The Life I Read

Lifetime Acheivement Award

2012-01-28T17:11:00.000-06:00

Who hasn't had the dream? A walk down the red carpet... an expectant crowd... the presentation of the award... the acceptance speech. "The Academy Award for Best..." "and the Emmy goes to..." "Here she is: Miss America..." "The Pulitzer Prize..." "The Nobel Prize for Literature..."

"I learned the truth a seventeen..." and, while I do not feel that my life has been without accomplishment, I never thought of it as award-winning. I was overwhelmed to the point of stammering when just before Christmas I was asked if I would permit Earth's Angels to honor me as one of four "Distinguished Hope Honorees--Titus Women. These are women whose lives have touched women by teaching and modeling the Word of God, and they are God's precious gems. The community in which we live is a better place because of their tireless efforts to build up, beautify, support, and encourage others. Their work is unto the Lord, but it has not gone unrecognized on earth."

So there will be a "Dinner of Champions" in March to open "Earth Angel's Conference 2012 Celebrating 10 years of Encouragement, Mentoring, and Leadership for Today's Teen Girl and Young Adult Women." And I will be given a lifetime achievement award of sorts. It's humbling and more than a bit awkward. There is an official bio:

K Cummings Pipes was born in Floyd County Texas in January 1949. She, her brother, and her sister grew up working on the family farm. The large extended family attended South Plains Baptist Church where K came to faith in Jesus and was baptized in 1958 shortly after her ninth birthday. The after school meetings of the Girls Auxiliary of the Women’s Missionary Union were one of many places where the church’s older women taught the young women, setting a wonderful example of Christian service. Following a series of community tragedies, K, at the age of 14 years, had sole responsibility for a Vacation Bible School class. Her service as a Bible teacher continued, almost without interruption, for more than forty years. K moved to Houston in 1967 to attend Rice University, majoring in English Literature. As a country girl in the big city, she enjoyed the opportunity and diversity of Houston and attended many churches of different denominations, seeking to appreciate the beauty and wisdom of all the people of God. Sunday evenings usually found her at Central Church of Christ sitting beside David Pipes. They taught and worked side-by-side in Central’s mission to the underprivileged children of Houston’s Third Ward for four years and came to know each other well. After their graduations in 1971, David and K married. Their marriage was not blessed with children but all children became theirs as they taught and ministered to a generation, following them from kindergarten through college. David was ordained an elder of the congregation in 2000 and shepherds the flock with K at his side. K enjoyed a professional career as a medical reference librarian, retiring in 1985. Until health concerns and the demands of caring for her aged parents limited her availability, she spent 20-30 hours a week using her gifts of Bible teaching, tutoring, librarianship, writing and editing at Southwest Central Church of Christ. She continues to pursue her interests in the wisdom literature of Hebrew scripture and the Psalms as a tool to constant prayer. She also collects and studies the work and life of a late Victorian Christian writer at www.evelynwhitakerlibrary.org.

While every word is true, that bio seems almost too shiny and slick. It leaves out so much. Most of it not at all the sort of thing one expects of a "Titus woman." Doubt... Depression... Cynicism... Fears... Selfishness... Temper... Stubborness... an all-too-often out-of-control tongue ad.inf. {Sigh!}

And my 5 minute acceptance speech is supposed to be a "teaching" for the attendees. It's really all about them. It has made me aware of the debt I owe to all the women who taught and mentored me. It would take more than 5 minutes or the words that may be put into a blog post to name them and thank them.

One of the duties of an honoree is to help spread the good news about the conference so that young women (aged 11 to to 30 years) can be taught and mentored. My dearly beloved is sponsoring those women of our church who wish to attend and our minister Steve Sargent is recruiting. Earth Angel's Conference 2012 information and registration.

"The Lord is my light and my salvation whom shall I fear. The Lord is the strength of my life, of what shall I be afraid... I hope to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait on the Lord. Be of good courage and God will strengthen your soul. Wait, I say, on the Lord."

"The significance of little things..." Dorothy Day

2012-01-28T14:13:00.000-06:00

SEASONS met this morning to finish our discussion of Dorothy Day: Selected Writings. By Little and By Little. Edited and with an introduction by Robert Ellsberg. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1992.

My copy of this book is heavily highlighted and I've read it multiple times. When we selected this book for SEASONS we were looking for a lodestone to help us endure this election year. I skimmed my highlights this week and found 18 sections that I tabbed for discussion. It is a book that has been important to my spiritual formation. Among many other things Dorothy Day taught me to care deeply for the poor.

Dorothy Day “wrote to give reason for a marriage of convictions that was a scandal and a stumbling block to many: radical politics and traditional, conservative theology. Yet it was not what Dorothy Day wrote that was extraordinary, nor even what she believed, but the fact that there was absolutely no distinction between what she believed, what she wrote, and the manner in which she lived.” p. xv Ellsberg’s introduction.

We drew our discussion from "Small Things" (p. 74) from Day after Day, excerpts from her personal reflections and her editorials for The Catholic Worker.
"Today we are not content with little achievements, with small beginnings....

Do what comes to hand. Whatsoever thy hand finds to do, do it with all thy might. After all, God is with us. It shows too much conceit to trust to ourselves, to be discouraged at what we ourselves can accomplish. It is lacking in faith in God to be discouraged. After all, we are going to proceed with His help. We offer Him what we are going to do. If He wishes it to prosper, it will. We must depend solely on Him. Work as though everything depended on ourselves, and pray as though everything depended on God, as St. Ignatius says...

I suppose it is a grace not to be able to have time to take or derive satisfaction in the work we are doing. In what time I have my impulse is to self-criticism and examination of conscience, and I am constantly humbled at my own imperfections and my halting progress.... I do know how small and I am and how little I can do and I beg You, Lord, to help me, for I cannot help myself."
(p. 274) "The significance of our smallest acts! The significance of the little things we leave undone! The protests we do not make, the stands we do not take, we who are living in the world!"
(p. 96-97) "In Christ's human life, there were always a few who made up for the neglect of the crowd.... We can do it too, exactly as they did. We are not born too late. We do it by seeing Christ and serving Christ in friends and strangers, in every one we come in contact with.... For a total Christian, the goad of duty is not needed--always prodding one to perform this or that good deed. It is not a duty to help Christ, it is a privilege."

The Duty of Delight: the Diaries of Dorothy Day, edited by Robert Ellsberg is available in a Kindle edition.
I also recommend a movie Entertaining Angels (1996) which I recently watched on Netflix.
There are several wonderful interviews posted on YouTube:
Christopher Closeup part 1 of 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNMHud0fFUg

Hubert Jessup part 1 of 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRSjY_4fFfc&feature=related

Her 1964 lecture "Witness" at UCSB

SEASONS [Sisters Enjoying A Season Of Nurturing Sisters] is a group of women who meet monthly to read and discuss theology and to support one another. We usually meet at Southwest Central Church of Christ.

Our next book is An Altar in the World. A Geography of the Faith. by Barbara Brown Taylor.

Like the best chocolate... bitterseet

2011-12-20T10:13:00.000-06:00

Like the best chocolate, Christmas, well-kept, is bittersweet.
Each year we anticipate the sweetness of Christmas. We prepare for it; we celebrate it. The sweetness of Christmas comes easily: the fragrance of evergreens, the ringing of bells, the glow of candles, the singing of carols, the joy of giving, the surprised delight of children, the gatherings of family and dear friends, and all the precious memories, bittersweet, of Christmas Past. Oh, the sweetness of Christmas: a baby asleep in a manger, and all heaven and earth proclaiming, "Hope! Peace! Joy! Love!"

And yet, there are those who will meet this Christmas with loss and pain and despair. There are, as always, the poor and those in desperate need. There are, as always, nations at war. There are, as always, those who mourn. For such as these the darkness of winter is dark indeed and Christmas, more bitter than sweet. Jesus walked among sheep without a shepherd and, one by one, he touched and healed and comforted. In his presence they found, as we still hope to find, peace and joy and love.

So, we will keep Christmas and try to keep it well. We will celebrate the birth in Bethlehem by making room in our hearts that Christ may be born in us. We will look upon the babe in the manger and see the man on the cross. Bittersweet! Like the angels we sing praises and speak peace. Like the Magi we offer gifts of adoration. Like the shepherds we "spread the word concerning... this child."

Hope! Peace! Joy! Love! Christmas... bittersweet.

Listen to Mark Lowry's "Mary, Did You know?"

It's a date...

2011-12-17T18:30:00.001-06:00

I love dates. Sooner or later if a recipe calls for raisins or cranberries, I'll substitute chopped dates. I clip or copy any recipe that calls for dates. My Gran Oma Cummings did the same. One of her special Christmas goodies was "date nut loaf." Sounds like it's bread; but it's candy. The nut is the pecan--favorite nut of all Texans and used in lieu of walnuts in most recipes. It's cooked pretty much like any candy then dumped out onto a clean, cold, wet dishtowel and shaped and rolled into a log or "loaf" about 1 1/2 inches in diameter and, after it's cooled, sliced about a quarter of inch thick.

My mother has made date nut loaf for more decades than I've lived. Her mother, my Grandma Mary Bridgett Wieland also made date nut loaf. It's a Texas tradition.

Mother made several candies every year for Christmas. Date Nut Loaf was the first and the favorite of my sister and me. Daddy's favorite, too. Other favorites are Boston Cream Candy, Peanut Brittle, Peanut Pattie, Fudge, and some awful peanut butter cocoa thing that Mother always tries to trick me into tasting. I don't like peanut butter; I've never liked peanut butter; I may even be allergic to peanut butter. If Reese's Cups were the only candy in the world, I'd never eat another bite.

This year Mother decided she wasn't up to making candy and delegated the Christmas chore.    My brother makes Boston Cream. He also makes Grandma's teacakes. Two years ago Mother supervised my making date nut loaf in her kitchen during an early December visit when she wasn't feeling very well.  (I've noticed that our visits are improved when I let her teach me things.) Two batches of perfect candy!  I tried a couple of batches in my own kitchen last year which didn't come out well--one was sticky and the other was grainy and obviously overcooked--so I'm a bit nervous because this year I'm on my own. I'm even more nervous because I've been unable to find the recipe with all my notes. It was either lost in the computer disaster of last January or is buried in one of my file folders of recipes which never quite manage to be organized into a cookbook.

So here follow 2 recipes: first, the old-fashioned stove top version like Mother and Gran and Grandma made and second, the microwave version which I made this afternoon.

Classic Texas Date Nut Loaf (Candy)
2 cups sugar                    1 cup milk
8oz dates (chopped)        1 cup chopped pecans
1 Tablespoon butter        1 teaspoon vanilla.

In a heavy saucepan (Mother always uses a heavy aluminum pot which has been missing a handle for decades--I think that pot is part of her magic.  I'm always in danger of scorching the milk.) combine sugar and milk. Stir over low heat, not letting it boil, until sugar is dissolved. Turn up the heat to medium and bring to a boil. Add the chopped dates and continue to boil until it comes to the soft ball stage. (Mother can tell by looking but uses the drop a bit into a cup of cold water test.) Remove from heat. Stir in the butter, vanilla, and pecans. Cool a bit. Divide into 2 batches and dump each out onto a cold, wet dishtowel. Shape and roll into a loaf. Cool completely. Unroll from the towel, transfer to a cutting board and slice. Layer into a tin, separating layers with wax paper. "Keeps a couple of weeks if you can keep from eating it." May be frozen either before or after slicing.

I read dozens of recipes. Some use evaporated milk which causes me to suspect that cream might have been used in the days of home dairies. I suspect that the increased fat in the cream would make a smoother, richer candy. And since I'm pretty frustrated by my attempts at stove-top candy making, I thought I'd try a microwave version.

K's Date Nut Loaf (Candy) Microwave

2 cups sugar                  1 cup heavy whipping cream
8 oz. dates (chopped)   1 cup chopped pecans
1Tablespoon butter       1 teaspoon vanilla

In a 4-quart microwave-safe glass bowl, mix together sugar and cream.
Microwave, on high and uncovered, for 4 minutes. Watch to be sure it doesn't boil over. Stir and scrape the sides of the bowl to dissolve sugar. Check the temperature with a candy thermometer--they make them for use in a microwave but I don't have one. I just stuck in my instant thermometer when I wanted to check.
Return to the microwave for another 4 - 6 minutes--stirring to prevent boil over--until the mixture reaches 235 degrees F. which is that soft ball stage. (It took only an additional 5 minutes for my batch.) check out the candy temperature chart
Stir in the dates. Return to the microwave for another 2 - 2 1/2 minutes, stirring at least once. (It took just under 2 minutes. My candy thermometer read 240 degrees.) The dates had softened and begun to dissolve into the candy mixture.
Remove from the microwave and add the butter, vanilla, and pecans. Mix well.
Let stand to cool until lukewarm. Then beat, beat, beat by hand for about 5 minutes. (Hard work for us electric mixer cooks.) . The candy will thicken (kind of fudgey) and change color a bit.
Pour half the mixture onto wax paper (I used that clean, cold, wet tea towel for half and didn't think it worked as well) and shape and roll into a loaf.
Repeat with the other half of the mixture. Yields 2 rolls, each about 9 inches long.
Allow candy to cool and harden for 4-6 hours. May refrigerate to speed the process.
Unroll towel or wax paper and slice.

Perfect date nut loaf candy. Yummy! And since I've posted the recipe on-line, I can't lose it.

Christmas greetings...

2011-12-15T10:47:00.000-06:00

We greet you with words from the prophet Isaiah and the gospel of Luke.. .

Listen to some of my favorite Christmas music at pandora.

and offer a prayer of blessing for family and friends from I Thessalonians 5:23.

As we have for many years, we ordered our cards from cards direct where we get to write our own greetings. We ordered them in the middle of the scorching summer drought and, feeling a need for hope, we were perhaps in an apocalyptic mood when we selected the scripture texts. We also selected a photo. If friends have watched us age through the years, there is some hope they will recognize us when we meet again. One of my pet peeves is the family greeting that includes only children or grandchildren of the friends we know and long to see again

20 March 2011, K's father's 90th birthday at their home in Clifton

This photo recreated a family portrait made when "the grandkids" were small.

The original family portrait made when "the grandkids" were small.

Kendall & Dorthy "Dot" Wieland Cummings surrounded by their 3 kids and their spouses:

Zacha & Jack
K & David
Jolene & Kelvin

and their four grand children:

Brittany K (Zacha's daughter)
Kendall II (Kelvin's son)
Victoria (Kelvin's daughter)
Josh (Zacha's son)

The clan with Josh's wife Amy and their 2 children Tilson and Tatum and Victoria's Philip and Kendall's Crystal.

We ordered fewer cards this year because we think we lost a lot of addresses in the great computer disaster last January. We're hoping this blog post, shared on facebook, will help take up the slack.

Today is the day I'll try to finish Christmas cards and gift wrapping so I can start making candy (date nut loaf) and baking pies (apple and mince) and maybe a few other goodies. I'll not succeed--a torn lattissimus dorsi is slowing me down--but I delight in the merry rush.

Last night DMP (still recovering from surgery) and I missed the Children's Christmas Cantata at Southwest Central Church of Christ because an evening of rest had to be a priority. It's the second small disappointment of the season for us: for only the third time in our 40 years of marriage, we did not get to go get our Christmas tree together because I stayed in Clifton for the week following Thanksgiving to help Mother with her decorating and shopping. Thanks to brother Bryan for helping David pick out "the prettiest tree ever" which is what I always think. Even when things are a bit painful, we still "keep Christmas" with as much joy and as little stress as possible.

A barbed wire Christmas...

2011-12-08T14:42:00.000-06:00

I'm somewhat like a chameleon. My free thinking and somewhat liberal views are well camouflaged by my conventional lifestyle. I do like tradition but I like it best when it stands in opposition to the current culture. My Christmas decorating style reflects this aspect of my personality.

I decorate my home for Christmas very much like I live and a peek inside today looks very much like a mid-20th Century suburban ranch house would have looked on its first Christmas. Except for the facts that it's a "store bought" Noble fir instead of a "cedar" cut from the Caprock Canyons and that LED lights have replaced the incandescent bulbs of my childhood and that I use curly willow in lieu of the silver foil icicles--our house bunnies who were our pre-Mandy pets tended to eat things off the tree and foil is not a holiday goodie--my tree looks very much like the ones my mother decorated in my childhood.

When one of my younger cousins was invited to view our freshly decorated tree, Kim said, "Oh, I don't need to look at it. Your tree looks just the same this year as it did last year." His mother offered up a new theme and color every year. While I admire the elegance of the decorator tree, I want a tree that once had roots and still needs water. While the soft shimmer of white lights are oh-so-tasteful, I prefer red, green, gold, and blue twinkling within green boughs. I don't want to see a lot of "cutesy" ornaments; I scatter a few realistic owls and a couple of bunnies among the green and gold balls and hang the treasured antiques at the top of the tree.

I love the little wooden church, a coin bank box used by Grandma Wieland for her Assembly of God Church in Lockney, TX. I remember the culmination of childhood decorating was placing this tiny church (flanked by two wax candle angels which were never lit and one hot summer melted like the witch in The Wizard of Oz) under the tree. Many years ago, Mother gave the little church to me. It always occupies a place of honor on my piano. I like to imagine it's the one Miss Toosey used for her African Mission in Evelyn Whitaker's book.

All the sentimentality surrounding a baby in a manger can turn me cynical and I appreciate a reminder that the church is now the body of Christ on earth. One Christmas brought a card from the decorating aunt mentioned above with a photo of the altar of South Plains Baptist Church where I grew up. I framed it and put it behind the little church. I made one change to my decorating tradition this year; I added a barbed wire bracelet.

David and I have always supported missions, particularly Wycliffe Bible Translators and this year the persecuted church (in Islamic countries, in Korea, and in China) weighs heavily on our hearts. As we celebrate, we choose to remember our unity with all Christians and proclaim that we are "one with them."

