Mighty Mead-Glee

It has been so long, friends, since we’ve had a review of anything but a book on here.  Sure, there was a play review in January, and a poem review last May, but nearly a year has passed since we last shared a review of beverages.  This should be remedied, so grab a glass and a seat while I tell you about last Saturday’s Meadfest.

On hearing that the B. Nektar Meadery of Ferndale, Michigan was having a mead-tasting festival, several friends and I decided to conduct ourselves thence.  I was put in charge of all Beowulf references, and packed my Chickering accordingly.

þa wæs Geatmæcgum         geador ætsomne
on beorsele         benc gerymed;
þær swiðferhþe         sittan eodon,
þryðum dealle.         þegn nytte beheold,

se þe on handa bær         hroden ealowæge,
scencte scir wered.         Scop hwilum sang
hador on Heorote.         þær wæs hæleða dream,
duguð unlytel         Dena ond Wedera.

Then a bench was cleared,   room made in the hall    491
for the gathered Weders   standing in a troop;
the courageous men     took their seats,
proud in their strength;   a thane did his office,
carried in his hands     the gold ale-flagons,
poured bright mead.     At times the scop sang,
bright-voiced in Heorot;     there was joy of warriors,
no small gathering     of Geats and Danes.  

þær wæs sang ond sweg         samod ætgædere
fore Healfdenes         hildewisan,
gomenwudu greted,         gid oft wrecen,
ðonne healgamen         Hroþgares scop
æfter medobence         mænan scolde
be Finnes eaferum,         ða hie se fær begeat,

There was tumult and song,    melodious noise,     1063
in front of Healfdene’s    battle-commander;
the harp was plucked,   good verses chanted
when Hrothgar’s scop    in his place on the mead-bench  
came to tell over   the famous hall-sport
of Finn’s sons    when the attack came on them…

I shared these lines of the mead-hall, along with various diverting kennings, until we reached our destination.  We were not immediately certain, on doing so, that we had reached it.  The rosy lenses of our expectation sought the promised tent and musicians and honey-drink on a grassy knoll amid a few trees.  Even if the grass were a bit much to hope for, Ferndale is known locally as a chic and trendy hotspot, so we were surprised to find ourselves in a janky parking lot between the brewery and its industrial neighbors.  It struck us as the mead-tasting no one had ever heard of.  Michelle, conductor of our chariot, reckoned that our Hipster Quotient had skyrocketed, to which our friend Adam remarked “Man, I knew I should have worn tighter jeans!”

Huddled against the brisk breeze, our crew meted out beverage tokens to try 11 of the varieties available and recorded our impressions at the tables and folding chairs standing in for mead-hall benches.  The wind whipped our cups over if ever we were careless, and the sun, overly concerned by the possibility of bothering us, kept hidden.

Against such a backdrop, the meads were welcome.  Some had been brewed to resemble an IPA beer in mouthfeel and strength; others had a thicker, more traditional texture; still others had had fruit or spices added to impart different flavors.  Here are our notes:

The Beer-Like (served on draft)

Lager-Style mead: sweet but not oversweet, no bad aftertaste.  PCS approval.

IPA-Style Evil Genius: Lightly carbonated mix of honey and hops.  “Nose of wine, taste of Kool-Aid.”  “That really just tastes like I ate a field of flowers.”  Grapefruity.  Like unto Jerome more than Ambrose or Bernard.

Necromangocon – made with mango juice, honey, and black pepper.  Very bubbly.  Smells of mango, tastes peppery.  Peculiar.

Apricot Cardamom – fascinating and strange.  Very tangy, spicy, not hard cider-y.  Smells more like apricot than it tastes.  JCS approval.

Zombie Killer – technically a “cyser,” or blend of honey and apple cider, with tart cherry juice added and light carbonation.  Apricot tang; very fruity.  Like a Lambic beer.  “Sparkling black cherry juice” (which I misheard as “carrot juice,” and was instructed to buy an ear trumpet for reasons both practical and sartorial).  JCS approval.

The Fruity

Wildberry Pyment – Made with clover honey, shiraz grapes (pyment = mead/wine mixture), and wildberry concentrate.  This last made it slightly like cough syrup.  Very winey.  Blackberry jam.  Ooof da.  Increasingly hard to drink.  Sweeter, peppery?

Unicorn – smells like different cough syrup, different fruits.  Less sweet.

