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Sunday Salon: September

Sep1

It’s the beginning of the –brrr months, as my husband calls them, our favorite season of the year. We’ve started school, had our disasters and reluctant bouts with self-discipline, and now it’s time to settle in, learn, and enjoy the autumn. Autumn is a lovely word, by the way, “from Old French, autumpne, or directly from the Latin, autumnus.”

I’ve done several autumnal series of posts about food over the years of this blog:

Apples: Fact, Fiction, Poetry and Recipe.

Pecans, the Nut of the Gods.

Autumn and Pumpkins

Potatoes: a Positively Ponderous Post.

You might enjoy reading about these autumn-ish foods as we head into September.

Then, there are the books of September.
Due out in September, 2013:
The Song of the Quarkbeast by Jasper Fforde. 09/03/2013 The Chronicles of Kazam, Book Two, sequel to The Last Dragonslayer.
Rose Under Fire by Elizabeth Wein. 09/10/2013
Silence: A Christian History by Diarmaid MacCulloch. 09/12/2013
United We Spy by Ally Carter. 09/17/2013
The Book of Common Prayer: A Biography by Alan Jacobs. 09/30/2013

September Events and Books:
September, 1914. During World War I, after the Battle of the Marne, both sides reach a stalemate in northern France, and the armies face each other from trenches along a front that eventually stretches from the North Sea to the Swiss border with France. Reading about World War I.
In September 2009, Abby Johnson was called into an exam room at the Planned Parenthood clinic in Bryan, Texas to help with an ultrasound-guided abortion. What she saw in the ultrasound picture changed her mind about abortion, about the pro-life movement, and ultimately about her own relationship with a loving God. Read more in Abby’s book, Unplanned.
September 1, 1939. Germany invades Poland. Norway, Finland, Sweden, Spain and Ireland declare their neutrality. Later in September U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt announces that the U.S. will also remain neutral in the war. Mila 18 by Leon Uris tells the story of the Jewish people of Warsaw, Poland as they fought and hid from the Nazis who were determined to exterminate them.
September 7, 1977. The U.S. signs a treaty with Panama agreeing to transfer control of the Panama Canal to Panama at the end of the 20th century.
September 8, 1492. The Voyages of Christopher Columbus on the Santa Maria, Nina and Pinta begin. Pastwatch by Orson Scott Card includes both history (Christopher Columbus, native Central American cultures, and slavery) and futuristic/dystopian/utopian elements.
September 8, 1900: A deadly hurricane destroys much of the property on Galveston Island, Texas and kills between 6000 and 12000 people. The Galveston hurricane of 1900 is the deadliest natural disaster ever to strike the United States. Reading through a hurricane at Semicolon.
September 16, 1975. Papua New Guinea gains its independence from Australia. Peace Child by Don Richardson is a wonderful missionary story set in Papua New Guinea.
September 28, 1961. A military coup in Damascus, Syria effectively ends the United Arab Republic, the union between Egypt and Syria. Mitali Perkins recommends a couple of books set in Syria, in light of the present crisis in that war-torn country.

Birthdays and Books:
Jim Arnosky, writer of nature and art books for children, was born September 1, 1946.
Elizabeth Borton de Trevino, whose historical fiction book I, Juan de Pareja, won the Newbery Medal in 1966, was born September 2, 1904 in Bakersfield, California. Also born on September 2nd: Poet Eugene Field and children’s humorist Lucretia Hale.
Aliki Liacouras Brandenberg was born September 3, 1929.
Children’s author Joan Aiken was born on September 4, 1924 in Sussex, England.
Lost Horizon author James Hilton was born on September 9, 1900.
Short story master O’Henry was born September 11, 1862.
On September 13th, Carol Kendall (1937), children’s fantasy writer, Else Holmelund Minarik (1920), author of the Little Bear easy readers, Roald Dahl (1916), humorist, and Mildred Taylor (1943), historical fiction writer and Newbery medalist, were all born, greatly adding to the breadth and joy of children’s literature.
Essayist and lexicographer Samuel Johnson was born September 18, 1709.
September 19th is the birthday of Arthur Rackham, illustrator, b.1867, William Golding, novelist, b.1911, Rachel Field, children’s author.
Poet T.S. Eliot was born on September 26, 1888.
September 29th is the birthday of Elizabeth Gaskell, novelist, b.1810.