"Come quickly, Lord Jesus."

"with a little help from my friends"

2011-11-10T12:52:00.000-06:00

Blogging. I started this blog because I felt like a stalker reading the blogs of some of the younger women at church. I wanted to share my life with them as they shared theirs with me. If I had known what I was doing when I first started, I might have chosen WordPress rather than Blogger. I knew I would be posting about my reading but I didn't know that my blog would prove interesting to a different audience than I originally thought. WordPress is a more "academic" choice, I think, but I've found Blogger to be easy to use and I like its Google tie-in. I don't post often enough; once a week would be about right for my blog. I think of things to post; I just don't sit down and do it; I'd rather read. Even my husband of 40 years has discovered things he didn't know about me in my blog. Because it's in some sense a shared journal, I say things that I never mention otherwise. I follow several blogs of people I don't know.

One of my favorite blogs is written by the man who fills Hugh Latimer's pulpit. Malcolm Guite offers a mix of theology, literature, poetry, and music, especially classic rock. I've become a great fan of his poetry and of his lovely voice reading it. His November 4th blog is about The Inklings "exploring the thesis that far from being backward-looking, reactionary or escapist, the Inklings were fully and prophetically engaged with the main streams of modernity, that they foresaw the coming crisis of meaning in the materialist West, and in particular the attendant crises of violence and environmental degradation. I have tried to explain the way they forged a coherent alternative vision, which called for us to reintegrate Imagination and Reason as ways of knowing truth and relating to one another and the world." http://malcolmguite.wordpress.com/blog/

Facebook. What a great way to stay in touch with friends and family and because of fb I didn't lose contacts that might have been lost after the huge computer disaster last January. I enjoy short visits with many of my cousins and now know who their kids and grandkids are and what they look like. I enjoy updates on nieces and nephews. Being back in touch with so many of my friends from South Plains and Floydada High School is so much fun--what wonderful, interesting people they are! I treasure all "my kids" from Sunday School that have friended (what a word!) me--I usually wait for them to invite me because I really don't want to be too nosy. As some age-related health limitations limit some of my abilities to minister, it's wonderful that I can be aware of their needs for prayer and encouragement. Facebook kept me in touch with Peter Whitaker who has been a superb resource for biographical information about Evelyn Whitaker. Publishing facebook links to my blog and to my website increased my traffic. http://www.evelynwhitakerlibrary.org/id59.html

I was disappointed that one of the facebook revisions removed what I thought was my link catalog. I have just started using Pinterest's pin board and I think it might work for some purposes. I like the boards that I can collect; I like the visual links which make scanning my boards easy. I'll have to play around with it a bit to see if it really does answer my needs. Is there some other alternative? I find that I collect links the way I collect books. Of course that's what the Favorites bar is designed to do, I think, but for some reason things just get buried and forgotten there. Often I save groups of related links by opening a Word file then I copy & paste the links and add comment into the .docx. For me that functions somewhat the old index card files that used to write college papers but I keep thinking there has to be something better. Even if that "something" isn't Pinterest, I'm enjoying yet another time sink. http://pinterest.com/KCummingsPipes/

I think I want my own personal version of Arts & Letters Daily. I first found this website by clicking a link on a friend's blog. It's a good way to stay informed and to discover things I might miss. http://www.aldaily.com/

Library Thing is an on-line catalog for my library and provides the side bars for my blog. It is also now the sole beneficiary of any associates income from clicks of the Amazon links in my blog. I also enjoy the ratings and reviews of my fellow readers. I've written a few of these myself. I'm always behind here because I just cannot teach the books to catalog themselves. The first 50 books are free so you can give this tool a thorough test drive and I considered their life-time membership a great bargain. http://www.librarything.com/profile/KCummingsPipes

Pandora. When KUHF bought KTRU I was most upset. The Rice radio station had only offered "alternative" programming while refusing to air anything that I might care about (like Rice athletics or programming from the Shepherd School of Music or faculty interviews) so I was not a listener, especially since the weak signal is not well received at my house. KUHF, on the other hand, was my radio station for classical music and their plans to move the classical programming to 91.7 FM was not a happy one for me. So once again my young friends led me by example to Pandora and suggested stations to me. I really appreciate MGB's suggestion of Harold Budd radio and with the add variety button I've got a great shuffle. I think getting some music back into my day has helped with my depression which has been a real trial this year.
http://www.pandora.com/#!/stations/play/601253876655993859

Several interesting books and a couple or three good movies have first been called to my attention by younger friends. Among these are:

Evolving in Monkey Town by Rachel Held Evans previously blogged here
Wicked by Gregory Maguire
The Help by Kathryn Stockett previously blogged here
The Conversion of the Imagination: Paul as interpreter of Israel's scripture. Richard B. Hays
Many, many children's literature titles and some wonderful lit crit. and reading lists for the courses I didn't take. For these gifts I am most grateful, to my goddaughter, Sonya Sawyer Fritz, and to my fellow blogger Victoria Ford Smith running with carrots.

Some of my friends: Luci, Debra, Whitney, Martha, Me, Chelsie, Bobbie, Belinda, Brandy, Beverly

The most important thing I've learned from my younger friends is the sheer joy of friendship and ministry. Wedding and baby showers had become for me social obligation and Christian duty. I have relearned what I once knew: life is joyful and celebrations bring us together and let us share joy. The time spent in planning/preparing (which I once thought wasted or "over dosing on Martha Stewart" as I have often thought and sometimes said) is part of the celebration and joy and that time has helped me connect and deepen relationships with some of my younger friends.

Vote 2011 - Occupy a Voting Booth.

2011-10-28T20:14:00.000-05:00

With all the noise and disillusionment of the 2012 campaigns already well underway, it would be easy to overlook the 2011 vote. Easy but unwise since there are a number of proposed amendments to the State of Texas Constitution, city of Houston office and school district seats to be filled. Early voting is already underway.

Here is a link to the Harris County Clerk for polling locations and sample ballots:

http://harrisvotes.org/

Here is a link to a sample ballot for the city of Houston: http://www.harrisvotes.com/SampleBallot/SampleBallot_ENG.pdf

Here is a link with details and comments from those who support and those who oppose the Constitutional Amendment Proposals:

http://www.tlc.state.tx.us/pubsconamend/analyses11/analyses11.pdf

I'm planning to vote like this:

STATE of TEXAS Constitutional Amendments

Prop. 1 (exemption for residence homestead of surviving spouse of 100% disabled vet) FOR

Prop. 2 (Texas Water Development Board bonds) FOR!!!

Prop. 3 (bonds for educational loans to students) I'm still a bit undecided but leaning FOR

Prop. 4 (county bonds for blighted development) AGAINST

Prop. 5 (city and county interlocal contracts) FOR it makes good business sense

Prop. 6 (permanent school fund pay out) still undecided but leaning AGAINST

Prop. 7 (El Paso County) FOR because the citizens of El Paso county will be able to vote and decide this issue for themselves.

Prop. 8 (water-stewardship) FOR

Prop. 9 (pardons) still a bit undecided but leaning FOR

Prop. 10 (unexpired terms running for office) FOR because elected officers in small towns and counties often need to keep their jobs

CITY of HOUSTON

Mayor Annise D. Parker !!!

Council District K (yep, we're in the new one) Larry Green

Council At-Large Pos. 1 Stephen C. Costello!!!

Council At-Large Pos. 2 looking forward to a run-off to narrow the field. In that regard I'll probably go with either Elizabeth C. Perez or Bolivar "Bo" Fraga rather than the front-runner Kristi Thibaut.

Council At-Large Pos. 3 Melissa Noriega

Council At-Large Pos. 4 probably C.O. "Brad" Bradford

Council At-Large Pos.5 Jack Christie!!! the man who has Bill White's only endorsement which I think says a lot.

City Controller Ronald C. Green who is unopposed

HOUSTON COMMUNITY COLLEGE (I'm always a bit mystified as to which of the districts we're in) but my choices are: Carroll G. Robinson, Richard Schechter, and Chris Oliver.

HISD TRUSTEE: Manuel Rodriquez, Paula Harris, Juliet Kathy Stipeche

Fellow Citizens, in a democracy we-the-people get to make the choices.
Occupy a Voting Booth!

Evolving...

2011-10-17T15:27:00.000-05:00

SEASONS (my women reading theology group at church) will meet on Saturday to discuss Evolving in Monkey Town: How a girl who knew all the answers learned to ask the questions by Rachel Held Evans. (link to amazon to sample the book) It's a book that would have been a huge help when I was a freshman in high school and first met Mr. Darwin and his theory. Like the author, I found science challenged my faith. Unlike the author, I kept my own counsel--for decades I shared my doubts with only a very few trusted ones.

After a brief time of private atheism, I found that I just could not live if life--all life, my life--was random accident. The world is full of beauty and I can never quite shake the thought that beauty has a source and a purpose and that somehow beauty and truth are linked. "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,' – that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." So Keats and other nature poets formed my canon. For many years, I kept a journal that consisted of each day's one moment of supreme beauty and found myself feeling gratitude. To whom? Having been a doubting Christian, I became a doubtful atheist. Beauty, gratitude and those second doubts led me step-by-step back to faith. I came to think of God as "source and sustainer."

My mother, with whom I had shared some of my doubts, encouraged me to just read the Bible, and reach my own conclusions about what it said and what it meant. She suggested I start with the Psalms--more poetry. The Writings of Hebrew Scripture--wisdom literature, the prophets, the song book of Israel--became my primary biblical text. Most Psalms are not didactic but responsive--responsive to life situations, responsive to pain, responisve to injustice, responsive to a community, responsive to God. The Psalms are not afraid to question God and I learned to be honest (with myself at least) about my doubts because a God who is "source and sustainer of all that has being" is certainly big enough to handle my questions.

Like Rachel Held Evans, I was troubled by all the great crowd of people, past and present, who could not believe because they had not heard. "If salvation is available only to Christians, then the gospel isn't good news at all. For most of the human race, it is terrible news." p. 92 I was well-versed in the Girls Auxiliary of the Women's Missionary Union but it seemed "not right" that God would condemn those who had been born at the wrong place and the wrong time and it was unrealistic to expect that missionaries could reach across geography and cultures and centuries to preach to all people and offer them the Jesus choice. If there is a God, God must be as merciful as just, as gracious as righteous. "The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end." [Lamentations 3:22-24; not all biblical poetry is found in Psalms.]

For people of compassion the idea of almost universal condemnation to eternal torment is quite troubling. For many it is the sticking point; my father was concerned for all the Native Americans and for the hypocrisy he found in the church. Even more troubling are the Christians who "are more offended by the idea of everyone going to heaven than by the idea of everyone going to hell." p. 113 My cousin is so troubled by what she learned as a child "from pretty Sunday school teachers who smelled like peppermint and let me call them by their first names" p. 27, so offended by unkind dogma, that she cannot even listen or seek the comfort that might be found in a more mature faith.

I was very comforted by C.S. Lewis whom Rachel Held Evans quotes on p. 139: "We do know that no person can be saved except through Christ. We do not know that only those who know Him can be saved by Him." Even more comforting to me than Mere Christianity was the story from The Last Battle in the Chronicles of Narnia when the young warrior who has faithfully served Tash discovers himself in Aslan's country where he immediately loves the great lion who has always loved him.

By the time I graduated from college, I had a very thorough understanding of Darwin's theory, as it had been first written and as it had been revised. I understood science far better and had a fuller appreciation of its beauty. Oddly, the more science I learned and the more open my mind, the easier it was to say with Charlotte Yonge: "some when, some how, God..." For me there is no conflict between science and faith but there is an almost constant conversation between them. I understand that science itself is not "the truth" but an understanding of truth in constant evolution.

"By little and by little" [Dorothy Day] I found faith to believe... most of the time... and a few years of reading Zen taught me to think of Christian life as a practice. Even when I feel no belief, I practice Christianity: I meditate, I pray, I read the Bible, I assemble with the saints, I sing songs of thanksgiving, I devote myself to good works.

Like Rachel Held Evans, I learned that "obedience--with or without answers--was the only thing that could save me from this storm." p. 106

When I spend time studying the Bible and time reading books by serious biblical scholars, when I see new ways of understanding biblical text and the world around me, when I get to talk with others who are also asking questions, I find it easier to believe. Among the more recent books that have evolved my faith is N.T. Wright's Surprised by Hope (previously blogged) which is also mentioned in Evolving in Monkey Town p.173.

Most of my doubts are now a faint and fading echo but, for me, faith is never simple. I walk a somewhat rocky Way through a dark valley. I am a believer and a Christian. I take biblical text seriously. I am neither a Fundamentalist nor an Evangelical. I believe in God and in Christ Jesus, Messiah, who brings life from death. I believe in "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control." Everything else is subject to change.

"Evolution means letting go of our false fundamentals so that God can get into those shadowy places we're not sure we want" God "to be. It means being okay with being wrong, okay with not having all the answers, okay with never being finished." p. 23

2011-09-26T16:54:00.000-05:00

September is almost gone and it has been a busy month. DMP and I celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary. Several years ago, we discussed a big party for our 40th, thinking that with no children to host a 50th and we might be too old manage one 10 years down the road. Somehow it managed to slip up on us and take us by surprise. We did manage to give ourselves the gift of new patio furniture and have finally had a morning that was cool enough to enjoy it:

So no party but our usual trip to the San Juans in SW Colorado. We both breathe a bit more deeply--at that altitude you have to--when we see Mt. Abrams as we drive from the airport at Montrose to Ouray.

We had a quiet, restful time enjoying the cool and the rain.

Lots of reading and soaking in the hot tub.

Good food at all our favorite restaurants.

Easy highway drives to Silverton and Dallas Divide for a glimpse of the promise of golden aspens and the joy of first snow.

We had great fun with our friends San Juan Scenic Jeep Tours--We drive you look. If you go you want to make sure you ride in the yellow jeeps. Here are a few pics:

We really enjoyed Corkscrew and the sweeping views of Red Mountain.

There are three Red Mountains and the color comes from iron so they're really big piles of rust.

We were lucky that the afternoon we chose for our back country jeep ride was beautiful as indicated by the blue sky reflected in Lake Como.

We were in Silverton for the annual quilt show and this year I bought a quilt. [We also found some lovely cedar boxes.] I have long admired the piecing of Barbara Green although her hand quilting is not particularly outstanding.

I love quilts and I think this one will make a pretty winter slip cover for my living room sofa.

Zacha & I used to thread a packet of needles onto spools of thread for Grandma Wieland every Sunday to see her through a week's work. She had her large quilting frame hung from the ceiling of "the front room" or parlor. Every day Grandma's dear friend, Miss Beulah Puckett, came by to visit [She was always "tolable, jus' tolable."] and she'd sit and quilt a spell. Every day after she left, Grandma ripped out her "higgaly piggaly stitches" and redid them. The next day Miss Beulah would admire what she thought was her work of the previous day. "I was afraid I'd just messed it all up yesterday but those stitches look right well in today's light."

"the mutable meaning of a supposedly immutable book"

2011-08-04T18:02:00.004-05:00

Last Sunday in the Open Door class at Southwest Central, my dear friend ABCE read a portion of Isaiah from the King James Bible. I found it hard to follow although it would probably have been much easier if I had just listened to her beautiful voice and phrasing. I'm no mean Elizabethan scholar having devoted 5+ semesters to it at Rice. I grew up on KJV; it's the text that often comes first to my memory thanks to my dear great aunt, Helen Calahan Karr, and sword drills at South Plains Baptist Church.

In many ways it is the best translation of the Psalms in English--still after 400 years.

A few weeks ago I went with some church friends and my mother-in-law to the Dunham Bible Museum at Houston Baptist University. Touring the museum it's very easy to see that it is "God" who is "the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow" because it is most certainly not biblical text which changes transmission mode (oral, written, digital) and media (stone, animal skin scroll, papyrus folio, paper & ink, printing press) and language (Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, Latin, English, and countless others) over centuries. People's interaction with text changes, too. It's fun to revisit discussions of what is and what is not part of the canon. People change as societies and as individuals, as I learned when when I was trying to track the text in my New English Bible (Oxford University Press, 1970) while Andrea read her KJV. Even her Bible looks little like the edition that first came off Gutenberg's press. Some of the more modern versions read by other class members are just so simple that I worry about lost meanings, missing sub-texts, and literary structures that have been rendered invisible.

In odd moments, I've been turning these things over in my mind probably because of a ChLA 2011 session which I chose only because I'd lingered too long over morning coffee and conversation and it was being presented in the classroom next door.

"Evolving Cultural Images in Illustrated Books" was a hodge-podge panel with environment/nature books and a lovely presentation by Anne Phillips on illustration in The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett entitled "Crocuses, Robins, and Rosebuds" and her presentation was a charming as her title.

However, the presentation that has lingered in my thoughts was Benjamin Lindquist's "The Evolving Images of Kenneth N. Taylor's Illustrated Children's Bibles" which looked at examples from 1956, 1989, and 2002. He began with a quote and I missed the cite: "books are more than the words they contain." Starting with a rather gruesome picture of Absalom that his wife (and I) remembered from childhood Sunday School, Lindquist showed examples of how biblical illustrations, especially those for children, were softened and sentimentalized throughout the 20th Century. Taylor's Children's Bibles used the same text over fifty years while changing illustrations in each new edition "reflect[ed] inarticulated social assumptions."

The books themselves changed from large books which format, paper, and font size indicate are intended to be read to a child by an adult to smaller books, thicker paper, larger font sizes--books that are "child friendly" and which the child might access for herself. The illustrations change from "high art" to sentimental art to cartoonish drawings lacking perspective.

The change represents more than a change in artistic style; it reflects societal views of childhood, of parental authority, of the place of worship, of God. The age of child characters frequently became younger, encouraging a little child to insert himself into the more adult text. Such changes also make the Bible more like every other book on the child's shelf or in the toy box. Is it possible that some of these changes undercut the Bible as a "book like no other" and as "the word of God"? Since such books and their pictures are "the child's first introduction to the divine, to the practice of religion," Lindquist proposes that it is well to consider the "mutable meaning of a supposedly immutable book."