The Traditional (or thereabouts)

Rainbow – sweet, traditional smell, but drier taste; a field of delight!

Orange Blossom – less like syrup; Kool-Aid with chalk.  Smells light; floral.

Wildflower – very sweet, thicker, more traditional, yeasty, field-like.  JCS, MH approval

Episode 13 – orange blossom/buckwheat honey mead, aged in a bourbon barrel.  Curious to smell; sweet, then quite smoky to taste; thicker in mouthfeel with a toasted vanilla aftertaste; almost meaty, the way buckwheat can be; and “like unto whiskey-flavored gelato.” PH approval, enough to buy a bottle of it.

                                             Gamen eft astah,
beorhtode bencsweg;         byrelas sealdon
win of wunderfatum.         þa cwom Wealhþeo forð
gan under gyldnum beage,…
“Onfoh þissum fulle,         freodrihten min,
sinces brytta!         þu on sælum wes,
goldwine gumena,         ond to Geatum spræc
mildum wordum,         swa sceal man don.

                        The glad noise resumed,                 1160
bright-clanking bench-music;    wine-bearers poured
from fluted silver.    Wealhtheow came forth,
glistening in gold, …
“Accept this cup,     my noble lord,
gold-giving king;    be filled in your joys,
treasure-friend to all,   and give to the Geats
your kind words,   as is proper for men…

