his adopted mother, but from his own twin. They met in London because the twin knew, and he’d gone searching for his brother, but Camillus did not know, and really never forgave his mother for that.

And what do you think about that?

Picture Book Preschool: Week 33

Aug8

Picture Book Preschool is a preschool/kindergarten curriculum which consists of a list of picture books to read aloud for each week of the year and a character trait, a memory verse, and activities, all tied to the theme for the week. You can purchase a downloadable version (pdf file) of Picture Book Preschool by Sherry Early at Biblioguides.

WEEK 33 (Aug) POETRY/MOTHER GOOSE
Character Trait: Mercy
Bible Verse: Blessed are the merciful; for they will be shown mercy. Matthew 5:7

1. Anglund, Joan Walsh. In a Pumpkin Shell. Doubleday, 1975.
2. Lines, Kathleen, compiler. Lavender’s Blue: A Book of Nursery Rhymes. Merrimack, 1982.
3. Jeffers, Susan, illustrator. Mother Goose: If Wishes Were Horses and Other Rhymes. Dutton, 1979. OP
4. Domanska, Janina. If All the Seas Were One Sea. Macmillan, 1971.
5. Provensen, Alice and Martin. Old Mother Hubbard. Random, 1977. OP
6. Wildsmith, Brian, illustrator. Mother Goose. Oxford, 1982.
7. Brown, Margaret Wise. Red Light, Green Light. Scholastic, 1992.

In Late Summer Our Thoughts Turn To . . .

Aug7

Shakespeare, of course. A couple of weeks ago we made our annual trek to Shakespeare at Winedale where the plays are presented by college students in an old country barn converted to theater. We saw A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Hamlet, and The Taming of the Shrew.. We learned that Hamlet is Shakespeare’s longest play, but the time is worth the use on’t, that the younger generation is seriously annoyed by The Taming of the Shrew, but I think they enjoyed being annoyed, and that Bottom is a funny name for a funny character.

So now a week and a half later we haven’t had our fill of Shakespeare, so we’re hosting our own Shakespeare festival. Since none of us is an actor that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, we’ll be taking advantage of the miracle of DVD. Here’s the invitation I gave out to a few families this evening:

You�re invited to:

The First Annual Semicolon Shakespeare Festival
Presenting at 7 p.m. each evening:
Tuesday, August 9th Much Ado About Nothing

Wednesday, August 10th Romeo and Juliet

Thursday, August 11th Henry V

You and any or all of your family are invited to attend any or all three of the plays. Much Ado and Henry V are the movie versions directed by Kenneth Branagh. Romeo and Juliet is the 1968 version directed by Franco Zeffirelli.

I’d be happy to invite all my blog buddies, but the trip to Houston might be a little too long for some of you, and my living room might be a tad too small. So if you want to rent the movies and watch them in the comfort of your own home, you’re hereby invited to host your own Shakespeare festival.

Which of the three plays we are planning to watch contains which quotation and who said it?

1. “In brief, since I do purpose to marry, I will think nothing to any purpose that the world can say against it; and therefore never flout at me for what I have said against it; for man is a giddy thing, and this is my conclusion.”
2. “O, swear not by the moon, the fickle moon, the inconstant moon, that monthly changes in her circle orb, Lest that thy love prove likewise variable.”
3. “Is love a tender thing? It is too rough, too rude, too boisterous; and it pricks like thorn.”
4. “The game’s afoot:
Follow your spirit; and, upon this charge
Cry ‘God for Harry! England and Saint George!'”
5. “If we are marked to die, we are enow
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.”
6. “O, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you!
She is the fairies’ midwife, and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agate-stone
On the fore-finger of an alderman,
Drawn with a team of little atomies
Athwart men’s noses as they lie asleep.”
7. “Some Cupid kills with arrows, some with traps.”
8.”See, how she leans her cheek upon her hand!
O that I were a glove upon that hand,
That I might touch that cheek!”
9. “O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend
The brightest heaven of invention;
A kingdom for a stage, princes to act
And monarchs to behold the swelling scene.”
10. “He that hath a beard is more than a youth, and he that hath no beard is less than a man; and he that is more than a youth is not for me, and he that is less than a man, I am not for him.”

Friday Blogamundi

Aug5

Christianity in China from Get Religion. “80 million members would mean there are now more Christians than Communists in China.”

Pages Turned blogs about her favorite TV series, Alias Smith and Jones. And Ambra Nykol praises The Cosby Show as “one of the greatest television shows ever created.” I must say that both series are among my favorites, and FYI The Cosby Show, first season, is now available on DVD.

Phil is taking nominations at Collected Miscellany for the Best Book(s) of 2005. I nominated two books, both fiction: Acts of Faith by Philip Caputo and The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. I think both of them were published in 2005.

The Anchoress discusses Catholic doctrine and teaching regarding contraception and children.

Quiver Full Revisited, Part 2

Aug4

Next reading assignment: Molly at My Three Pennies Worth writes Quiverfull Schmiverfull. Good stuff to continue our discussion. Summation quotation:

“There are some good reasons why limiting family size can be godly, and I have friends who have had to make that difficult decision due to life-threatening issues. They are the minority, though. For many, the decision to “have 1.7 children” is not birthed (pardon the pun) from prayer, but from a nonchalant acceptance of what our godless society says is Normal.”

