Jacob Weisberg of Slate goes Bookhunting in Britain., and he describes his two favorite bookstores in London.
Unfortunately, I don’t have a favorite London bookstore. My favorite bookstores here in Houston are Half-Price Books and Barnes and Noble. If Half-Price put in some couches and tables, I’d probably desert Barnes and Noble, but B & N is a nice place to browse the latest and theoretically greatest.
What’s your favorite bookstore? Why?
I’m too tired to post much, but the trip back went well. We didn’t encounter too much heavy traffic, although it was clear that lots of people are returning to Houston. And we had no trouble at all getting gas. So, back to normal, I hope. Oh, yes, we did find this reminder of Rita’s visit in our next door neighbor’s yard–from our tree.
Technorati tag: hurricane rita
Mark Olson at PsuedoPolymath has an idea. I think I’ll try to participate in this blog-essay thingummy–even though I’m already juggling about nineteen (my all-purpose number) intellectual/study balls right now.
The idea is to compare and contrast two heroic stories from almost the same eras but from very different cultures. The two stories I had in mind were the Hebrew heroic story … that is the story of King David in Samuel I & II … and the Greek heroic poems from the same era by Homer … that is the Iliad (and perhaps the Odyssey). I had in mind perhaps posting once weekly (say Thursdays) on the similarities and differences – to contrast and compare the stories of David and Achilles. We could write on the same subtopic on this theme each week. For example, for next week I was thinking we could write on the openings. To compare and contrast the Iliad’s immortal opening cadences to the more subtle (tender?) vignette of Hannah giving up of Samuel, her firstborn, to the Temple.
What are my other “nineteen” studious undertakings? I’m glad you asked because some of these may spill over into the blog as I work out my thoughts on these various topics.
1. I’m teaching a British literature class at our homeschool co-op. This week we’re reading excerpts from Le Morte D’Arthur.
2. I’m also helping to teach a worldview class at the same co-op. We’re going to be watching some videos about relativism with the famous (blogger) Francis Beckwith for the next three Fridays.
3. I’m re-reading The Brothers Karamazov just because I wanted to.
4. I’m doing a Beth Moore Bible study called The Patriarchs about Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph.
5. We’re also teaching from Genesis in the fifth and sixth grade Sunday School class that Engineer Husband and I agreed to teach.
6. I have one book to review (The Bible or the Ax?) and another to read and review (In the Beginning There Were No Diapers) for Mind and Media.
OK, not quite nineteen, but it’s definitely a full plate—in addition to teaching school and keeping house. Oh, well, the idle mind is the devil’s workshop, right?
Madame MMV has thrown down the gauntlet. SFP at pages turned inspired the idea with this post and promised to rise to the challenge with this one.
I simply can’t resist–although I’m not sure even as I type which books I’ll list. There are so many.
The challenge, if you’ve not already rushed over to read about it at the other two blogs linked above, is to make a list of ten books that have “shaped or defined you,” “a list that reveals something about you.” Or as SFP asks, “Can you timeline your life with books?”
This list may take a while. In no particular order:
1. The Severed Wasp by Madeleine L’Engle. Why did this book impress me so much when I first read it several years ago? It’s about real people attempting to live authentic lives in New York City. It’s about community and how that community is formed. I’m very interested in how families interact, how intentional communities are formed and sustained, especially artistic communities and Christian communities. I think there’s something more there, too, but I can’t put my finger on it.
2. A Severe Mercy by Sheldon Van Auken. Van Auken tells the story of how he re-lived his life with his wife, Davey, after her death, by listening to the music they listened to together and re-reading the books they read together. It may sound maudlin, but it’s not. He also comes to terms with his loss and with the flaws in their relationship and with priorities, how marriage partners who find their ultimate security in Christ and His love can grow closer to each other. But those who hold onto each other jealously and possesively lose the thing they most want to preserve. I think I’m married the way I’m married, very happily I must say, partly because of this book.
3. Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton. C.S. Lewis talks about joy as an elusive longing for Something that is just out of reach. Tragedy is also an elusive feeling that depends on just the right combination of circumstances. Paton’s book about South Africa under the apartheid system and about the power of forgiveness to redeem, sometimes, is truly tragic. I also think this is what life is like: essentially hopeful, but tragic in the short run. Sometimes the Good is too little , too late.
4. Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. Life-changing. Lewis puts into words what I believe and why I believe. Definitely part of my mind’s landscape along with the Narnia books, The Screwtape Letters, and Till We Have Faces.