A Reading List for September 24, National Punctuation Day.

Autumn is my favorite season.

On the Day I Died by Candace Fleming

Oct16

I remember Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Twilight Zone. Paranormal fiction, phantoms and ghouls, stories of the weird, the supernatural, and the spectral.

What do kids watch nowadays when they want a good, old-fashioned ghostly supernatural story or creepy mystery (not romantic vampires or stupid zombies)? For that matter, what do they read? Neil Gaiman. Mary Downing Hahn. Goosebumps. Eventually they could graduate to Stephen King or X-Files, I guess.

But what if the reader is looking for ghost stories, not novels? The kind of stories that were presented by Mr. Hitchcock or introduced by Rod Serling on the Twilight Zone? The kind you tell on a camp out on a dark night?

Subtitled “Stories from the Grave”, Ms. Fleming’s book fits that niche. The book includes nine stories, set in and around Chicago, all about teenagers who died. These stories eschew the violence and gore that so often substitutes for real suspense and spookiness these days, and instead they go straight for that horrified, eerie response feeling. You know, when you ask yourself, “Could that really happen? Naaaaa, maybe, well?”

Mike is led to a graveyard by a ghostly hitchhiker, surrounded by the ghost of teens who need to tell their stories, and compelled to listen to those stories. For instance, there’s Scott (1995-2012) who didn’t believe in the supernatural until he decided to make a visit to the abandoned grounds of Chicago State Asylum for the Insane. Johnnie (1920-1936) was a juvenile delinquent with a predilection for revenge until one of his victims took her revenge on him. There’s also a “monkey’s paw” story (Lily 1982-1999), and another (Edgar 1853-1870) that’s a take off from Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, The Yellow Wallpaper.

I’d get this one, especially if you live in or are familiar with the Chicago area, just in time for Halloween. I can picture a Halloween party with older middle schoolers or young high schoolers dressed up as the dead people in the stories and prepared to tell their own “stories from the grave.”

The book could also be a springboard for research into your own local folklore about ghost sightings and death stories. Ms. Fleming began her stories with “memory and myth”, “local legend and folklore”, and “nearby places, real-life people, actual events.” She writes in the author’s notes at the end of the book, “The best ghost stories, I learned, should always include a kernel of truth.”

Maybe some of the stories at the website Ghosts of America could be starter seeds for your own book of ghostly tales. These stories are from my own hometown of San Angelo, Texas.

Some Labor Day Links

Sep3
'The boy who harnessed the wind' photo (c) 2009, afromusing - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

Happy Vocation Day by Gene Veith.

Labor of Love: Death of a Salesman & The Problem With Success by Karen Swallow Prior at Christ and Pop Culture.

Labor and Calling in Heart of a Shepherd by Roseanne Parry at Redeemed Reader.

Semicolon review of The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba and Bryn Mealer.

If you are not a Christian, where do you derive a philosophy that dignifies labor/work and gives it meaning?

Sunday Salon: More Fascinations (Quite Random)

Oct31

The Sunday Salon.com

First of all, Happy Halloween to all the saints, both those on earth and those who have preceded us into heaven. I believe that Christians can celebrate Halloween in good conscience and while giving glory to God in all we do. Here are some resources to read about this perspective on the celebration of Halloween:
Debunking Halloween Myths at The Flying Inn.
On Halloween by James Jordan.

I’m fascinated by young people who do hard things, like this 23 year old who has started an orphanage in Nepal.

Shakespeare really sounded like . . . a Scotsman?

Donate old cellphones to Hopeline to help women in crisis.

John Grisham’s latest thriller (yes, I admit to taking a guilty pleasure in reading the novels of Grisham) features a Lutheran pastor. I usually eschew popular, best-selling literature, unless I can say I discovered it before it became popular, in a sort of reverse, inside-out snobbery. But I make an exception for Grisham. I am tired of Grisham’s anti-death penalty agenda getting in the way of his story-telling, and from what I can tell by reading the review this latest book harps on that topic. I’ll probably read it anyway.

