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Christmas Dinner: December 25, 195?

Dec4

It was Christmas when we awoke. Breakfast was light–acorn pancakes, jam, and sassafras tea. Bando went for a walk. I lit the fire in the fireplace and spent the morning creating a feast from the wilderness.

Bando rinsed Dad’s soup bowl in the snow, and with great ceremony and elegance–he could really be elegant when the occasion arose–poured him a turtle shell of sassafras tea. Quoting a passage from one of Dickens’s food-eating scenes, he carved the blackened steak. It was pink and juicy inside. Cooked to perfection. We were all proud of it. Dad had to finish his tea before he could eat. I was short on bowls. Then I filled his shell. A mound of sort of fluffy mashed cattail tubers, mushrooms, and dogtooth violet bulbs, smothered in gravy thickened with acorn powder. Each plate had a pile of soaked and stewed honey locust beans–mixed with hickory nuts. The beans are so hard it took three days to soak them.
It was glorious feast. Everyone was impressed, including me.

My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George

We’re currently reading this Newbery Honor Book for our read aloud time. Did you know that E.P. Dutton (publishers) initially refused to publish Ms. George’s story of a boy who leaves home to live off the land in the Catskill Mountains because they were afraid it would encourage children to run away from home?

Newbery Award and Honor Books

Nov19

I would like to undertake a project to read all the Newbery Award and Honor books dating back to 1923. Since one fiction book for children is chosen each year to win the Newbery Medal, and the committee also chooses anywhere from zero to six Honor books, I’m estimating that there are about 83 x 4 books on the list–or a total of 332 books. I’ve already read about fifty to a hundred of them, but I’ll have to re-read them for this project because I’d like to review the books here.

So Book 1 of this project is one I reviewed earlier this week:

Swift Rivers by Cornelia Meigs Newbery Honor 1933

I also wrote about the Newbery Award here and highlighted the Newbery Medal books that I have read. I just counted, and I’ve read fifty-eight of the Medal books. It looks as if I’ve another book list to prevent me from becoming bored with life–as if eight children couldn’t handle that little task.

I wonder: Are any of the Newbery books also Christmas stories? If so, I should probably start with a Christmas book. If anyone knows, please leave a comment. Otherwise, I’ll just look through the titles and see what I can figure out.

Swift Rivers by Cornelia Meigs

Nov17

Yesterday I finished reading this book aloud to Karate Kid and Brown Bear Daughter. We always have a history-related read aloud book going, and this one occupied most of the past three weeks.

Swift Rivers was published in 1932, and it made the Newbery Honor roll in 1933, the same year that Elizabeth Lewis won the Newbery Medal for Young Fu of the Upper Yangtze. The very next year in 1934 Ms. Meigs won the Newbery Medal herself for her biography of Louisa May Alcott called Invincible Louisa. The year of publication is important because children, and adults, who are used to reading more recently published children’s literature will be challenged by the language and somewhat complicated plot line of Cornelia Meigs’s novel about the journey to manhood of a young man who brings a job to completion in spite of many obstacles.

Here’s an example of the language, chosen at random:

“Mr. Howland knew how to put shrewd provocative questions. In half a day’s acquaintance he seemed to have come to understand completely that restless Stuart Hale and his wish to ‘find things, or build something nobody ever thought of building before,’ and that impatience of his, not of study, but of authority over their students of professors whom he deemed no wiser than himself.”

The entire book reads much this same way. The language is somewhat stilted by today’s standards, rich in vocabulary, and very descriptive. Once while I was reading the book aloud, the author used the word “exceedingly.” Karate Kid interrupted, not rudely but just wanting to share with us, and said, “I really like that word ‘exceedingly.’ It sounds good.” I say any author who can make an All-Boy Eight Year Old Karate Kid listen and notice words–and follow the story at the same time, by the way–is a talented writer.

Swift Rivers is the story of eighteen year old Chris Dahlberg, a farm boy in northern Minnesota in the early 1800’s, who decides to make his fortune and take care of his elderly grandfather by running logs down the Mississippi River. Chris and his friend Stuart take the logs all the way to St. Louis and along the way they learn lessons in both forgiveness and persistence. Subplots reinforce the themes: the significance of good character, the necessity for hard work and determination, and the importance of forgiveness and friendship. All these qualities are show to be vital to true manhood and to survival in frontier America.

Karate Kid says he liked the part of the book where they were fighting over the fool’s gold and the part where Chris Dahlberg fought with the Indian. (Can you tell where Karate Kid got his nickname?) And Brown Bear daughter liked the part about the thieves because it was “kind of spooky” and the ending because everything turned out OK. Swift Rivers is a good read aloud book; I wouldn’t send most elementary age children off to read it by themselves. Middle schoolers who love history ought to be able to handle it, and high schoolers could learn a few things from this book about character as well as history.

