What, precisely, is BookTrib?

Terry Teachout links to lists of plays produced across America compiled by American Theatre. To Kill a Mockingbird is very popular, and Terry will have more analysis tomorrow in the Wall Street Journal. (via Books, Inq.)

Tomorrow: Terry’s article in the WSJ is here. Despite my comment made from a quick scan, To Kill a Mockingbird did not make the top 11 most produced plays list. He notes: “It suggests to me that American theaters have a pronounced bias in favor of new and newish plays by American authors, especially ones that have high public profiles. (Six of the top 11 plays of the past decade have been produced on Broadway, while five of them won Pulitzer Prizes.) Up to a point, that’s good news.”

Chad Pergram of Fox News has an interesting post on the artwork in the Capitol Rotunda. I’m sure I saw what he describes here, but I don’t remember thinking much about it. Of course, I didn’t have a tour guide.

Plastered against the arched ceiling above the Rotunda floor is a gigantic canvas called “The Apotheosis.” It shows George Washington, accompanied by thirteen maidens, rising into the heavens.

Some tour guides and Congressional staff try to downplay the meaning of the word “apotheosis.” But in its official literature about the fresco, even the Architect of the Capitol’s office says that apotheosis “means literally the raising of a person to the rank of a god.”

There’s always chatter about the U.S. being a Christian nation and holding Judeo-Christian values. But in the most-hallowed temple of American democracy, at the top of one of the most recognized pinnacles on the planet, there’s a fresco of the first American president, ascending into the heavens as a god. Alongside 13 women.

And it takes the health care bill to stir people into a tizzy?

While Lars is blowing snow and avoiding cardiac arrest, you may want to pursue this list of 45 manly hobbies by the folks at The Art of Manliness. Naturally, chess tops the list. Live steel combat is on it too (aka fencing).

While Lars is blowing snow and avoiding cardiac arrest, you may want to pursue this list of 45 manly hobbies by the folks at The Art of Manliness. Naturally, chess tops the list. Live steel combat is on it too (aka fencing).

I object.

One of the things you learn living in these Hyperborean climes, after a few winters, is that (most of the time) there is no double jeopardy.

By which I mean that, looking at winter’s two Great Evils—bitter cold, and snow—you generally get one or the other, but not both. If it’s snowing, the temperature is probably fairly mild, because extremely cold air is dry. If it’s very cold, it probably won’t snow.

The terms of that armistice were treacherously breached today. We only got a couple inches here, but it blew hard, and was enough to put me behind the snow blower after work tonight.

(Oh, that’s right. I didn’t tell you about my snow blower. We had several inches of heavy, wet snow on Christmas eve, and my neighbor who generally blows out our shared driveway was out of town [as he tends to be, suspiciously often, when this sort of thing happens]. The weather forecast called for more of the same on Christmas day. I stood in the driveway, leaning on my shovel, trying hard to breathe [I’m fighting bronchitis], and thought, “A snow blower of my own isn’t in my budget. But you know what? Having a heart attack isn’t in my budget either.” So when the driveway was clear, I employed it to drive away to K Mart to buy an 8 horsepower Craftsman snow blower. I knew I’d get a better price if I waited till after Christmas, but that would mean another day’s shoveling.

The Christmas day snow wasn’t primo stuff for blowing. Very heavy and wet (what some of us [or me, anyway] call “coronary snow” in these parts). But tonight’s snow (where was my neighbor? Probably someplace warm, I’m guessing) was as granular as Sahara sand, and fine as mummy dust.

I expect it’ll all blow back in, with the strong winds expected tonight. But I made the effort. My dad would have been proud with me.

Except that he’d have said, “You missed a spot. Over there.”

“All our entertainments, good as they may be in themselves, can all too often function like sedatives that mask our awareness of some underlying tedium in our reality.” – Richard Winter

Read a brief devotion on this topic at Living Christ 360.

The following is from a poem by Ogden Nash, probably about 80 years old, called, “Good-bye, Old Year, You Oaf, or Why Don’t They Pay the Bonus?”

My goodness, if there’s anything in heredity and environment

How can people expect the newborn year to manifest any culture or refironment?

Every New Year is the direct descendant, isn’t it, of a long line of proven criminals?

And you can’t turn it into a philanthropist by welcoming it with cocktails and champagne, any more than with prayer books and hyminals….

Nevertheless, all the staff at Brandywine Books wish you as happy a new year as may reasonably be expected, under prevailing conditions.

And remember, it’s pronounced “Twenty-Ten!”

Here’s an introduction to falconry. Be the first on your block to master this skill.

I’m not back to full speed on my blogging–whatever that means–but I want to direct your attention today to news and items which are probably not worth your attention, but they will make for some darn interesting conversation with the certain people, maybe those people you’d like to avoid.

First, The Very Short List points out Abebooks’ Wierd Titles, a collection of books you may have seen at the used bookstore and wonder how the fruit something like that got published. Pratical titles like Help! A Bear Is Eating Me! and impractical ones like The Teach Your Chicken to Fly Training Manual. Of course, there are several of unsavory titles, and I don’t mean Critter Cuisine, the guide to dishes made from your backyard. Be forewarned.

Second, Obit Magazine has a feature story on bizarre deaths from this year. For example, “in Vienna, Austria, Gunter Link, a devout Catholic, grabbed a pillar at church as he gave thanks for being rescued from a stuck elevator.” Somehow the pillar supported a 860lb. stone monument and was unstable enough to topple and crush him. Worshippers attending Mass the next day discovered the body.