Pied Beauty by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Mar4

Pied Beauty
by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Glory be to God for dappled things—
  For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
    For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
  Landscape plotted and pieced— fold, fallow, and plough;
    And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
  Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
    With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
        Praise him.

Megan at Homeschooling on the Run: “Here is my all-time favorite GMH poem – it smacks of glorious springtime, and happy abandon in the warming climes of creation.”
Kelly Fineman at Writing and Ruminating: “What I like about the second stanza is its ambiguity: is Manley telling all those things that are freckled, fickle, etc. to praise God, or is he praising God for having made them? The stanza reads well both ways, and I rather think that was on purpose.” (Kelly has a good discussion of the poem. You should read it if you’re interested in poetry in general or in Mr. Hopkins in particular.

Bold Spirit by Linda Lawrence Hunt

Mar2

Bold Spirit: Helga Estby’s Forgotten Walk Across VIctorian America by Linda Lawrence Hunt.

Lost, or nearly lost, stories of ordinary heroes seems to be one theme of my reading lately, as I just finished this book about a woman who walked with her oldest daughter, Clara, across the United States in 1896 for the purpose of winning a $10,000 wager in order to pay off her family’s back taxes and delinquent mortgage.

It’s a story that is both inspiring and sad. Helga Estby and Clara walked all the way from Spokane, Washington to New York City, an accomplishment that would prove daunting to most men and most women nowadays. Helga’s neighbors thought she was crazy and thought the journey she planned would be not only impossible but also a betrayal of her role as the mother of nine children. Helga’s youngest child was only two years old when her mother set out across America in pursuit of her own American dream. Her stated goal was to earn the money to save her family’s farm and homestead. Her anonymous sponsor’s objective was either to advertise women’s clothing or to prove that women were strong and hardy enough to undertake such a arduous trek across a continent. Perhaps both.

Unfortunately for Helga and her family, the walk across America that was to solve all of the family’s financial woes was completed, but the anonymous wagerer was a welsher. Helga and Clara did not get any money for their courageous and formidable achievement, and while they were absent from home circumstances caused the children left behind to become angry and resentful toward their mother and her undertaking. In fact, they became so filled with rancor over Helga’s absence during a crisis in the family’s history that the children convinced their mother never to speak of her attempt to walk across the country. And after Helga’s death, two of her grown children burned all of her written stories about her walk. The story of Helga and Clara Estby and their walk across America was nearly lost to posterity.

However, Linda Hunt heard about the two women and their remarkable journey in a paper written by a young descendant of Helga Estby for the Washington State History Day Contest. She then began to research the story, talking to Helga’s granddaughter and finding old newspaper articles that told about the women as they traveled and shared their stories with reporters in the various towns they passed through. Ms. Hunt did remarkable work herself in piecing together this story of two brave women who could have been forgotten had it not been for the memories of a few people who knew them and the hard work of a historian.

What are the stories in your family that are in danger of being lost and/or forgotten? Save them in a scrapbook or a photo album or a blog or even a book. Or tell them here to us. I may start posting myself after Easter about family stories I want to save.

Nothing To Fear by Jackie French Koller

Mar1

My American History class has reached the era of the Great Depression, the 1930’s, and we’re reading Nothing To Fear by Jackie Koller. This read is going much better than the last book they were asked to read, Christy by Catherine Marshall. Christy is one of my favorite novels, but had I known when I wrote the syllabus that I would have a class of nine fourteen-fifteen year old boys, I might have chosen a different book to exemplify the early twentieth century.

Back to Nothing To Fear. All of the boys were enthusiastic about this one. It’s the story of a boy, Danny Garvey, who lives with his Irish American family—father, mother, and little sister Maureen–in a tenement apartment in New York City in 1932. Like all of the men in Danny’s neighborhood, Danny father is out of work and feeling desperate about providing for his family. Danny’s mother does laundry and ironing from her home for Miss Emily’s Hotel for Young Women. Danny shines shoes to make a few extra pennies.

But when Danny gets in with the wrong crowd and a window gets broken at old man Weissman’s store, Danny learns just how important his good name is to his father and eventually through the course of events, Danny also learns to value his own name and reputation.