The Most Dangerous Thing Is Illusion

Oct31

Harry Houdini died of gangrene and peritonitis resulting from a ruptured appendix on October 31, 1926. Magician dies on Halloween; how odd is that?

Houdini was born in Budapest, Hungary on March 24, 1874. He was the son of a rabbi, and his birth name was Erik Weisz. The family moved to America in about 1878. Erik/Houdini ran away from home at the age of twelve. Houdini worked hard to become a vaudeville magician and entertainer; eventually he concentrated on escapes. He was known as “The King of Handcuffs” and “The Genius of Escape.”

In 1922 Houdini was vacationing with his friend Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Doyle’s family. He attended a seance with Lady Doyle who claimed to receive a message from Houdini’s deceased and beloved mother. Houdini did not believe in the message, and he and Doyle became estranged over this seance and over Houdini’s continuing efforts to unmask fake and fraudulent “mediums.”

Teaching materials on Harry Houdini from PBS’s The American.Experience.

Born September 20th

Sep20

Upton Sinclair, b. 1878, socialist author of The Jungle, a novel about the meat-packing industry that resulted in passage of The Pure Food and Drug Act (1906) and The Meat Inspection Act (1906)).

Upton Sinclair, letter of resignation from the Socialist Party (September, 1917)

I have lived in Germany and know its language and literature, and the spirit and ideals of its rulers. Having given many years to a study of American capitalism. I am not blind to the defects of my own country; but, in spite of these defects, I assert that the difference between the ruling class of Germany and that of America is the difference between the seventeenth century and the twentieth.

No question can be settled by force, my pacifist friends all say. And this in a country in which a civil war was fought and the question of slavery and secession settled! I can speak with especial certainty of this question, because all my ancestors were Southerners and fought on the rebel side; I myself am living testimony to the fact that force can and does settle questions – when it is used with intelligence.

In the same way I say if Germany be allowed to win this war – then we in America shall have to drop every other activity and devote the next twenty or thirty years to preparing for a last-ditch defence of the democratic principle.

I wonder what Sinclair would say about the war in Iraq were he alive today? Also, just out of curiousity, did anyone else become a vegetarian for a week or two after reading The Jungle in high school? I would strongly suggest that you NOT read Sinclair’s muckraking classic if you are squeamish or if you wish to remain comfortable in your meat-eating habits. Then again, if you want cheap motivation for a healthier diet . . .

The Bible or the Axe by William O. Levi

Sep16

Subtitled “one man’s escape from persecution in the Sudan,” this autobiography reads like a novel. Wiliam Levi, the founder and president of Operation Nehemiah, was born in a village in Southern Sudan and grew up in Uganda in exile from his native land as a result of persecution and war in Sudan during the 1960’s. He returned to Sudan as a young teenager to go to school, but soon found that Islamic persecution intensified and interfered with his schooling and, eventually, threatened his life. At one point, William and couple of other young men decide to flee to Kenya in hopes of continuing their education. They are arrested, however, and charged with intending to join the Southern rebels against the government in Khartoum, the SPLA.

It’s funny what you think about when you know you are marked for death. Perversely, I was filled with regret that I would not be able to go to school. When you are seventeen, you have your whole life ahead of you; but for me, the desire to finish school was the first thing that came to my mind. (p. 183)

William experiences torture but is able to escape from the custody of the Sudanese government soldiers. He and his family see that he must leave Sudan, and William eventually travels to Egypt, then Turkey, then France, and finally seeks asylum in the United States. Throughout all his travels and adventures, William remains faithful to God and to his vision for obtaining an education for the sake of serving his people in Southern Sudan.

I was impressed with several things in William Levi’s life as I read his story. First of all, he is passionate about becoming educated. His family sacrifices for the sake of William’s education, and his first thought after gaining asylum in the U.S. is to further his education. Oh, that our children would realize the value of education and the riches that they have here in the United States in being able to pursue an education amid an abundance of educational resources.

Secondly, I am inspired by Mr. Levi’s steadfast faith. At his baptism, William’s grandfather gives him a choice of weapons: the Bible or the axe? Wiliam consistently chooses the Bible and faith as his weapons to defeat both earthly and spiritual enemies. None of his struggles are made to seem easy, either, whether it’s the difficulty of living with worldly roomates or the confusion of not knowing where God is leading and how He will provide. The Christian life requires faith in a God who is there even when we cannot see His ways, and the story of William Levi gives numerous examples of the real life application of this kind of faith.

