I love these lines from an Aline Kilmer poem:
When people inquire I always just state:
“I have four nice children and hope to have eight.
Though the first four are pretty and certain to please,
Who knows but the rest may be nicer than these?”
Even if they aren’t nicer, they will be my children, and I will love them better, I hope, than I have in the past.
A ticket agent says the movie States of Grace is “being advertised as a Christian film, but it’s really a Mormon film,” and Mormons are shocked, claiming to be Christians. Ted Olson, Christianity Today’s online managing editor, reports on other complaints Mormons have had in the news and concludes with this:
Even more [evangelicals] see Mormons as non-Christians—-or worse—-while seeing liberal Protestants as “bad Christians”—-though both groups equally deny classical Christian doctrine on revelation, the full divinity of Christ, the nature of man, and other key points.
With their strong family values, constant Jesus talk, and passion for evangelism, Mormons seem almost like evangelicals’ cultural twins. In some ways, they represent our ideal. Maybe that’s one reason why so many evangelicals are more comfortable with liberal Protestantism than with Mormonism. We like our differences stark, with red-and-blue color coding.
Is Ted being snarky here? I suggest the real difference b/w Mormons and liberals when evangelicals want to label them is a desire to avoid generalizations. Mormon doctrine is not Biblically sound, so a faithful Mormon can be safely label non-Christian, whereas Methodist or Episcopal doctrine may be sound despite what individual churches teach or what certain bishops say to reporters. You can’t broadbrush all Episcopals by calling them non-Christians. They aren’t, no matter how liberal their denomination appears to be. And you can’t call Mormons Christians no matter how much they talk about Jesus. They aren’t talking about the God/Man who words are recording in Scripture, and He never spoke to Joseph Smith either. [seen on Open Book]
I agree: “If you’re going to donate books to the local library, don’t just leave them in a suitcase outside the building.” Someone did that back on June 27 in Chicago. Large, leather suitcase on the sidewalk.
The police detonated it. [seen on Waterboro Library]
Walker wheeled his dolly through the Post Office door. A lady going out held the door for him, and he thanked her twice, embarrassed to have a door held for him by a woman.
It was a once-a-quarter chore, sending the returns back to the publisher. In order to have a variety of books to sell, the bookstore subscribed to a program by which the publisher sent them a couple cartons of overstocks, which would be displayed for three months, then returned. The bookstore paid for the invoice difference, if any. Not much this quarter. Precisely one book sold. Summer slump in a school bookstore.
He got in line and surveyed the dingy, cluttered service area. The building wasn’t very old, but the abrasion of bureaucracy had already erased any humanity the place had ever had. Walker missed the old-time Post Offices, temples of democracy with classical porticos and lots of brass. You felt like you were dealing with the majesty of the republic in those old places. You felt proud to be an American there. You scanned the wanted posters on the bulletin boards, inspired with civic zeal to ferret out wrongdoers for the good of the commonwealth.
He looked at the service windows to his left. Only two postal employees on duty, so it would be a wait. But she was on duty today. Maybe he’d luck out and be one of her customers. Maybe a Sublime Moment would happen, somehow….
Such a lovely woman. You didn’t expect to see a woman who looked like that working for the Post Office. He couldn’t guess her age. She might be in her thirties, she might be as old as fifty. Impossible to tell. With that bone structure, she’d be beautiful until the day she died. The kind of bone-deep beauty Katherine Hepburn had, though she didn’t look at all like Hepburn. A petite woman with shoulder-length blonde hair and blue eyes. A kind of aquiline face, its planes clean and perfect. If she wore makeup, it wasn’t apparent.
And no wedding ring….
Helen gave the lady her receipt and looked to the next customer, saying, “Can I help you?” That customer, a guy with a beard, seemed to be woolgathering. The guy in line behind him nudged him, and he roused himself and wheeled two cartons on a dolly up to her window.
Great. Boxes to lift. Again.
Boxes of books. She knew it was books because she recognized the customer. Some sort of bookstore employee. He came in now and then, and he always wore a tie and a hat. Even on a summer day like this. Odd bird.
Too fat, but he had interesting salt-and-pepper hair, and his face looked younger than the hair indicated. She wondered what he was like. He was always polite and well-spoken. She glanced at his hand. No ring.
“All books. Media Mail,” he said.