Using the story of Samuel's waking in the night to God's voice calling him, Lindquist showed how these changing illustrations change the reader's view and introduce a changing theology. In the earliest illustration Samuel's experience is mediated by Eli and a transcendent God is visibly present in items of scroll and Temple lamps and in the moon & starlit sky of His creation. By 2002, Eli is left out of the picture and a very young Samuel himself pulls back a curtain of the Temple There is no scroll, implying that Samuel's experience is not subject to scripture. There are no items of worship. If God is represented, it is only by Samuel's own glowing face and the source of light is not clearly defined as external or internal to Samuel's self.

I'll never again look at Bible illustrations in the way I once did.

He also showed some Sunday School hand-out illustrations from 1925 and the print that hung in my bedroom as I was growing up.

It's from an 1890 painting by Heinrich Hofmann; the colors in our print were somewhat faded from exposure to the light. Even as a very young child, I loved this print. I suppose it was an icon for me; it encouraged me in my daily Bible readings and called me to prayer. If I woke up frightened in the night, I'd shine my flash light on it and be comforted. The print remained on the wall of the bedroom when I went to college, but still today when I turn off the lights and close my eyes, I think of it. It's still calls me to prayer. It's still a comfort to me.

And while I'm on the subject of biblical illustration, I want to share a couple of other favorites:

Frances Hook. Soft and Sweet.

Timothy Botts. The text is the illustration.

And the 19th Century favorite, Gustav Dore.

"Words are our most inexhaustible source of magic."

2011-07-22T17:14:00.000-05:00

DMP and I went today to see Harry Potter: The Deadly Hallows, Part 2. We read/loved/lived the books and were very pleased with the movies. To quote DMP: DHpt1 was "confusing, meandering, dark and just really not a very good movie but I thought the same thing about the first part of the book." This final episode redeemed Part 1 and was a very satisfying conclusion to the story. In some ways, Part 2 wins the rare accolade: It was better than the book.

It's always interesting to see the changes that are made in going from print to screen. Spoiler alert here: perhaps my favorite moment in the movie is when Neville Longbottom pulls out the sword of Gryffindor and the movie gave that bit a much better heroic frame than the book. But then, the actor who played Neville has developed quite satisfactorily; at least in my view. I have an ingrained attraction to the nerd as romantic lead.

I also thought the conversation at King's Cross was better in the movie than the book and I wonder if Rowling didn't write it with the movie visuals in mind. My favorite line from the movie--"Words are our most inexhaustible source of magic."--do not appear in the book; at least not that I remember and I didn't find them when I re-read that last couple of chapters of the book.
A similar line from the book (page 209): "And his knowledge is incomplete... That which Valdemort does not value, he takes no trouble to comprehend. Of house-elves and children's tales, of love, loyalty, and innoncence, Voldemort knows and understands nothing. Nothing. That they all have a power beyond his own, a power beyond the reach of any magic, is a truth he has never grasped."

That reference to "children's tales" is a good point to turn this blog to the final installment of ChLA 2011. Since it relates to the movie I'll begin with Friday's session on Reading, Education, and Girl's Development. Caroline McAlister presented a paper on "Bookworm as Heroine from Frances Hodgson Burnett to J.K. Rowling." McAlister cited Shakespeare's McBeth: "a woman's story at a winter's fire, authorized by her granddam." She discussed a Burnett heroine: "if reading is the source of her isolation, it is also her way back into the public world." She traces an arc from the "passive habit of reading" which leads to empathy which leads to active citizenship, a sympathetic responsiveness to others. She explains this as "the training of the imagination." This arc is in fact the goal of all didactic writers whether Harriet Beecher Stower, C. S. Lewis, George McDonald, or my dearly beloved Evelyn Whitaker.

Hermione Granger is another example of one whose passive reading leads to active citizenship, in particular her concern for the house elves. Q&A was dyanmic: Are Hermione's concerns due to her reading, her inherently sympathetic nature as female, or her humanity? Hermione is a muggle and one presumes attended muggle schools and knows muggle history. There are also some concerns that in the Rowling books "there is no literature--no one reads anything but text books" or books in search of information. This observation is quite disturbing, given that the Harry Potter books are credited with saving books and promoting literacy. Literacy is not necessarily literature; literature is part of what makes us human. We live a world that increasingly values "knowledge.. incomplete... takes no trouble to comprehend... children's tales... which have... power."

"Little Dog knew he wasn't and never had been lost." ChLA 2

2011-07-08T09:03:00.000-05:00

I wouldn't be me if I didn't "play hooky" or "cut class" now and then.

Friday morning at ChLA, I slept in because I needed time to recover from the awful travel day on Wednesday and the late night on Thursday. The late morning put me at the coffee bar with key note speaker Julia Mickenberg, Assoc. Prof. American Studies at U.T. Austin, who authored one of the books I read in preparation for the the conference. Learning from the Left: Children's Literature, the Cold War, and Radical Politics in the United States won the 2008 ChLA Book Award and is a beautifully written "study of children's literature and the Left in the mid-twentieth century. It is a work of history as well as a work of literary analysis." (p. vii)
I was born at mid-20th century and, as a child, read many of the books discussed. I thanked Julia for her book "which explained my life." As a child I learned a democratic, egalitarian spirit from the books I read. "While school textbooks taught children to uphold the values of the Cold War, many of the trade books they checked out of the library or bought in bookstores taught them just the opposite." As McCarthyism drove leftist writers and educators underground they entered "the hidden world" of children's literature. Some titles and authors mentioned in the book are:

Millions of Cats, Dr. Seuss, the All- About Books and the Landmark Books, Jack London, Little Golden Books, Penny Parker, Nancy Drew, most Lincoln biographies for children, Langston Hughes (whose poetry I selected as my reading for UIL competition during my senior year in high school), many science and nature books, etc.

"Few..." of the authors of these books "wished to 'propagandize' children... they wished to make children autonomous, critical thinkers who questioned authority and believed in social justice.... to strengthen a sense of community, of the need to work with others to solve problems or accomplish tasks." (page 11) "They wished to give children tools of critical thinking, a distrust of received authority, and insights into the dynamics of biological and technological development and operation. They wanted to share their internationalist, cooperative, and democratic outlook and what they perceived as an ability to rationally evaluate aspects of an irrational society." (p. 182)

While I was reading this book, I was selecting books from my sister's library and came across Just Follow Me by Phoebe Erickson which is illustrative of Mickenberg's treatise: the puppy explores a world that is much bigger than he is, meets a variety of animals who say "just follow me" while he learns to judge for himself what is and isn't a home, comes across a lamb from the flock of the home farm, plays equally with this very different animal, and goes home to a mother who has worried that he has been lost but "Little Dog knew he wasn't and never had been lost."

In some sense this little book is a biography of the "flower children" and so many of my friends who travelled about and made foolish and wise choices while "looking for themselves" during our college years. It is one explanation of how and why the radicalism of the 1960s grew out of the placid (and repressive) 1950s and how and why some children of the South marched for Civil Rights, although Julia cautions: "It would be impossible (and far too reductive) to draw some kind of cause-and-effect link between childhood reading and the rebellions of the 1960s. Even so, the generational lines are not merely coincidental." p. 276

I highly recommend Mickenberg's Learning from the Left, which I read in the Kindle edition, to anyone with an interest in literature, history, American culture, education, or who seeks to understand the roots of the sharp political divide and partisanism which is the bane of current U.S. politics. We might also read a some children's literature to see if we can "strengthen a sense of community, of the need to work with others to solve problems."

"Windows and Wallpaper" ChLA 1

2011-07-01T17:57:00.004-05:00

I recently spent a delightful 5 days at Hollins University attending ChLA; the hosts were wonderful, the sessions were educational, my fellow attendees were interesting and interested, the food was delicious, and there were fireflies at the awards banquet on the grounds of the historic quad. All that and I got to be dorm "roomie" with Sonya Sawyer Fritz. What fun!

Margaret Wise Brown, who graduated from Hollins in 1932, is the author of two of my favorite books (Goodnight Moon and The Runaway Bunny)
and is being celebrated with a festival which has just opened. The campus museum exhibit, where I spent a delightful half hour and wanted to stay the day, is Goodnight, Hush. Classic Children's Book Illustrations. I lingered and returned again and again to the original illustrations by Clement Hurd. Since DMP and I had a series of house bunnies spanning twenty years, I delighted in his studies of rabbits in various poses.

I also enjoyed the classic fairy tale illustrations of Ruth Sanderson and bought a copy of Papa Gatto, An Italian Fairy Tale, a Cinderella story which required no fairy godmother.

Sanderson's illustrations are beautiful and draw one into the story. If there had been a copy in stock I would have bought Goldilocks because the illustration reminds me of my young neighbor, Emily C. After making my purchase, I returned to the exhibit to find the benches fully occupied by women with PhDs and tenure-track professorships. Each had grabbed a book and settled down to read a story of her childhood. What a wonderful recess from the distractions of scholarship!

The first session on Thursday featured Children's Literature as Linguistic Play and a look at books where "conversation shapes social reality" and I enjoyed learning about these very special children's books: , David Wiesner's The Three Pigs at first seems to be the familiar story but then the wolf huffs & puffs & blows the little pigs outside the story frame and away they go on a series of adventures (and changing illustrative style) into other story books. It's a childhood version of Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series which neither DMP nor I can resist for a minute.

Adam Z. Dotson's presentation linked Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz to Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces which defined the monomyth and has been required reading for any serious student of literature since it was first published in 1949. A bit of fun as Dorothy manages all 17 points of the hero's journey although Baum's work predates Campbell's by almost half a century. If you only know the movie, you've missed much of the story although I did not much enjoy the books when I read them as a child.

Dotson's paper was lagniappe since I chose that panel because I wanted to hear Anna Panszczyk's paper "Get Thee to a Library: The Library Setting as a Space of Revolt and Difference in Children's Literature" and Anna did not disappoint. The library appears as a space of "hushed tones and rigid rules" where one obtains "immediate information" but its "organized, ordered exterior" exists "in tension with the chaos at its heart" where there is a "frenzied passion" to "collect, hoard, and devour" books. Anna's talk featured Library Lion and The Librarian of Basra and one of the most delightful books I've come across, The Libraryby Sarah Stewart about a girl who would "rather read..." That girl is a lot like the child I was and the woman I grew to be.

The day concluded with a screening of The Library of the Early Mind, a documentary film directed by Edward J. Delaney, produced by Steven Withrow, which features interviews with 50 top writers, illustrators, publishers and critics of children's literature.

{Insert many adjectives for a rave review here!}

The interview with Daniel Handler a.k.a. Lemony Snicket is a delight!

One of the interviewees (perhaps Peter H. Reynolds) said that children's literature, "the books we read as children... give us windows and wallpaper." I think he meant "windows" through which to look out and learn of the world and "wallpaper" with which to decorate the rooms of our minds, the images on which our inner eye dwells.

My quirky mind was pleased at what I think was an unintended double entendre: Windows is also an operating system and Wallpaper is the image we select for our Desktop. One cannot consider books, reading, information, libraries without considering the changes that technology and digitization are bringing.
Quoting my friend Luci's blog: "...if you're a teacher... start imagining how you can transition your classroom to a multi-media, online format. don't worry, your organization's LMS should be a great help, and you can shoot for gradual blended learning if the online component freaks you out. but buck up, soldier - the technology is here to stay, people are already drawn to it, and it can add a lot of options to your class to help different kinds of learners, so make friends with the computer and let it help us turn out critical thinkers who're actively participating in their educations."

ChLA to be continued...

A novel, a blog, and Bob Dylan

2011-05-30T14:17:00.001-05:00

I can't seem to get back into the blogging groove. I can't even keep Library Thing updated with my "what I'm reading" and "recently read" lists. I have been reading as much as I can manage; I'm cramming for ChLA like I think it's a final exam. When the program came out, I was pleasantly surprised to find that I was better read in the source material than I had anticipated. I'll save those books and my comments for the July blog after I've come home.

SEASONS (my women-reading-theology group) has decided to offer a special summer program based on the book and soon to be released movie, The Help by Kathryn Stockett which I read on Kindle. I will probably blog much more about this book later also. I'll limit today's comment to Stockett's decision to break the novel's timeline in order to include the lyric of Bob Dylan's The times they are achangin'. On page 352, Skeeter hears the song on the car radio. "It is better than anything I've ever heard... I feel a rush of inexplicable relief. I feel I've just heard something from the future." The novel is set in 1962 and Dylan's song was first played 26 October 1963. I don't understand why Stockett didn't just push her timeline. A later date would have allowed her to make use of the selective service draft which throughout most of the South took "coloreds and white trash" first. The conscription and death of young black men "in the white man's war" in Viet Nam served as a call to action for the civil rights movement. I, however, did not write this book; the teller of the tale gets to make such decisions. I basically liked The Help and thought it spoke truth.

My reading of Stockett's book came shortly before Bob Dylan's 70th birthday so I revisited the music of my youth. As I recall I first heard Bob Dylan on the floor of my dorm room probably in the fall of 1968. I had to learn to appreciate Dylan as a musician--it was a totally new sound--but I recognized at once that he was a great poet. Malcolm Guite--British poet, singer-songwriter, and priest--writes a blog which I enjoy for its insight on the intersections of literature and Christianity. In a 2008 article published in The Tablet, Malcolm Guite demonstrates how Dylan layers time and echoes biblical text.
Turning again to the song that Stockett thought so essential to her story that she broke the timeline to quote the last two lines of the first stanza, I have added a few notes in red in The times they are a-changin' by Bob Dylan:

Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters       whelming waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you                  "redeeming the time"
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin' rejection of status quo
Or you'll sink like a stone        Jesus: "better a millstone"
For the times they are a-changin'.

Come writers and critics       Stockett's novel is about writing
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon     there is a long silence, time of waiting
For the wheel's still in spin Bible is not the only religion's imagery
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'                    who is named in Skeeter's book
For the loser now                  Jesus: last shall be first
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin'.

Come senators, congressmen    Stuart's father is a senator
Please heed the call                   Hilly's husband is running for office
Don't stand in the doorway       Hilly's husband loses election
Don't block up the hall              Stuart's father has more open views
For he that gets hurt                  but will not speak them publicly
Will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside
And it is ragin'
It'll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'.

Come mothers and fathers       lots of mothers in novel
Throughout the land
And don't criticize                   Skeeter's mom & Elizabeth criticize
What you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is                     Psalm 1, the way of the wicked
Rapidly agin'
Please get out of the new one   road blocks to stop activists
If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'.

The line it is drawn         novel is all about boundaries
The curse it is cast          this image is about prophecy
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin'
And the first one now       again Jesus: last shall be first
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin'.

[ Lyrics from: http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/]

listen to Bob Dylan at the White House Celebration of Music of the Civil Rights Movement.

How does my garden grow?

2011-04-28T11:39:00.000-05:00

My friends have started to comment, "It's been a long time since you've blogged." I joke that, although unintentionally, I apparently gave up blogging for Lent. In truth, I've been hugely depressed. Why?

It's Spring... for as long as I can remember all that teeming new life and hope make me feel hopeless and lifeless. All this transitory beauty seems like such extravagant waste. "It is the blight man was born for..." I probably need to read some Hopkins while listening to Gregorian chant. Seriously, for me it helps.

Grandma Wieland in her kitchen, 1971,
holding keepsakes from my wedding.

Several of my young friends and family members are in marriages that are ending and I remember the joy that marked their weddings and weep. Marriage and divorce are not private and personal matters since they grow out of and into the community of the "dearly beloved... gathered here to unite..." I know that "happily ever after" is extraordinarily rare except in fairy tales but... {sigh!}

A number of my young friends are mourning grandparents and I mourn for them. I know what they may not yet know, that the death of those we love and those who love us is a life-long wound. Yes, of course, there is Easter and Resurrection-promised, but now we wait beside our tombs that are not yet empty.

Depression is like drought; it's an unchosen time of waiting, of lying fallow, of praying "O thou lord of life, send my roots rain."

[Hopkins, again. link to Pied Beauty at the Poetry Foundation ]

In the meantime, I've been working in my yard, tending a literal garden in the hope that some time spent "in green pastures... beside still waters..." will "restore my soul." My yard looks great:

Red geraniums in memory of Gran Cummings & David's father.

Caladiums & indigo spire sage come back after the frost of winter.
The magnolis tree has also recoverd from the damage of Ike and is in glorious bloom.

DMP loves blue & got me some pretty new pots. Herbs flourish.

Patio garden.
Pepper & eggplant ready to bloom;
a harvest will come.

I begin to sense that the darkness is passing and that I may be about ready to "arise and shine."

One of the things I do in down times, uncreative times, is sort, file, and edit. Rather than sharing my reading in this post, I'll share something I wrote several years ago and recently reworked.

In this short story/memoir/personal essay--the lines between fact and fiction are blurred in the telling--I attempted to capture the fragility of age and the bittersweet mood of memory, the interweaving of past and present. I tried to reproduce the cadence of the speech of my grandmother's generation, using phrases and grammatical constructions without resorting to dialect. The moment of time in this story is 1966.

Winter Magnolias

by K Cummings Pipes

in memory of Grandma Mary Bridget Atzenhoffer Wieland

She reached down the jacket and bonnet from behind the kitchen door. Since girlhood she had protected her skin’s fairness from the sun’s burning. Nowadays, her granddaughters ran around half-naked, tanning their skin a deep brown. Even so, they were pretty girls. The young one, especially, was a lot like her—short and well-rounded with red-gold hair. In her day, she too had been pretty. She had known it and had taken care to protect her skin with jacket, bonnet, and gloves. Despite her precautions, years of stress aided by the West Texas wind wrinkled her face. Old age’s liver spots marred her fairness. Still, by long established habit, she put on the jacket and bonnet before going outside to work the garden. No gloves, not anymore, since half her eyesight was in her fingertips. She stepped out to the porch and bent to change her slippers for the old shoes she wore when working. As she laced and tied them, the wind carried a strong whiff of honeysuckle to her. Another pair of shoes, another place, another time. Her granddaughter--the older one, the smart one--would call it déjà vu. She had no name for the feeling. She simply enjoyed the moment and allowed her mind to enlarge it into memory.