Some bad stuff happens in this book, but it ends on a note of hope and perseverance. Danny and his mother trust in God and President Roosevelt to get them through the Depression, a trust somewhat misplaced in my opinion, but it’s true to the era and matches the stories that I’ve heard from people who lived during the 1930’s. Danny and his mom and all their neighbors are ecstatic when Roosevelt is elected, and even though, again realistically, the election of Roosevelt does nothing to improve the Garveys’ lives, they still cling to the hope that FDR will do something to end the Depression and return the country to prosperity. It reminds me of people nowadays who still maintain that President Obama will get our economy going again, except that I don’t think we’re as desperate as people were during the Great Depression. Therefore, we have a little room to see clearly that Obama is not our rescuer. FDR was any port in a storm and too much of a last chance for people to give up on him, even when he didn’t/couldn’t deliver.

I would recommend Nothing To Fear for boys ages 12-16 who are studying the Depression era in history or who just enjoy history and historical fiction. A few other recommended fiction books set in the same time period for children and young adults:

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred Taylor. Cassie Logan lives with her family in rural Mississippi and experiences the family closeness and racial tensions of the 1930’s time period.

I like these Dear America diaries:
Christmas After All: The Great Depression Diary of Minnie Swift. Indianapolis, IN, 1932 by Kathryn Lasky.
Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: The Diary of Bess Brennan, The Perkins School for the Blind, 1932 by Barry Denenburg.
Survival in the Storm: The Dust Bowl Diary of Grace Edwards, Dalhart, Texas, 1935 by Katelyn Janke.

Year Down Yonder by Richard Peck. Winner of the 2001 Newbery Medal. Fifteen year old Mary Alice is sent downstate to live with Grandma Dowdel while her Ma and Pa stay in Chicago to work.
Bud, not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis. Bud, not Buddy, Caldwell is an orphan who thinks he might just have a dad, Herman E. Calloway, bass player for the Dusky Devastators of the Depression. Will he find Calloway, and is Calloway really his father?
Moon Over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool is the story of a girl, twelve year old Abilene Tucker, whose father, Gideon, is a hobo. Abilene and her dad have been riding the rails together for as long as she can remember, but now (summer, 1936) Gideon has sent Abilene to live with an old friend of his in Manifest, Kansas while Gideon takes a job on the railroad back in Iowa. 2010 Newbery Award winner. Semicolon review here.
Ten Cents a Dance by Christine Fletcher. For older teens and adults. Semicolon review here.
William S. and the Great Escape by Zilpha Keatley Snyder. William escapes his abusive home along with his little sister and brother, but can the three fugitives find a place to call home in a time when home is hard to find? Semicolon review here.
Turtle in Paradise by Jenifer L. Holm. Semicolon review here. Take one eleven year girl named Turtle with eyes as “gray as soot” who sees things exactly as they are. Plunk her down in Key West, Florida with her Aunt Minnie the Diaper Gang and a bunch of Conch (adj. native or resident of the Florida Keys) relatives and Conch cousins with nicknames like Pork Chop and Too Bad and Slow Poke.

St. David’s Day

Mar1

The patron saint of Wales is Saint David, or Sant Dewi as the Welsh call him. He lived in the sixth century and became the Archbishop of Wales. He was particularly fond of bread, vegetables, and water, drinking nothing but water for most of his life. He is also associated with water because it is said that a spring of water came bubbling up where he walked at significant times and places during his life. I’m interested in Saint David partly because some of my ancestors came from Wales.
The Welsh celebrate Saint David’s Day with leeks (remember Fluellen in Shakespeare’s Henry V?) and daffodils, male voice choirs, and harp concerts. If you would like to celebrate this Welsh holiday with your children, the website below has coloring pages, craft projects, a recipe for leek soup, and more information on David’s life.
St. David’s Day Activities for Kids
St. David died in about 589, and his last words were recorded as:

“Be joyful, and keep your faith and your creed. Do the little things that you have seen me do and heard about. I will walk the path that our fathers have trod before us.”

‘Do the little things’ (‘Gwnewch y pethau bychain’) is today a very well-known phrase in Welsh. It reminds me of Elisabeth Elliot’s admonition to “do the next thing.” Either way it seems to me to be a good motto. Sometimes it’s all I can do– to do the next little thing that needs to be done, and sometimes it’s enough. Happy St. David’s Day!

