What I'm Reading...

Fiction:

Barrie, James M.: What Every Woman Knows. (1906) Project Gutenberg. Kindle. We watched Finding Neverland (Netflix) and the movie prompted me to review Barrie's life and browse a couple of his books. (It's a good movie but it does play fast & loose with the facts.) I don't remember having read this particular play before. Clever, fun and I think it would stage rather well.

Potter, Beatrix: The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter. Project Gutenberg. Kindle. We watched Miss Potter (Netflix) and so I'm reading bedtime stories.

Richmond, Grace S.: Red Pepper Burns.
Richmond, Grace S.: Mrs. Red Pepper. (1913)
Richmond, Grace S.: Red Pepper's Patients. (1919) Project Gutenberg. Kindle. I read these books as a child and have read them at least once more as an adult. The stories are about a doctor in the early 20th Century. What stricks me about these books on this reading is the frequent mention of drug addiction. These writers are part of the "living clean" movement: fresh air, exercise, don't drink.

Palmer, William J.: The Detective and Mr. Dickens. A Secret Victorian Journal Attributed to Wilkie Collins, Dicovered and Edited by... New York: St. Martin's Press, 1990. The author is/was English prof at Purdue. He writes a compelling story set in the dark underbelly of London at night . The sinful pleasures of male Victorian life are the primary plot device. Every woman in this book is a prostitute or a pander or a victim. As one would expect given the sub-title, several scenes are quite graphic and push into pornography. In real life (as opposed to his life in this novel) Collins had arthritis and a laudanum/opium addiction. Needed to see Dr. Red Pepper Burns.

Bedside Book:

Peterson, Eugene H.: Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places: A conversation in spiritual theology. Kindle. I continue my slow exploration, reading and re-reading, of issues of salvation and the relationship between Exodus and Mark.

SEASONS:

Whitaker, Evelyn: Laddie. We are exploring the 19th Century woman novelist as theologian.

Veterans' Day. A love story...

Today is Veterans Day. Daddy still calls it Armistice Day, remembering "the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month" of 1918 marking the cease fire on the Western Front of WWI. His father, Pvt. Zach Carter Cummings, Co. D 39th Infantry 4th Division, was marching toward the sound of the guns when over the hill he heard the silence of peace. Instead of fighting in the bloody trenches of France, his war experience was with an occupation force in Germany. Here is a photo of my grandfather, taken "on the Rhine River Germany April 1919."

And a photo of the girl he left behind him, Miss Oma Calahan, in Farmersville, Texas. She wrote on the back of this photo: "I wasn't mad when this was made. I was just facing the sun." This photo was made in the autumn of 1918 and was one of those she sent to him in a letter.

For family and others who would like a bit more of the story, I've transcribed and linked three of my grandfather's letters:

1. in late October as he sailed for Europe
2. on November 19 at the edge of the battlefield in France
3. on November 28 from Germany

at my domain: http://www.evelynwhitakerlibrary.org/blog_the_life_i_read/id9.html

And as she always does on this date Mother recited a poem:
http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~wldciv/world_civ_reader/world_civ_reader_2/mccrae.html

Autumn Leaves of Grass

My favorite season has always been autumn. Morning cool. The last of the garden. Harvest. I'll never forget driving over a hilltop in the Poconos and seeing a child-gone-crazy-with-the-Crayolas landscape. During my childhood, the family often made an October drive to the mountains of New Mexico to look at the aspens and to gather apples. David & I vacation with the Colorado colors.

It's commonly said that Texas doesn't have seasons but like much that is commonly said that's incorrect. Our deciduous trees are turning now although they are out-numbered by evergreen live oaks and pine and magnolias and tropicals--Houston truly is the emerald city. When we make our Christmas road trip across Texas there is often great color; we're all just too busy looking at Christmas lights to notice. It's like the robins which in Houston are not a sign of spring but of winter. Each place has seasons of its own but one must have eyes to see.

As I've been driving across Texas from the Gulf Coast to the Hill Country, I've enjoyed being back in touch with the seasons. What I've seen on the most recent trips are the autumn grasses which are truly as lovely as the wildflowers of spring.

There is great variety and diversity of grass--tall, short, straight, stiff, plumed, lacy. This photo is pink-haired grass waving in a row at pavement's edge but the colors are limitless: green, chartreuse, gold, brown, black, red, maroon, orange, purple, aubergine, silver, copper. Grass in fields, grass in roadside clumps, grass in swaths of self-sown sweeping waves. Seed time and harvest. A festival of grass.