Review: Out of the Silent Planet

Note: This review was written as part of the Pages Unbound C. S. Lewis Read-Along for the month of February 2013.  Go check out their master list for more Lewisian topics!
~~~
Perhaps it is a peculiar practice to review a book one has read at least two or three times already.  But perhaps it is the only honest way to do it.  I’ve let Out of the Silent Planet, first book of Lewis’s Cosmic Trilogy, rest on my shelf for a few years already; though I recalled where the story ended up, I didn’t always recall how it got there.  “Narrative lust,” that is, wanting to know How It Ends, wasn’t necessary to carry me through; the story retains an element of freshness and would not, I think, be worn thin by further rereadings.

Why not?  In part, because of its oddest aspect: the mystery of the title.  Here’s a prepositional phrase, appearing nowhere in the story itself, whose meaning is obscure even when we learn which planet it indicates.  Is it the start of a sentence?  The end of one?  Perhaps it means to set up a contrast: out of the silent planet, into the heavens.  For though the planets are the chief concern of this book and the trilogy in general, Lewis doesn’t miss his chance to share his favored cosmology:

A nightmare, long engendered in the modern mind by the mythology that follows in the wake of science, was falling off him.  He had read of “Space’: at the back of his thinking for years had lurked the dismal fancy of the black, cold vacuity, the utter deadness, which was supposed to separate the worlds.  He had not known how much it affected him till now – now that the very name “Space” seemed a blasphemous libel for this empyrean ocean of radiance in which they swam.  He could not call it “dead’; he felt life pouring into him from it every moment.  …No: space was the wrong name. 

Hence my references to the Cosmic Trilogy, rather than the Space Trilogy.  Cosmic better captures the nature of this book, which is a bit of a pastiche genre-wise: it has something of the mythic (particularly where the hrossa and their poetic inclinations are concerned), a good dollop of the supernatural, bound up in a science-fiction narrative which was composed early enough to be called scientifiction.  Even without that slightly archaic term, there are points when it becomes clear that this book is an early effort (though far from the earliest) in the science-fiction genre.  The nature of the spaceship, Ransom’s somewhat foggy understanding of the ship itself, gravity, the occasional confusion where other celestial bodies are concerned, his attempts to figure out how this new planet Malacandra sustains life: these are details absent, or strikingly different and more true-to-life, in books written fewer than 75 years ago.  Some readers get distracted by this, but I suppose it’s never troubled me, since it’s clearly a facet of Lewis’s world-building.

The three main facets of said world-building, so far as I noted them, are as follows: the physical descriptions as Ransom sees and interacts with the country around him; the details and history learned from the hrossa, sorns, and Oyarsa; and over-around-through it all, the use and limits of language.

This last seems especially noteworthy.  Lewis paints the world and its inhabitants in bold, bright colors: clouds of red stone, neon blue rivers hiding a lightning-fast eel, pink scrub, sweeping green mountains, and precarious-looking purple vegetation.  By analogy he gives us to understand more or less what a hross looks like (something like a penguin, otter, and seal, with the flexibility and litheness of a stoat), and a sorn, and even a pfiffltrigg.  There are occasions where discussions of life and philosophy are worked in, despite Ransom’s shaky grip on the Malacandrian tongue.  But there are also times when words fall short, both when the narrator tries to put an experience into words which cannot be so rendered, and when Ransom attempts to translate Earthly arguments into Malacandrian.

This language doesn’t have so many shades of meaning as English, and therefore cannot be used in the subtly misleading fashion that is the travelers’ wont.  It reminded me of nothing so much as Diggory and his Uncle Andrew: Devine and Weston, the other Earthlings, are so quick to couch their goal in the rosiest terms and obscure whom shall be sacrificed on the altar of progress, making it really seem, for a second, that ‘they were saying something rather fine” (indeed, they think they are).  In the end their greed, their halting understanding, and their having set up an unimportant rule as their guiding principle, reveals these two to be ridiculously silly figures.  It is quite as entertaining as Uncle Andrew being planted and watered.

I have some minor quibbles with the story near the end – there’s a spot of trouble the Earthlings manage to avoid though it’s never explained how – but overall, this first book of the Cosmic Trilogy is a fine step in a somewhat different direction for those who loved Narnia.  Further delights await elsewhere in the Field of Arbol!

Mistaken Title Twins

A couple years back, David reviewed a book called Undine.  I read his review, put the title on my mental “to read” list, and went on my way.  Before long, time ate away all details of the review except that title, but I figured it was enough to see me through.  So last week, flushed with the victory of my new library card, I typed “Undine” into Ann Arbor District Library’s catalog, and rejoiced when I picked it up.