The Ink Garden of Brother Theophane by C.M. Millen

Feb28

The 2011 winner of the Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award is: The Ink Garden of Brother Theophane by C.M. Millen, illustrated by Andrea Wisnewski (Charlesbridge, 2010). “This annual award goes to the best book of children’s poetry published in the United States in the preceding year. It is co-sponsored with Lee Bennett Hopkins himself along with the University Libraries, the Pennsylvania Center for the Book, and additional sponsor, Pennsylvania School Librarians Association.”

What a lovely book celebrating the art and the poetry of the humble medieval monks who gave us beautiful illuminated manuscripts of the Bible and other Christian texts and also scribbled little bits of phlosophy and poetry in the margins and on spare bits of parchment. Mr. Millen has taken these monkish poems and used them as inspiration for a story poem about a monk named Brother Theophane who “would stop with his copying chore to write all about the beauty outdoors” and who “tended his field, harvesting plants for the colors they yield.”

Andrea Wisnewski is a gardener herself, and it shows in her illustrations which combine a love for nature and for colorful illumination with a Celtic medieval feel to it. I could spend a great deal of time looking at the illuminated lettering and the vines and plants entwined through the margins of the pictures. Books like this one are what convince me that the ebook revolution has a ways yet to go before it will be an improvement on the old-fashioned picture book. Whoever invented the book with pages did a fine thing.

The Ink Garden of Brother Theophane would be a good addition to any homeschool study of the Middle Ages and a brilliant entryway into discussion of Irish monks, monastery life, manuscript illumination, and medieval poetry. Also in the back of the book are these links to ehlpful websites that could extend the study:

To learn how to make your own hawthorn bark ink.
To experiment with extracting colors from plants.
To learn how illuminated manuscripts were made.

Sunday Salon: Fascinations for the Month of February

Feb27

The Sunday Salon.com


Author Laura Hillenbrand (Seabiscuit and Unbroken) has had her own challenges as she continues to write best-selling nonfiction and deal with a debilitating disease.
A Sudden Illness: How My Life Changed by Laura Hillenbrand.
Laura Hillenbrand releases new book while fighting chronic fatigue syndrome by Monica Hesse.

C.K. Dexter Haven, you are so much more attractive and intelligent than anyone who’s decorating the screen these days. “Cary Grant’s frothy delights leave us pondering the dramatic shift in our understanding of marriage, divorce, vows and the idea of anything being permanent.” Divorce Granted by Joseph Susanka.

John Piper recommends ten books for Black History Month. I happen to think that if they’re good books, they’re good to read any month, not just during February which happens to have been designated Black History Month.

Did you see my article on YA fiction from 2010 at Chuck Colson’s The Point online magazine? I’m rather pleased with the way it turned out and the books I was able to recommend.

Circumscribed by Noel deVries, on living a small but brave life.

I’ve been studying Proverbs, rather sporadically, during the month of February. I printed out this study guide, and it’s been helpful. However, the best thing I’ve done is just to read through the proverbs in the book of Proverbs and check the ones that seem useful and understandable and x the ones that I don’t understand. There are more than a few about which I still lack understanding.

My plan for Lent is to post about Forty Inspirational Classics that I have read and would recommend to others. The posts will start on Ash Wednesday, March 9th, and God willing, end on Easter Sunday, my Resurrection gift to you all.

HAPPY READING!

Certain Women by Madeleine L’Engle

Feb26

A couple of years ago I started on a Madeleine L’Engle Project. My goal was to read or re-read all of Ms. L’Engle’s books in the order in which they were published. I didn’t get all that far, but I did re-read some favorites and post about them here at Semicolon. Then, I became distracted by other projects, and I haven’t read anything by Madeleine L’Engle in a while.

So, I am pleased the my participation in the Faith and Fiction Roundtable impelled me to read Certain Women again, one of Ms. L’Engle’s later novels. It’s the story of famous stage actor David Wheaton who is dying of cancer, attended by the wife of his old age, Alice, and by his daughter, Emma, who is also an actress. Alice is actually David Wheaton’s ninth and final wife, and he has nine children, the products of eight previous failed marriages. David Wheaton has always wanted to play the role of King David from the Bible, but the opportunity never came. As Wheaton reviews his life, he and his complicated family see the analogies between the life of David Wheaton, actor, and the life of David, sweet singer and King of Israel.