Finally, I see in William Levi a man who is dedicated to service in the name of Jesus Christ. At the very end of the book, Mr. Levi concludes:

In 1972, there was a peace accord, but eleven years later it was followed by renewed oppression and genocide. Please help us build a strong and united biblically based Christian community in the South Sudan and throughout the entire country during this window of opportunity.

He then tells about some of the ministries of the Nehemiah Project: church planting, education, trade school, health care, ministry to Sudanese widows and orphans, investment in micro-businesses, agricultural projects and construction and infrastructure projects. Surely ministries like this one and projects that are grounded in a deep Christian faith are the hope of Sudan and of Africa. The novel I read a few months ago, Acts of Faith by Philip Caputo does a good job of showing the problems and the temptations inherent in any kind of relief work, especially in Sudan and northern Africa. This true story, The Bible or the Axe? sounds a note of hope. The problems and divisions in the Sudan are rooted so deeply in history and in the sinfulness of the human heart that Christ is the only hope.

Unsinkable Courage

Apr15

Thursday 18 April 1912
(A poem said to have been written on board the RMS Olympic, April 18, 1912, following the disaster to her sister ship)

He slams his door in the face of the world
If he thinks the world too bold:
He will even curse; but he opens his purse
To the poor, and the sick, and the old.

He is slow in giving to woman the vote
And slow to pick up her fan;
But he gives her room in an hour of doom
And dies – like an Englishman!

Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1855-1919)

On this day in 1912 the luxury liner Titanic sank at 2:27 AM after hitting an iceberg just before midnight the night before (the 14th). 2227 persons were on board the Titanic; only 705 were rescued from the icy waters near the site of the sunken vessel. Most of the survivors were women and children.

Some fiction books featuring the Titanic:
Tonight on the Titanic (Magic Treehouse Series, No. 17) by Mary Pope Osborne
Titanic Crossing by Barbara Williams
SOS Titanic by Eve Bunting I read this one while I was sick a few days ago. It’s OK, typical teen romance-type novel with good historical detail. There’s a steward who foresees the disaster because of his supernatural “gift.” And there’s an underlying theme of class war and class distinctions just as there was in the movie, Titanic.

Also Born on March 26th

Mar26

Nathaniel Bowditch, self-taught mathemetician, astronomer, and navigator, b. 1773. We’ve been reading Carry On, Mr. Bowditch by Jean Lee Latham for over a month, I think, and we’re about through it. He’s a very interesting character, a Yankee seaman and an extraordinary mathematician and ship’s captain. Let your boys read this one, and anyone who is interested in numbers and math.
Edward Bellamy, Utopian novelist, b. 1850. His very popular novel, Looking Backward, was set in the future in the year 2000, and in it Bellamy envisioned a socialist utopia. People have been trying, unsucccessfully, to make the novel come true ever since he wrote it.
A.E. Houseman, poet, b. 1859.
Betty MacDonald, author of Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle and its sequels, b. 1908. Mrs. MacDonald also wrote The Egg and I, which inspired the 1947 movie with Claudette Colbert and Fred MacMurray.

March 14th Birthdays

Mar14

Arthur William Edgar O’Shaughnesy, English poet, b 1844.
Albert Einstein, scientist, b. 1879. This year is the centennial of Einstein’s “Annus Mirabilis,” his miracle year of 1905, during which he created the Special Theory of Relativity and the quantum theory of light, explained in one paper Brownian motion and in another how to determine the size of atoms or molecules in space, and extended the theory of relativity to include the famous equation E-mc squared. He did all this while working forty hours a week in a patent office. I don’t have a clue what any of these discoveries really mean, but I’m impressed with the Einstein miracle.

“I know quite certainly that I myself have no special talent; curiosity, obsession and dogged endurance, combined with self-criticism have brought me to my ideas.” Albert Einstein

Marguerite DeAngeli, author of 1950’s Newbery-award winning book, The Door in the Wall, b. 1889. In this favorite quote from The Door in the Wall, Brother Matthew is speaking to Robin, a boy who has been crippled probably by polio:

“Whether thou’lt walk soon I know not. This I know. We must teach thy hands to be skillful in many ways, and we must teach thy mind to go about whether thy legs will carry thee or no. For reading is another door in the wall, dost understand, my son?”

 

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!

Mar2

Theodore Geisel aka Dr. Seuss was born on this date in 1904 in Springfield, MA. His first book was To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street, and it was rejected by 27 puplishers before being published by Vanguard Press in 1937. Dr. Seuss wrote 46 children’s books, and my favorites are:

To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street
Horton Hatches the Egg
The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins
Green Eggs and Ham

Go to Seussville for lots of cool games and fun stuff. In honor of Seuss’s birthday, the National Education Association sponsors ReadAcrossAmerica.

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