She had come in from the field so tired. It must have been a hundred degrees in the shade. She had chopped cotton through the heat of the day, planning to take off early for the dance. Her very first. She had taken that hand-me-down dress from the banker’s wife she scrubbed floors for--the banker’s wife was so fat there was plenty of material—and had cut the silk to fit her own budding figure. She had ached for the pair of shoes she had seen at the store but her mother had forbidden her and bought a pair of heavy brogans. Who could dance in brogans? But dear brother Henry could never stand to see his little Mary unhappy. He bought her those shiny black shoes that did not lace but buttoned all the way to the top with brass buttons that shone like gold. Beautiful, fashionable—just like the girl in the Sears Roebuck catalog. That blue silk had matched her eyes. The black shoes had flown across the wooden slats while fiddles sang and honeysuckle sweetened the air. Just as the memory now sweetened her day.

Enough day-dreaming, the flags and pansies needed weeding. With some luck that thunderhead might bring a shower, at least it was building up in the northwest, the right direction for rain. The moisture would help the flowers but it would help the weeds more. She got down on her knees to see the plants a little better and began pulling the unwanted roots from the ground. She worked steadily for half an hour and began to feel warm even though the evening cool was setting in. The yard was a lot of work but worth it, especially so the year her yard had won the prize. It might not look like much these days, but it had sure been pretty then. She was still proud of her yard, proud of her flowers. Flowers, even wild ones, did not come easy in this country. Back home, flowers had seemed to grow everywhere.

The entire field in front of the house had been colored with them. She could still see him, straight and tall, walking across that field. He had picked a bunch of wild flowers , bluebonnets and Indian paint brush, for her. They had said he was too old for her, “old Robin Gray come a-courtin’.” She had looked at the love and laughter in his eyes and had seen all the years ahead, years of working and praying together. They had had a good life until he passed on. She blinked away tears and wondered that twenty years had passed. Still, she had his children. And memories. She left an orange prairie flower nodding among the pansies. A wild flower was not a weed.

She thought she heard a noise and a shadow passed in front of her hands, startling her. She turned quickly, straining eyes and ears to identify the intruder. No one; nothing. Probably only a cloud and the wind freshened by the coming storm. Silly old woman. But you never knew; there were so many bad things happening nowadays. A woman living alone could not be too careful. She took a deep breath. A woman living alone could not live in a dither of fear either.

"the boy" Kelvin,
"the smart one" K, Grandma, "the pretty one" Zacha

An unexpected visitor might just as well be the grandkids. They came by every once in a while. Why, they stopped by about this time last Friday, brought her a small carton of strawberry ice cream. They admired her flowers and chattered on and on about the dance, “prom” they called it. The younger girl, the one who looked like her, had been all excited; it would be her first dance. The boy had gone by the florist to pick up a corsage for his girl. His mama had told him that gardenias were always proper. Did she think so? He showed them to her—gardenias, white and sweet like magnolias. The smell was like magnolias, too, only a bit less lemony. She wanted to tell them about the magnolia but they were in a hurry. They had driven away in the car their daddy got them. Their daddy spoiled those kids. Their mama’s daddy had not had much chance to spoil her.

He had been gone for almost two months when Will came by. Dear, dear Will who had stood up for them at their wedding. How solemn he had looked apologizing for missing the funeral. He had brought her a magnolia. Climbed right up on the hood of the car and reached over the fence and picked it, he had said, with some old lady yelling that he had no call to take her flowers. That was little enough compared with other things he had taken, with some of the trouble he had been in. Will had driven hell-for-leather bringing that magnolia to her. It was brown and wilty by the time he got it here, but, oh, it had smelled so sweet. Sweet as laughter after two months of tears. Sweet as flowers for a young girl’s dance.

She began putting away the tools and looked hopefully to the northwest. That thunderhead was going to slide off to the west; no rain tonight. She got the hose and turned on the faucet. So much water for the flowers made the bills too high. Last summer, it had been hard to stretch the money to cover it. Her check stayed the same but the bills grew like weeds. She prayed that the rain would come soon. In just a bit, the lambsquarter and poke would come in season, and she could eat greens. That would save grocery money. Then the vegetables would start up but vegetables used a lot of water, too. Still, if she were careful with the water and careful with the money, she would make it. She always had. Times were always hard for a widow woman. The water spattered the ground and washed the dust from leaves, making them shine. Little drops ran down inside the blooms. In the fading light, it looked like dew. She smiled at the memory of dewy mornings she had known as a child.

She found herself humming. The tune had been stuck in her mind for some time, going round and round. Now she took it for that old waltz. She couldn’tt remember a time when she had not known it. As a little girl, she had thought the song belonged to her because it had her name in it. Later, young men had sung it to her when she rode in their buggies. Not that she had gone riding with just anyone who asked her; she was not that sort of girl. It was a pretty song. “Mary, Mary, pretty Mary, be my love so fair.” No one called her Mary anymore. Most of her friends had passed away. Casual acquaintance of her generation maintained an old-fashioned formality. Everyone called her Mrs. Wieland. Or Grandma. Young people who she hardly knew sometimes called her grandma. She was not quite sure she liked that.

The scent of the flowers was fading; the blossoms closed, curling in on themselves. The morning sun would open them again but today’s light was almost gone. She turned off the faucet and put away the hose. A lingering brightness in the west streaked the rain that was falling on other fields and gardens. She sat heavily on the porch and changed back into her slippers. Again, she remembered when dancing in new black shoes had been so very important. With a smile and a sigh, she lingered a bit but even a West Texas twilight does not last forever. Time to go in. She hung her jacket and bonnet on the nail behind the door and closed it to shut out the night.

What I'm reading...

2011-02-01T15:33:00.001-06:00

I intended to blog more often this year but... I'd planned to blog on my birthday a week and a half ago and woke up sick. The next day my computer didn't wake up at all. The following Monday my husband became very ill. It will be a long time before I've put all the pieces back together but everyone and every thing at least seems to be up and functioning more or less normally.

What I've been reading:

Fiction:

Conroy, Pat: The Prince of Tides. 1986. Kindle. I seldom read any best-selling book until it's been kicking around a few years. "Popular" does not equal "time-tested" and there is so little time to read. I also tend to avoid 20th Century male authors; their world view is often too depressing for me. I knew I would love this book and I also knew I would hate it. I loved the first half and hated the last half; I prefer "elegy" to "nightmare." Pat Conroy wrote a great novel in the tradition of the great Southern novel with the requisite beauty, quirky characters, and disfunction. kindle location [kl] 859 "...you're southern to the bone, Savannah. It don't wash out." loc 1268 "The southern way?" she said. "My mother's immortal phrase. We laugh when the pain gets too much. We laugh when the pity of human life gets too... pitiful. We laugh when there's nothing else to do." "When do you weep... according to the southern way?" "After we laugh, Doctor. Always. Always after we laugh." kl 3646 "...in the South. Sorrow is admired only if it's done in silence." kl 3748 "I've always found paranoia to be a perfectly defensible position." It has some wonderful descriptions of childhood and some painful ones: kl 169 "Later when we spoke of our childhood, it seemed part elegy, part nightmare." kl 1504 "There are no verdicts to childhood, only consequences, and the bright freight of memory." kl 3046 "There is no fixing a damaged childhood. The best you can hope for is to make the sucker float." It offers descriptions and commentary upon the 20th Century struggles against racism and those of feminism and environmentalism. kl 201 "This has not been an easy century to endure." Chapter 18 should be required reading. I don't know that I've ever fully appreciated the role of a coach, despite having a couple in my family. The descriptions of the North Carolina locale are heart-breakingly beautiful and made me want to go live on an island and fish. One of my favorite quotes is about reading: kl 997 "You get a little moody sometimes but I think that's because you like to read. People that like to read are always a little fucked up." There is, of course, a movie and it's a good one but the book is better. I've decided to read some more Conroy: My Reading Life. Doubleday, 2010. Kindle.

Victorian scholarship:

Adams, Maureen: Shaggy Muses. The dogs who inspired Virginia Woolfe, Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Barrett Browing, Edith Wharton, and Emily Bronte. New York: Ballantine Books, 2007. Kindle. My friend, Cathey Roberts, recommended this book {she also mentioned a seminar on Creativity and Madness which riffs nicely with Conroy's book and brought a smile to DMP}and I immediately downloaded it and read it straight through without iterruption--one of the advantages of physical weakness and no computer is that one may read and read and read. kl 3361 Quoting Virginia Woolfe: "Half the horrors of illness cease when one has a book or a dog or a cup of one's own at hand." kl 4496 "Like many creative people, she [Emily Dickinson] depended on someone else to oversee the balance between having time alone against the need for connection with others to avoid being engulfed by the work." Emily Dickinson and her friend Susan Gilbert, who married Emily's brother, "shared a hatred of housework, a love of literature, and an intense interest in religion." Sounds a bit like me.

My "intense interest in religion" groups six very different books:.

I'm continuing the Annie Dillard Reader and have just finished the excerpts from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, perhaps my favorite work of mysticism. kl 4236 "that which isn't flint is tinder, and the whole world sparks and flames." kl 4270 "An infant who has just learned to hold his head up has a frank and forthright way of gazing about him in bewilderment. He hasn't the faintest clue where he is, and he aims to learn. In a couple of years, what he will have learned is how to fake it..." kl 4567 "But although the pearl may be found, it may not be sought. The literature of illumination reveals this above all: although it comes to those who wait for it, it is always, even to the most practiced and adept, a gift and a total surprise... I cannot cause light; the most I can do is try to put myself in the path of its beam." .

I was asked to read an excerpt from For the Time Being during a Sunday worship--which I was too ill to read--and as a result I'm reading W. H. Auden's Collected Longer Poems which I haven't touched since my undergraduate course with Dr. Monroe K Spears, Poetry of W.H. Auden: Disenchanted Island. I have a much better appreciation of the modern poets now than I did in my youth.

"Remembrance of the moment before last

Is like a yawning drug."

Several weeks ago, DMP and I went to see the new Narnia movie which has given us an excuse to re-run the movies and re-read the books. I first read C.S. Lewis's literary scholarship (the dreaded and still dispised Milton semester with Alan Grob) and happened upon Voyage of the Dawntreader so I started the series in the middle. It's always been my favorite and one reason is that dear swashbuckling mouse Reepicheep reminds me so very much of DMP. This story is also a commentary upon "reading the right books" and celebrates imagination rather than information. A lesson that our universities might well learn before they slash the funding for humanities and libraries.

I continue my slow progress through Robert Alter's The Book of Psalms which is masterful and magnificent. From the 39th Psalm: "Let me know, O LORD, my end and what is the measure of my days. I would know how fleeting I am... a nothing... mere breath.... For I am a sojourner with You, a new settler like all my fathers. Look away from me, that I may catch my breath before I depart and am not."

These psalm readings work really well with the book that is the companion of the Open Door class study of Genesis. Walter Brueggemann's Land kl 231 "...any society is likely to treat its land in the same way it treats its women." kl 307 "...land is never simply physical dirt but is always physical dirt freighted with social meanings derived from historical experience." kl 485 "Biblical faith begins with the radical announcment of discontinuity that intends to initiate us into a new history of anticipation.... rooted in the speech of God..."

Blog note: I will continue using the Amazon associate links and images in the text of the blog because Amazon usually allows readers to take a look inside or download a sample. I've switched the sidebars to LibraryThing which lets me maintain an on-line catalog and collection lists. They have the advantage of being readable on the Kindle. http://www.librarything.com/home/KCummingsPipes

I first saw the LibraryThing used in Catherine Pope's Victorian Geek blog: http://blog.catherinepope.co.uk/2011/01/an-eye-for-an-eye-by-anthony-trollope/ and clicked the link in one of sidebars. The first 200 books is a free membership if you want to give it a try.

Leftovers...

2011-01-01T16:56:00.004-06:00

I like leftovers, especially all those left from luscious holiday feasts. This post deals with a few things that are left over from 2010.

My house is still fully decorated and will remain so for a few more days and, yes, I'm still listening to Christmas music. I'll play Handel's Messiah while taking down the tree, probably on Wednesday.

I want to share my favorite decorating tip which might prove useful at other times. Note the brass candle holders. I pressed them into floral foam and used the foam to secure the bright red elongated ornaments. The visual effect is candle-like but it was much safer than a lighted flame close to my drying-out-by-the-minute Noble fir. I keep thinking of using this trickwith things other than ornaments. Maybe pussy-willows, or tree limbs, or peacock feathers?

I monetized this blog several months ago. Being an Amazon associate allows me to display images of book covers and provides an easy link for readers wanting more information. In the interests of full disclosure, I would receive a small % of any sales which my links generated. To date, there has been no money. If there are ever any proceeds, they will be donated to a library or children's reading program.

What I'm reading:

Among my Christmas celebrations was a reading of The Children's Book of Christmas Stories edited by Asa Don Dickinson and Ada M. Skinner, originally published in 1913, a Project Gutenberg eBook downloaded to my Kindle for free from manybooks.net although it is also available at Amazon's Kindle store.

I have added links to several of my favorite sources for Kindle books to My Favorite Web Places in the right side bar.

Alter, Robert: The Book of Psalms. A translation with commentary. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2007. This is my current bedside book and I'm lingering over a psalm or two each night. I have read through the 53rd Psalm of this superb and well-annotated translation. Alter's notes compel me to notice how much the Psalms are related to the Prophets--particularly Isaiah and Micah--and of their commonality with Wisdom literature--particularly Ecclesiastes and Proverbs. A note on Psalm 48:17:

"Like Your name, so Your praise--

to the ends of the earth.

With justice Your right hand is full."

Alter comments on the word justice:

"the Hebrew tsedeq can also mean "victory" or "bountiful act."

What a rich and challenging concept is God's justice!

As I read the Psalms in this translation, I note the frequent repetition of the word "breath" and am reminded of a by-gone resolution which, as I kept it, helped restore my health. Both spiritual and bodily health and, indeed, life itself require breath. The only New Year's Resolution currently on my list is: Breathe deeply.

In my Annie Dillard Reader, Kindle edition , I've read her Poems and The Book of Luke (1989)which made wonderful Advent reading. Kindle location 3899 "It is a fault of infinity to be too small to find. It is a fault of eternity to be crowded out by time." 3922 "This Bible, this ubiquitous, persistent black chunk of a best seller, is a chink--often the only chink--through which winds howl. It is a singularity, a black hole into which our rich and multiple world strays and vanishes. We crack open its pages at our peril." 3925 "...it is the book that kidnaps the children, and hooks them." The author writes about her experiences in Christian summer camp and Sunday School and offers insightful commentary on the Gospel text, concluding with these selected quotes: 4095 "What a pity, that so hard on the heels of Christ come the Christians.... flawed to the core, full of wild ideas and hurried self-importance.... They are smug and busy, just like us, and who could believe in them? ...Who could believe that salvation is for these rogues?" "Unless, of course-- Unless Christ's washing the disciples' feet, their dirty toes, means what it could, possibly mean: that it is all right to be human." 4109 "If they were just like us, then Christ's words to them are addressed to us, in full and merciful knowledge--and we are lost. There is no place to hide." Annie Dillard's lovely meditative prose, her keen observations, and the way her mind interweaves everything make her one of my favorite authors.

At least a half dozen of my friends have urged me to read The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows, Dial Press, 2009. I finally found time for a nice uninterrupted reading of this book which I enjoyed at least as much as my friends thought I would. I knew nothing of the German occupation of the Channel Islands during World War II. Kindle location 145 "That's what I love about reading: one tiny thing will interest you in a book, and that tiny thing will lead you into another book, and another bit there will lead you to a third book. It's geometrically progressive--all with no end in sight, and for no other reason than sheer enjoyment."

I suppose I've just added a second, continuing, resolution: Read as many good books as I can and share them in my blog with as many friends and strangers as possible.
I've been downloading many, many samples as I explore titles and plan my reading for the New Year.

My favorite Christmas present:

DMP insisted that he be allowed to up grade my original Kindle to the latest generation Kindle with Wi-Fi and 3G. I'm really enjoying the upgrade which came loaded with my media library from the first Kindle. The first night I opened my Kindle and began reading where I'd left off. The improvements are really improvements and I love the larger memory and the ability to organize my eBooks into collections on the home page. It's much faster, too. The e-Ink Pearl offers better resolution and more choices for fonts and line spacing. Wow!

Some sort of eBook reader is the future of reading. No one loves the "book experience" more than I, but a Kindle in a leather cover is an acceptable substitute. It opens up a world of reading materials that I couldn't otherwise find or afford.

Remember that you can download all Kindle books on multiple devices and have your reading synced across devices.visit Amazon to download free reading apps.

Happy New Year!

My Year in Status 2010

2010-12-31T15:12:00.009-06:00

In this season, as in all seasons...

2010-12-07T12:16:00.000-06:00

[This article is probably the most popular thing, I have ever written. I wrote it first to use as our Christmas card insert; then it was published in the church newsletter as part of LIGHT! (Advent 2005) and I think it was published at least once again. Lots of people have "borrowed" it and I've gotten it back in emails and other's cards; a few asked permission first. I still love it and hope you will too. In this season as in all seasons... by K Cummings Pipes]

It's that time of year. Everyone is or soon will be "making a list and checking it twice." I've even made a list of my lists. Rush, rush, busy, busy! The list is long and the time is short. I hope not too short for prayer and meditation in this season as in all seasons.

I want to make time to remember that long ago God's people waited in expectant hope for God to act, to redeem, to lead, to reveal. I want to remember that long ago, in a season of darkness, there was light.