In the hands of another writer, this book would probably have been about David Wheaton, a man who married many wives and whose life experiences bore a certain resemblance to those of King David, with the similarities being left to the reader to discover. L’Engle chose to highlight the analogies by having Emma’s husband, a playwright, spend most of the novel attempting to write a play, specifically a vehicle for Wheaton to star as King David. By the opening of the novel, the play is a failed attempt that never was completed, and David Wheaton is much too old and sick to play the part of David anyway. But as the novel progresses the characters review scenes that were written about David and his many wives: Michal, Ahinoam, Abigail, Maacah, Bathsheba, Abishag, and others. And Wheaton and his family discuss the similarities between the Wheaton family and King David’s family and the differences. Somehow the Biblical stories give the characters insight into their own family dynamic and help them to reconcile with God and with each other.

I thought the first time I read the book, and I remembered again as I re-read, that this novel in particular, of all Madeleine L’Engle’s novels, has a certain soap opera quality to it. (Madeleine L’Engle’s husband was an actor and a long time character on the daytime drama, All My Children.) The characters move in and out of one another’s lives like soap opera characters, and there’s a lot of adultery, divorce, re-marriage, and other family drama (nothing terribly explicit or offensive). However, L’Engle’s people are more complicated and have more depth to them than the average soap opera witch or ingenue. The story this time around reminded me of Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead in its portrayal of an old man preparing to die, reminiscing about his life, and trying to understand the decisions he’s made and their ongoing effect on his family members. Gilead is probably, almost certainly, the better written book, but somehow Madeleine L’Engle’s books always speak to me.

In this reading I was impressed by the importance of forgiveness for both the sinner and the one sinned against:

“He said that it was only after David lusted after Bathsheba, caused Uriah’s death, only after he had failed utterly with Tamar and Amnon and Absalom, only after he was fleeing his enemies, fleeing his holy city of Jerusalem, that he truly became a king.”

“Parents always fail their children. If we’d had children, we’d have failed ours. That’s simply how it is, and the kids have to get along as best they can. My parents were who they were. Dave is Dave.”

“Emma closed her eyes. There was a terrible empty space where Etienne and Adair should have been. ‘What is forgiveness?’
Chantal’s long fingers gripped the steering wheel. ‘It’s not forgetting. That’s repression, not forgiveness.’
Emma looked over at her sister.
‘Remembering,’ Chantal said, ‘but not hurting anymore.'”

What is your definition of forgiveness? And how do you forgive someone who is either absent or unrepentant?

Jesus said of the prostitute who washed his feet, “Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven–for she loved much. But he who has been forgiven little loves little.” Perhaps only those who know that they have sinned greatly can understand and experience the depth of God’s grace, mercy, and love.

Other participants in today’s discussion of Certain Women:
My Friend Amy: Certain Women, The Women in David’s Life
Heather at Book Addiction.
Book Hooked Blog.
Sheila at Book Journey
Jennifer at Crazy for Books
Carrie at Books and Movies
Ronnica at The Ignorant Historian
Thomas at My Random Thoughts
The 3r’s Blog: Reading, ‘Riting, and Randomness
Word Lily
Tina’s Book Reviews

Observing Lent

Feb24

Easter is late this year, not until April 24th. And so the season of Lent begins in March. Shrove Tuesday is March 8, and Ash Wednesday is March 9. I want to do some special things with our family to observe both Lent and the fifty days after Easter which constitute the Easter feast that lasts from Easter until Pentecost Sunday, June 12.

The following ideas for Lent come from:
Lenten Links: Resources for a Post-Evangelical Lent.
One deep drawer: Observing Lent with our families
10 Lenten Traditions to Enrich Your Family’s Easter Celebration by Barbara Curtis
At a Hen’s Pace: An Anglican Family Lent.
Recommended Reading for Lent at Conversion Diary.

