Justin Buzzard: “We lose power if we do not concentrate on the right thing.”
Christmas Books
Here are some Christmas book recommendations from the good people at Reformation 21. Stephen Nichols, who adds in another post Richard Doster’s Crossing the Lines, which I reviewed last summer.
Sean Lucas, who actually links to the books in his post.
All of these men recommend a new, beautiful release of Pilgrim’s Progress by Crossway Books. What I’ve seen of the illustrations look superbly fantastic. It’s worth our attention.
Leaving Their Names Off
Did you hear about The Manhattan Declaration a few weeks ago? The document says in part:
While the whole scope of Christian moral concern, including a special concern for the poor and vulnerable, claims our attention, we are especially troubled that in our nation today the lives of the unborn, the disabled, and the elderly are severely threatened; that the institution of marriage, already buffeted by promiscuity, infidelity and divorce, is in jeopardy of being redefined to accommodate fashionable ideologies; that freedom of religion and the rights of conscience are gravely jeopardized by those who would use the instruments of coercion to compel persons of faith to compromise their deepest convictions.
Here are a few very respected men who left their names off the declaration and their reasons for declining to sign.
High Entertainment
Lars refers to highbrow art in the last post. Obviously, he was thinking of this holiday classic:
There’s no need to thank me for bringing this up. It’s my pleasure.
Picasso’s violations
I don’t know why I write about art occasionally. I’m a confirmed middlebrow–if I don’t care for black velvet matadors or Thomas Kinkade, I don’t get Modernism or Abstract Art at all. But I liked to draw when I was a kid. I guess that gives me an illusory sense of comprehension.
Anyway, Joe Carter at First Thoughts posted a short piece on Picasso today that fascinated me, as it confirmed my prejudices.
What begins in the glow of realist love—or at the very least infatuation—ends in the violent disgust of Cubist distortion. Picasso’s love/hate relationship with the visible world was a visual expression of his love/hate relationship with the particular woman in his life at the time. Cubism, according to the evidence in Picasso’s paintings, is less the abstract juggling of shapes and colors than an index of sexual disgust.
Makes sense to me. See what you think.
Poe’s First Book Sells for $662,500
The auction on Edgar Allan Poe’s first book, which we mentioned before, has sold for $662,500. Note the beat-up book in the photo.
Dulcet tones online
I was interviewed recently by The Christian Authors Show with Don McCauley. You can hear this interview, today and tomorrow (maybe longer, but I’m not sure how that works) here.
Instead of posting, I’ll post this post
I’m barely functioning tonight. Last night I needed sleep and wanted sleep, but my brain (which hates me. With some justification) wouldn’t let me sleep. So just a few links.
My new novel, West Oversea, was just reviewed at The Old Schoolhouse Magazine, a journal for homeschooling families. Nice review, too.
One of my favorite blogs, Mitch Berg’s Shot In the Dark, has begun a series of hard-hitting exposes of the true, never-before-revealed roots of organized crime in America — the Norwegian mob. Mitch calls the Capo di tutti capi De Godenfar, but I prefer the name we used (in hushed whispers) back home — The Codfather.
Part One here.
Part Two here.
Part Three here.
More to come.
Also some scintillating comments from one of America’s finest young novelists.
The Fruit of the Spirit
“The best writing tip I ever got,” writes Andree Seu, was not a variety of good statements, but something much deeper.
Who moved my gap?
Today is the anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. What amazes me is that, whenever a world-changing event like this happens, we always hear people saying, “We must never forget. We will never forget.” We saw the same thing after the 9/11 attacks.
And yet, we always do forget. In other times, it took at least a generation for the forgetting to begin. It took the cultural hand-off to the children of the people who had actually been there for the amnesia to set in, and for the lessons to be unlearned.
Today, it only takes a few years. “Move on,” we’re told. “Mere historical events can teach us nothing. The writings of Howard Zinn, though—there we may find wisdom.”
That doesn’t mean the wisdom is lost.
We’ll learn the lesson again.
But it will cost a lot of human lives. Continue reading Who moved my gap?