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My Psalm Project

Apr22

I’m in the process of making a collection of songs based on the psalms as a playlist on my iTunes. Here’s what I have so far:

Psalm 5 Chuck Girard, Voice of the Wind
A Mighty Fortress (Psalm 46) Covenant Life Church
The Law of the Lord Is Perfect Ed Gungor, Shouts of Joy
Praise to the Lord the Almighty (Psalm 103 & 150) Fernando Ortega
The King of Love My Shepherd Is Fernando Ortega
Create In Me a Clean Heart Keith Green
The Lord Is My Shepherd (23rd Psalm) Keith Green
How Majestic Is Your Name (Psalm 8 ) Kristin Chenoweth
While the Nations Rage (Psalm 2) Rich Mullins
Psalm 3 Salvador, Into Motion
Psalm 6 Sons of Korah, Light of Life
Praise the Lord Sovereign Grace Music
Psalm 4 Waterworks, An Order for Compline
The Lord’s My Shepherd Wintley Phipps
My Soul Finds Rest (Psalm 62) Aaron Keyes, Not Guilty Anymore
God Be Merciful (Psalm 51) Indelible Grace Music

Suggestions? I would really like to find a good, singable version of Psalm 1, since I have Psalms 2-8, but not the first one. I know a song from childhood that’s based on Psalm 1, but I haven’t found a recorded version that I like.

Please add your suggestions for recorded versions of the Psalms in almost any musical style. I do like for the words to be understandable, and for the tune to be musical and easy to sing along with.

Wednesday’s Word of the Week: Defenestrate

Apr18

My daughter and I think it’s funny that there’s a word for throwing someone or something out of a window: defenestrate. The word comes from Latin: de for down and fenestra for window, and it’s a transitive verb. So, you can defenestrate your garbage or your mother-in-law.

“There have been many defenestrations over the course of history, but the most famous, and the one that inspired the word defenestration, was the Defenestration of Prague on May 23, 1618. Two imperial regents and their secretary were thrown out of a window of the Prague Castle in a fight over religion. The men landed on a dung heap and survived. The Defenestration of Prague was a prelude to the Thirty Years’ War.”

The quotation is from Anu Garg’s site, Wordsmith.org or A.Word.a.Day. Can you think of any other famous defenestrations, either historical or fictional, because I’m blank? Brown Bear Daughter encountered the word in Eva Ibbotson’s YA novel, A Song for Summer. She says, by the way, that she liked the story but not the ending. (No, it doesn’t end in defenestration; that comes near the beginning of the novel.)

'Defenestration' photo (c) 2008, torroid - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

The above is a picture of a work of art in San Francisco called “Defenstration.” I also think the word would make another good blog title.

Prior Wednesday Words of the Week: galimaufry,flanerie, vatic, pavid, galactagogue, snollygoster, apophenia.

1987: Events and Inventions

Apr18

May 28, 1987. Nineteen year-old West German pilot Mathias Rust evades Soviet air defenses and lands a private plane on Red Square in Moscow.

June 12, 1987. During a visit to Berlin, Germany, U.S. President Ronald Reagan challenges Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall.

June 28, 1987. Iraqi warplanes drop mustard gas bombs on the Iranian town of Sardasht in two separate bombing rounds, on four residential areas. This is the first time a civilian town is targeted by chemical weapons.

July 11, 1987. World population is estimated to have reached five billion people, according to the United Nations.

October 19, 1987. Black Monday. U.S. Stock Market crashes with a 508 point drop or 22.6%. Stockmarkets around the world follow with falls: by the end of October Australia had fallen 41.8%, Canada 22.5%, Hong Kong 45.8%, and the United Kingdom 26.4%.

December 16, 1987. A marathon two-year trial comes to an end in Sicily as 338 Mafiosi are sentenced to prison terms for crimes including extortion and murder.

Poem #53: The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1861

Apr18

“To feel most beautifully alive means to be reading something beautiful, ready always to apprehend in the flow of language the sudden flash of poetry. “~Gaston Bachelard

I love Longfellow! Accessible, rhythmic, and pure fun!

Listen my children and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.

So through the night rode Paul Revere;
And so through the night went his cry of alarm
To every Middlesex village and farm,—
A cry of defiance, and not of fear,
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a word that shall echo for evermore!
For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,
And the midnight message of Paul Revere.

Read the entire poem.

And, by the way, on April 18, 1775, 237 years ago today, American revolutionaries Paul Revere, William Dawes and Samuel Prescott rode though the towns of Massachusetts giving the warning that “the British are coming.”

