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.
Archives
“Lindy”
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???
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
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?
Newbery Award
John Newbery (1713-1756) was born on this day.
The Newbery Medal was named for eighteenth-century British bookseller John Newbery. It is awarded annually by the Association for Library Service to Children, a division of the American Library Association, to the author of the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children.
Go to the extended entry for a list of the Newbery Award winning books back to 1922 when the award was first given. I’ve put into bold print the ones I’ve read. (I can see from performing this exercise of marking the books I’ve read that I haven’t kept up with children’s literature in the past several years. I think I remember trying to read a couple of the Newbery Award-winning books from the past ten years or so and finding them depressing–just like most of the twentieth century literature I try to read.)
2004: The Tale of Despereaux: Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup, and a Spool of Thread by Kate DiCamillo (Candlewick Press)
2003: Crispin: The Cross of Lead by Avi (Hyperion Books for Children)
2002: A Single Shard by Linda Sue Park(Clarion Books/Houghton Mifflin)
2001: A Year Down Yonder by Richard Peck (Dial)
2000: Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis (Delacorte)
1999: Holes by Louis Sachar (Frances Foster)
1998: Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse (Scholastic)
1997: The View from Saturday by E.L. Konigsburg (Jean Karl/Atheneum)
1996: The Midwife’s Apprentice by Karen Cushman (Clarion)
1995: Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech (HarperCollins)
1994: The Giver by Lois Lowry(Houghton)
1993: Missing May by Cynthia Rylant (Jackson/Orchard)
1992: Shiloh by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor (Atheneum)
1991: Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli (Little, Brown)
1990: Number the Stars by Lois Lowry (Houghton)
1989: Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices by Paul Fleischman (Harper)
1988: Lincoln: A Photobiography by Russell Freedman (Clarion)
1987: The Whipping Boy by Sid Fleischman (Greenwillow)
1986: Sarah, Plain and Tall by Patricia MacLachlan (Harper)
1985: The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley (Greenwillow)
1984: Dear Mr. Henshaw by Beverly Cleary (Morrow)
1983: Dicey’s Song by Cynthia Voigt (Atheneum)
1982: A Visit to William Blake’s Inn: Poems for Innocent and Experienced Travelers by Nancy Willard (Harcourt)
1981: Jacob Have I Loved by Katherine Paterson (Crowell)
1980: A Gathering of Days: A New England Girl’s Journal, 1830-1832 by Joan W. Blos (Scribner)
1979: The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin (Dutton)
1978: Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson (Crowell)
1977: Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor (Dial)
1976: The Grey King by Susan Cooper (McElderry/Atheneum)
1975: M. C. Higgins, the Great by Virginia Hamilton (Macmillan)
1974: The Slave Dancer by Paula Fox (Bradbury)
1973: Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George (Harper)
1972: Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C. O’Brien (Atheneum)
1971: Summer of the Swans by Betsy Byars (Viking)
1970: Sounder by William H. Armstrong (Harper)
1969: The High King by Lloyd Alexander (Holt)
1968: From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg (Atheneum)
1967: Up a Road Slowly by Irene Hunt (Follett)
1966: I, Juan de Pareja by Elizabeth Borton de Trevino (Farrar)
1965: Shadow of a Bull by Maia Wojciechowska (Atheneum)
1964: It’s Like This, Cat by Emily Neville (Harper)
1963: A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle (Farrar)
1962: The Bronze Bow by Elizabeth George Speare (Houghton)
1961: Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell (Houghton)
1960: Onion John by Joseph Krumgold (Crowell)
1959: The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare (Houghton)
1958: Rifles for Watie by Harold Keith (Crowell)
1957: Miracles on Maple Hill by Virginia Sorenson (Harcourt)
1956: Carry On, Mr. Bowditch by Jean Lee Latham (Houghton)
1955: The Wheel on the School by Meindert DeJong (Harper)
1954: …And Now Miguel by Joseph Krumgold (Crowell)
1953: Secret of the Andes by Ann Nolan Clark (Viking)
1952: Ginger Pye by Eleanor Estes (Harcourt)
1951: Amos Fortune, Free Man by Elizabeth Yates (Dutton)
1950: The Door in the Wall by Marguerite de Angeli (Doubleday)
1949: King of the Wind by Marguerite Henry (Rand McNally)
1948: The Twenty-One Balloons by William Pene du Bois (Viking)
1947: Miss Hickory by Carolyn Sherwin Bailey (Viking)