1. Make doughnuts or some other deep-fried treat on Mardi Gras or Fat Tuesday.
2. Learn a new song. a song that points to spring coming and new life sprouting.
3. Go for a walk every day. I once knew of a homeschooling family who put a pot of soup on to simmer for lunch and headed out for a walk each day, no matter what the weather.
4. Make a nature almanac recording what you see on your walks.
5. Learn a new prayer to say at meals.
6. Give up meat as a family. or sugar. Give the money to an organization like Heifer.
7. Change your seasonal table or altar. Add a bowl of water to be the waters of life, or a tray of sand to be the 40 years in the desert, our own long journey, our dustiness.
8. Sprout something. Grow something. Plant something.
9. Make bread. to go along with the soup.
10. Celebrate National Poetry Month (April) with a poem a day.
11. Wear purple, the traditional color of Lent, to keep you mindful.
12. Light candles at meals. Turn off the electric light. Enjoy the darkness.
13. Observe silence even for a few moments each day at the same time.
14. Memorize an Easter passage of Scripture as a family. Suggestions: one of the Psalms,
15. Celebrate Purim, March 20-21. Read the book of Esther aloud.
16. Celebrate Passover, April 19-25.
17. Post Bible verses, especially the words of Jesus, on the refrigerator, bathroom mirrors, wherever a busy family is sure to see them.
18. Bake your own pretzels. Pretzels originated as early Christian Lenten treats, designed in the form of arms crossed in prayer.
19. In Matthew 12:39-41, Jesus points to the story of Jonah as a sign of his own destiny. So this is a great time to review it with your children, discussing the issues of sin, obedience, and God’s mercy.
20. Read books together as a family or alone to lead you into Easter Resurrection celebration. Books for Lent to lead you into Resurrection.
21. Read the Church Fathers during Lent.
22. Practice confession, asking God to search our hearts and point out those things in our lives that need to change.
23. Fast on Fridays or fast from meat on Fridays.
24. Decide as a family on one thing that is distracting your family from following God fully, and take that one thing out of your family life at least for the duration of Lent.
25. Participate in World Vision’s Relentless Acts of Justice.
26. Pray and read the Bible daily.

W.F. Matthews: Lost Battalion Survivor by Travis Monday

Feb21

Reading Unbroken(Semicolon review here) made me want to take a look at this WW II memoir about a man who was a deacon and a patriarch at my church when I was growing up in San Angelo, Texas. Mr. Matthews also survived imprisonment with the Japanese in Southeast Asia. As I remember it, my parents told me that Mr. Matthews had been a prisoner of the Japanese during World War II but that he “didn’t like to talk about it.” So I was curious, but I never asked.

Apparently, Mr. Monday who pastored my parents’ church for a while after I had already moved away from San Angelo, did ask—and wrote this self-published book in 2004 to tell “the incredible true story of an American hero,” W.F. Matthews.

The most striking note in the book was Mr. Matthews’ almost dispassionate attitude toward his captivity.

About the Japanese treatment of prisoners: “They beat on us pretty good. It seemed like—you know most of them are short—seemed like they resented us being so much bigger than they were.”

About the New Testament BIble that he carried and hid from the Japanese all through his captivity: “I’d get down, boy, and I’d sneak out and get that thing out and sit there and read it for about 20 minutes, and boy I’d get pepped up again.”

About working near Bangkok during bombing raids: “It was pretty rough up there. The Americans started bombing us. They were bombing at River Kwai and all down through there.”

About his condition after the war’s end in hospital: “I was about 90 pounds when I got in there, and of course, I had that malaria and dysentery. And they put me in that hospital and treated me for that, and I got in pretty good shape. I started eating and I gained a little weight.” (He weighed 220 pounds when he left Texas for San Francisco at the beginning of the war.)

About his recovery from the emotional scars of the war: “People would hover around me and want to talk and I had to leave pretty quick.” “There was a creek right by the house there, and I’d go way down on that creek walking around and kind of staying by myself.”

What magnificent understatement. What a matter of fact attitude.

W.F. Matthews went on to marry and father two sons. He was, as I said a deacon in my Southern Baptist church, and I grew up with his boys. He never said much of anything about the war, certainly never intimated that he was a hero or a person to be admired. As far as I knew, until my parents mentioned something about Mr. Matthews’ war experience, he was just Randy’s and Tommy’s dad, just a good ol’ West Texas man who happened to drink coffee with my dad and some other men every morning at the Dunbar Restaurant.

I believe we are surrounded by quiet, matter of fact, humble heroes, not always war heroes, but all kinds of unheralded and unsung heroism, and we often know nothing about the stories that these quiet heroes never think to tell.

How W.F. Matthews said he wants to be remembered: “I’d like them to remember that we were Americans and that we had a little more to live for than the rest of ’em. That Bible and a few things like that made a difference.”

