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Cartoon King

Nov26

He was born on November 26, 1922, and his friends called him “Sparky.” He became “the highest paid, most widely read cartoonist ever.” The very first Peanuts comic strip, written by Charles M. Schulz, appeared in seven newspapers on October 2, 1950.

A few good words from Sparky:

There’s a difference between a philosophy and a bumper sticker.

Don’t worry about the world coming to an end today. It’s already tomorrow in Australia.

I love mankind; it’s people I can’t stand.

I have a new philosophy. I’m only going to dread one day at a time.

All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn’t hurt.

Kate Seredy

Nov10

Kate Seredy (SHER edy) was born November 10, 1899 in Budapest, Hungary. She came to the United States in 1922. She was the owner of a children’s bookstore at first, and then she began to illustrate children’s books and textbooks. An editor at Viking Press suggested she write a book about her childhood, and in 1935 she published The Good Master. Its sequel, The Singing Tree, was published in 1940. Both books are about children growing up in Hungary during World War I. Seredy won the Newbery Medal in 1938 for her book The White Stag ( a sort of mythological story about the Magyars and the Huns), but I enjoyed the two books about Jansci and Kate surviving war times more. I found this quote at one of the quotation websites:

I make money using my brains and lose money listening to my heart. But in the long run my books balance pretty well.

Carol Kendall and Else Holmelund Minarik

Sep13

The Gammage Cup was published in 1959. The story of five non-conformist Minnipins who become unlikely heroes probably hit a nerve in the non-conformist sixties, but it’s still a great story. The Periods, stodgy old conservatives with names such as Etc. and Geo., are wonderful parodies of those who are still caught up in the forms and have forgotten the meanings. And Muggles, Mingy, Gummy, Walter the Earl, and Curley Green, the Minnipins who don’t quite fit in and who paint their doors colors other than green, are wonderful examples of those pesky artistic/scientific types who live just outside the rules of polite society. One of them, Muggles I think, isn’t consciously a nonconformist nor an artist; she just gets caught up in the adventures of the others and finds out that she, too, has her own desires and dreams and talents. I loved The Gammage Cup by Carol Kendall (b. September 13, 1917) when I was a child, and I still remember images and ideas from it. For instance, I’ve always had a desire to paint my front door red or orange or yellow. And I sort of like being different–sometimes just for the sake of difference.
Today is also the birthday of Else Holmelund Minarik, author of the Little Bear stories for beginning readers. What is your favorite Little Bear story? I really like A Kiss for Little Bear in which Little Bear’s grandmother gets some friends to deliver a kiss to Little Bear. The kiss unfortunately gets “all mixed-up” when a pair of lovestruck skunks keeps exchanging the kiss instead of delivering it, but everything turns out all right in the end. I also like the quote from Little Bear’s grandfather when Little Bear suggests that Grandfather might be tired and need a rest. “Me–tired? How can you make me tired? I’m never tired,” says Grandfather, just before he falls asleep in his lawn chair. Then, there’s the story of how Little Bear visits the moon and comes back in time for supper. Oh, yes, and I love Little Bear’s Friend about Little Bear’s friendship with Emily. Little Bear is about as fun and as profound as Frog and Toad. Who ever said that children’s books were boring or unchallenging? They have to be better than adult books so that we can enjoy reading them over and over again until they’re memorized.

New Hobby

Aug23

I have a new hobby, and it only costs $2.00 a week. (Yes, I know that $2.00 a week means $104.00 a year.) My new hobby is . . .
iTunes. I plan to buy exactly two songs per week and enjoy lots of nostalgic moments. So far, I’ve bought the following songs:

Simon and Garfunkle: Scarborough Fair
Simon and Garfunkel: Bridge Over Troubled Water
Eagles: Desperado
Roberta Flack: The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face
From Lord of the Rings: Into the West
Artist Unknown: Eres Tu

I just found the words to Eres Tu. Anyone else remember this ballad from the late 70’s, I would guess?

ERES TU
(Juan Carlos Calderon)

Como una promesa eres tu, eres tu,
Como una manana de verano.
Como una sonrisa eres tu, eres tu.
Asi, asi eres tu.

Como una esperanza eres tu, eres tu,
Como lluvia fresca en mis manos
Como fuerte brisa eres tu, eres tu
Asi, asi eres tu

Eres tu como el agua de mi fuente.
Eres tu el fuego de mi hogar.
Algo asi eres tu.
Algo asi como el fuego de mi hoguera,
Algo asi eres tu , en mi vida algo asi eres tu.