It was only after dashing through it that I looked at David’s review again and realized that oh, the thing I just read was written nearly 200 years after the thing he reviewed.  Not only that, but he included a note that the novella he read is available in full on Google books.

Woops!

So perhaps it could be regarded as an inconvenient happenstance, but I grieve not.  Instead of an Irish fairy story by Friedrich de la Motte Fouque, I got an Australian story of magic and the sea by Penni Russon, very clearly inspired by The Tempest, with some intriguing relationships and a dash of localized diction.

Undine’s a sixteen-year-old girl living next door to her best friend Trout (not even his teachers call him Trevor anymore), dealing with a peculiar heavy feeling and the unpleasant weight of Tuesdays (“which, on the whole, were not to be trusted”).  Whispers call Undine home, as though she weren’t at home already, and she has a freak storm, a love triangle, and curiously inevitable fights with her mum to deal with as well.  Meanwhile, Trout is doing a bit of research on chaos theory, a bit of reading on Shakespeare, and a bit of pondering how discrete he should be with other people’s secrets.  My apologies for being vague, but I’m trying not to spoil any of the plot.  Here are a few selections from it:

Little scales glittered on her hands from the fish, and her skin felt dry and salty.  She lathered and washed, but suspected the scales were as insidious as Jasper’s day-care glitter, which hung around for months, miraculously appearing underneath a fingernail or at the end of an eyelash, no matter how many baths he took, and migrating to Lou and Undine, and various other unlikely places, so that little bits of Christmas would suddenly and surprisingly appear in the corners of things.

“Anyway, he didn’t waffle.  He sang.”
Undine groaned.  “That’s even worse.  Tra la la.  And then the great hero Achilles went into an epic sulk and was boring for a very long time.  Tra la la.  And here’s the name of every ship, all one billion of them, and everyone who was ever on each ship, tra la la.”

“But who…I mean…I already know my father is dead.  This is hardly a revelation.”
“Do you know the story of The Tempest?”
“No.  We studied Hamlet in English lit.”
Trout rolled his eyes.  “You can actually just read Shakespeare, you know.  It’s not outlawed outside of school hours.”

It was a fast and evocative read.  My chief complaint is that a storyline dependent on the extra-ordinariness of the protagonist may ring a bit hollow to the ordinary reader.  There were moments when I thought “Okay, so there’s this power you could wield; what is that to me?” because, of course, I can’t.  Thankfully Undine has enough of the ordinary teenage girl about her: navigating relationships with friends and family, some awkwardness, and a quest to understand who she really is when she’s never seen or heard from her father.

Half-Review: Three Genres

Like last year, I made some resolutions on New Year’s Day.  In fact, I made one resolution months prior to January 1, so as to begin work on it early.  I planned to read one book per week: specifically, one of the 400-some I own but have not yet read.  Then, if said books were not worth keeping, I would hurl them away lest they needlessly burden my bookshelves.  Back in October, I made a lovely little list of the 52 books of 2013, so that I would not be set back by hair-pulling indecision each week.

Surely you’ve noticed my use of the past tense.

Not because I’ve abandoned the project, no; but I am rather far behind.  The third week of this year is drawing to a close, and I’m still on the first book of the year.*  I’m barely halfway through it, but that half prompted me to send Thalia a copy, so I figured that – in the name of trichobezoar prevention (this year’s watchword? I think so) – I would tell you about it.

Three Genres: The Writing of Poetry, Fiction, and Drama (Seventh Edition)

Perhaps you can understand why it’s taking longer than a week.  This 400-page volume was assigned as a text for a composition class my sophomore year at Hillsdale – and I was, indeed, a Wise Fool, and neglected to read it at that point.  “Dr. Sundahl didn’t tell us what parts to read; he just told me to write How I Take Hold Of Things.  Whatever that means.”

More fool me.  Halfway through the first section, The Writing of Poetry, I kicked myself for failing to pick it up earlier.  What Stephen Minot has done, unlike every other poetry text I’ve met with, is combine definitions of poetic terms, exemplar poems, and verbal exercises with an examination of how poetry must be compressed, how it must approach a point indirectly, how it must utilize the sounds and shapes to give meaning flesh.  Also notable is his list of Pitfalls to Avoid.  Some readers find it annoying and restrictive, but I wish someone had told me much earlier in life to write poems without intrusive meter (still a problem for me, ha!), impenetrable obscurity (Davey of Davey’s Daily Poetry gently chided me for this once), or a heavy-handed recapitulation of Generally Accepted Truths.

Similarly, the section on stories describes the components thereof, as well as means to go about transforming experience into a narrative which will carry some weight or impact.  Minot is not without biases – one comment unfavorably comparing comic strips to Catcher in the Rye sat ill with me – but his is generally sound counsel, exhorting nascent authors to take care in their work and strive for subtlety.