Here are links to a few resources for teaching and enjoying the poetry of Mr. Longfellow:

In episode #197 of Adventures in Odyssey, entitled The Midnight Ride, Whit tells the real story of Paul Revere’s ride, pointing out a few inaccuracies in Longfellow’s poem. I would use this radio program in class if I were teaching this event in American history or if I were teaching the poem.

I’ve done several posts on Longfellow and his poetry here at Semicolon:
Poetry Friday: Poem #43, The Village Blacksmith by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1841

Poetry Friday: The Childrens Hour by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Longfellow, Hurricanes and The Wreck of the Hesperus.

A Celebration of Longfellow

Longfellow’s Birthday

This is the forest primeval . . .

If you’re interested in the inception of the American Revolution and Paul Revere, I would suggest two books, one fiction and one nonfiction, by Esther Forbes. Ms. Forbes received a Pulitzer Prize in 1943 for her historical work, Paul Revere and the World He Lived In, and in 1944 her young adult historical fiction book, Johnny Tremain, was awarded the Newbery Medal for distinguished contribution to American literature for children. Paul Revere is a character in the novel Johnny Tremain, and the entire story is a wonderful introduction to the American Revolution and to the ethos and culture of the mid to late 1700’s in Boston.

Chinese History in Fiction and Nonfiction

Apr17

I read two books back to back that shed some light on the vicissitudes of Chinese life and history: Fortunate Sons by Liel Leibovitz and Matthew Miller and Nanjing Requiem by Ha Jin.

Fortunate Sons is the nonfiction title, subtitled The 120 Chinese Boys Who Came to America, Went to School, and Revolutionized an Ancient Civilization. It’s about an educational experiment that took place starting in 1872 in which groups of boys from China were sent to New England to be educated in the ways of Western thinking and inventions and technology. The goal was to train leaders for China who would bring the Chinese out of their technological deficit and their impotence in the face of Western weaponry and warfare.

In spite of the fact that the boys were called home early, before most of them were able to complete their university education, many of the young men who returned to China after receiving an American education were able to serve their native country effectively and with great loyalty. Sometimes their gifts were under-appreciated and under-utilized given the chaotic state of Chinese politics in the early twentieth century. However, some of the CHinese Educational Mission graduates were given great responsibility in bringing China into the modern age in the areas of railroads, diplomacy, and warfare in particular.

Unfortunately, I had trouble remembering which boy was which as I read the book. What with American nicknames like “Jimmy” and “By-Jinks Johnnie” as well as Chinese names, such as Yung Wing and Yung Liang and Chen Duyong and Liang Dunyan, that all started to sound alike to my untrained American ears, I was confused most of the time about who was whom. A list of the boys with their Chinese names, American nicknames, and one distinguishing fact about each would have been quite helpful. Nevertheless, I do recommend the book for those who are interested in modern Chinese history.

As usual, I learned more from the fiction book that I read set in 1937-1940 China called Nanjing Requiem than I did from the nonfiction book. This novel is another one of those memoir-ish fictional treatments, based on the life and experiences of a real person, specifically the life of Minnie Vautrin, an American missionary and the dean of Jinling Women’s College in Nanjing, China. If you’ve read anything about China and World War II, you’ve heard of the Rape of Nanjing. This story brings the Japanese occupation and pillage of Nanjing to life, but in an understated, almost documentary sort of writing style. The violence and the horror are there, and the author’s style, using a fictional Chinese narrator to tell the story of Ms. Vautrin’s courage and her eventual mental collapse, makes the barbarity of the events in the novel even more vivid because Ha Jin leaves much to the imagination. Then, there are the moral dilemmas of war and dealing with the enemy on behalf of the helpless and sometimes thankless Chinese refugees who become Ms. Vautrin’s responsibility. No one, including Minnie Vautrin, especially Ms. Vautrin, escapes the horrible repercussions of decisions made under the pressure of sometimes choosing between evil and more evil.

For those who are interested in the true story of Minnie Vautrin and the Rape of Nanjing, this video is a dramatization of material from the diaries of Minnie Vautrin, presented as a mock trial for war crimes committed during the Nanjing occupation. This video is a fictional presentation, not a real trial. The real Minnie Vautrin died in 1941.

I noticed as I read Nanjing Requiem how the characters in the novel spoke and thought about revenge on the Japanese for the atrocities they committed and how they wondered why God did not act to bring justice and vengeance down upon the Japanese army and upon the Japanese people for allowing such wickedness to proceed unchecked. I couldn’t help thinking about the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki a few years after the Rape of Nanking. Although I don’t believe that God sanctioned the bombing of those Japanese cites in retribution for the Rape of Nanjing and other Japanese war crimes, I do believe that evil begets evil. And sometimes the innocent pay for the sins of their fathers and others.

