Some people don’t know anything about manhood. Thanks to Tony Woodlief for setting them straight.
A real man, on the other hand, protects and provides for his family, and partners with his wife to train up his children in the way they should go. He isn’t necessarily gabby, but his children know in their souls that he loves them. He is patient and kind. He lays down his life for his family every day.
I’ll agree with that. Fatherhood is hardest thing I’ve ever done.
“I believe Christian fiction in general is now at least as good as all the other genres. I think this is slowly becoming an accepted fact, even among publishers and critics outside the Christian world. In fact, it seems to me most of the opinions one still reads to the contrary are from Christian writers who have not managed to get published, and one suspects their motives, to say the least. I say this as an extremely demanding reader. I do not finish about half of the novels I start, because I cannot bear poor craftsmanship or boring stories, regardless of the message. I will not support a Christian artist simply because he is a Christian. That would demean Christianity itself. But these days I find myself abandoning non-Christian novels with about the same frequency as Christian ones, so yes indeed, we have come a long, long way.” Thus spake Athol Dickson earlier this year.
Up in these parts, w’re such slaves to mindless tradition that, year after year, we all rake our leaves in the fall. No imagination.
This year I did it in a big way. I took out the whole tree.
Yes, it’s gone. Today dawned rainy, with scattered thunderstorms, and I thought, “Blast it. The tree guy’ll never take my tree down in weather like this. Somebody could get gaussed by lightning.”
But he called me at work in the morning and told me he’d have it out by noon.
Mark you, this is the low bidder. Lower by about $300 than anybody else I talked to. But he got in there and hustled, and the tree was gone before the clouds cleared. (And yes, he is licensed and insured.)
It’s good to have the Sword of Damocles retracted from my place of residence, believe me. Still, I’ll miss the old tree. For a long time I thought it was an ash. This pleased me, because the ash tree is central to Norse mythology. In the Norse system, the universe itself was a great ash tree, and like mine it was a little sick, with things gnawing at it, requiring care and nutrition.
However, it turns out to have been some odd kind of elm (it never matched any of the pictures I found in tree identification web sites, which is what confused me).
That makes the loss easier to bear. The increased air conditioning costs, due to reduced shade, will hit me in the summer.
I read Brad Thor’s Blowback over the weekend. I don’t think it rates a long review. Enough to say that I like the politics (the president seems to be a fictionalized version of George W. Bush, and his political nemesis is a very nasty female Democratic senator with presidential aspirations, whose initials are H.R.C.). It was fast-moving, like a Roger Moore James Bond movie, and about as substantive. The characters had all the depth of Murine eye drops.
Not bad for recreational reading, when you’re waiting for a plane or something, but I’d prefer conservative fiction with a little more substance.
I’ll be gone for a week starting tomorrow. I’ll check in from Minot and Høstfest if I get a chance. Pictures when I get back, perhaps, so you can share the aesthetic delights of Norwegian-sweater-and-cowboy-hat couture.
Your prayers worked. I found a guy who’ll take the tree down pretty inexpensively, and he plans to do it on Monday.
Thank you.
Tree update: I know how you’ve all been checking this space hourly for my removal situation, so I bow to public pressure and announce that I’ve changed my mind. Or made a decision. Or something.
I’m going to give up on the plan to get the tree removed in a week and a half by a guy who’ll do it cheap, and I’m going to get a professional to do it now.
Because the more I look at the thing, and see how thin the split trunk is, and how many branches are balancing on that trunk, I know I won’t sleep decently until the whole thing is safely on the ground.
Also because if we were to get a big wind, and the thing went over on my roof, I think the insurance company would stiff me (with good reason), knowing I’d let a dangerous tree stand.
It’ll put me way in hock, but I think it’s the responsible choice.
Here’s a couple links for your weekend enjoyment.
“In the beginning was the Word,” in more than one sense. It seems some scholars now believe that the Hebrews invented vowels. Hat tip: Mirabilis.
And Dennis Ingolfsland at The Recliner Commentaries explains (in case you’ve been to college and lost your ability to reason) some major differences between Christian and Muslim Fundamentalism.
If you care to pray for me, pray that I get a cheap bid, and that I can finish the business in time to still get to Minot.
America’s greatest theologian, Johnathan Edwards, was born on this day in 1703. From his work Religious Affections, he wrote:
. . . who will deny that true religion consists, in a great measure, in vigorous and lively actings of the inclination and will of the soul, or the fervent exercises of the heart. That religion which God requires, and will accept, does not consist in weak, dull and lifeless wouldings, raising us but a little above a state of indifference: God, in his Word, greatly insists upon it, that we be in good earnest, fervent in spirit, and our hearts vigorously engaged in religion: “Be ye fervent in spirit, serving the Lord” (Rom. 12:11). . . . ‘Tis such a fervent, vigorous engagedness of the heart in religion, that is the fruit of a real circumcision of the heart, or true regeneration, and that has the promises of life; “And the Lord thy God will circumcise thine heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the Lord thy God, with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live” (Deut. 30:6). If we ben’t in good earnest in religion, and our wills and inclinations be not strongly exercised, we are nothing.