We’ll see what insights the remainder of the book holds.  My copy is the 7th edition; an 8th and 9th edition have been released since, and the differences between them may not be simply cosmetic.  But the latest edition runs some $67.00, the 8th $5.00+, and the 7th a penny-plus-shipping.  It’s not exactly a cavern map of How to Write a Good Poem, or How to Write a Good Story.  But it is rather like being armed with a flashlight and a compass when setting out to write a poem or a story (or, presumably, a play) in itself.  Quality, we are assured, comes with experience and years of practice.

*In fairness, I did spend some four days zipping through The Hunger Games trilogy.  But they’re on loan and thus not part of The Lyst of Greate Doome.

When Doings are Undoings

In storytelling—that most misused of arts—horses absolutely must not go in front of carts. A ballad starts where a ballad starts and this is the start of Prudencia Hart’s.

Shamefully, this is my first post of the year, when I have so many things to tell you and keep letting the words tangle up inside me.  There’s always a temptation to keep them in until they’re perfectly sorted, or closer to it, but the result of doing so is that I hoard tangle upon tangle, snagged into a trichobezoar of thoughts and feelings.

So though I have not sorted through all the significance, the implications, the ramifications of the play I saw the other night, I want to share it anyway.

My eldest brother invited me to join him in watching The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart, a curiously-named production by the National Theater of Scotland.  Indeed, it was curious in a lot of ways: five Scottish actors playing about 12 roles, singing and playing instruments besides, in a pub (the Corner Brewery).  Weaving amongst the patrons, the cast grabbed us with their absorption in their characters, with rollicking rhymed couplets, and with well-deployed props: a violin bow playing a windshield wiper, flashlights serving for headlights, a rug for the rending of space and time, and most memorably, napkins the audience tears up and hurls into the air for snow.  I took care to cover my huge mug of beer and the three shared half-pints of cider from this precipitation, and felt very clever about it.

Feeling very clever is something of an important point in Prudencia’s undoing.  Prudencia Hart is the academic that most of us would recognize and, I think, sympathize with.  Having finished her thesis on the Scottish Border Ballads, she does not pass up speaking at a conference about them, despite her contempt for the others on the panel; the grad student’s pursuit of a free lunch may factor into her attendance.  She’s aghast at Colin Syme’s testosterone-and-meme-driven commentary (and his Kylie Minogue ringtone), Siolagha (a fancy way of saying Sheila, Prudencia fumes) Smith’s post-post structuralism, and Professor Macintosh’s theory of negative reading (whatever that is).

The blizzard from which I protected my potables, it turns out, keeps Prudencia from returning to Edinburgh when the conference ends.  She is stuck an hour’s drive away in Kelso, fending off Colin’s offer of a drink et cetera and keeping to herself amid a bacchanalian sort of karaoke scene.  Ignoring the warning from a fellow pubgoer – namely, that it is solstice night and at midnight begins the Devil’s cèilidh, when “a chink between the mighty walls of time” opens – she sets out into the snow to find a B&B.

Left, and left, and left again: she believes she’s come to a bed and breakfast with an unexpectedly huge library (look at these first editions – it’s like heaven!), but the door locks and there she is, caught in hell.  Four millennia she spends there (cleverly compressed for our convenience) before a fling with the Devil enables her to escape.  Colin becomes a sort of knight in half-clothed glory, pulling her out and keeping her from tumbling back into Hell.

The pub again demands that she sing.  The Devil appears.  Her eyes on him, she ends the evening with Kylie Minogue’s “Can’t Get You Out of My Head.”

Here’s the thing: that feels like a lot of plot rehashing, though it’s more of a plot skeleton.  It doesn’t depict how captivated we all were.  It cannot contain Prudencia’s face as she regards the ballads, her colleagues, the perfect library, the devil she’s fallen in love with, or her confusion about the reality of what she has just escaped.  It most certainly doesn’t make sense of this strange sympathy for the Devil.  There’s none of the rhyming lines, witty and sparkling.

Really, I’m afraid there isn’t much sense of it that I can give you.  But there is a cracking good play and a good night at the pub.  My brother and I laughed so heartily the producer thanked us for leading the more reticent to react.  We came away having shoved aside the veil of the karaoke culture and glimpsed the ballad’s Hart.

Happy Hobbit Day!

A Happy Belated Hobbit Day to you!

And, I extend felicitations to one Mr. Bilbo Baggins on the occasion of his natal day.

I hope that you all had the opportunity to partake in a healthy Hobbit Second Breakfast yesterday. Since it was the 75th anniversary of the publication of the Hobbit. As well as International Hobbit Second Breakfast Day.

Amazing how those two days coincided.

My pupils and I had a loverly Second Breakfast party in the morning, consisting of seed cake, fruit, and juice. And we followed it up in the afternoon with a few rousing games of “Hobbit Go Seek”, and “Dwarf, dwarf, HOBBIT!”

But, in case you missed it and now feel left out, fear not! We have 3 months to advent of The Movie . . . er . . . . I mean, The Birthday of Christ. But part of His gift to us this season is a movie version of The Hobbit.