Blackout and All Clear by Connie Willis

Feb18

Life is just one d— thing after another. ~Elbert Hubbard

Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans. ~John Lennon

History with its flickering lamp stumbles along the trail of the past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, to revive its echoes, and kindle with pale gleams the passion of former days. ~Winston Churchill

Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest do not happen at all: the conscientious historian will correct these defects. ~Herodotus, The History of Herodotus

We are the prisoners of history. Or are we? ~Robert Penn Warren

Perhaps nobody has changed the course of history as much as the historians. ~Franklin P. Jones

Connie Willis writes some of the best books about time travel and history and epistemology and philosophy that I have ever had the privilege of reading. I first read her novel The Doomsday Book, about time-traveling historians from the future, in 2009. In that book Kivrin, a history student at Oxford in 2048, travels through “the net” back in time to the fourteenth century. After I finished The Doomsday Book, I immediately went out and found a copy of Ms. Willis’s next time travel history book, To Say Nothing of the Dog. It’s a delightful romp in which the fate of the universe may or may not be at stake. However, the course of history and the universe is “self-correcting,” shades of LOST, so the universe is never really in danger of imploding or careening off-track. Probably. I loved it even more than The Doomsday Book.

Now, in 2010, Ms. Willis has published two more future-historians-travel-through-time books: Blackout and All Clear. In these some of the same characters reappear, and the universe or the space-time continuum IS in danger of going off the rails. The focal point of all the temporal disturbance and crisis is World War II, and of course, several of our intrepid historians are criss-crossing Britain through time and space, trying to avoid the temptation to interfere in history and do something that, however well-meaning, might actually change the course of the war and end up making Hitler and the Nazis the victors. It’s not easy to observe history without changing it, however, as Polly and Mike and Eileen find out. It’s also not easy to survive the Blitz in London, even if you know about when and where the bombs are going to drop. Nor is Dunkirk a safe vantage point from which to observe heroism, even though there’s a lot of it going on.

I have several things to say about these two novels. First of all, they’re not really two novels; it’s one novel in two volumes, just as The Lord of the Rings is one book in three parts. So be sure to have the second book, All Clear, on hand before you start the first one. And read them in order even though there’s lots of time travel involved so that events in the novel(s) don’t exactly appear in chronological order.

Second, read these books. If you liked LOST because of the mind-bending time travel and suspenseful and philosophical elements, you should like what Connie Willis has done with these two books. If you’re a WW II buff, you will find these books fascinating. If you just enjoy a good science fiction or historical fiction story, read Blackout and All Clear. And read all the way to the end. It’s worth the confusion that accompanies the 1000+ pages of the two books. (Time travel makes my head hurt—in a good way.)

William Holman Hunt: The Light of the Worldphoto © 2007 freeparking | more info (via: Wylio)
Finally, I think these are what I would call Christian worldview novels. It’s not blatant or didactic or obvious, but if Ms. Willis is not a Christian, she has certainly co-opted Christian values and symbols and made the books breathe a Christian ethos in a way that is both attractive and entertaining. The central images and metaphors of the novels are Christian: The Light of the World, a painting by Holman Hunt, St. Paul’s Cathedral standing above bombed-out London, The Tempest by Shakespeare, a door that opens to another world. The themes are all about redemption and sacrifice and the power of obedience to what is good and noble even when you don’t know what the outcome will be. And this conversation, between a time traveler from the future and an elderly Shakespearean actor caught in the darkest days of WW II, toward the end of the second volume, clinches it for me:

“Was that your third question?” she managed to ask.
“No, Polly,” he said. “Something of more import.” And she knew it must be. . . .
“What is it?” she asked. . . .
He stepped forward and grasped the staircase’s railing, looked up at her earnestly. “Is it a comedy or a tragedy?”
He doesn’t mean the war, she thought. He’s talking about all of it–our lives and history and Shakespeare. And the continuum.
She smiled down at him. “A comedy, my lord.”

Surely, Christians are the ones who believe that life and history are ultimately a comedy that ends in the Great Marriage Feast.

I loved these books.

Guide to the Oxford Time Travel books at The Connie Willis.net Blog.

Content consideration: These novels are adult novels, not for children, and the characters sometimes use bad language. The character Mike, in particular, does take the Lord’s name in vain on numerous occasions.