Newbery Boy Appeal

Apr16

Around Newbery Award time I heard a lot of buzz about the middle grade/young adult novel Okay for Now by Gary Schmidt. Mr. Schmidt had already received two Newbery honors for his books Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy and The Wednesday Wars. So people who really liked Schmidt’s most recent book thought it was time for him to win a Newbery.

Come January and the Newbery announcements, Okay for Now won . . . nothing, zip, not even a mention. Nor was Okay for Now among the finalists for the Cybils, even though it was nominated in the YA fiction category. If I had read the book before the award season started and ended, I would have been pulling for Mr. Schmidt with all my might. Okay for Now is an award-worthy book, and a book worth reading.

So, how to describe this novel? It’s got: drawing lessons, juvenile delinquency, child abuse, Jane Eyre, junior high school angst, libraries, literacy training, John James Audubon, returning Vietnam soldiers, baseball stats, Apollo rockets, ice cream and Coca Cola, horseshoes, Percy Bysshe Shelley-hatred, a cranky playwright, redemption, hope and change. Oh, and my favorite actor, Jimmy Stewart, makes a non-speaking cameo appearance. What more could you ask?

The narrator and protagonist, Doug Swieteck, has a voice that is both memorable and endearing. He’s something of a bully as the novel begins, and I wasn’t sure I was going to like him or the book. But then, sign of a really good author, Gary Schmidt managed to enlist my sympathies by slowly revealing the secrets and influences that have come together to make Doug the boy he is: a survivor. I was drawn into the story and into sympathy with the main character almost imperceptibly. And that’s only part of what makes Okay for Now a great book.

Here’s an article about Gary Schmidt.
Review of Okay for Now by Elizabeth Bird at Fuse #8 Production. (Ms. Bird does longer, more thorough reviews than I do, and I like and agree with what she said about this novel.)

The book that actually won the Newbery, Dead End in Norvelt by Jack Gantos, was, I suspect, trying to be the same kind of book as Okay for Now: historical fiction about a boy growing up in a rather quirky small town, lots of boy-appeal. However, whereas Okay for Now has many humorous moments and characters, it’s essentially a serious book about a boy surviving a traumatic childhood. Dead End is essentially a comedic novel about a boy living in a town full of crazy people. The boy who narrates and lives the story is named Jack Gantos, so I assume the novel is somewhat autobiographical.

The problem with Dead End, for me, was that I didn’t laugh. I didn’t even smile much. I mostly got that quizzical look on my face that you get when you wonder what in the world these people are thinking or doing???? Poison the rats in your basement with doctored chocolates? Really? Gather mushrooms in the wild to make meals for the elderly? Really? Sneak into an old lady’s house dressed as the Grim Reaper to see if she’s still alive and hope you don’t scare her to death? Really? Mow down your mom’s cornfield when you know she’s going to be really mad, just because your dad will be mad if you don’t? Really? And those are only a few of the minor plot points I had trouble suspending disbelief for.

Dead End in Norvelt gets an E for effort, but we each have our own sense of humor. Mine just wasn’t susceptible to Mr. Gantos’s brand of comedy.

Then, there were the plot holes. (These questions may include spoilers.) Five or six (I lost count) murders and no one even figured out till the very end that the deaths were not natural? Jack’s dad learns to fly an airplane in two or three easy lessons? Why did Jack’s mom ground him in the first place when he was only doing what his dad told him to do? Because she’s crazy? If anything in this book didn’t make sense, it was chalked up to the idea that “they’re all nuts.”

Checking in again at Fuse#8, Ms. Bird says Dead End in Norvelt is “weird” and “may also be one of the finest he’s (Gantos) produced in years.” She obviously liked it better than I did. I’m also not as observant as Ms. Bird because I ddn’t notice until she pointed it out that the two books have very similar cover pictures.

Dead End in Norvelt gets a few points for a more evocative and memorable title, but Gary Schmidt was cheated out of a Newbery-award as far as I’m concerned.

Alice I Have Been by Melanie Benjamin

Apr15

This fictional autobiography of Alice Liddell, the original Alice in Wonderland, is disturbing in its portrayal of Alice as Lolita and Lewis Carroll as a sort of passive pedophile. The book doesn’t indicate that Carroll molested Alice and there’s nothing sexually explicit in the story, but it does imply that Carroll ruined her youth and reputation with his excessive interest in photographing her and that his interest in her was unnatural and detrimental to Alice’s growth into maturity.