I know, it is by the same guy who ruined Lord of the Rings. And who has characters staring off into the dreamy middle distance for hours on end. And who is crassly commercial enough to make one book into three movies. (Count ‘em. 1, 2, 3. WHY?????)

But all the same, I want to see it. It has Martin Freeman. And Richard Armitage, whose strong jawline character and noble love stole my heart in the miniseries North and South.

So to celebrate, and to refresh our memories of the book, David from The Warden’s Walk has organized a Hobbit Read-Along. Various bloggers have agreed to post about certain chapters every Tuesday and Thursday.  As one of the bloggers is your truly, I thought it within the realm of Egotism to share the schedule and bloggers.

 

David of The Warden’s Walk
Taliesintaleweaver of Lights in the Library
Brenton of A Pilgrim in Narnia and Princess Madison Jayne
Mary of Grimmella
Emily of WanderLust
Krysta of Pages Unbound
Rob of The Old Book Junkie
novareylin of MySeryniti
Jubilare
Melpomene of The Egotist’s Club

Chapter 1 – An Unexpected Party → 9/25 Tuesday
David (Me!)

Chapter 2 – Roast Mutton→ 9/27 Thursday
Emily

Chapter 3 – A Short Rest → 10/02 Tuesday
Krysta

Chapter 4 – Over Hill and Under Hill →10/04 Thursday
Taliesintaleweaver

Chapter 5 – Riddles in the Dark →10/09 Tuesday
Brentondickieson

Chapter 6 – Out of the Frying-Pan into the Fire →10/11 Thursday
Mary

Chapter 7 – Queer Lodgings →10/16 Tuesday
Rob

Chapter 8 – Flies and Spiders →10/18 Thursday
Jubilare

Chapter 9 – Barrels Out of Bond →10/23 Tuesday
Novareylin

Chapter 10 – A Warm Welcome →10/25 Thursday
Melpomene

Chapter 11 – On the Doorstep →10/29 Tuesday
Emily

Chapter 12 – Inside Information →11/1 Thursday
Krysta

Chapter 13 – Not at Home →11/6 Tuesday
Taliesintaleweaver

Chapter 14 – Fire and Water →11/8 Thursday
Brentondickieson

Chapter 15 – The Gathering of the Clouds →11/13 Tuesday
Mary

Chapter 16 – A Thief in the Night →11/15 Thursday
Rob

Chapter 17 – The Clouds Burst →11/20 Tuesday
Novareylin

Chapter 18 – The Return Journey →11/22 Thursday
Jubilare

Chapter 19 – The Last Stage →11/27 Tuesday
Melpomene

Ready for some awesomeness? Have a sneak peek!

 

Robbed

 

The night before my dad and I left Dallas, I was robbed.

My purse, book-bag, and other various items were taken from my car.

I was an idiot for leaving them in the car, of course. The car was already weighed down by so much that I thought no one would even bother to try to get the unwieldy and very heavy bookshelves and dresser from the back seat. And therefore they would bypass it entirely.

And so, like a Dufflepud, I tried to do something to save time. I hid my purse under the seat, and left my book bag open so potential thieves would see that it was only books.

 

Items lost:

• wallet, containing -
  • license and other photo IDs (including all the school IDs from every college attended)
  • credit card and debit cards
  • AAA card
  • insurance card
  • checkbook
  • concealed carry licence
  • cash
• passport
• camera
• emergency spare cell phone
• book-bag, containing:
  • The First Days of School: A Guide for Teachers
  • The Heart of the World, by Hans Urs Von Balthasaar
  • The Well-Wrought Urn, by Cleanth Brooks
  • The Collected Yeats Poems
  • Good and Evil, by Yeats
  • A Vision, by Yeats
  • Our Secret Discipline: Yeats and Lyric Form, by Helen Vendler
  • The Man and the Mask, a Biography of Yeats
  • Beyond Byzantium, critical essays on Yeats’ later poems

 

Do you notice a theme?

Yep. I had packed every book that I need for my thesis in that book-bag, with plans to get some work done on the road.

The loss of my purse is annoying and time-wasting. And without access to my funds I would not have been able to make the move; thank God for my dad and his generosity.

And thankfully, the very valuable or dangerous items were buried under loose piles of books.

But it is the loss of my carefully chosen books on Yeats that troubles me. The books held all my notes, the passages I wanted to use were marked, and I knew every page intimately; each spine was worn from rereading and studying, and the margins were filled with my scribbles.

I am still upset.

Later that day, on road, dad read the Divine Office morning prayer aloud. And I realized – yet again! – that God has a sense of humor.

Psalm of the day:

1Why, O Lord, do you stand far away?
Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?

² In arrogance the wicked hotly pursue the poor;
let them be caught in the schemes that they have devised.

³ For the wicked boasts of the desires of his soul,
and the one greedy for gain curses and renounces the Lord.

⁴ In the pride of his face the wicked does not seek him;
all his thoughts are, “There is no God.”

⁵ His ways prosper at all times;
your judgments are on high, out of his sight;
as for all his foes, he puffs at them.

⁶ He says in his heart, “I shall not be moved;
throughout all generations I shall not meet adversity.”

⁷ His mouth is filled with cursing and deceit and oppression;
under his tongue are mischief and iniquity.

⁸ He sits in ambush in the villages;
in hiding places he murders the innocent.
His eyes stealthily watch for the helpless;

⁹     he lurks in ambush like a lion in his thicket;
he lurks that he may seize the poor;
he seizes the poor when he draws him into his net.

¹⁰ The helpless are crushed, sink down,
and fall by his might.

¹¹ He says in his heart, “God has forgotten,
he has hidden his face, he will never see it.”¹² Arise, O Lord; O God, lift up your hand,