I want to celebrate God's provision in the winter beauty of Creation. I want to remember that there was oil for Temple lamps. I want to see glorious light on Bethlehem's hills and hear songs of peace and good will. I want to look for the star that led the wise to an improbable manger where all power was wrapped in the weakness of a sleeping child.

In this season as in all seasons, I want to sing the old songs that are forever new and remember that "heaven came down and glory filled my soul... My sins were washed away and my night was turned to day..."

In this season, when days are short and the night is long, I want to remember and to wait in expectant hope.

Advent Resolutions...

2010-11-30T14:05:00.000-06:00

It started even earlier this year--the rush to the malls and big box stores, the rush to grab, to get, to buy. Merchants couldn't wait for Black Friday profits and Americans could not manage to devote even one day to family and giving thanks. [Although my family enjoyed a "Norman Rockwall" Thanksgiving at my cousin Natalie's lovely home.]
In the world around us, the next few weeks will be driven by materialism, consumerism and overindulgence. "These are things the heathen run after... set your mind on God's kingdom and his righteousness." {Matthew 6:33} Christians are called in all seasons to live lives that proclaim the-already-come-and-coming kingdom, to live each day in expectation of Christ's coming, to proclaim that Jesus came and Christ is coming. We are called be awake to what is truly important, to live worthy lives, and to walk as children of light even in a season of darkness. We must keep Christmas without falling prey to the temptations which abound in the world during the holiday season.
Some advent resolutions:

I will exercise the discipline of good stewardship. I will give gifts without making debts. I will remember that a gift is given; it is not exchanged.
I will focus less on myself and more on the redeeming work of Jesus and how I can continue that work in the world. I will speak and do those things that point the way to the coming of Christ.
I will find time to remember stories of Christmases past, people who have blessed my life, people who have blessed the world. One of the blessings of 60+ years is that there have been many Christmases and many blessings.
Even in remembering, I will not dwell in the past but will seek wisdom and joy in the present.
I will be grateful for what I have rather than coveting what I don't. I will say "Thank you."
I will weep with those who weep.
I will share with others in the name of Jesus. DMP & I love the Salvation Army bucket & bell. We will give anonymous gifts to those who are in need who will not be able to thanks us and so will thank God.
Worship, prayer, study, meditation will not be pushed from my life by the frantic rush, false deadlines, and intrusive noise of the world's celebration.
I will keep Christmas because the world and I need reminders that Jesus came and Christ is coming. We need encouragement to remember and to prepare for His coming. This season, with the natural world's shortening of light & increasing night and the fleshly world's temptations, is a season to seek spiritual renewal and to help other seekers find it.

Yes, I will keep Christmas while remembering that the point is not the rituals but the meaning they proclaim. If I am not awake to the meaning then I am in danger of turning precious rituals into just one more thing the pagans run after and joining in the chase. I want to be wide-awake while I decorate an evergreen tree in red and gold to symbolize royalty, sacrifice, and eternal life. When I arrrange my ceramic wise men, I want to be fully aware that "the wise still seek" and that the world's wisdom bows before that babe in a manger. I want to light candles and shine light into darkness. I will greet my friends, my family, and the whole wide world with peace and joy and love.

Longer ago than I can imagine, the Prophets promised Messiah would come and Jesus came: “In Him was life and that life was the light of men. The Light shines in the darkness…” and there is hope.

What I'm Reading...

2010-11-04T14:03:00.001-05:00

Politics, politics, too much politics. Now that the election is over I intend to take a hiatus from politics. "...a pox on both your houses" unfortunately puts a pox on my house, too.

I've started preparation for the annual Medicare Part D (prescription drugs) assault. I've got to do it for my parents and it's a ministry to offer my help to the Keenagers at church. 2011 plan data is now available at the Medicare Plan Finder . Enrollment in 2011 plans is from November 15, 2010 to December 31, 2010.

The last month has seen lots of time devoted to wind energy information and contracts and letter from our attorney... Daddy signed the contract on Monday so now we wait and hope to reap the wind.

Home repair/maintenance considerations. I'm thinking of replacing my dishwasher before it breaks (it's old enough to be near the end of its expected life span) because I seriously covet a Bosch dishwasher with its leak guard and enclosed heating element. This unthrifty fit was brought on by what I thought was a leaking dishwasher but what proved to be a leak in the 53-year old plumbing behind the wall. I love my 1957 ranch but... While I've got a handyman here to replace that small piece of pipe, he's going to repair the minor water damage, reinforce the cabinet base, and replace the kick board. When all that's done and my kitchen is back in good working order, I really don't want to have to deal with another water-leaking dishwasher, so I'm trying to convince myself that it's really an sound economic decision to get the thing I want to get now.

It's not only the autumn season, it's catalog season. Every day brings a half dozen catalogs, slick glitterings to tickle my materialism. I just can't resist browsing through them although I'm such a procrastinator that I really don't indulge in actual buying very often. I always think I'm going to find perfect gifts for everyone on my list without having to go out into the crowded malls. It's so much fun when UPS brings stuff to me.

In my Annie Dillard Reader I'm enjoying large selections from An American Childhood. Kindle I'm fascinated by comparing her growing up as a town kid in a northeastern city (Pittsburgh) and my own American childhood on a farm in West Texas. My days were filled with many more chores than hers but we each had ample time to think during our days and nights. Like me, she had an entertaining mother. Her mother told jokes; mine sang and danced around the kitchen, and read and recited poetry. Like me, she was pretty much allowed to choose her own reading and to pursue her own interests with minimal parental supervision. Libraries and baseball are common to both of us.

Wright, N.T.: Surprised by Hope. Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, previously blogged, continues to surprise me. I'm surprised at how easy it is to highlight on my Kindle and retrieve references and I'm surprised by how very much I needed to rethink. 2413 "Bodily resurrection is not just one odd bit of that hope. It is the element that gives shape and meaning to the rest of the story we tell about God's ultimate purposes." 2855 "As with God's kingdom, so with its opposite, it is on earth that things matter..." 2996 "...heaven and hell are not, so to speak, what the whole game is about. This is one of the central surprises in the Christian hope.... The New Testament, true to its Old Testament roots, regularly insists that the major, central, framing question is that of God's purpose of rescue and recreation of the whole world, the entire cosmos." Wow! anyone with any interest at all in matters eternal needs to read this book. I'll have to buy hard copy to share with DMP because he absolutely refuses to even try to read my Kindle.

Chiffolo, Anthony F. & Hesse, Rayner W. Jr.: We Thank You God, for These. Blessings and Prayers for Family Pets. New York: Paulist Press, 2003. Illustrated by Andrew Lattimore. I got this book back down from the shelf to search for a quote for a sympathy note when a dear friend lost her beloved pet and have been enjoying it. I love to read the dog quotes aloud to Miss Mandy Whitepaws.

Alter, Robert: The Book of Psalms. A translation with commentary. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2007. DMP gave me this book for Christmas and it was forgotten and buried in my stack. In fact, I had already put it back on my want list before I found it. Christmas all over again. [The image at left is a clickable link where Amazon will let you look inside and browse this book. I sampled this book on my Kindle and read the introduction there before I put the book itself on my list. For reading the psalms, I found this one of those rare instances where the Kindle just didn't work.] This is my current bedside book. I read a couple or three psalms each night before sleep. Robert Alter, Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at U. Cal. Berkeley, is a formidable scholar from whom I have learned much having read both The Literary Guide to the Bible and The Art of Biblical Poetry. Alter is enriching my understanding of the Psalms and expanding my Hebrew vocabulary. His translation attempts to be readable poetry in English while maintaining much of the psalmic poetics. I think he succeeded brilliantly. Introduction xxix "Biblical Hebrew is what linguists call a synthetic language, as opposed to analytic languages such as English." In his introduction xxxi, Alter described his translation process from the Hebrew as "emulating its rhythms... reproducing many of the effects of its flexible syntax, seeking equivalents for the combination of homespun directness and archaizing in the original, hewing to the lexical concreteness of the Hebrew, and making palpable the force of the parallelism that is at the heart of Hebrew poetry."

While the introduction and commentary are excellent and of great interest to a scholar of the Psalms, the translation itself is wonderful devotional reading. From the 4th Psalm, v 6-8:

"Offer righteous sacrifices

and trust in the LORD.

Many say, "Who will show us good things?"

Lift up the light of Your face to us, LORD.

You have put joy in my heart

from the time their grain and their drink did abound.

In peace, all whole, let me lie down and sleep.

For you, LORD, alone, do set me down safely."

Alter's use of "lift up" in v. 6 as a "gesture of divine favor (as in Priestly Blessing)... common in biblical idiom" is one example of a better reading to be gleaned from his translation. Most, perhaps all, other English translations say "let" which is a far weaker, less evocative phrase.
Alter found the "syntactic link" of grain and drink in v. 8 "obscure." My knowledge of Hebrew is certainly not strong enough to enable me to comment on syntax but I suggest a connection to v. 6 "righteous sacrifice" since both grain and wine are offered in joyful harvest festivals and as individual sacrifices of thanksgiving. As a Jewish scholar, Alter would not approve my Christianizing the Psalms but this translation recalls to me the Eucharistic moment when the host and the cup (grain and wine) are lifted up. This book is full of such tidbits to keep me happily reading for a long, long time.

Early Voting...

2010-10-22T22:47:00.000-05:00

Since I was a very young child, I've been a bit interested in politics. One of the first things I remember reading was the cover of a magazine with a picture of Adlai Stevenson and the phrase "egg head" which I found somewhat shocking and amusing. I used to always wait until the actual election day because I hated to cast my vote early in case "something" came to light and I loved the excitement of the crowded polls. Not this year. Early voting in the 2010 election is almost half over. With a very long judicial ballot and considering the damage to Houston's voting machines, I don't think waiting is wise. DMP and I plan to vote tomorrow.

I will not vote a straight ticket. I don't think anyone should.  The down ballot is far too important and in some of these races a straight ticket for either party is a poor exercise in democracy, demonstrating a shocking lack of discernment. I really appreciate getting to vote for judges but it is a bad idea for a straight ticket to remove good judges from office or to sweep ill-qualified candidates into office. I spent many hours reviewing the candidates. In a couple of races, I was unable to determine which was the better choice and in those races, I will not vote. If the name is in bold, the candidate has my endorsement as well as my vote.    I am a Republican--since I was a teen, charter member of my home county's Young Republicans--when I vote for a Democrat you can bet he/she is the best qualified candidate. The following candidates have earned my vote. If the name is in bold they also have my strong endorsement, regardless of their political party affiliation. I'm not yet prepared to give up hoping for good government with liberty and justice for all.

US Representative District 9 Steve Mueller

Governor Bill White (DEM) I really hate to give the governorship to a DEM during a redistricting term but I've had way more than enough of our current governor.

Lt. Governor David Dewhurst

Attorney General Gregg Abbott

Comptroller Susan Combs

Commiss. Gen Land Office Jerry Patterson the man who ticks off both Rick Perry & the Sierra Club gets my vote.

Commiss. Agriculture Todd Staples

RR Commissioner Jeff Weems (DEM) is far better qualified and I’m very miffed at David Porter for running against Victor Castillo in the primary.

Justice Supreme court pl 3 Debra Lehrmann

Justice Supreme court pl 5 Paul Green

Justice Supreme court pl 9 Eva Guzman

Judge Criminal Appeals 2 Lawrence “Larry” Meyers

Judge Criminal Appeals 5 Cheryl Johnson

Judge Criminal Appeals 6 no vote

State Board Education Dist 4 unopposed DEM no vote

State Senator District 13 Michael Mauldin is too tea-tasting for me but he gets my vote against Rodney Ellis who will be elected in my highly DEM district. I respect Mr. Ellis and appreciate his many years of public service to my district but we disagree on the details of so many issues that I cannot vote for him.

Chief Justice, 1stCourt of Appeals District Sherry Radack

Justice 1st Court Appeals Place 4 Evelyn Keyes

Justice 1st Court Appeals Place 8 (unexpired term) Michael Massengale

Justice 14th Court Appeals Place 2 Sharon McCally

Justice 14th Court Appeals Place 5 (unexpired term) Martha Hill Jamison

Justice 14th Court Appeals Place 9 Tracy Elizabeth Christopher

District Judge 55 Dion Ramos (DEM)

District Judge 113 Christina Bryan (DEM)

District Judge 157 Randy Wilson

District Judge 180 Marc Brown

District Judge 182 Jeannnine Barr

District Judge 183 Vanessa Velasquez judged in a court where served jury duty this year.

District Judge 184 Jan Krocker a tie goes REP for me

District Judge 185 Susan Brown

District Judge 189 Bill Burke

District Judge 190 Patricia J. Kerrigan

District Judge 208 Denise Collins

District Judge 209 Mike McSpadden

District Judge 228 Marc Carter

District Judge 230 Belinda Hill

District Judge 232 Mary Lou Keel

District Judge 234 Reece Rendon

District Judge 245 Roy L. Moore

District Judge 246 probably Sherri Cothron (DEM)

District Judge 247 Bonnie Crane Hellums

District Judge 248 Joan Campbell

District Judge 257 Judy Warne

District Judge 262 Denis Bradley

District Judge 263 Alvin Nunnery (DEM)

District Judge 269 Katie Kenneday (DEM)

District Judge 270 Brent Gamble

District Judge 280 Lynn Bradshaw Hull

District Judge 281 Sylvia Matthews

District Judge 295 Caroline E. Baker

Family District Judge 308 Bruce Kessler (DEM)

Family District Judge 309 no vote

Family District Judge 310 Lisa Millard

Family District Judge 311 Deborah Wright (DEM)

Family District Judge 312 Robert Hinojosa (DEM)

Family District Judge 313 Natalie Oaks (DEM)

Family District Judge314 David Longoria (DEM)

Family District Judge 315 Michael “Mike” Schneider

County Judge Ed Emmett

Judge County Court at law no. 1 R. Jack Cagle

Judge County Court at law no. 2 Jacqueline Lucci Smith

Judge County Court at law no. 3 no vote

Judge County Court at law no. 4 Bruce Mosier (DEM)

Judge County Criminal No. 1 Paula Goodhart

Judge County Criminal No. 2 Bill Harmon

Judge County Criminal No. 3 Natalie Fleming

Judge County Criminal No. 4 Alfred G. “Al” Leal (DEM)

Judge County Criminal No. 5 Margaret Stewart Harris

Judge County Criminal No. 6 Larry Standley

Judge County Criminal No. 7 Pam Derbyshire

Judge County Criminal No.8 Jay Karahan

Judge County Criminal No. 9 Analia Wilkerson

Judge County Criminal No. 10 Sherman A. Ross

Judge County Criminal No. 11 Diane Bull

Judge County Criminal No. 12 Robin Brown

Judge County Criminal No. 13 Don Smyth

Judge County Criminal No. 14 Mike Fields

Judge County Criminal No. 15 Jean Spradling Hughes

Judge County Probate No. 1 Kathy Stone (DEM)

Judge County Probate No. 2 Mike Wood

Judge County Probate No. 3 Rory Robert Olsen

Judge County Probate No. 4 Tammy Manning (DEM)

District Clerk Loren Jackson (DEM)

County Clerk Ann Harris Bennett (DEM)

County Tax Assessor collector Diane Trautman when an ill qualified REP beats the well-qualified incumbent in the primary, I’ll vote for the better qualified DEM in November

County Treasurer Orlando Sanchez

Justice of Peace Precinct 5, Place 2 Jeff Williams

City Houston Prop 1 dedicated fund drainage & streets AGAINST I would happily support most drainage/streets props but his one is poorly worded, is an inappropriate way around tax limitations previously imposed by voters, and in DMP's words "is dishonorable" to seek to tax institutions (schools and churches) which are by law non-taxable.

City Houston Prop 2 reduce residency requirements AGAINST We are awash in politicians. If we let them move around they'll "shop" for offices. I much prefer that my representatives have real ties to my community. They should live where I live, drive the streets I drive, send their kids to schools in my neighborhood for at least 18 months before they attempt to say they can represent me and my neighbors.

City Houston Prop 3 red light cameras FOR because too many drivers fail to respect our traffic laws. If one runs a red light, one deserves a ticket. If that "one" is I--my answer doesn't change. There is no constitutional issue here.

             The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all. ~
                                                                                                                John F. Kennedy

What I'm Reading...

2010-10-14T14:13:00.002-05:00

When one is a reader much time is spent in collecting, maintaining, and getting rid of books. These activities reduce the time available for actual reading but books as a tactile experience have been a source of joy to me since... well, since before I learned to read.

A number of books from my collection were borrowed and used as decoration at a baby shower for my good friend Tricia. I took the opportunity to rearrange my collections. All of my children's literature [except for the rabbit books and a few oversized books] has joined my Victorian author collection evelynwhitakerlibrary.org in the antique amoire in the living room. I've also been adding archival covers to book jackets and decorative covers which somewhat diminishes that lovely tactile experience.

We bought the Eastlake piece while DMP was in the Army stationed in Maryland. There were really super antique auctions and shops but unfortunately not a lot of money. I planned to use it in our dining room as a china cabinet but it has spent 32 years in our living room holding our special (or sometimes merely decorative) books. At the same time I bought a similarly styled dresser intending it also for the dining room to hold my collection of table linens and function as a cocktail or beverage buffet. It lives in the guest bedroom/office. I still have dining room dreams but DMP says that I might as well let go of the vision we saw in a lovely shop in the French Quarter of New Orleans. I will never have a dining room to hold that beautiful table for 18 (the dealer said there were 2 additional leaves) with its three sterling silver candelabra.
A girl can dream...

Oh well, if I spent that much time entertaining, there would be much less time for reading.

Having mined the water on our family farm, we are hoping to reap the wind.