This book is “meant to capture this moment … a book blog keepsake, when book blogs are exploding across the web … in it we talk about the ones who are good, who should be sought out, communicated with and encouraged.” [via Books, Inq.]
So it’s Banned Books Week for the American Library Association, and people are taking to the streets to ban or burn their favorite books. What? That’s not happening in your neighborhood? Well, don’t just sit there. Go to the library and complain about something. Freedom of choice in reading starts with you.
So have you read a “banned book” lately? Funny how you got hold of one. Black market book fair, I guess?
Speaking of choice, O.J. Simpson’s book, So What If I Did It?, has been published, and Barnes and Noble apparently announced that they would not distribute it. The public arose to say they wanted it, and the bookseller recanted. As Charles Kaine writes, “Barnes and Noble, on a daily basis, declines to carry dozens, if not hundreds, of titles, and yet we do not get a daily press release from them announcing what they won’t be carrying. Why did they choose to make this one book so special?” Why? They were trying to win some publicity points, of course. Maybe they did.
Still, Kaine argues against their initial decision. “When large corporations start making choices for us,” he says, “deciding for us what we can and can’t read based on what they perceive to be the popular opinion, we, the American public, are in serious danger of losing our right to choose.” But isn’t that the nature of the publishing process, people at large and small corporations deciding whether a manuscript should be published? If we had all the choice we could stomach, every writer would be published, and that would not be a victory for the American or world reader. (Enter The Blog to glut the reader’s stomach.)
Books are published from a community, are they not? The publishing community, composed of editors, writers, managers, designers, publicists, printers, and booksellers, take a manuscript from idea to print. Some of them hold the reigns on every potential book, holding it at standstill or spurring it forward to publication. There are good stories that are not being published and bad ones that are. Do we want more bad stories to choose from or responsible editors to hold them back?
The real battle over choice is in the news business. In that arena, editors filter stories through a condescending elitists grid. Where’s the choice there? And public education–where’s the choice there?! Okay, I’ll stop.
Discovery House Publishers has revised their website and is offering free shipping on all orders through Sunday, October 7.
In other info tidbits, if you are looking for the WaterBrook Press site, follow this link, not this one.
And if you’re longing for another of those books about books, something along the lines of a “hilarious epic fantasy” involving a city which is akin to “a gigantic second-hand bookshop,” you could do worse than cracking open The City of Dreaming Books.
Mowed the lawn tonight. I’d hoped to wait until the branches were cleaned up from my fallen tree, but my branch removing guy still hasn’t shown up yet, and the weekend’s supposed to be rainy, and I’m going away on Tuesday (burglars, don’t take that as a hint. My renter will still be here, and he’s a former Navy Seal who’s always armed).
My current cause for night sweats is the thought of another unusually strong wind before the tree gets removed, so that it falls on my house. And the insurance company will refuse to pay because I knew the tree was dangerous and hadn’t had it removed yet.
Carol Platt Liebau is hosting Hugh Hewitt’s show tonight, and she’s been talking about the declaration of Dr. James Dobson and some other pro-life leaders that they’ll vote for a third party candidate if a spotless pro-lifer isn’t nominated by the Republicans.
I suppose there’ll be some disagreement about this among our readers. But I’ll share my opinion, which I hold strongly. As always, the ideas and opinions in this post do not necessarily reflect the ideas and opinions of Brandywine Books, its owners or management, or of real persons, living or dead.
I’ve admired and supported Dr. Dobson for many years. I’m grateful for his tireless work for good causes in this country.
But I got a renewal notice for Citizen Magazine today, and I decided to toss it. I don’t want Dr. Dobson to be able to claim me as a supporter at this point in history.
I remember hearing him say, on his radio program years back, that he’d decided that he would never again vote for any candidate who wasn’t solidly pro-life. I admired his passion, but I remember thinking I wasn’t sure that would always be the best policy.
I don’t think I’ll sleep better in an America where Hillary Clinton is president, and the Democrats control both houses of congress, and four brand spanking new loose constructionists sit on the Supreme Court, just because I can tell myself I voted for a righteous candidate.
Compromise isn’t just part of politics. Compromise is politics. If you can’t compromise, if you can’t accept a half a loaf today in the hope of getting more another day, then you shouldn’t become a political player.
This seems to me a doomsday tactic. It’s saying (and one of Carol’s callers said essentially this), “If I can’t have everything the way I want it, I’m happy to see the whole country devastated and the earth sown with salt, in the hope that something better will spring from the holocaust.”
That’s not conservative American principle. That’s what the hippies used to say in the 60s.