Como mi poema eres tu, eres tu,
Como una guitarra en la noche,
Como mi horizonte eres tu, eres tu.
Asi, asi eres tu.

Eres tu como el agua de mi fuente
Eres tu el fuego de mi hogar.
Algo asi eres tu.
Algo asi como el fuego de mi hoguera
Algo asi eres tu, en mi vida algo asi eres tu.
Algo asi eres tu,
Algo asi como el agua de mi fuente.
Al asi eres tu, como el fuego de mi hogar.

Yes, I do have an incurable nostalgic and romantic streak. And don’t insult my eclectic taste in music. I plan to have Computer Guru Son turn my cassette tape of Keith Green into computer files next and load that into the iTunes, too–right next to Simon and Garfunkel and Pachelbel’s Canon.

Book recommendations

Jul27

If you could recommend a book each for John Kerry and George W. Bush to read that would “deepen his understanding of the realtionship between religious faith and political responsiblity,” what book(s) would you choose? NY Times columnist Peter Steinfels posed this question to various erudite religious scholars, and they came up with all sorts of book recommendations, mostly rather obscure at least to this evangelical Christian.
However Doug LeBlanc, at getreligion where I got the link to the NY Times column in the first place, recommends that John Kerry read Between Heaven & Hell: A Dialog Somewhere Beyond Death with John F. Kennedy, C. S. Lewis & Aldous Huxley by Peter Kreeft (InterVarsity, 1982). I thought this was a rather interesting recommendation, not only since I just posted about Huxley, but also because in reading a blurb about Kreeft’s book I found out that Kennedy, Huxley, and Lewis all died within hours of each other on November 23, 1963. What a creative idea to have these three men discuss the meaning of life and the claims of Christ! So I have yet another book to add to my ever growing list which lengthens much faster than I can read.
As for my recommendations, I would suggest that John Kerry read something by Marvin Olasky, perhaps The Tragedy of American Compassion and for George W. Bush maybe Kingdoms in Conflict by Chuck Colson.

“Lindy”

Jul25

I just finished re-reading “Bring Me A Unicorn”, the letters and diaries of Anne Morrow Lindbergh, who married the famous aviator Charles Lindbergh. It’s really fascinating and terribly romantic – it describes how she met him and fell in love with him. He was the object of amazing idol-worship everywhere he went (he was nicknamed “Lindy”), and she was a shy bookworm and dreamer; they were really awfully unlike each other. So – in short, a beautiful love-story.

Another volume of diaries that I read recently was the first volume of L.M. Montgomery’s diaries. (LMM is best known for “Anne of Green Gables”). Also very good, though almost completely different from Anne Morrow Lindbergh. LMM grew up in Cavendish, Prince Edward Island, a model for the fictional Avonlea.

Both women were very good at conveying their moods in their journals – depressed, overjoyed, tired, etc. Both were also good at describing nature, because they were both nature-lovers, I think.

Hemingway, Product of a Christian Home???

Jul21

Did you know this?

Ernest Hemingway was born on 21st July 1899 in Oak Park, a suburb of Chicago, Illinois. He was one of six children. His father, Dr Clarence Edmonds Hemingway was a fervent member of the First Congregational church, his mother, Grace Hall, sang in the church choir.

Or this?
In 1928 Hemingway received word of his father’s death by suicide. Clarence Hemingway had begun to suffer from a number of physical ailments that would exacerbate an already fragile mental state. He had developed diabetes, endured painful angina and extreme headaches. On top of these physical problems he also suffered from a dismal financial situation after speculative real estate purchases in Florida never panned out. His problems seemingly insurmountable, Clarence Hemingway shot himself in the head.

Or this?
In the fall of 1960 Hemingway flew to Rochester, Minnesota and was admitted to the Mayo Clinic, ostensibly for treatment of high blood pressure but really for help with the severe depression his wife Mary could no longer handle alone. On the morning of July 2, 1961 Hemingway rose early, as he had his entire adult life, selected a shotgun from a closet in the basement, went upstairs to a spot near the entrance-way of the house and shot himself in the head. It was little more than two weeks until his 62nd birthday.

I always liked Hemingway better than I liked the other guy that I associate with mid-1900’s American literature, Steinbeck. At least Hemingway’s plots are sort of interesting; Steinbeck is just depressing. Everybody drinks a lot in Hemingway’s novels, and for a young Southern Baptist that was also somewhat interesting. I remember wondering if anybody really did drink that much alcohol. I have since learned that, yes, some people do.
Information is from The Hemingway Resource Center.