I've read and am continuing to read much about wind energy and wind farm contracts. Windustry.org is one good place to start. As a family, we've decided to participate in a community wind farm and all of us are excited about the possibility of having an income source even after the water is gone. My brother, along with his son, has been very helpful and is doing a super job of not only acquiring information and making contacts but of being point man for our family. After much study and even more talk, we all agreed that it was a "win-wind."

Wright, N.T.: Surprised by Hope. Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, Harper-Collins, 2008. This is the book selected for Sunday Bible study in the Open Door class which I'm reading in a digital edition on Kindle. My recommendation: read it, read it, read it. Kindle location 1174 "There are, after all, different types of knowing. Science studies the repeatable; history studies the unrepeatable.... History is full of unlikely things that happened once and once only." 1209 "Sometimes human beings--individuals or communities--are confronted with something that they must reject outright or that, if they accept it, will demand the remaking of their worldview." 1235 "The most important decisions we make in life are not made by post-Enlightenment, left-brain rationality alone." 1333 "All knowing is a gift from God, historical and scientific knowing no less than that of faith, hope, and love..." 1564 "Creation was from the beginning an act of love, of affirming the goodness of the other..." 1803 "What creation needs is neither abandonment nor evolution but rather redemption and renewal; and this is both promised and guaranteed by the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. This is what the whole world is waiting for." 1831 "In our own day the problem is... flat literalism, on the one hand, facing modernist skepticism, on the other, with each feeding off the other." 1856 "Part of Christian belief is to find out what's true about Jesus and let that challenge our culture." 1896 "...if the ascension is true, then the whole project of human self-aggrandizement represented by eighteenth-century European and American thought is brought to heel." 1901 "At this point the Holy Spirit and the sacraments become enormously important since they are precisely the means by which Jesus is present." 2248 "...God's world, the world we call Heaven.... is different for ours (earth) but intersects with it in countless ways, not the least in the inner lives of Christian believers." 2397 "The ascension and appearing of Jesus constitute a radical challenge to the entire thought structure of the Enlightenment (and of course several other movements). And since our present Western politics is very much the creation of the Enlightenment, we should think seriously about the ways in which, as thinking Christians, we can and should bring that challenge to bear."

Being informed and transformed by reading N.T. Wright, I am very happy with the Christmas card which DMP and I will send this year. As usual I "preview" the readings for Advent and select Bible verses. DMP and I select a card and choose a verse. I love that our card this year will celebrate Jesus' coming to earth not only as the Babe of Bethlehem but as the Redeemer who will bring resurrection and a new heaven and a new earth. From the 96th Psalm: "Let the heavens be glad, Let the earth rejoice... Then shall the trees of the forest sing for joy before the Lord, for He is coming."

I continue to nibble at my Annie Dillard reader. Living like Weasels (1974) is as nearly perfect as reading gets. The short essay describes her encounter with a weasel and offers a meditation about choice and necessity. It concludes:

"I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure to grasp your one necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you. Then, even death, where you're going no matter how you live, cannot you part. Seize it and let it seize you aloft... lightly, thoughtless, from any height at all, from as high as eagles."

SEASONS (a group of women meeting monthly to read and discuss theology):

Rice, Anne: Christ the Lord, Out of Egypt. New York: Ballantine Books, 2005. A competent retelling of the story richly embroidered with the senses (you can taste the bread, feel the water of the mikvah, smell the smoke of the sacrifice) and the creation of a very believable family dynamic. I don't care much for this type of fiction and wouldn't have read it if not for SEASONS but I did enjoy and do recommend it. I plan to donate Out of Egypt to the church library.

Long ago, I considered writing a book on the 1st Century, including the childhood of Jesus, the hidden life of Christ. Rachel Crying for Her Children was my working title. The project was put away and forgotten--I often find I satisfy my creative impulses by researching and planning without actually having to write a book. Probably an indication that I'm better suited to be a librarian than a writer. I much enjoyed revisiting this material and was pleased to see in Rice's Author's Note and in the bibliographic materials on her website many of the sources I had researched. I will also take a look at a couple of titles which Rice recommended: the translations of Richmond Lattimore and at John A. T. Robinson: The Priority of John.
So many books, so little time...

What I'm Reading...

2010-09-25T21:58:00.001-05:00

When I start a novel, any novel but especially a good one, I want to read it all the way through from start to finish with as few interruptions as possible, which is of course not at all possible most of the time. Vacations are an exception. Earlier this month while on vacation, I indulged in a fiction binge:

Braddon, Mary Elizabeth: Lady Audley's Secret, Kindle downloaded from Project Gutenberg. Braddon (1857-1915) first published her "sensation" novel about bigamy in 1862 and it was a sensation of the popular sort, going through nine editions in the first year. I was surprised at how much fun it was to read this book--a murder mystery with a bit of romance and family dysfunction. The character of Robert Audley (the nephew/sleuth) and some of the book's tone remind me a bit of the much later comic novels of P. G. Wodehouse. A quote re. Lady Audley's relationship with her adult step-daughter: "There can be no reconciliation where there is no open warfare. There must be a battle, a brave boisterous battle, with pennants waving and cannon roaring, before there can be peaceful treaties and enthusiastic shaking of hands." Another favorite: "Sir Michael Audley made that mistake which is very commonly made by easy-going, well-to-do-observers, who have no occasion to look below the surface. He mistook laziness for incapacity. The thought because his nephew was idle, he must necessarily be stupid. He concluded that if Robert did not distinguish himself, it was because he could not.

"He forgot the mute inglorious Miltons, who die voiceless and inarticulate for want of that dogged perseverance, that blind courage, which the poet must possess before he can find a publisher; he forgot the Cromwells, who see the noble vessels of the state floundering upon a sea of confusion ... and who yet are powerless to get at the helm... Surely it is a mistake to judge of what a man can do by that which he has done.... The game of life is something like the game of ecarte, and it may be that the very best cards are sometimes left in the pack."

Yonge, Charlotte M.: The Heir of Redclyffe, Kindle downloaded from Project Gutenberg, first published in 1853 and the best selling of Yonge's novels, "the most popular novel of the age." Yonge (1823-1901) used profits from her books for charity. Her father told her upon the success of The Heir of Redclyffe "that a lady published for three reasons only: love of praise, love of money, or the wish to do good." She is sometimes called the novelist of the Oxford Movement and was a life-long Anglican Sunday Schools teacher. I read this book long ago, probably in imitation of Jo March in Alcott's Little Women. I enjoyed reading it again. Yonge is a bit "preachy" even for my taste (despite my complete sympathy with her religious views and, as readers of this blog have undoubtedly noted, my predilection for all things theological) but dear Charlotte does go on and on and on and... Perhaps that's one more thing I have in common with her.

I've started Wright, N.T.: Surprised by Hope. Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, Harper-Collins, 2008. This is the book selected for Sunday Bible study in the Open Door class which I'm reading in a digital edition on Kindle and I'm hopelessly behind the class in my reading. I'm greatly enjoying the DVD discussion by N.T. Wright and the discussion questions. A few years ago I read this author's The Last Word: Scripture and the Authority of God--Getting Beyond the Bible Wars (2006) and would put it on my short lists of books that made a significant difference in my world view because it finally made clear to me the questions asked by post-modernist thinkers. p. iv "Almost all Christian churches say something in the formularies about how important the Bible is. Almost all of them have devised ways, some subtle, some less so, of ostentatiously highlighting some parts of the Bible and quietly setting aside other parts." p. xi "How can what is mostly a narrative text be "authoritative"? [How can we] "speak of the Bible being in some sense "authoritative" when the Bible itself declares that all authority belongs to the one true God, and that this is now embodied in Jesus himself." p. 14 "My present point is that these older ways of thinking about the world have left their mark on the study of the Bible, on the way it has been taught... and that these ways of thinking have themselves become discredited in the mainstream culture." p. 16 "integrity consists not of having no presuppositions but of being aware of what one's presuppositions are and of the obligation to listen to and interact with those who have different ones." My copy of this book is very heavily highlighted and I recommend it with enthusiasm. I'm hoping that I will be able to enjoy reading N.T. Wright as much on the Kindle with bookmark/highlight tabs as I did in print with my yellow highlighter in hand.

I continue reading Annie Dillard (previously blogged) and greatly enjoyed revisiting Total Eclipse and An Expedition to the Pole from Teaching a Stone to Talk. I found her short story The Living a bit odd and disturbing, as Dillard can be. I'm reading a collection of her works on my Kindle. Dillard is one of the finest nature writers I've encountered and I greatly enjoy her writing style and her powers of observation. She makes unexpectedly connections and helps me see how intricately all of life is interwoven. Interwoven--what a great name for the book I'll never write.

And as previously blogged I'm reading through everything by Carlyn G. Heilbrun who will undoubtedly merit a blog dedicated solely to her one day. I recently finished The Last Gift of Time. Life Beyond Sixty. This author gives voice to my thoughts and I know no other author (who did not live in the 19th Century) who mirrors by interior life and thoughts so well. p.2 "...aging might be gain rather than loss, and... the impersonation of youth was unlikely to provide the second span of womanhood with meaning and purpose." p.4 "Perhaps I am one of those who are born... blessed with the gift of eternal old age." p. 35 "As Sartre said, not to choose is to have already chosen. The major danger in one's sixties--so I came to feel--is to be trapped in one's body and one's habits, not to recognize those supposedly sedate years as the time to discover new choices and to act upon them." p. 120 "What one remembers is, I think, a clue to what one wants to be." p. 137 "To find unmet friends, one must be a reader, and not an infrequent one.... Reading--like those more frivolous lifelong pursuits, singing in tune, or diving, or roller-blading--is either an early acquired passion or not: there is no in-between about it, no catching up in one's later years." and p. 182 "Life seemed simpler because I was young and simple." p. 150 quoting Samuel Johnson: "the enduring elegance of female friendship." ...perfectly describes the relationship of a woman reader with a woman writer whose work she has encompassed, reread, and delighted in." Thank you to my "unmet friends for that "enduring elegance: Jane Austen, Evelyn Whitaker, Elizabeth Barret Browning, Grace Livingstone Hill, Beatrix Potter, Christina Rossetti, Annie Dillard and, yes, Elaine Showalter and Carolyn G. Heilbrun.

I finished the second of the poetry books DMP gave me for Christmas last year. Gluck, Louise: Averno. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006. She is an excellent poet and I'll probably keep this book on the shelf and may reread it in a year or two but it was much to dependent on the Persephone myth to be quite my cup of tea. full text available at the floating library

I'll close this month's reading list with another quote from Carolyn G. Heilbrun (p. 182):
"True sadness which is not nostalgia can, I have found, be dispelled by reading: by that same literature which seemed, in my youth, to hold both excitement, wisdom, and all I could discover of truth; and by today's newly perceptive books. Lifelong readers continue to read, finding in books... the means to enjoy life or to endure it."

Celebrating our 39th Anniversary

2010-09-04T19:40:00.000-05:00

September is a month of firsts for us. In those days, school started weeks later than it now does. I first arrived at Rice U. in Houston on 10 September 1967 and first met DMP at the college class party of Central Church of Christ on Saturday 16 September. We had our first date two weeks later, a football game--Rice vs. Navy. Rice won. We enjoyed many, many dates over the next four years--football games, basketball games, bridge, movies, dinners, Baskin-Robbins, the zoo, MFA, college open houses, Brown Jones formals, Roundelets, Rice Players, Galveston, Westbury Square, long walks around campus--and we spent lots of time with each other that weren't dates while he tutored me in math and physics, while we worked in college theater productions, while we spent time with friends on campus, while we worshiped at Central and worked with the children at the Drew Street Mission. Most, if not all, of our friends considered us an "item" almost from that first September. A few weeks ago my friend, Jo S., asked when David and; I started going with each other exclusively. She was shocked when I told her, on 17 June 1971, the day he asked me to marry him.

DMP left almost immediately for Army ROTC summer camp. I got a job and planned a wedding; I was not one of those girls who had spent her entire life planning a wedding, until I met DMP I was not even sure that I intended ever to be married. We chose the Saturday of Labor Day weekend because it was convenient for me to get at least one day off work, he would have a long weekend from grad school, and our siblings who were all in school would be able to come. The wedding would have to be in Houston and, indeed, we wanted it there so that our Rice friends could conveniently be with us. Our decision was reflective of several things that have defined our lives: (1) Houston is our home, (2) Central is our church, (3) our friends are as dear to us as our family, (4) Rice is important to us.

It was a simple, inexpensive celebration. My mother made my gown and my sister's gown. David's mother made his sisters' gowns. Andrea made her gown. The flowers were real. [If real flowers are too costly, use fewer or skip something else. There should be nothing fake at a wedding.] I carried red roses on the white Bible my mother had carried on her wedding day, marked to Ruth's "whither thou goest" passage as it had been at her wedding. My attendants each carried a single long-stemmed red rose. The men in the wedding party wore white carnations. Our mothers wore orchids. The church had two large white seasonal arrangements, mostly gladiolas. A friend selected music (mostly Bach) and played solo piano prior to the ceremony. We processed to Tchaikovsky's piano Concerto in B-flat and recessed to Beethoven's Ode to Joy. There was no photographer since we both felt that was a distraction and an unnecessary expense. (We were wrong.) One of DMP's roomies and our head usher took photos. Several of my aunts and cousins snapped a few pics; some of which I didn't see until decades later. Since no one in DMP's family took any photos there are very few pics of him.

I was not in any sense a "bridezilla" because it never occurred to me that it was "my" day. David and I both thought, and still think, that a wedding is about family and community and it marks only the beginning of a marriage and not the most important day of our lives.

What was important to us was what would be said, what words would constitute the covenant. The ceremony was short and uniquely ours. I walked down the aisle promptly at 4:30 p.m. because we are rarely late and it seemed good to us to start our life together in a timely fashion.

Our ceremony with a few more pics:

Reading: Genesis 2:18, 21-24

Then the Lord God said, “It is not good for man to be alone. I will provide a helpmeet for him.” …And so the Lord God put man into a trance, and while he slept, the Lord God took one of his ribs and closed the flesh over the place. Then He then built up the rib, which He had taken out of the man, into a woman. He brought her to the man, and the man said:

Now this, at last—

bone from my bone,

flesh from my flesh!—

She shall be called woman,

for from man was she taken.”

That is why a man leaves his father and mother is united to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.

Reading: Ephesians 5:21-33

Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ.

Wives, be subject to your husband as to the Lord; for the man is the head of the woman, just as Christ also is the head of the church. Christ is, indeed, the Savior of the body; but just as the church is subject to Christ, so must women be to their husbands in everything.

Daddy & me

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ also loved the church and gave himself up for it, to consecrate it, cleansing it by water and the word, so that he might present the church to himself all glorious, with no stain or wrinkle or anything of the sort, but holy and without blemish. In the same way men also are bound to love their wives, as they love their own bodies. In loving his wife a man loves himself. For no one ever hated his own body; on the contrary, he provides and cares for it; and that is how Christ treats the church, because it is his body, of which we are living parts. Thus it is that (in the words of Scripture) ‘a man shall leave his father and mother and shall be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ It is a great truth that is hidden here. I for my part refer it to Christ and to the church, but it applies individually: each of you must love his wife as his very self; and the woman must see to it that she pays her husband all respect.

David, will you take K to be your wife to love, to honor, and to cherish from this day forward?

K, will you take David to be your husband to love, to honor, and to obey from this day forward?

(David and I agreed that our experience said that we usually agreed but, when we did not, neither of us resigned our position gracefully. After much discussion we decided to go with the old-fashioned "obey" understanding that it was predicated on the Genesis and Ephesians readings. That decision was tested pre-marriage when we opened our combined bank account and debated the name. I wished to keep my own name; he felt strongly that I should take his name. I finally agreed "for the sake of our children." Ironic. Although I am sometimes addressed as Mrs. David Pipes, I never think of myself in those terms. I am, as I have always been K Cummings and I add Pipes only as a courtesy to my husband. But truly, the marriage ran more smoothly than the courtship.)

Reading: I Corinthians 13

The vows which we wrote:

David [turned pale and silent for a loooong time before he remembered what to say. The minister had no copy of the vows so I would have had to prompt him. A bit unwise, that]: Because I love you and believe in you, K, I want you to share my life. I will protect and care for you as your husband in times of joy and of sorrow. I will put love first, being patient and kind, never selfish nor quick to take offense. I will keep no score of wrongs, nor gloat over mistakes, but will delight in the truth. Through the Spirit of the Lord, there is no limit to my trust in you, to my hope for you, and to our love’s endurance.

K: David, because I love you and believe in you, I will live with you as your wife, sharing with you all things. I will be a comfort to you and will endeavor to make our home a house of peace in both joy and sorrow. I will put love first, being patient and kind, never selfish nor quick to take offense. I will keep no score of wrongs, nor gloat over mistakes, but will delight in the truth. Through the Spirit of the Lord, there is no limit to my trust in you, to my hope for you, and to our love’s endurance.

David: K, take and wear this ring as a symbol of our union.

K: David, take and wear this ring as a symbol of our union.

Terry K. pronounced us husband and wife in the name of Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. (The state of Texas had to be content with the marriage certificate and was not mentioned.) No one gave anyone permission to kiss anyone. David lifted the veil and graced me with the most chaste kiss ever seen at a wedding.

Terry offered a very few words of joy and admonition and a prayer of blessing concluding with these words:

The Lord bless you and keep you:

The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you.

The Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace.

May the Lord implant his Spirit within you and grant you length of days, vigor of body, deep and abiding mutual understanding, companionship, and love, increasing with the passage of years and in the fullness of peace.

It was a prayer to which we said "amen" and which we have found truly answered in our life together.

And they lived, not unhappily, ever after...

or at least for the next 39 years, to date.

Always. Sometimes. Never.

2010-08-26T07:11:00.000-05:00

Taking my cue from Chelsie, I made a list:

I Always...

1) read three or more books at time and finish every book I start--eventually.
2) begin the day with at least 2 large cups of coffee. Black & strong.
3) say yes to ice cream.
4) fasten my seat belt before ignition.
5) have an opinion, even if I'm not very interested in the subject.