They went through the rigmarole. As always, he didn’t want insurance or special services. He pulled out a business check and had it filled in except for the amount by the time she had a figure for him.
“If he asked me out, would I say yes?” she asked herself. “Might be interesting to find out what a guy who dresses like this is like. Probably a weirdo, though.”
“Any stamps?” she asked.
“In a separate transaction,” he said.
“Doesn’t charge his own stamps to his company,” she thought. “Minimally honest, at least. Better than my last boyfriend.”
She lifted the plastic display page. “We have these stamps,” she said.
“I’ll take a sheet of the Reagan stamps.”
She swore to herself. A bleeping Republican.
“Thank you,” she said when he paid her.
“Thank you,” he replied, wheeling his empty dolly away.
(The story above is true, except for the lies. It’s a fair description of my trip to the Post Office today, but I made up Helen’s [not her name] thoughts [certainly wrong].
Inventing scenarios like this is one of the things that make me a novelist.
Also one of the things that make me a total dork.)
J. Mark Bertrand points out a couple podcasts he participated in during this summer’s Worldview Academy. (part 1, part 2)They are the two parts of an interesting discussion on why we should care about literature.
In the second part, I believe Mark makes a great point about the instincts of his students. Though they may question how someone can say one writer is better than another, they fully understand how someone can say one band is better than another. Personal taste does come into play a bit, but an experienced listener can make a good case that one band, even a band he doesn’t enjoy, is more skilled than another. The same with writers. There’s more to be said, but I’ll leave it there.
Here’s a fun, art-related animation which you may not have seen. It’s “Animator vs. Animation.”
The Chicago Tribune aulso got into th act, uezing simpler spelingz in th nuezpaeper for about 40 years, ending in 1975. Plae-riet George Bernard Shaw, hoo roet moest of his mateerial in shorthand, left muny in his wil for th development of a nue English alfabet. . . . But for aul th hi-proefiel and skolarly eforts, the iedeea of funy-luuking but simpler spelingz didn’t captivaet the masez then — or now.
From the article, “Push for Simpler Spelling Persists,” by AP Writer Darlene Superville. She says the idea of overhauling English spelling has not captured “th publix imajinaeshun.”
Alan of Thinklings is talking about an article in which Peter Leithart argues that Modern Protestants can’t write. He says it has something to do with Zwingli. Maybe I’m in a mood tonight, but I find that I don’t care. I don’t care why we haven’t written well in the past. Some write now, and no light-weight, commercially successful novel from an evangelical author takes away from their artist effort. God will raise up artwork to glorify himself. I don’t care who complains about, heh, mere entertainment.
The Thinklings carry on part of the discussion in relation to movies.
Erin O’Connor is talking about John McGahern:
There were many other things I should have been doing in my little garret in my remote, undisclosed Irish location, and morning tends to be my best time for getting things I should be doing done. But this novel was too terrible to be deferred. It needed to be dispatched with as much speed as several cups of strong milky tea could make me read. By “terrible” I should clarify that I don’t refer in any way to the quality of McGahern’s writing–quite the opposite. McGahern has an awesome ability to conjure up the minute but powerful tensions and pleasures of daily life in mid-twentieth century rural Ireland. His fiction is quiet and unassuming . . .
I made my memorial to Jim Baen tonight. The family and staff had asked that in lieu of memorials, people purchase copies of the story collection, The World Turned Upside Down and give them either to young people or to libraries. I got my copy today, took it to my nearest branch library, inscribed it as given by Lars Walker in memory of Jim Baen (in the fashion of the Pharisee in the temple with the trumpet) and made the donation.
Speaking of Baen Books, my best author friend is Mike Williamson, author of Freehold, which is a very good science fiction book in the Robert E. Heinlein/Libertarian/Lots of Sex style. Mike told me recently about a book called Atlanta Nights, by “Travis Tea.”
There’s a story behind this book, and you can get the details by checking out the site. But the short version (as I understand it) is this—there’s a company called PublishAmerica (sort of a cross between a vanity publisher and a publish-on-demand house, I’m told) which is not popular with Science Fiction/Fantasy writers. Representatives of the company took a swipe at SF and Fantasy writers as a group, so a devious cabal of SF/F authors got together and decided to write the worst novel they could possibly come up with, to see how PublishAmerica would handle it.
As you’ve probably guessed, it was accepted for publication immediately.
Hilarious story, and a warning to all aspiring authors.