So to review from Quiver Full Revisited, Part 1, my first point was:Our culture is becoming anti-child, and this attitude is bad for our society and wrong for Christians.

My second point is easy to state and understand, too. The anti-child attitude and the lack of prayer and careful thought about the issue of contraception among Christians is a problem—not the number of children a couple chooses to have or not to have.

I consider myself “quiverfull.” We have eight children, and we don’t use contraceptives (anymore). We came to this place slowly after several years of the same prayerlessness and lack of careful thought that I decry in the above statement. I’m glad to see Christian women (and men) thinking about the issue of contraception and asking what the One who is supposed to be Lord of our entire lives would have them do in this area of decision.

A few years ago a leader of women’s ministry in my (Baptist) church told me, laughingly, in front of the younger of her two children, that she and her husband should have only had one child. The second one was a mistake. They were really only able to handle one child, and after the second one was born, they got that “fixed” right away so that there wouldn’t be any more mistakes. I couldn’t believe she was telling me this, and I was literally speechless. I have since thought of many responses, both good and bad, but the main question I would like to ask that lady if I were able to do so is this: “Do you really believe God made a mistake in giving you a second child?”

For Christians, children are never mistakes; children are blessings.

Quiver Full Revisited

Aug3

First mosey over and read this column by Albert Mohler. I’ll wait. . . Some of the guys at Boars Head Tavern hated it, so I figured I might like to read what Dr. Mohler had to say. First, let’s review what he didn’t say:

1. He didn’t say that married couples who are unable to have children or who are unable to have as many children as they might like to have are sinful or cursed or less spiritual. “Morally speaking, the epidemic in this regard has nothing to do with those married couples who desire children but are for any reason unable to have them, but instead in those who are fully capable of having children but reject this intrusion in their lifestyle.”
2. He didn’t say that Christian couples must never use contraceptives under any circumstances or that they must do everything they can to conceive and give birth to all the children they possibly can. “Couples are not given the option of chosen childlessness in the biblical revelation. To the contrary, we are commanded to receive children with joy as God’s gifts, and to raise them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.”
3. Finally, Dr. Mohler says nothing to justify this question by Michael Spencer at BHT: Isn’t he just saying the “Full Quiver” position- pregnant, bed-ridden 48 year old wives pregnant for the twentieth time and all- is the Biblical position?”
No, actually, Dr. Mohler said nothing of the kind—which is why I agree with the ideas in his column. I am 48; I’m not pregnant; and I agree with the Full Quiver position (as defined by me, not by someone else).

What he did say (and I agree):
Our culture is becoming anti-child, and this attitude is bad for our society and wrong for Christians.

Couples are not given the option of chosen childlessness in the biblical revelation. To the contrary, we are commanded to receive children with joy as God’s gifts, and to raise them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. We are to find many of our deepest joys and satisfactions in the raising of children within the context of the family. Those who reject children want to have the joys of sex and marital companionship without the responsibilities of parenthood. They rely on others to produce and sustain the generations to come.

I have been reading The Empty Cradle: How Falling Birthrates Threaten World Prosperity and What To Do About It by Philip Longman and Fewer: How the New Demography of Depopulation Will Shape Our Future by Ben J. Wattenberg. Both of these books document, from a purely secular point of view, how the anti-child ethos in Western civilization is a new kind of “population bomb” set to go off in this century and cause all kinds of somewhat unpredictable problems and challenges for our children and grandchildren.
For both practical and spiritual reasons, Christians should be different. Christians should welcome children, regard them as gifts from a loving God, and do the work and self-sacrifice required to nurture and admonish each child God gives.

Part 2 tomorrow. Wow, a lot of people have already written a lot of good stuff about this subject.

Born August 3rd

Aug3

Two of my favorite novelists have birthdays today: Baroness Phyllis Dorothy James (b. 1920) and Leon Marcus Uris (b. 1924, d. 2003).

Although I like her detective novels very much, my favorite P. D. James novel as of now is Children of Men, a dystopian novel about a world where no children are born. I suggest that those who are struggling with the “quiver-full question” read James’ rather chilling picture of a future with no children at all. Read my review here.

Leon Uris is sometimes described as a “Zionist” and one obituary in the British newspaper The Guardian referred to him as a racist for his portrayal of Arabs in his admittedly pro-Jewish novels. I think this is an unfair accusation, but if you are Palestinian, or sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, you might not enjoy Uris’ novels as much as I do. Exodus, Mila 18, and QB VIII are all great stories with lots of historical information about Israel and the experience of modern Jews in Europe during and after World War II. My thoughts about Uris and James and their books on this date last year.

More Picture Books

Aug1

Hey, I sold two copies of my curriculum book, Picture Book Preschool. I hope y’all enjoy it and find it useful. (Picture Book Preschool is a preschool/kindergarten curriculum which consists of a list of picture books to read aloud for each week of the year and a character trait, a memory verse, and activities, all tied to the theme for the week. You can purchase an updated, downloadable version (pdf file) of Picture Book Preschool by Sherry Early at Biblioguides.)

Also Carmon has a list of Agrarian Picture Books. It looks like a great supplement to Picture Book Preschool.

Also, today is the birthday of Gail Gibbons (b. 1944), picture book author and illustrator extraordinaire. I list ten of her books in my curriculum, and there are many more that are excellent also but just wouldn’t fit. For a field-trip-in-a-book, try any of these books by Gail Gibbons.