I Sometimes...

1) wish I were more adventurous (or at least less sensible and cautious) and knew how to have wild, crazy fun. But then I'd probably have less time to read.
2) put an Earl Greyer teabag in my cup, pour in the hot java, and enjoy bergamot coffee.
3) talk too much and too loudly.
4) imagine entire worlds of people (living, dead, literary, completely made up in my own mind) and have long discussions with them.
5) change my mind.

I Never...

1) paint my nails.
2) wear a watch--since they won't run if they touch me anyway--and I believe that time is a purely theoretical concept, is finitely elastic (like a rubber band, it stretches and stretches until it breaks), and is too precious to waste.
3) really enjoy travel, although I like to think about it and plan for it and pretend that I'm going to do it someday.
4) tire of Impressionist art or say no to any museum.
5) finish my "to do" list.

What I'm reading...

2010-08-17T13:16:00.001-05:00

In a recent post, I said that I don't read mysteries but anyone looking over my reading list would see that I do. Previous posts have included books by

I read mysteries if they have been recommended by someone who knows what I like to read (usually DMP) and I'll read a second by an author who appeals to my sense of humor or offers me a view into history or who feeds me literary tidbits. Since DMP must go to Murder by the Book, now celebrating their 30th anniversary, at least twice a month, I come across such books rather frequently. I've indulged in a fiction binge of several mysteries:

Maron, Margaret: Rituals of the Season. New York: Warner, 2005. This is one of the later books in the series which began with The Bootlegger's Daughter and DMP thought I'd enjoy the chapter heading quotations from Florence Hartley's The Ladies Book of Etiquette, 1873, which may be read on-line at the Open Library. Two quotes: "Many believe that politeness is but a mask worn in the world to conceal bad passions and impulses, and to make a show of possessing virtues not really existing in the heart; thus, that politeness is merely hypocrisy and dissimulation. Do not believe this; be certain that those who profess such a doctrine are themselves practising the deceit they condemn so much... True politeness is the language of a good heart." "Among well-bred persons, every conversation is considered in a measure confidential...." DMP's timing was great since I'd just read a Hartley quote in the Ph.D. thesis of Sonya Sawyer Fritz. A bit of Maron's humor from p. 36: "So what is the difference between a spinster and a old maid?" "Well, as Doris would've said if Herman hadn't stopped her, a spinster ain't never been married. But an old maid ain't never been married ner nothing." DMP was correct; I did enjoy Maron's mystery and may have the chance to read her again (I'll certainly scan her chapter headings) since he acquired most of the out-of-print earlier books by asking me to find them for him. I used abebooks.com, one of my favorite sources, and was able to order from two vendors that I have used frequently: owl books and seashellbooks.com.

I'm planning to read and re-read the non-fiction books by one of my favorite authors, Carolyn G. Heilbrun, and thought that I'd start with three of the Kate Fansler mysteries which were first published under the pseudonym of Amanda Cross:

In the Last Analysis. New York: Fawcett Books, 1964. "I didn't say I objected to Freud... I said I objected to what Joyce called freudful errors--all those nonsensical conclusions leaped to by people with no reticence and less mind." p. 1 "She had learned as a college teacher that if one simplified what one wished to say, one falsified it. It was possible only to say what one meant, as clearly as possible." p. 8 "...there's only one test for discovering what you really want: it consists in what you have." p. 159 "He probably thought I was writing a novel and he answered my question in the most long-winded and technical way possible. But then doctors are always indulging either in incoherence or oversimplification--if you want my opinion, I don't think they even understand each other." p. 209
Poetic Justice. New York: Fawcett Books, 1970. Filled with delicious W.H. Auden quotations and an excellent depiction of university life during my undergraduate years and some feminist issues. "unready to die... but already at the stage when one starts to dislike the young." p. 3 "I have nothing against young people--apart from the fact that they are arrogant, spoiled, discourteous, incapable of compromise, and unaware of the cost of everything they want to destroy.... I prefer those whom life has had time to season." p. 41 Kate to Reed: "You... are my greatest accomplishment. I have achieved the apotheosis of womanhood. To have earned a Ph.D., taught reasonably well, written books, traveled, been a friend and a lover--these are mere evasions of my appointed role in life: to lead a man to the altar. You are my sacrifice to the goddess of middle-class morality..." p. 107 "It may serve, in these frantic days of relevance, to remind you of the importance of the useless." p. 110 "When formality went from life, meaning went too. People always yowl about form without meaning, but what turns out to be impossible is meaning without form. Which is why I'm a teacher of literature and keep ranting on about structure." p. 133 "...'the only earthly joys are those we are free to choose--like solitude, your college, certain marriages.' 'And what about unearthly joys?' 'Ah, those, if we are fortunate, choose us. Like grace. Like talent.'" p. 135
The Theban Mysteries. New York: Avon Books, 1971. Antigone, dodging the draft, and an up-scale New York girls' school. "No one pretends anything any more, which I suppose is a good thing, although I can't help sometimes feeling that the constant expression of emotion in itself becomes the cause of the emotion which is expressed." p. 12 "What is troubling... is that he is rude, unwashed, inconsiderate, filled to the brim with slogans, and outrageously simplistic. Alas, he also right." p. 25 "Nothing ages more quickly than the absolutely up-to-date.... the latest in everything, age[s] like a woman who has had her face lifted: there is not even character to set off the ravages of time." p. 27 "There is nothing so uncomfortable as seeing both sides of the question." p. 89 "For myself, I've discovered that when I ask myself what I should do I always tumble into confusion. The only clear question is to ask oneself what one wants to do.... It sounds like [self-indulgence] certainly, but oddly enough, it isn't. The 'should' people are really indulging themselves by never finding out what they want. It has taken me many years to learn that discovering what one wants if the true beginning of a spiritual journey." p. 125

The Auden quotes in Poetic Justice are probably what inspired me to grab my well-worn Pocket Book of Modern Verse, edited by Oscar Williams, for bedside reading, all 628 pages. I have a few favorites but, by and large, I am out of sympathy with Moderns: "Terrence, this is stupid stuff..." A.E. Houseman. Found a smile and an apt description of the Parliament (Rice's NCAA Bulletin Board): "...owls raving--Solemnities not easy to withstand... The owls trilled with tongues of nightingale. These were all lies, though they matched the time..." Robert Graves. My final reading for this paperback with it's yellowed, brittle pages--some falling out--and it's broken spine. I kept it far longer than necessary for sentimental reasons: Larry McMurtry taught my section of English 100 at Rice and this little book is where I met and got to know: Auden, Thomas Hardy as a poet rather than a novelist, Houseman, Dylan Thomas, William Butler Yeats, and Gerard Manley Hopkins. I'm considering a replacement.

I'm finally returning Peterson, Eugene H.: A Long Obedience in the Same Direction. Discipleship in an Instant Society. 2nd edition. Downers Grover IL: Intervarsity Press, 2000, to my Psalms study shelf. This a very rich book offering commentary on the Psalms of Ascent, Psalms 120-134. Many quotes from this book will one day be added to my Psalms notes but this one is worthy of mention here: "Those who parade the rhetoric of liberation but scorn the wisdom of service do not lead people into the glorious liberty of the children of God but into a cramped and covetous squalor."

SEASONS:

David Eagleman: Sum: Forty tales from the Afterlives. New York: Vintage Books, 2009. The author majored in British and American literature at Rice before earning a Ph.D. in neuroscience. A funny, thoughtful delight which is less about Afterlives than about our perceptions of life. A couple of quotations: "She was always leery of apostates, those who rejected the particulars of their religion in search of something that seemed more truthful. She disliked them because they seemed the most likely to float a correct guess." "...your memory has spent a lifetime manufacturing small myths to keep your life story consistent with who you thought you were. You have committed to a coherent narrative, misremembering little details and decisions and sequences of events.... you are battered and bruised in the collisions between reminiscence and reality."

So many books; so little time.

Decoupage - snips of my day

2010-07-28T12:34:00.002-05:00

I live in the heart of a sprawling city where "all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil; And bears man's smudge and shares man's smell..." and yet sometimes I am surprised by great natural beauty. The wild turning of a bayou, a kingfisher perched on a wire, flights of birds or butterflies that swirl like schools of fish in the sea, swooping martins, flowers, flowers everywhere. "...nature is never spent; There lives the dearest freshness deep-down things..." These two ideas play tug-of-war in my thoughts. {The quotes are from my favorite poet Gerard Manley Hopkins whose words are as deeply etched in my heart and as voiced in my prayers as any scripture.}

Yesterday I went to the zoo with my sister-in-law, my neice and her young daughters. When one goes to the zoo one expects to see animals, animals in cages--no matter how lovely the habitat of the cage may be. My favorite animal was wild and uncaged--a young cotton-tail rabbit sitting behind a palm tree nibbling a tidbit from the plantings. A "dearest freshness deep-down thing" reminds me that this city is an overlay on an ancient landscape.

After I got back home I rested by catching up on blog reading. CFS in her blog Link to this blog wrote, "The other day I was driving home from work, on 290, going posted speeds with the rest of the Houston population, and do you want to know what I saw: a duck and her four baby ducks. That is right, there was a duck trying to cross 290 with her 4 babies!!! It was a disturbing picture for me. How on earth did that duck and her four babies get up on 290?" I identify with the duck and wonder how such a fast-moving, dangerous thing as U.S. Highway 290 came to be on the peaceful Katy prairie, ancient home to migrating water birds.   "...all is seared with trade" and the prairie is being devoured by that sprawling city that is my home.

I think of my friend DTA and her pressing concern for the over-population of the earth. I remember petri dishes filled with nutrients and seeded with bacterial cultures. How very much pictures of the earth from space--the spreading lights, the destruction of forest, the growing deserts, the Texas-sized gyre of litter in the Pacific, urban sprawl creeping across the big blue marble, "all... bears man's smudge and shares man's smell"--resemble those petri dishes with the bacterial colonies eating thier substrate until all is gone and there is nothing left but death.

Another friend, VFS, blogs   Link to this blog about the Polyphemus moth in Annie Dillard's An American Childhood. I don't need this reminder of a disturbing story that has long lived in my memory.  I remember my mother asking me to take a look at the "worms" that were eating one of her prize plants and finding a butterfly chrysalis and watching the process of a butterfly unfurl and take its first flight, a "dearest freshness deep-down thing."  I am in sore need of such comfort.

I love Annie Dillard who voices my tug-of-war and grows my spirit. It's time to read her books again and I'm pleased to find that I can now add her books to my Kindle:  Pilgrim at Tinker Creek American Childhood  The Writing Life For the Time Being  Holy the Firm Teaching a Stone to Talk An Annie Dillard Reader The Maytrees The Living

My blogging friends both work with issues of childhood, although in very different fields. Their blogs resonate with each other, echo through my thoughts, disturb my rest.   How many children did I see at the zoo today who are Dillard's Polyphemus moth? How many mothers and children are caught in a world that has changed and is moving much too fast? How many of us are caged in spaces too small to spread our wings and fly? We and all creation bear the curse of a by-gone Eden, "bleared, smeared with toil..."

I find it's easy to weep.
It's harder to hope.
I share the depression that often crippled the poet.
Yet, Hopkins concluded his poem:
"Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs--
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings."

Link: to Hopkins poem on the Victorian Web.

It's a mystery

2010-07-17T16:23:00.000-05:00

When I was in the 4th Grade at South Plains School, J.B. Williams, became the principal and every two weeks (or maybe only once a month) he went by the public library in Floydada to check out a collection of books for his "country school" students. I think the librarian selected them for him. The books filled the large back seat of his car and the older boys carried then into the classrooms, sorted by grade levels. My classroom had books for girls (Nancy Drew and stories about nurses) and books for boys (Hardy Boys and sports stories) and dog and horse books. I usually managed to read all the girls' books, all the dog and horse books, and several of the boys' books before Mr. Williams brought the next bunch of books.

The Nancy Drew books were the most coveted; all the girls wanted to read Nancy Drew. I sometimes spent recesses and lunch hours telling the slower readers the stories so that they would give their books to me, which probably undercut the purpose of Mr. Williams hauling all those books around. I read the first 37 books of the series, mostly in the editions illustrated by Bill Gillies: Link to see Nancy Drew dust jackets The Nancy Drew mysteries are "formula" ficition. Carolyn Keene was a name owned by the publisher and the books were actually written by several people. The first books (perhaps the first 23 in the series) were written by Margaret Wirt Benson for $125 each. Benson wrote other books, many of which I read. Link: Mildred Wirt Benson

After I finished whichever Nancy Drew books were in the stack, I read all the dog stories by Albert Payson Terhune, the first author's name I learned because someone else wrote dog stories that I didn't like at all. I remember looking carefully at two of the books and discovered that the author made a difference. I also remember showing the books to Mr. Williams and telling him which ones to bring next time. I was a bossy little girl. Some would say I never outgrew it.

I also loved the books by Mary O'Hara; My Friend Flicka is the most well known probably due to the TV series. I liked the one about the white stallion Thunderhead and in fact searched that book out for my collection. Green Grass of Wyoming and Wyoming Summer are other titles.

The nurse books were the Cherry Ames mysteries by Helen Wells and the Sue Barton series by Helen Dore Boylston. When I declared my intention to be a nurse, my parents said I should become a doctor instead because I liked to be in charge. See, I really was a bossy little girl.

As I grew I read and read... Mysteries were a big part of what I read: Victoria Holt (one of the pen names of Eleanor Hibbert) and Mary Stewart and the canon of classic mystery writers: Eric Ambler, John Buchan, Raymond Chandler, Agatha Christie, Graham Greene, Dashiell Hammett, Helen MacInnes, Dorothy Sayers, Rex Stout, Josephine Tey, and Erle Stanley Gardner who wrote the Perry Mason series that my Gran Cummings loved and DMP continually rereads.

I know a lot of people who read mysteries--who in fact still read the mysteries I read. My husband, and at least 2 of my sisters-in-law and my mother-in-law... One of sisters-in-law in fact writes mysteries. Link to Dee's website. Houston has a whole bookstore devoted to mysteries which I visit with DMP two or three times each and every month. {Sigh!}

I, however, don't read mysteries. Somewhere between ages of 25 and 30 years, I pretty much quit. I stopped reading mysteries and formula romances around the same time. It was not a conscious decision as much as my having tired of the formulaic genres. Around that time I wrote a romance novel which was never published and in retorspect I'm very glad it wasn't.

I read a lot of Victorian authors, I read some literary fiction, I read some theology but I don't read mysteries.

What I'm Reading...

2010-07-08T09:14:00.000-05:00

This month has been yet another slow reading month. There have been busy distractions but I think a need for new glasses may be the root of the problem.

DMP and I have also been making full use of our NetFlix Subscription which means 2 movies of week, which means 2 fewer evenings for reading. Movies: Paint Your Wagon, Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, The High and the Mighty, High Noon, The Sun Also Rises, Rio Bravo, The Philadelphia Story, Master & Commander.

I have done a couple of "quick and dirty" medical literature reviews:

macular degeneration for a private client
Vitamin D
is there an assoication between urinary tract problems/sugery and myasthenia gravis?

I've skimmed, clipped, filed, and recycled a 2 1/2 foot stack of periodicals.

I've begun transcribing my recipes.

I've been entering books into the church library catalog.

A couple of ideas have grabbed my attention in my lectionary reading and I'm starting to explore these biblical ideas, mostly in Hebrew Scripture:

staff, the meaning of Aaron's staff in Numbers and it's implications in other passages
robe, Elijah/Elisha is the source of my current curiosity but it is a recurrent motif

What I'm reading (I include picture links to Amazon where you can browse the book):

Brueggemann, Walter: The Prophetic Imagination. 2nd edition. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001. There is hardly a page on which I didn't highlight something. An extraordinary book! "The riddle and insight of biblical faith is the awareness that only anguish leads to life, only grieving leads to joy, and only embraced endings permit new beginnings." p. 56 There is commentary on Psalm 137 p. 62. "Speech about hope cannt be explanatory and scientifically argumentative; rather it must be lyrical..." p. 65 "I believe that, rightly embraced, no more subversive or phrophetic idiom can be uttered than the practice of doxology, which sets before us the reality of God, of God right at the center of a scene from which we presumed he had fled." p. 66 "...exile is first of all where our speech has been silenced and God's speech has been banished." p. 69 "Compassion constitutes a radical form of criticism." p. 88 "That tradition of radical criticism is about the self-giving emptiness of Jesus... The emptying is not related to self-negating meditation, for it is a thoroughly political image concerned with the willing surrender of power..." p. 98 "Without the cross, prophetic imagination will likely be as strident and as destructive as that which it criticizes.... Prophetic criticism aims to creat an alternative consciousness with its own rhetoric and field of perception.... This kind of prophetic criticism does not lightly offer alternatives, does not mouth reassurances, and does not provide redemptive social policy. It knows that only those who mourn can be comforted, and so it first asks about how to mourn seriously and faithfully..." p. 99 "...all functions of the church can and should be prophetic voices that serve to criticize the dominant culture while energizing the faithful.... Thus, the essential question for the church is whether or not its prophetic voice has been co-opted into the culture of the day." p. 125

Peterson, Eugene H.: A Long Obedience in the Same Direction. Discipleship in an Instant Society. 2nd edition. Downers Grover IL: Intervarsity Press, 2000. I'm fairly certain I at least scanned the first edition, 1980. A devotional reading of the Psalms of Ascent, Psalms 120-134.

Fiction:
Schweizer, Mark: The Organist Wore Pumps, a liturgical mystery. SJMP Books, 2010. Funny! "It's tradition... when society started, women were not thought of as 'literary'... That's true. Well, if you don't count Emily Dickinson, Christina Rosetti, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Dorothy Parker, or the Bronte sisters." See previous posts for more detailed descriptions of these books (Organist is the 8th in the series) which DMP and I both find hilarious. I include the Amazon links for those who may want to browse but we buy our mysteries at Murder by the Book in Houston. link: Murder by the Book
This is a real bookstore with staff who knows their books and get to know their readers. I love the $1 shelf at the back where I find treasure. Unlike DMP, I don't read mysteries, except for the couple of authors who make me laugh.