1946: Strawberry Girl by Lois Lenski (Lippincott)
1945: Rabbit Hill by Robert Lawson (Viking)
1944: Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes (Houghton)
1943: Adam of the Road by Elizabeth Janet Gray (Viking)
1942: The Matchlock Gun by Walter Edmonds (Dodd)
1941: Call It Courage by Armstrong Sperry (Macmillan)
1940: Daniel Boone by James Daugherty (Viking)
1939: Thimble Summer by Elizabeth Enright (Rinehart)
1938: The White Stag by Kate Seredy (Viking)
1937: Roller Skates by Ruth Sawyer (Viking)
1936: Caddie Woodlawn by Carol Ryrie Brink (Macmillan)
1935: Dobry by Monica Shannon (Viking)
1934: Invincible Louisa: The Story of the Author of Little Women by Cornelia Meigs (Little, Brown)
1933: Young Fu of the Upper Yangtze by Elizabeth Lewis (Winston)
1932: Waterless Mountain by Laura Adams Armer (Longmans)
1931: The Cat Who Went to Heaven by Elizabeth Coatsworth (Macmillan)
1930: Hitty, Her First Hundred Years by Rachel Field (Macmillan)
1929: The Trumpeter of Krakow by Eric P. Kelly (Macmillan)
1928: Gay Neck, the Story of a Pigeon by Dhan Gopal Mukerji (Dutton)
1927: Smoky, the Cowhorse by Will James (Scribner)
1926: Shen of the Sea by Arthur Bowie Chrisman (Dutton)
1925: Tales from Silver Lands by Charles Finger (Doubleday)
1924: The Dark Frigate by Charles Hawes (Little, Brown)
1923: The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle by Hugh Lofting (Lippincott)
1922: The Story of Mankind by Hendrik Willem van Loon (Liveright)
Dorothy Sayers Quotations
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
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.
Edith Wharton and House of Mirth
I finished reading The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton. I’m still trying to figure out what the title means. If you know, don’t tell me. I’d like to figure it out myself.
I found this information about Edith Wharton:
She did not go to school, but educated herself by reading in her father’s “gentleman’s library,” and was given lessons by a governess
Another homeschooled genius.
I liked the book very much although it was sad. I was reminded of a professor I had in college who said something to the effect that every time he read Romeo and Juliet he hoped against hope that somehow the story would turn out differently, that Romeo would arrive at the right time or that Juliet would wake up just a little sooner. In The House of Mirth, the main character, Lily Bart, is always just a little too late or a little too trusting or a little too scrupulous or a little too unsure of herself. She’s trapped in a society that pushes her toward a materialistic and loveless marriage of convenience, and she tries to fight against the pressure. However, she never fights hard enough or soon enough, and of course, it’s obvious from the beginning that the novel must end in tragedy. Romeo and Juliet, Lily and Selden, neither couple can live happily ever after. At least, Juliet knows she wants Romeo. They’re just “star-crossed lovers.” Lily Bart knows how to get what she wants; unfortunately, she never does figure out exactly what it is she wants. May we, unlike Lily, figure out what is really important in life before it’s too late.
No Graves As Yet by Anne Perry
I finished reading No Graves As Yet by Anne Perry. I enjoy her books; the characters and the relationships are always interesting. The mysteries she’s written previously are set in Victorian England. No Graves As Yet takes place just as World War 1 is beginning. In fact, Archduke Ferdinand is assassinated in the first few pages of the book. The main characters in the novel are two brothers, one of whom works for British Intelligence and the other of whom is an Anglican priest and a don at Cambridge. Although, as I said, I have read and enjoyed many of her mystery stories, something always disturbs me just a little about Anne Perry’s plots. There’s usually something that doesn’t quite connect. I don’t know if it’s poor editing or poor logic on my part or what. For instance, in No Graves As Yet, there is a character who we find out could have been on the scene at the exact time that a suspicious accident took place. Then, it seems to me that we’re supposed to assume that because this particular person could have been there, he was, and he either saw everything, or he’s a murderer. I notice these “assumption problems” in all of Perry’s mysteries. Some possibility is mentioned, and the reader is supposed to make a mental jump to assume that the probability is a fact. Even so, the settings and the characters are worth the read. I believe No Graves As Yet is planned to be the first in a series of four or five novels with the same main characters set in the same time period. I’ll be interested to see how the author develops the characters in the other books in the series.