forget not the afflicted. (Psalm 10:10-12)

New Testament Reading:

⁸ I am not commanding you, but I want to test the sincerity of your love by comparing it with the earnestness of others. ⁹ For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich.

¹⁰ And here is my judgment about what is best for you in this matter. Last year you were the first not only to give but also to have the desire to do so. ¹¹ Now finish the work, so that your eager willingness to do it may be matched by your completion of it, according to your means. ¹² For if the willingness is there, the gift is acceptable according to what one has, not according to what one does not have.

¹³ Our desire is not that others might be relieved while you are hard pressed, but that there might be equality. ¹⁴ At the present time your plenty will supply what they need, so that in turn their plenty will supply what you need. The goal is equality, ¹⁵ as it is written: “The one who gathered much did not have too much, and the one who gathered little did not have too little.” (2 Corinthians 8:8-15)

 

 

Alright God, I get it. Fine.  Have mercy on those who need so desperately that they steal. Do not begrudge them such a paltry share of my goods.

But, may I ask that they write my thesis for me in exchange?

 

 

Apparently my lesson was not sufficiently learned. After spending yesterday moving into my new place, I dropped off my rent check with my new land lady.

This morning, (after several very vivid dreams of having my place broken into, which I have never dreamed about before,)I got a call from the landlady.

Her office had been broken into and robbed. Guess what was taken?

My check.

Just my check. Nothing else.

Dear Lord, what are you trying to tell me?

 

 

The Stories of Summer

Thalia has challenged me to proffer a Summer Reading List, and I am in the mood to oblige.

It is odd that we still phrase it as such, a “summer” list. When, now that we are supposedly grown up and out of school and in “real” jobs, our summers are just as busy as the rest of our time.

In fact, more so, because in the nice weather we want to be swimming or canoeing or hiking or running about with firecrackers!

So really, it ought to be a winter reading list. For when all we want to do is curl up by the fire and let the dark, drowsy days lull us into exploring the imagination.

But summer reading was what was requested. So here it goes part one!

A Humorous Read:

The Luck of Bodkins
By P. G. Wodehouse

For some reason, this seems to be one of the lesser known of Wodehouse’s work. Every time read it I am seized with a desire to make into a stage play.

It is fairly typical of his shenanigans, only, on a boat. In the middle of the ocean. With a jealous fiancée, a flippant movie star, a charming ne’er-do-well, and a desperate movie magnate. Not to mention all of their respective romantic partners, indeliable (no, that is not a mistype) lipstick, smuggled pearls, and a Mickey Mouse doll.

And a baby alligator.

Moreover, the opening sentence is brilliant. ”Into the face of the young man who sat on the terrace of the Hotel Magnifique at Cannes there had crept a look of furtive shame, the shifty hangdog look which announces that an Englishman is about to talk French.”

How can you resist?

A Classic Read:

The Sun Also Rises
By Earnest Hemingway

Part of my personal quest for the summer is to actually read some of those classics of American Literature. I have always been more fond of British Lit, and despite dipping into O’Connor and Walker Percy and a few others, I have managed to avoid the BIG names.

So I read some Hemmingway.

And to my shock, I enjoyed it. In part because this is one of his earlier and lighter works, I think. It lacks the nice, tidy conclusion that my heart craves, but it does have a moments of intense human experience. I had expected the layers of significance and symbolism, but I had not expected the humor.

Of course, my enjoyment was in a darkly perverse, cynically amused sort of way.

“The road to Hell is paved with unbought stuffed dogs!”
“He’s a taxidermist.”
“But that was in another country. And besides, all the animals were dead.”

So if you feel like trying to read some of the American Greats, I suggest starting here.

A Must Read Before You Die:

Gilead
by Marilyn Robinson

This book is an extraordinary work art, employing words so delicately, precisely, and beautifully that my heart trills over every sentence. And yet the story, or rather, the narrative remains in the fore, crafted and buoyed, not distracted from, by the language.

It written in the form of a long letter from an elderly and dying minister to his very young son. It is in part a history, in part a  love story, in part an introduction to father the boy will never know, and it is entirely a meditation.

One of my professors once described modern though as being “discoursive”, constantly moving and progressing, while classical thought was contemplative, staying at one point and considering all that passes.

This book, while being very modern, is contemplative in the softest, most gentle, loving, self-revealing way possible. It was described to me as being a tale revealing the sheer miracle of existence, which is   . . . true. But is also very narrow a summary of the simple grace, sunshine, life, and humanity that bubble up and overflow each page.

If I make it sound saccharine or preachy, forgive me. It is not. It is a gently melancholy book, told in a peacefully strange style. It is beautiful.

For the good of your soul, read it.

That should keep y’all going for about a week, right?