The DMR book blog has profiled me today. You can read it here. Thanks to D. M. Ritzlin for giving me the exposure.
Category Archives: Blogs, Socials
Let’s Just Say I Know What I Know, Midwestern History, And Truthful Jokes
It’s easy to overgeneralize, and when someone is battle-scarred, he may overgeneralize combatively.
I worked at a men’s conference in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, several years ago, during which a speaker made some mildly controversial points in an aggressive manner. I think this man felt he was under attack because he lacked support for his work. He probably had to argue for his point of view, if not the reality of his experience (it was on the fringe). “Nobody knows what’s happening,” he’d say. “Why doesn’t anyone see this?” he might ask. And at least one time, that question would have been answered with the fact that many of those in the room knew saw what he saw. We agreed. We didn’t need to be persuaded, and we weren’t fighting him on that point.
Too many of us are willing to say no one is talking about something important, when the truth is we only know something of what’s being discussed in our small circle, including the limited amount of news we can consume. The noise or silence on select social media can convince us that everyone is or isn’t talking about something.
The solution, of course, is humility. We know what we know, and even that could be wrong. We walk on to the best of our knowledge coram Deo.
Midwesterners Unite: A review of a new history of the American Midwest. “In contrast to prevailing clichés and the modern platitudes about backwardness, sterility, racial injustice, and oppression, an in-depth look at the history of the American Midwest reveals a land of democratic vigor, cultural strength, racial and gender progress, and civic energy — a Good Country, a place lost to the mists of time by chronic neglect but one well worth recovering, for the sake of both the accuracy of our history and our own well-being.”
Reading: Contrasting styles, subjects, and tones can act as palate cleansers between books. “They have to be short, they have to be relatively undemanding, and if it’s a re-read, so much the better.”
Satire: The head of the Babylon Bee talks about writing jokes that smack of the truth and the blowback his company has received from media outlets. “The absurd has become sacred only because it hasn’t been sufficiently mocked.”
English-American-Scottish Words: George Grant has an audio piece on the clash of words between the English speakers of America, Britain, and Scotland.
Theater: “Excuse me, sir; are you with the show?”
“Well, let’s just say I’m not against it.”
Photo: Old gas station, Odebolt, Iowa. 1987. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.
Comfort in Christ, Acceptable Sins, and Fantasy Nihilism
This afternoon, I was wishing for comfort food, blankets, and books. It’s been a long week. Will I take my fatigue to the little comforts around me and drink too much coffee, or will I remember my weakness before the Lord? Will I console myself with my gifts or with the Giver? (There’s a phrase that’s probably said in a pulpit somewhere at least once every Sunday.)
A child may not have a penny in his pocket, yet he feels quite rich enough if he has a wealthy father. You may be very, very poor, but oh! what a rich Father you have! Jesus Christ’s Father is your Father. And as He has exalted His own dear Son, He will do the same for you in due time. Our Lord Jesus is the firstborn among many brethren and the Father means to treat the other brethren even as He treats Him. Your Father has made you one of His heirs—yea, a joint heir with Jesus Christ—what more would you have?
Charles Spurgeon, in a sermon delivered Sept. 17, 1899
And what links do we have today?
Wendell Berry: “The public certainly retains a keen sense that some actions and attitudes are wrong, and public figures often condemn particular offenses with totalizing ferocity. As Berry notes, the ‘old opposition to sin’ remains, but he worries we have narrowed the acts that count as sin. He warns that ‘nothing more reveals our incompleteness and brokenness as a public people than our self-comforting small selection of public sins.'”
Fantasy nihilism: “HBO has succeeded in identifying popularity and prestige with immorality. Things that could not have been shown in prime time 20 years back are now the only prime time fare there is.”
Graham Greene: In 1950, author Graham Greene was stuck on an America-bound ocean liner with a reporter who shoved a mic and camera in his face. The reporter was Jack Mangan, who was working on his ABC TV series “Ship’s Reporter.” Dwyer Murphey shares a video and some details.
Reading: Need a device to help you read several volumes without requiring you to move? Consider this design by Italian military engineer Agostino Ramelli: the bookwheel.
Bookstores: Booksellers adapt to new customer patterns. “We like having browsers, but we don’t depend on it. This idea that a person is going to come to a bookstore and browse, it doesn’t sustain the business now.”
Jokes are evil? Here’s a YouTuber who talks about writing and breaks down comic book stories and select movies to learn more about writing well. Last month, he riffed on an issue of X-Men: Years of Future Past to discuss a theme in that story, that jokes are evil.
Photo: Texaco gas pumps, Milford, Illinois. 1977. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.
Will We Overcome by Faith, Remembering Poetry, and the Importance of Librarians
Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory begins in a Mexican state that has outlawed the church and attempted to drive Christianity out of its culture. Priests have been executed. Churches have been repurposed or destroyed.