Poetry:
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett: Sonnets from the Portuguese and other love poems. Illustrated by Adolf Hallman. Garden City, NY: Hanover House, 1954. My friend, Konny, gave me this book and I've greatly enjoyed reading these poems. The illustrations are particularly lovely in this gift book edition. Adolf Hallman, 1893-1968, is a Swedish illustrator; his drawings for this book have the sparse look and muted colors of much Scandinavian art. I usually look for vintage books like this one at estate sales and used book stores. When I must have it now I use IOBA or biblio.com or abebooks.com or alibris.com or, yes, Amazon. When a book is in the public domain (as most books first published prior to 1923 are), it's a good time to read it digitally and this is my favorite starting point: onlinebooks at U Penn and read EBB now at the poetry foundation. "We walked beside the sea, After a day which perished silently, Of its own glory..." "I thank all who have loved me in their hearts, With thanks and love from mine. Deep thanks to all... Love that endures, from Life that disappears."

While I'm reading...

2010-07-03T16:23:00.003-05:00

Based in part on my recent blog poll, I'm playing with this post while adding a few "monetize" things. I'm not sure I'm keeping them but the Amazon links may prove useful to readers who want to preview or browse some of the books I recommend. In the interests of full disclosure, I will of course be paid for referrals although I doubt that it's going to amount to much. I will undoubtedly donate and monies to a literacy charity or a library. I'll be sure to update all my readers. The Amazon Associates process is easy. There is a good selection of widgets.  Amazon Associates puts a right side bar beside my text editor which makes it easy to select links and images. All the links in this article are to Amazon.

While I'm reading, I often sip a cup of coffee. I drink a lot of coffee, 4-6 cups every day.  Coffee, java, a cup of Joe... should be very hot, and strong, and generally black... although a half scoop of Bluebell Homemade Vanilla in the cup is delish. I'm enjoying my Keurig coffeemaker although my favorite K-Cup is the one I make with my Gevalia coffees, especially Kona and La Procope. My favorite pre-prepped K-cups are:   Timothy's Nicaraguan Fair Trade Extra Bold and Green Mountain's Kona blend. I'm not usually much on flavored coffees but I just adore
Green Mountain's Wild Moutain Blueberry.
While I'm reading, I often grab an apple and call it lunch.

While I'm reading, I often listen to music... instrumental only, lyrics are words and distract... not too loud. I like lots of the New Age stuff ( Yanni is a particular favorite) as well as Classical and sometimes Jazz.  The links in this article are so far are text links to Amazon but I could also do image links like this.   Which may be a bit in your face.

While I'm reading, I often have a hand buried in Mandy's lush fur.

Do you find the scroll slideshow of books distracting?
I'm not sure the blue background works.
Is a monetized blog offensive?

"Where'd ya get those eyes?"

2010-06-22T15:22:00.004-05:00

The title for this post is from a 1938 song written by Harry Warren with lyrics by Johnny Mercer, orignally sung by Louis Armstrong in the movie Going Places. Mother used to sing this song. "Jeepers, Creepers, where'd ya get those peepers. Jeepers, Creepers, where'd ya get those eyes?" Listen to this excellent rendition on youtube. I found myself singing the jazz standard today after I logged onto FaceBook and discovered that friend DW had Photoshopped one of my favorite pics despite the fact that DMP blinked:

DW had used the quick selection tool to get those "peepers" and bit of the "cheaters" from another pose, copied it, pasted it onto this photo, moved it into position, deslected. He said it took 2 minutes. Golly, Gee!

So I just had to try it for myself. One of the things I love about shooting digital rather than film is that there is no cost associated with a shot. When I shoot a group, I take several 3-5 as quickly as I can shoot, hoping to catch a good one. That usually works but sometimes the best pose of each person in the group is in a different shot. This is a group shot of my cousin's family. It was the best shot I got of the guys but E's eyes are closed. M looks good but several folks preferred a shot where she was laughing.

Below is a demo. I first retouched with the spot healer tool to remove a blemish or two. Then I used the quick selection tool to open E's eyes just like DW had opened DMP's eyes. It took me several attempts to master the quick selection tool. Then I deselected. I could have stopped there but I thought it might be interesting to try a head replacement. I found another shot where I selected the happier face for M. and used copy and paste to move it and deslected. This demo shows the selections before they were moved into position. It also helps if there is some clear edge marker to help position. That little bit of white from M's collar was a big help. The nose bridge of the glasses also helped. (Remember I actually did this as a two-step process.)

The photos need to be the same size, the same pose. A sequence of tripod shots, taken quickly before people had time to move their heads around, would be ideal. It's worth a try in any group that is not quite perfect if you remembered to snap several shots.

And I think you could use this application for insets and other "arty" things if you enjoy playing around. I love it when I learn something new. Thanks, DW

I use Adobe Photoshop Elements 8.

Blog Poll.... I don't usually ask for opinions but...

2010-06-07T10:23:00.000-05:00

Sometime ago I removed the followers list from my blog because it is rather public and searchable and a number of my followers appeared to me to be blogging private matters that they might not wish to have so broadly shared. I just did it; I didn't ask. For similar reasons, I seldom mention names in my blog. I use initials so that mutal friends and family usually know of whom I'm writing but the more public readers will be left guessing. I'm assuming everyone knows that DMP is my husband, David, since that information is rather public but DMP doesn't preview and approve my blogs and he's not on facebook, so I offer the same courtesy to him that I do to others. Frankly, I enjoy playing at the old literary tradition of Lord A... and Lady L... of ....shire.
I don't usually ask for opinons. I'm quite decisive and I've found that if I ask for an opinion and then do something else then those I asked may be disappointed or even offended. It only gives people an excuse to offer comments that I don't care to hear. But I do have a dilemma regarding my blog and would appreciate some input from its readers, even those who are anonymous to me.

I am posting a poll on the left sidebar but before you vote let me share a few thoughts:

Because of the book reviews in my blog, I'm under a bit of pressure--I'm receiving personal emails from the book vendors I often use for out-of-print materials in addition to the usual stuff from Amazon, AdSense, and Google--to "monetize" my blog. I've bought from some of these vendors so often and for such a long time that some of them feel like friends so it's hard to ignore their pleas. I rather think that the referral fees that I'd receive are too small to be anything except a bother at tax time and using my blog as a way to make money is of no interest to me.
Because I think of my blog primarily as a part of my academic pursuits, I have rejected overtures to monetize thinking that they might create the appearance of a conflict of interest. It has been my policy to provide links in my blog text to free and public sources whenever possible. My intention is to maintain that policy.
I also have a "Miss Mannersish" concern that seeming to solicit sales from my friends is just tacky.
But I can also make a case that a link to a vendor where I decide what appears on the link might be a convenience rather than an imposition for my readers. The Amazon carousel, filled with only those items that I have read and personally recommend, might be helpful since it's often possible to sample a book before buying. I really enjoy having a bookstore at my fingertips.
A few of my favorite websites and blogs provide portals which I "click through" and I have felt grateful rather than offended. Since I have not thought it tacky in others perhaps I'm being a bit "missyish" or "snobbish" in regard to my own behavior--a flaw which has been mentioned to me more than once.

So let me know what you think by taking the poll or offering comment if you prefer. Thank you and please don't take offense when I make the decision. As I have told several of my blogger friends: "It's your blog; do with it what you will."

Memorial Day: Patriotic Poetry

2010-05-31T13:52:00.003-05:00

One of my favorite things is my church's fifth-Sunday sing-song at evening worship. Last night we sang several patriotic songs at the request of DAR member and super-patriot Jenny F. I remember singing some of these songs at church and school as a child. Do children still learn patriotic songs in school? I hope so for they are a part of our history and our heritage. The songs we sing together affirm and create community.

At least two of these patriotic songs were written by women. Since I am always interested in the ways in which women made their voices heard at a time when they were denied equal access to public discourse, today's blog comments on these women and their patriotic songs and concludes with a poem I wrote.

Julia Ward Howe: The Battle Hymn of the Republic, which as a child of the South I was not permitted to sing (as Uncle Shelby Calahan said, "we will not so dishonor the memory" of our ancestors who died in the War between the States) until I left home for college. {I thought a hundred years and four or five generations was long enough to carry a grudge.} Julia and her husband, Sam Howe, were abolitionists and during the war worked on the U.S. Sanitary Commission which was concerned with reforming unsanitary conditions in the Union camps and hospitals--disease, dysentery, typhoid, malaria killed two men for every one killed in battle. (Other notable women of the Sanitary Commission include Louisa May Alcott, Clara Barton, Dorothea Dix.) The Howes' work with the commission was recognized by President Lincoln and in 1862 he invited them to the White House. In Washington, Pastor James Freeman Clarke who had read some of Julia's poetry asked her to write a new song for the war to replace John Brown's Body. Howe's account of inspiration while writing the Battle Hymn of the Republic: I awoke the next morning in the gray of the early dawn, and to my astonishment, found that the wished-for-lines were arranging themselves in my brain. I lay quite still until the last verse had completed itself in my thoughts, then hastily arose, saying to myself, I shall lose this if I don't write it down immediately.... I lay down again and fell asleep, but not before feeling as if something very important had just happened to me." The poem, published in the February 1862 issue of Atlantic Monthly, made Julia Howe an instant celebrity. I love this song because it clearly articulates the basis of social justice in Christ and in the "glory" of God. "Our God is marching on."
Katherine Lee Bates: American the Beautiful was written in 1893, published in 1895 in The Congreationalist, and Bates revised the words in 1904 and again in 1913. Before being published with the music Materna written by Samuel A. Ward in 1910, it was sung to other tunes, notably Auld Lang Syne. Was Samuel Ward related to Julia Ward Howe? I don't know. As Michael T. said last night the original poem was a bit different:

O beautiful for halcyon skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the enameled plain!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
Till souls wax fair as earth and air
And music-hearted sea!

O beautiful for pilgrims feet,
Whose stern impassioned stress
A thoroughfare for freedom beat
Across the wilderness!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
Till paths be wrought through
wilds of thought
By pilgrim foot and knee!

O beautiful for glory-tale
Of liberating strife
When once and twice,
for man's avail
Men lavished precious life!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
Till selfish gain no longer stain
The banner of the free!

O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
Till nobler men keep once again
Thy whiter jubilee!

Finally, a poem I began on the morning of 11 September 2001 shortly after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. I finished it several months later on Memorial Day 2002. The poem is a riff on America the Beautiful or perhaps a dialog with Katherine Lee Bates.

Oh, beautiful for spacious skies...
In a world with too little room
on this Tuesday morning,
death hurtled through the clouds.
...for amber waves of grain...
While we dwelt in peace and plenty,
a hate harvest ripened,
an explosion of horror, watched.
...mountain majesty... fruited plain...
Dreadful September day
when innocence crumbled to ruin
and fear took us hostage.

America, America...
Pilgrims fleeing persecution,
patriots overthrowing tyranny
stood once where we now stand,
...sheltered by God-shed grace...
cried "Freedom;" paid the price.
More than once the price paid in blood;
common man sought uncommon good,
beyond the shining seas
for brotherhood does not
in isolation live.
Costly, too high, too dear—but, still—
America, America...
We are resolved; tears dim
our eyes, not our vision.
Still, alabaster cities gleam.

Once upon a time...

2010-05-12T17:09:00.003-05:00

I love fairy tales. I have always loved fairy tales.

Since one of my current interests is children's literature, I'm getting to revisit my own childhood reading. A couple of months ago I read Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know by Hamilton Wright Mabie, Doubleday, 1905. Kindle. Link: Project Gutenberg books by Mabie

When I was in the 3rd & 4th grades--yes, two grades in the same classroom, at the same time, with one teacher--there was a bookshelf along the back filled mostly with volumes of fairy tales. I especially remember The Golden Book of Fairy Tales, translated (from the French) by Marie Ponsot and illustrated by Adrienne Ségur. Link: Terri Windling's tribute Segur The book, published in 1957, was well worn when I first saw it 1959 and it was one of the few on the shelf that I actually had to share with my classmates. When I thought I could get away with it, I hid the book in my desk and read it or studied the illustrations when I finished Mrs. Vardeman's boring lists of glossary words that we were forced to copy into notebooks. Seeing little use to copy things that I could look up in a dictionary, I was already in training to become a reference librarian.

I was fascinated by the various printed versions of Snow White. I became interested in the transitions that stories undergo from generation to generation, and from story to book to movie. Walt Disney's Snow White (I secretly thought she should skip the prince and the palace and stay at the lovely little house in the woods with the animals) and Fantasia (which I credit for my first experience of classical music) were and perhaps still are my favorite movies. Mrs. Vardeman also had us listen to music while we used Crayolas to "draw what the music makes you feel." For a brief tour of comparative fairy tale illustrations visit more fairy tale illustrations & illustrators

One of my rediscovered delights is Der Struwwelpeter. Heinrich Hoffman (1809-1894) who wrote and illustrated the book in December 1844 as a gift for his three-year-old son. Link: illustrated Project Gutenberg Struwwelpeter You may notice a resemblance between Hoffman's drawing of Straw Peter and the movie character of Edward Scissorhands, a movie fairy tale which is evocative of numerous other fairy tales and movies. "Children are bewitched by this book because it challenges them in ways that adults can no longer fathom nor recall. Struwwelpeter stands or falls on the credo that children can bear to be scared by art and thereby grow." Link: review of the new Dover edition by Ellen Handler Spitz in The New Republic

Der Struwwelpter is one of several books that Evelyn Whitaker mentions in her novels. In Gay, [Little Brown, W.R. Chambers, 1903] Oliver Bruce is writing a book "...in London he would be more within reach of books of reference, and be able to consult authorities, and get in touch with those strange and mysterious powers, the publishers, of whom Mrs. Bruce spoke with bated breath, dimly imagining them to resemble Great Agrippa in Struwwelpeter with his gigantic ink-pot."

I remember being very pleased with the Great Agrippa illustrations. The story spoke to issues of racial equality which, even as a child, were important to me. I was also pleased with the ink pot since I was the proud owner of my first fountain pen and ink bottle with which I wrote Mrs. Vardeman's lists in a blotty cursive that was never up to her standards of penmanship. Hoffman's The Story of the Inky Boys is undoubtedly referenced when later in the book the children, Gay and Do, put a poppy flower in Oliver's ink pot. "...the two children always called his flat the Ogre's Den, and Oliver surmised that the festive mother might have encouraged the idea... The children had added on their own horrifying and blood curdling details selected from Jack the Giant Killer, with a flavour of the Three Bears."

Lovers of fairy tales will fairy tale illustrations will want to take a peek at Neil Gaiman: Instructions. Everything you'll need to know on your journey by, illustrated by Charles Vess, Harper-Collins. The book was first published as A Wolf at the Door, Simon & Schuster, 2000. Vess dedicates to the above mentioned Terri Windling. A reviewer has called it "how to survive a fairy tale" but I think it could as easily be called "how to survive life." "Trust dreams. Trust your heart, and trust your story."
From "once upon a time" to "happily ever after" this is the life I read...

What I'm Reading...

2010-05-06T15:59:00.003-05:00

The list for this month is much shorter than usual.
As I have noticed before when I'm writing I read less.

I've been thinking about what I learned at BWWA 2010 and exploring websites related to Victorian literature. I've been reading technical stuff on archives, libraries, and website design. I've been exploring HASTAC - Humanities, Arts, Science Technology Advanced Collaboratory which I had not been aware of until I was interviewed (link on the sidebar) but this subject is fascinating to me. link: Bridget Draxler's current blog on the future of thinking.

I've been catching up on periodicals and catalogs. Shopping on-line for clothes; they've quit making my trousers! I hate to shop so it's a good thing that my view on fashion is: "Fashion is for those who have no sense of personal style."

Probably spending too much time on Facebook but I'm enjoying reconnecting with my cousins, classmates, and kids I know & loved from my Sunday School classes.

Fiction:

Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn: Mary Barton. 1848. Kindle. Project Gutenberg.   This book is essentially a love story with characters about whom it is easy to care. That empathy is the snare to engage the reader in a discussion of capitalism and the conflict between mill owners and workers, in an investigation of power, money, and faith.
Bedside book:

Brueggemann, Walter: The Prophetic Imagination. 2nd edition. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001.   Brueggemann is never boring but his texts are incredilbly rich; I expect to linger over this reading. The first edition (1978) is the "first publication in which" Brueggemann says he "more or less found my own voice as a teacher in the church." I am an admirer of Brueggemann and my mature views of scripture have been significantly shaped by his writings. In this early book I recognize the roots of some of the later works--particularly Message of the Psalms. Awed to Heaven, Rooted to Earth, the prayers of Walter Brueggman lives on my bedside shelf so that he prays for me when I cannot pray for myself. In February 2005, Bobbie and I attended his lecture: Psalms: the good, the hard, the surprising. Some quotes from my notes: "The Psalms invite us to push the edges of our emotional alertness to the reality around us." "...faith requires candid entry into suffering..." "good authoritative speech... generates a new world... why our speech must be imaginative and not cliched." "Breath is a gift; it is not a possession. Breath is the property of the life-giving God." "There is nothing in your life that you cannot bring to the presence (orientation) to the absence (disorientation) of God." "Biblical faith traffics not in certitude but in relationship."   "Church... too much an echo of the culture... need to recover our idenitity... as ...the place where the truth is told and things are called by their right names..." " God responds to authentic trouble..." the purpose of worship is "to re-preform creation... people come to church overwhelmed by chaos... liturgy transforms chaos into creation." "...the promise of new orientation is not a quiet deal between me and Jesus. It is a BIG cosmic event in which I may participate."
link: some of Brueggemann's texts available on-line