Memorizing Poetry

Jul21

I read an article advocating the memorization of poetry by children in school. I think memorizing poetry, speeches, and other good examples of well-written material is a very useful exercise for children and adults. I tend to memorize things easily, but even if it’s hard for you to memorize, it can be done. Most children will memorize anything that you read aloud to them every night for a month. Eldest Daughter memorized the 23rd Psalm this way when she was only four years old. I memorized all kinds of things when I was younger: 1 Corinthians 13, John 14, Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe, The Gettysburg Address, The Preamble to the Constitution, The Raggedy Man by Eugene Field, Nobody by Emily Dickinson, various passages from Shakespeare. And look at this list of poets and others that New York schoolchildren used to be required to memorize:

The standard of literacy in the 1927 Course of Study in Literature for Elementary Schools is astonishingly high. Poems for reading and memorization by first-graders include those of Robert Louis Stevenson (Rain and The Land of Nod), A. A. Milne (Hoppity), Christina Rossetti (Four Pets), and Charles Kingsley (The Lost Doll). Second-graders grappled with poems by Tennyson (The Bee and the Flower), Sara Coleridge (The Garden Year), and Lewis Carroll (The Melancholy Pig). In third grade came Blake’s The Shepherd and Longfellow’s Hiawatha, while fourth grade brought Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Emily Dickinson, and Kipling. In the grades that followed, students read and recited poems by Arnold, Browning, Burns, Cowper, Emerson, Keats, Macaulay, Poe, Scott, Shakespeare, Southey, Whitman, and Wordsworth. Eighth-graders tackled Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and Second Inaugural Address.

What poetry do you have memorized? What do you or would you require your children to memorize?

Dorothy Sayers Quotations

Jun15

I always have a quotation for everything – it saves original thinking.
— Dorothy L. Sayers (Have his Carcase, 1932)

I found this on an unfamiliar website. looks like the website for a Lutheran church.. I don’t know if Dorothy really wrote it or not, but it’s wonderful satire:

Creed of St. Euthanasia
(Commonly called the Atheneum Creed)

I believe in man, maker of himself and inventor of all science. And in myself, his manifestation, and captain of my psyche; and that I should not suffer anything painful or unpleasant.

And in a vague, evolving deity, the future-begotten child of man; conceived by the spirit of progress, born of emergent variants; who shall kick down the ladder by which he rose and tell history to go to hell.

Who shall some day take off from earth and be jet-propelled into the heavens; and sit exalted above all worlds, man the master almighty.

And I believe in the spirit of progress, who spake by Shaw and the Fabians; and in a modern, administrative, ethical, and social organization; in the isolation of saints, the treatment of complexes, joy through health, and destruction of the body by cremation (with music while it burns), and then I’ve had it.

I especially like the part where the spirit of progress spake by Shaw and the Fabians.

This last one is a favorite of Eldest Daughter. Lord Peter says to Harriet Vane:

“I know you don’t want either to give or to take. You’ve tried being the giver, and you’ve found that the giver is always fooled. And you won’t be the taker, because that’s very difficult, and because you know that the taker always ends by hating the giver. You don’t want ever again to have to depend for happiness on another person.”
Dorothy Sayers, Have His Carcase

County Chronicle by Angela Thirkell

May31

I just finished reading County Chronicle by Angela Thirkell. The book begins with a proposal and then a marriage and ends with two proposals, marriages yet to come (in the next book?). So it’s a comedy, right? Angela Thirkell seems to have published about one book a year from 1930 until 1959–32 books in all by my count. This book, published in 1950, actually takes place two or three years after WW II. The problems in the novel, although distressing to the characters, involve nothing more serious than a lack of petrol, uncomfortable living arrangements, and unkind relatives. Still the story manages to hold my interest and keep me reading, and lately that’s an accomplishment. I’m supposing that these books are more or less like an English country soap opera and that the characters continue from one book to the next. Actually, the main complaint I have about the book is that there are so many characters, and they’re hard to keep sorted. Nevertheless, Ms. Thirkell has a gift for vivid description and interesting situations. And it’s all very clerical and gentle and pleasantly English. I already have another book by the same author, Private Enterprises that I plan to read next (even though it comes before the one I just read). Maybe someone should do a soap opera based on these books. Lifetime network? It would be a nice change from woman in danger and disease of the week.