The first section contrasts two priests. Both are despicable, but one deeply believes God made him a priest and that duty is irrevocable. Even when he wants to run away to save himself, he turns back at the call of duty. The other, Padre José, is a priest in name only.
In one scene, José is walking alone between grave stones and interrupts a family burying a child. “They had been quite resigned until he had appeared, but now they were anxious, eager.” They are familiar with and resigned to the patterns of death, but when they see José, they remember their hope. They beg him to pray for their daughter, saying he could trust them not to say anything to the authorities.
“But that was the trouble–he could trust no one.” He fears one of them will naturally tell someone else, and he will be found. The family has more faith than he does. All he can do is tremble in the grip despair has on him.
Believer, it doesn’t take a murderous state to press you into fear that sharing or expressing your faith publicly will get you condemned. Mere criticism can do that, but God is greater and calls us to overcome the world and our own pride by being transformed by the knowledge of him.
Poetry: In this old blog post, Patrick Kurp shares an anecdote of Shirley Hazzard talking with Graham Greene about remembering lines of poetry.
Coffee: A rambling post on coffee, writers, and books. Camus asked, “Should I kill myself or have a cup of coffee?” Did that man say anything worth hearing?
Book Blogs: Are these the 50 best book blogs of 2022? How could they be? We aren’t on the list.
Librarians: “A Good Research Librarian Can Help You Find Information You Didn’t Even Know You Needed” (via Books, Inq)
Photo: B.P.O.E. Elks Lodge, Alturas, California. 1991. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.
No One Said Liberty Would Be Easy
The Critic: “Most of all Johnson wrote to drive away demons.”
Religious Liberty: A new book by Norte Dame political scientist Vincent Phillip Muñoz “provides one of the best treatments we have on the meaning of the religion clauses” focusing on the debates held in each state “about establishments and religious freedom. . . . These debates, and the views of a spectrum of Founders, allow Muñoz to craft a convincing argument. He contends that the founding generation’s concept of religious liberty was rooted, first and foremost, in natural law and inalienable natural rights.”
Science Fiction: Disney now has creative input into the BBC’s Doctor Who series, boasting it with financial support. I loved the classic series growing up. I watched every episode broadcast on PBS from Jon Pertwee’s run (#3), Tom Baker’s (#4 and still the best ever), Peter Davidson’s (#5), and Colin Baker’s (#6). I may have watched all the episodes with Sylvester McCoy, but the show lost its appeal for me during that time. Recently, I watched the new season 5 and part of 6 with Matt Smith, who is great as a title character, but over half of the stories were so much nonsense, I lost interest again.
Book Banning: At least 520 Penguin Random House staff and connections are arguing that Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s book contract be cancelled. They don’t oppose free speech, they write. They aren’t calling for censorship. “Rather, this is a case where a corporation has privately funded the destruction of human rights with obscene profits.”
Photo: Tivoli Theater, Stephenson, Michigan. 1980. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.
Old Ogden Nash Hardcovers, Praising e-Readers, and Brain-Changing Reading
For some years, I’ve had a water damaged copy of Ogden Nash’s Good Intentions. Here’s a look at a good copy of it; this one has the slip cover too (I hadn’t seen it before).
Yesterday, I found similar red, hardback copies of Many Long Years Ago, a collection of mostly previously published verse from 1931-1945, and The Private Dining Room, new verse published in 1953. I refrained from replacing Good Intentions or buying another volume they had, so you know what that says about me. We don’t need to say it out loud. I also could have purchased one of a couple more recently published anthologies. This is one of them. But, if I do anything, I’d like a set of the five red hardcovers.
Here are a few lines from Many Long Years Ago.
“Who wishes his self-esteem to thrive
Should belong to a girl of almost five.”
“We’ll remind each other it’s smart to be thrifty
And buy our clothes for something-fifty.”
“If turnips were watches they’d make as good eating as turnips.”
Reading: In praise of e-readers and the joy of winning an argument with a print-only reader who has so many books that he loses the ones he has.
How would Jesus advertise? I have a hard time believing Jesus would encourage us to spend millions on advertising his character traits. How many vice is being funded with a Super Bowl ad? But I also have a hard time throwing stones at this.
Does reading change the brain? “When it comes to a cultural trace in the form of literature, we would really like to know whether there is some sort of permanent alteration to the structure of the brain.” They chose Robert Harris’s Pompeii to see if they could detect a small brain change.
Banned Books: Anthony Sacramone has a book challenge for public schools. “Try and get all these at one go onto a public school curriculum (NYC, LA, SF) and see how that goes. I’d love to be proven wrong.”