I find such speculation excessive in itself, and although the novel was interesting, I found the parts about Alice’s relationships with men, not just Carroll but also Ruskin and one of Queen Victoria’s sons, to be difficult to believe. So Victorian—in the worst sense of that term. I don’t know. If you’re particularly interested in Carroll and Alice Liddell, you might either love or hate the book, depending on your image of Mr. Carroll.

Here are some other facts and snippets to take into consideration as you read, if you read:

Wikipedia article on Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov:
“Vladimir Nabokov was fond of Lewis Carroll and had translated Alice in Wonderland into Russian. He even called Carroll the ‘first Humbert Humbert’.”

From The Eighth Lamp Ruskin studies today:
“Alice’s father Henry Liddell was Ruskin’s tutor at one time in Christ Church, Oxford. He encouraged Ruskin’s talent and promoted his architectural drawings. It was this early connection that led to Ruskin giving drawing lessons to the Liddell children, at a time when he was becoming increasingly famous due to the success of his critical writings.”

From alice-in-wonderland.net:

Q: Was Carroll a pedophile?

A: No, probably not. He certainly liked little girls at a level that was more than normal. However, there is no evidence at all that he was sexually attracted to them. He did photograph them in the nude, but only with permission from their mothers, and only if the children were completely at ease with it. He made sure that after his death those pictures were destroyed or returned to the children to prevent them from getting embarrassed.

In his time making nude photographs of children wasn’t uncommon; all Victorian artists did studies of child-nudes, it was a trendy subject for the time. When his child-friends grew up, they told only positive stories about their warm friendship. It is suggested that Carroll loved little girls so much because he had many sisters which he loved to entertain when he was a young boy.

This article in Slate magazine about children’s author Margaret Wise Brown mentions Lewis Carroll as another example of a writer who perhaps never grew up, who retained his childhood in a way that most of us don’t. The movie Finding Neverland portrays Peter Pan author James Barrie as a perpetual child who enjoyed the company of children, not in a sexual way, but as playmates who appreciated his fantasy world. I think this understanding of both Barrie and Carroll is the closest to truth.

1985: Events and Inventions

Apr15

A Year of Terrorism and Tragedy: Earthquake, volcano, cyclone, mudslides, storm surge–altogether they kill over 30,000 people during the year 1985. The terrorists, mostly Palestinian, kill far fewer people, but create havoc nevertheless, hijacking airplanes and a ship in their ongoing mission to turn the world’s attention toward the Palestinian cause.

March 11, 1985. Mikhail Gorbachev becomes the new leader of the USSR after the death of Konstantin Chernenko.

May 25, 1985. Bangladesh is hit by a tropical cyclone and storm surge, which kills approximately 10,000 people.

'Three Cultures Square, Mexico City (8)' photo (c) 2011, Jorge Andrade - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/June 30, 1985. Thirty-nine U.S. hostages are released in Beirut, Lebanon after their TWA flight was hijacked seventeen days earlier by Islamic Jihad terrorists. The hijackers murdered one passenger, a U.S. navy diver, and demanded the release of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails as a condition for the release of the hostages. The U.S. and Israel insist that no deal has been struck with the terrorists, but Israel plans to release 700 prisoners in the next few days.

September 19, 1985. An 8.1 Richter scale earthquake strikes Mexico City. Around 10,000 people are killed, 30,000 injured, and 95,000 left homeless.

October 1, 1985. The Israeli air force bombs Palestinian Liberation Organization headquarters near Tunis in Tunisia.

October 7, 1985. The cruise ship Achille Lauro is hijacked in the Mediterranean Sea by four Palestinian terrorists. One passenger, American Leon Klinghoffer, is killed.

November 13, 1985. Nevado del Ruiz volcano erupts, killing an estimated 23,000 people in Columbia.

'Bill Gates' photo (c) 2006, Esparta Palma - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0/November 20, 1985. Microsoft Corporation releases the first version of Windows, Windows 1.0.

November 23, 1985. EgyptAir Flight 648 is hijacked by the Abu Nidal group and flown to Malta, where Egyptian commandos storm the plane; 60 are killed by gunfire and explosions.

November 21, 1985. U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev meet for the first time in a summit in Geneva, Switzerland. The two leaders discuss nuclear arms control and reductions and human rights.

Breadcrumbs by Anne Orsu

Apr14

“I believe that the world isn’t always what we see. I believe there are secrets in the woods. And I believe that goodness wins out. So, if someone’s changed overnight—by witch curse or poison apple or were-turtle—you have to show them what’s good. You show them love. That works a surprising amount of the time. And if that doesn’t save them, they’re not worth saving.”