Jamie Langston Turner, who writes generally wonderful but quiet little stories, has another book or two that I haven’t read: No Dark Valley (reviewed at Hope Is the Word) and maybe a couple of older books: Suncatchers and By the Light of a Thousand Stars. I have read her latest book, Sometimes a Light Surprises, and I reviewed it here, although it wasn’t my favorite of her books.

Finally, the books I’ve read this month (October) have been mostly Cybils nominees and INSPY nominees, with a few exceptions thrown in for variety:

CYBILS MIddle Grade Fiction nominees:
Shooting Kabul by N.H. Senzai. Semicolon review here.
The Red Umbrella by Christina Diaz Gonzalez. Semicolon review here.
The Strange Case of Origami Yoda by Tom Angleberger. Semicolon review here.
The Fences Between Us by Kirby Larson. Semicolon review here.
I, Emma Freke by Elizabeth Atkinson. Semicolon review here.
Tortilla Sun by Jennifer Cervantes. Semicolon review here.
The Private Thoughts of Amelia E. Rye by Bonnie Shimko. Semicolon review here.
Wishing for Tomorrow by Hilary McKay. Semicolon review here.
A Million Shades of Gray by Cynthia Kadohata. Semicolon review here.
This Means War! by Ellen Wittlinger. Semicolon review here.
The Death-Defying Pepper Roux by Geraldine McCaughrean. Semicolon review here.
The Total Tragedy of a Girl Named Hamlet by Erin Dionne. Semicolon review here.
My Life as a Book by Janet Tashjian. Semicolon review here.
Grease Town by Ann Towell. Semicolon review here.
Max Cassidy: Escape from Shadow Island by Paul Adam. Semicolon review here.
Rocky Road by Rose Kent.
Crunch by Leslie Connor.
Leaving Gee’s Bend by Irene Latham.
Betti on the High Wire by Lisa Railsback.
Mamba Point by Kurtis Scaletta.

INSPYs Young Adult Fiction nominees:
This Gorgeous Game by Donna Freitas.
Once Was Lost by Sara Zarr.
(I’m not allowed to post a review of these until the judging is over in December.)

Others:
The Cardturner by Louis Sachar. Semicolon review here.
No and Me by Delphine de Vigan. Semicolon review here.
Keep Sweet by Michele Dominguez Greene.
Carney’s House Party by Maud Hart Lovelace. Semicolon thoughts (and music) here.
My Hands Came Away Red by Lisa McKay. Semicolon review here.
8th Grade Superzero by Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich. Semicolon review here.

Sunday Salon: Autumn is My Favorite Season

Sep26

Vagabond Song by Bliss Carmon
THERE is something in the autumn that is native to my blood–
Touch of manner, hint of mood;
And my heart is like a rhyme,
With the yellow and the purple and the crimson keeping time.
The scarlet of the maples can shake me like a cry
Of bugles going by.
And my lonely spirit thrills
To see the frosty asters like a smoke upon the hills.
There is something in October sets the gypsy blood astir
We must rise and follow her,
When from every hill of flame
She calls and calls each vagabond by name.

Dawn celebrates falling leaves with crafts, books, art, science projects, nature study, and tea in this post from 2006.

Jama Rattigan has a recipe for Autumn Garden Soup and a follow-up post on Autumn Picture Book Soup.
And here Ms. Rattigan celebrates orange goodness.

Christ and Pop Culture: An Autumn Playlist

A is for Autumn and also for apples: 100 Apple-y Activities for Home and School.

Celebrating autumn (the Waldorf way) at The Magic Onions.

Carrie at Reading to Know reviews Kitten’s Autmn by Eugenie Fernandes.

Coffee Books Tea and Me Autumn Decorations. Brenda’s Autumn Decorations At Coffee Books Tea and Me, Part Two.

100 Pumpkins: A Celebration of All Things Pumpkin-ish.

In November 2006, Semicolon celebrated the Pecan, King of all nuts with a series of posts.

Autumn 2006-2007 at Semicolon.

It’s still rather warm and summmery here in Houston where summer can extend its sweltering tentacles into October and even early November. My plan is try to entice Autumn into southeast Texas with a series of blog posts this week on autumnal themes. If you have a post at your blog on autumn, autumn reading, fall fun, fall recipes, anything seasonal, leave a comment and I’ll link to your post. Meanwhile, enjoy the links above, and especially enjoy the days the Lord has made.