Mystery: John Wilson reviews another Cameron Winter story, A Strange Habit of Mind, by Andrew Klavan, to be released in a few days.
The Powerful Rings So Far, Libraries, and Freedom in Commitment
Someone in our house picked up Amazon Prime, which means we’ve watched five episodes of The Rings of Power. If you remember what Lars said about not watching it, those reasons still stand. After the first two shows, I told the rest of my family it was not a Tolkien’s story, but a good fantasy that leaned heavily on Tolkien’s established world. It could have been independent of Middle Earth, but then it wouldn’t have gotten all of the hype, fans of Tolkien wouldn’t have come out of the woodwork to comment, and it wouldn’t have disappointed viewers as badly as it has.
I can’t say I’m in the most disappointed camp yet, though I have my complaints. Straight out of the gate, the writers tell us there was a time without darkness, which I took to mean evil had yet to come into the world, but they follow those words with little Galadriel getting bullied over her toy boat. Then they say, you know why a boat floats and a rock sinks? It’s because a boat has hope and keeps it head up. If the dialogue had maintained that level of inanity for the whole first episode, I would have dropped it, but it improved. Not before arguing that Galadriel, who had bent her life on stamping out Sauron, was in danger of sustaining the evil by seeking it, because if evil isn’t out there, but you think it is, then you could become the very thing you seek.
Those were meta level reasons I said the story wasn’t Tolkienesque, but it still seemed okay as we moved along. Characters weren’t doing stupid things until maybe episode five. A wizard-like character who fell from the sky has not been explained–he’s interesting. The Sylvan elf is the only one fighting at this point and has gotten in some good Legolas moves. The Duran-Elrond storyline is good overall.
But with episode five, things have begun to turn sour. There’s a laughable fighting tutorial that suggests swordmen should fight with their feet, not with their arms. An actor with stage fighting experience has a couple videos in response to this part of the show, in which he explains how actors swing weapons to appear lethally aimed when they aren’t and what the camera must do to make a battle look real.
I could say more, but many others have said many things about this show already. I should just move on with blogroll links.
Bookcases: “We’re so enamored of digital technology we often presume its superiority; worse, we sometimes forget its alternatives even qualify as technologies.” Joel Miller recommends a bookcase as the most underrated user interface we have.
Coffee: Artist Alyssa Ennis paints detailed architecture and landmarks of Northeast Ohio using pencils and coffee. Her dad sculpts wildlife models from wood.
Liberty: Peter Mommsen writes about our love of liberty, fear of commitment, and the freedom found in making good vows. “I soon discovered that being bound [by a vow] didn’t feel like a loss of liberty. On the contrary, once the step had been taken, paralyzing daydreams about other possible life paths disappeared . . .”
Libraries: The Palafoxiana Library in Puebla, Mexico is the oldest public library in the Americas. “On the first floor, there are more than 11,000 Bibles, religious documents and theological texts. The second level is dedicated to the relationship between God and people — chronicles of religious orders and the lives of saints — and the third contains books on physics, mathematics, botany, language, architecture, even carpentry.” (via Arts Journal)
Photo: Springfield Library, Springfield, Massachusetts. 1984. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.
Where Do You Want to Read?
Reading: Where do you like to read? A hammock, a couch, an overstuffed chair? At a desk, on a bench, or while walking somewhere? The chair in the photo above would suit me well for firmness and lighting.
I feel I can’t read in half of my house without falling asleep, and while it would be easy to blame my age now, I don’t think that has been the reason for my fatigue or maybe mental laziness before now. I am a poor, distracted, uncompelled reader for the most part. No one will learn of my literary habits in the coming years and find in them a pattern to follow.
Historic Novels: Some books are not comfort reads. Gina Dalfonzo says she had trouble sleeping after reading The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell. It’s a novel about Lucrezia de’ Medici, the wife of Alfonso II d’Este, Duke of Ferrara, who died at age 16, and is remembered mainly as the subject of Robert Browning’s, “My Last Duchess.”
That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Saith the Duke with every indication that he suspected his Duchess of infidelity or perhaps, more vaguely, unworthiness.
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now; Fra Pandolf’s hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Jotting Notes: Patrick Kurp has a few small notes in his Bible of 60 years. They don’t reveal much.
What is she holding? The woman in this 1860s painting by Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller has all the appearances of holding a smartphone.
Nobel Prize: French author Annie Ernaux has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Photo by Nick Hillier on Unsplash
An Artist of the Brandywine School, a Best-of List, and Dreaming of October
Artist and illustrator N. C. Wyeth (1882-1945), trained by the famous Howard Pyle and painter of the Brandywine School, produced illustrations for many Scribner’s Classics editions such as Treasure Island, Kidnapped, The Last of the Mohicans and The Yearling.