Breadcrumbs is a surprisingly expressive and meditative tale in the tradition of the Chronicles of Narnia and of Rebecca Stead’s Newbery award-winning When You Reach Me. The story teeters on the edge of despair, and as in the ending to Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, not everybody necessarily lives totally and completely happily ever after. There is a price to be paid for the rescue of a soul from the clutches of cold and darkness, which is what this particular story is all about.

Ten year old Hazel has a friend named Jack. Hazel and Jack are best friends. But one day Jack rejects Hazel, and then he goes off with the White Witch/Snow Queen into the woods and into the far North. The story echoes Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen, and it also picks up on other Andersen tales such as The Little Match Girl, The Red Shoes, and The Wild Swans. The story also makes allusions to A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle, the fantasy novels of Philip Pullman, JK Rowling’s Harry Potter books, and other fantasy classics, comic books, and fairy tales.

Ms. Orsu’s novel is rife with points for discussion and even argument. How does Hazel keep going on her quest to rescue Jack when she has no hope, no inner strength, and thinks she is literally “nothing.” Where does Hazel get the strength to escape from the snares placed in her way by the world of the woods while others are entrapped forever? What does it mean that Hazel is willing at the end of the story to make new friends and let go of Jack to some extent?

I liked the novel very much, and I liked the questions it raised. Older children and young adults who enjoy thoughtful fantasy/science fiction, such as A Wrinkle in Time and the fairy tale novels of Donna Jo Napoli, will probably like this story of love, friendship, and perseverance.

Other reviews of Breadcrumbs:
Amy at Hope Is the Word: “Replete with literary allusions and even archetypes, Breadcrumbs hovers on the edge of meaning–growing up, friendship, selfhood, it’s all in this story, but it’s right under the edge. I think much of this might be lost on its target audience; I struggle with identifying it all myself.” (Me, too. I think it’s reflective of our times that the author was hesitant to spell out the exact meaning of the story. Andersen ended The Snow Queen with a verse from the Bible. One can hardly imagine a modern author doing the same and actually appealing to a broad audience.)

Sprouts Bookshelf: “Hazel never wavers from the notion that Jack, the real Jack is still in there, and that he needs her now even more than he ever has. Quite a commentary on growing up but not away, this one.” (Maybe that’s the key: it’s a novel about identity and friendship and hanging onto both. To rescue someone you have to know who you are and who he is and who the two of you are together.)

Bekahcubed: “Their friendship might not last through this adventure. Jack might be changed. Hazel might be changed. When Hazel sets out to rescue her friend Jack, she has no promises that life might return to usual. She might be able to rescue Jack, but she has no illusions that she’ll be able to get her friend back.” (Yes, this aspect of the story really spoke to me. Even fairy tales, maybe especially fairy tales, don’t always work out exactly the way you want them to, the way you had planned in your mind. Andersen’s tales in particular are sort of sad and not very happily-ever-after. But that’s the way things are in this world, and the world of fantasy and fairy tale isn’t really a different world at all: it’s only a reflection of the fallen world where we all live.)

Interview with Anne Orsu at Little Willow’s bildungsroman.

Interview with Ms. Orsu at The Reading Zone.

1984: Events and Inventions

Apr12

February 13, 1984. Konstantin Chernenko succeeds the late Yuri Andropov as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

February 26, 1984. United States Marines and other peacekeeping forces leave Beirut, Lebanon to be policed by local militias.

June 6, 1984. In response to militant Sikh extremists demanding their own state, Indian troops storm the Golden Temple at Amritsar, the Sikhs’ holiest shrine, killing an estimated 2,000 people.

August 21, 1984. Half a million people in Manila, the Philippines demonstrate against the regime of Ferdinand Marcos.

September, 1984. After two years of negotiations, agreement is reached for Great Britain to return Hong Kong to Chinese control in 1997.

October 23, 1984. The world learns from moving BBC News TV reports that a famine is plaguing Ethiopia, where thousands of people have already died of starvation and as many as 10,000,000 more lives are at risk.

October 31, 1984. Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi is ambushed and assassinated by two of her own Sikh bodyguards. Anti-Sikh riots break out. Rajiv Gandhi, Indira’s son, becomes prime minister of India

December 8, 1984. At least 2000 people die in the Indian city of Bhopal after the US-owned Union Carbide chemical plant there has a chemical leak, releasing a huge cloud of toxic methyl isocyanate gas. Thousands more are blinded or injured.

December 10, 1984. Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa wins the Nobel Peace Prize for his nonviolent struggle against apartheid. He says, “I have just got to believe God is around. If He is not, we in South Africa have had it.”