I, of course, named this post for Walt Whitman's famous poem:

http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/1764.html

But in looking for that link, I found this poem by Brian Patten:

http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/998.html

Mighty is our LORD and great in power

whose wisdom is beyond all telling...

Sing a song of thanksgiving to the LORD...

who clothes the hills with grass.

Psalm 147: 5,7,8

What I'm reading...

September is always a very busy month for me and this year the busyness lingers into October. A trip to Clifton, a family wedding, Colorado vacation, a trip to Clifton, David's surgery, church library, church chairs, another trip to Clifton... Yikes! who has time to read. I do. The crazier things get the more I need words, words, words to keep me sane.

Vacation reading:
Poole, Ernest: His Second Wife. Kindle. Project Gutenberg. Originally published in 1918. Having enjoyed his Pulitzer Prize winning novel, His Family, I gave this author who is new to me another chance. Another good read by an author I plan to read again. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Poole

Showalter, Elaine: A Jury of Her Peers. American Women Writers from Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009. Kindle. This compelling book by the author of A Literature of their Own sabotaged my vacation fiction binge. I've spent the last month reading and chasing rabbits e.g. women authors I've read and those I haven't and I was surprised at the number in both categories. I've got more reading to do than I'll have time to do it. What struck me most was how time and again a woman writer was "silenced as much by her activity in a repressive political movement as by her domestic life." And, I wonder if feminism is not at least to some extent yet another repressive political movement. Women who celebrate heterosexual marriage and motherhood (certainly in the late Victorian era and I suspect in other past eras and the present) are still silenced by women as well as by men with the label "sentimentalist." Surely some of those writers have something of interest to say and a few at least say it well. But then I have a hobbyhorse: http://evelynwhitakerlibrary.org/

Fiction:
Kelley, Jacqueline: The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2009. Recommended by my friend, Cathey R. This coming-of-age book focuses on a young girl and her grandfather, interweaving rural Texas in the early 20th Century with Darwin. This a wonderful story beautifully told. Must reading for anyone (of any age, of any gender) who enjoys good fiction. I found it even more delightful as a break from and continuation of the study of Showalter.

Smith, Alexander McCall: Friends, Lovers, Chocolate. New York: Pantheon Press, 2005. Cathey R. passed on this book from her collection as part of the thank you for the border collie puppy adventure. I had read and enjoyed The No. 1 Ladies' Dectective Agency and at least one other book in this author's series. This is the 2nd book in the Sunday Pholosophy Club series and the first that I've read of that series. It stood alone very well and was more to my tastes; probably due to the Edinburgh, Scotland setting. Good light ready with a thought provoking phrase now and then.

Bedside Book:
Peterson, Eugene H.: Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places. A conversation in spiritual theology. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2005. Kindle. Yes, a Kindle book works at bedside if I remember to keep the battery charged. I plan to linger with the book for quite a while. It is dense and rich in food for thought. I have long loved the introduction to John's Gospel and his presentation of Christ--the Word, the Logos, the creative speaking of God. Peterson is building on and expanding my appreciation of this text and helping me see application in my own life.

Seasons:
Johnson, Elizabeth A.: She Who Is: the Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse. New York: The Crossroads Publishing Co., 1992, 2002, 2003. This month we are discussing the Chapter 1. Introduction: Speaking rightly of God and Chapter 6. Classical Theology.

Family wedding photoshop

Just as I did, my niece selected the Saturday of Labor Day weekend for her wedding date. We made the trip to Clifton to chauffeur my parents to Fort Worth for the wedding. I took lots of photos and have played around with Adobe PhotoShop. All sides of our family have lots of blue eyes so all the red-eye needed fixing. All the auto-fix tools are helpful. I've found that cropping often improves a photo. I've also played around some with lighting and managed to recover a couple of shots where there wasn't any flash. I retouched a number of photos to remove a blemish here and there. Sometimes something in the background (a light switch or a sign for the restroom or just an inconvenient person or clutter ) messes up a really lovely shot.

Here are a couple of examples:

Note the messy background in the bride's dressing room. A black skirt is visible in the mirror but I've "erased" it from the background; the hanger is still visible.

Crop it and voila! a bridal portrait.

Everyone loved the way that V. looked at P. in this shot as they bid their wedding guests Aloha! before leaving for their Hawaiian honey moon. Too bad about the crowd of people and the cluttered background.