Best of: Ted Gioia offers his paid subscribers his reviews of the 50 best works of non-realist fiction (sci-fi, alt-history, fantasy, and more). Read the list for free (part one of five so far). The reviews are behind the paid wall.
Gothic Stories: Ray Bradbury released 27 stories in a collection called Dark Carnival. Eight year later, he had matured considerably as a writer and was able to republish a new, revised edition of 19 tales under the name October Country.
In this short span, he wrote his breakthrough story cycle, The Martian Chronicles, a book that signified a start to the genre’s inclusion in mainstream literature; published the celebrated science-fiction collection The Illustrated Man; followed up with the underrated collection of mixed fiction (fantasy and contemporary realist prose), The Golden Apples of the Sun; wrote his magnum opus, Fahrenheit 451; and began work on the screenplay for Moby-Dick for director John Huston.
Theology: Dale Nelson reviews a preface to fantasy author George MacDonald’s theology. He favored Christmas over the cross. “Christ came to show us complete childlike trust in the Father.”
What’s in a name? “Six months and still your parents couldn’t name
the boy they wished a girl. They let a crowd
of tipsy cooers at their resort pluck
Edwin from a hat.”
Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra (V.ii)
Cleopatra: His legs bestrid the ocean, his reared arm
Crested the world. His voice was propertied
As all the tunèd spheres, and that to friends;
But when he meant to quail and shake the orb,
He was as rattling thunder. For his bounty,
There was no winter in ’t; an autumn ’twas
That grew the more by reaping. His delights
Were dolphin-like; they showed his back above
The element they lived in. In his livery
Walked crowns and crownets; realms and islands
were
As plates dropped from his pocket.
Dolabella: Cleopatra—
C: Think you there was, or might be, such a man
As this I dreamt of?
D: Gentle madam, no.
Your Starting Word is Everything, Jazz Hope, and Manhood
Yesterday, the socials were torn up with complaints about the Wordle word of the day. Wordle renews at midnight, and some people rush to solve it first. I usually play it in the middle day, and yesterday I happened to see the angst from other players ahead of time.
The word was parer. It’s not Merrium-Websters or Oxford, but it is the American Heritage. This is enough to inspire fulminating effusions of grief over how hard the game is or the loss of a win streak. It’s not even a real word, they say.
I did guess this word, perhaps because it’s one in another word game I play but perhaps because the perceived difficulty of a Wordle level depends on your starting word. You could go vowel heavy (audio, ideas, adieu) or consonant heavy (smart, plumb, track). You could attempt more common letters (scope, trace, broke).
I like word light (or sight, might, fight) because of the common letters. If H is eliminated, then CH and SH are too. If I is out, then AI, OI, EI are too.
But with a word like parer, if you approach it as PA_ER, then you can see the potential for angst. Is it paper, paver, pager? When you have a word like this, it’s good to attempt a word with three possible letters, like grave, so if all three out, you can attempt a fourth option, like the P if the R hadn’t been the answer.
I’m sure, as they say in the podcasts, nobody cares. Let’s move on.
Manhood: For the Church | Episode 177: Brant Hansen on The Men We Need. Here’s an enjoyable podcast ep. on a manhood book that may be more grounded than some of those you’ve heard about. Hansen, an “Avid Indoorsman,” appears to keep his advice within the bounds of Scripture and argue for flip-flops as a sign of failed masculinity.
True Crime: “Nothing But the Night takes readers back to 1924, when two students at the University of Chicago, Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, kidnapped a fourteen-year-old boy named Bobby Franks and callously killed him. When the crime came to trial, Leopold and Loeb were defended by the celebrity lawyer Clarence Darrow, whose passionate courtroom antics were read in newspapers and circulated like the latest radio drama.” (Get the book here)
Education: In the book Letters Along the Way, a young believer says he intends to go to Yale to help Christians gain academic respectability. The corresponding senior saint writes, “At the risk of sounding pedantic (though realizing I sometimes come across that way), I doubt very much that evangelicals are wise to pursue academic respectability. What we need is academic responsibility. There is a world of difference.”
Jazz: In the current issue of ByFaith (not yet online), there’s a conversation with jazz pianist William Edgar, who is also a professor at Westminster Theological Seminary. He says, “I used to be fairly pessimistic about the future of jazz, but then I listen to these guys like Jon Baptiste or the guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel, and it’s the real thing. . . . it’s the theme of my book, ‘from deep misery to inextinguishable joy.’ You can’t take a shortcut to the joy, because it becomes happiness instead. You also can’t swell in the sin without becoming morbid. Jazz is that journey that goes from one place to the others.”
You can listen to Jon Baptiste with friends in this recording from 2020.
Photo: Fire Department, Columbus, Indiana. 1977. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.