Crop it! Still we have the frowning man coming between them and the background clutter. Use the tools to erase the man and to reproduce the flowers in the head band and lei to fill in the area. Then add sparkle effects to conceal my amateur workmanship.

And never overlook the potential in changing to black and white.

My, how weddings and brides have changed!

Compare one of my bridal photos with those of niece V.

I'm the old-fashioned bride with my matron of honor, ACE.

And, remember, with PhotoShop every photo may be something less than the truth.

What I'm reading...

Not much. I've made another trip to visit parents in Clifton. Road music: Best of the Righteous Brothers, Yanni In My Time, Schumann Symphonies Nos. 2 & 4, and Juilio Inglesias Tango. That list is almost a definition of eclectic. Miss Mandy Whitepaws, my sheltie, is in love with Juilio and found several of the Righteous Brothers' vocals intriguing. It was a good trip.

But it was not a break from the church library. I spent a lot of time looking at the Highsmith catalog making lists of furnishings and supplies. When I got home I prepared a budget for the coming year. I spent all day yesterday on-line making purchases from Highsmith and from Amazon, http://www.abebooks.com, and http://www.biblio.com. [If you're looking for a rare out-of-print book, give them a try. My first choice is biblio.com because I like the way they manage the orders from a plethora of independent booksellers.] I was really fortunate--or should I say blessed?--to find all but one of the thirty-three books that had to be replaced. Hurricane Ike destroyed four dozen or so others but I elected not to replace them. Given the state of the church library after the storm, the losses were really far fewer than I'd expected.
Other than catalogs I've been reading:

Fiction:
Poole, Ernest: His Family. New York: MacMillan, 1917. Project Gutenberg. Kindle, free download from http://manybooks.net/. The first winner of the Pulitzer Prize for literature. A beautifully crafted story of the interior life and family relationships of a man as he nears the end of his life. In New York at a time of transition (early 20th Century), his three daughters encounter their father, their family, each other, and themselves as three graces, if you will. What does it mean to be woman in the Modern world? How does a woman decide issues of career, marriage, motherhood? Poole examines issues of education, urbanization, war and conscience, and eternal life. A delightful read that is also thought provoking. FICTION 20th CENTURY PULITZER NEW YORK MODERNISM FEMINISIM

Chairside Nibbles:
mostly Kindle sampling for an upcoming reading binge

Bedside Book:
I was slow to make a new selection so I read Gerard Manley Hopkins and finally memorized

That Nature Is a Heraclitian Fire and the Comfort of the Resurrection.

CLOUD-PUFFBALL, torn tufts, tossed pillows flaunt forth, then chevy on an air-

built thoroughfare: heaven-roysterers, in gay-gangs they throng; they glitter in marches.

Down roughcast, down dazzling whitewash, wherever an elm arches,

Shivelights and shadowtackle in long lashes lace, lance, and pair.

Delightfully the bright wind boisterous ropes, wrestles, beats earth bare

Of yestertempest's creases; in pool and rut peel parches

Squandering ooze to squeezed dough, crust, dust; stanches, starches

Squadroned masks and manmarks treadmire toil there

Footfretted in it. Million-fuelèd, nature's bonfire burns on.

But quench her bonniest, dearest to her, her clearest-selvèd spark

Man, how fast his firedint, his mark on mind, is gone!

Both are in an unfathomable, all is in an enormous dark

Drowned. O pity and indig nation! Manshape, that shone

Sheer off, disseveral, a star, death blots black out; nor mark

Is any of him at all so stark

But vastness blurs and time beats level. Enough! the Resurrection,

A heart's-clarion! Away grief's gasping, joyless days, dejection.

Across my foundering deck shone

A beacon, an eternal beam. Flesh fade, and mortal trash

Fall to the residuary worm; world's wildfire, leave but ash:

In a flash, at a trumpet crash,

I am all at once what Christ is, since he was what I am, and

This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, patch, matchwood, immortal diamond,

Is immortal diamond.

Peterson, Eugene H.: Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places. A conversation in spiritual theology. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2005. Kindle. Can a Kindle book work as bedside reading? Just started but it promises to be informative and inspirational. I remain grateful to Peterson for his Psalms study, How do I answer the God who speaks to me?

SEASONS:
Linn, Dennis; Linn, Sheila Fabricant; Linn, Matthew: Good Goats: healing our image of God. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1994. vi, 101 p. Next month will finish this book and after our last group discussion I liked this book much better.