5. My first homeschooling book was John Holt’s Teach Your Own. This was before I had any children. Even though I use workbooks and curricula with my children, the unschooling, easygoing, let them teach themselves, philosophy is a part of my homeschool, too. I do want them to learn to learn and to enjoy learning, to be self-educators. I’m also drawn again to the sense of community that is present in Holt’s books.
6. The book that most shaped my life as a young Christian teenager was The Edge of Adventure by Keith Miller and Bruce Larson. I haven’t re-read this book in a long while, and I suspect it’s full of what I would now consider psycho-babble. But at the time the emphasis, again (note the recurring theme), on Christian community and basic Christian disciplines was exactly what I needed to hear. A lot of my ideas about prayer and discerning God’s will and following Christ in obedience came from this book.
7. All the Way Home by Mary Pride. I know that Mary Pride is a lightning rod for criticism and controversy, but her ideas about home and family being a center for economic, spiritual, and social influence were and are liberating for me.
8. The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien. Either I’m focused on the ideal of community tonight or else the theme of my whole adult life is comunity and how families come together to form real communities. I’ve wanted to live in Hobbiton, in a nice little hobbit-hole, ever since I first read Tolkien in the late 1960’s.
9. No Graven Image by Elizabeth Elliot. A young missionary finds that God is trustworthy, but not necessarily fathomable. I find the same to be true in my Christian life. This novel and the book of Job are my mainstays in the time of suffering and difficulty.
10. Cheaper by the Dozen by Ernestine and Frank Gilbreth. Was it from this book or somewhere else that I got the idea that it could be fun to have a lot of children and to teach them things in my own home? I think some of the nonfiction I listed above (and life) fleshed out the details, but Cheaper by the Dozen planted the seed of an idea long before I even realized the idea was there.
Hard task. On another day, I’d probably pick an entirely different set of books. And I didn’t even begin to list my childhood influences–the picturebooks that formed my imagination and the chapter books that made me think and made me grow. I’ll save all that for another post, but the ten books above have definitely shaped and do continue to define who I am. What books made you who you are or confirmed your direction in life and work?
Now, here is where my heart is. I want my daughters and daughter-in-laws close to me so that they will have someone to help them with their first babies, to give them relief when a child has the flu and has been up all night, to tell them which kind of cough doesn’t require a trip to the doctor, to fix the crooked quilt they spent all year on, to give piano lessons to the grandkids, to tell them to get home and make dinner and stop complaining, to tell them to not be short with their boys’ ruckuses, and to love their husbands by never speaking ill of them.
Yes, it’s possible to do some of this from afar, but it is the daily things that make up daily life. Life is a bunch of daily moments, and the ordinary is what life is. It isn’t Thanksgiving and Christmas. And if I have the opportunity to be a part of the small moments, it will be a big moment for me.
From Amy’s Humble Musings
Yes. This is almost exactly what I would like to see come about in our family and extended family. However, as far as I can see, the Lord has placed us right smack dab in the middle of Major Suburbia, and I have no desire or calling to become a country girl. I believe this sort of community can happen even in Major Suburbia. It’s the living close together and sharing life’s small moments that appeals to me, and although it may be difficult, I believe it can be done here.
FEMA and the Red Cross are obviously “making it up as they go along” in regards to Katrina relief efforts, not that I blame them. As everyone has been saying over and over, the situation is unprecedented. The Red Cross shelter near us at Gloria Dei Lutheran Church has been serving over 300 storm victims all this week. From their website:
Late Friday night we were suddenly informed that the American Red Cross, FEMA, and the authorities charged with managing the national response to the Katrina disaster had made the difficult decision to close the community based shelters in the Houston area and consolidate relief efforts and resources at the George R. Brown Convention Center in downtown Houston. Our dedicated shelter team, the local Red Cross folks and our staff shared our frustration and tears over this abrupt change in direction. In the past few days we had been told to plan for as little as a week or two of sheltering to as long as 3 months. Our community has responded with overwhelming generosity, bringing our shelter up to speed as one of the finest very quickly. By the grace of God and through the generosity of the community we have provided housing, meals, material needs and care for nearly 400 resident guests and over 1,000 other displaced people in the last week. Consolidating shelters will permit the available resources to be managed and deployed more effectively.
Eldest Daughter and I were discussing this decision this afternoon. It seemed to both of us that community-based efforts where individuals could connect with individuals instead of being “warehoused” in the Astrodome or another convention center were preferable. In fact, I would expect the Red Cross officials to be encouraging families to house families and churches to house families so that the larger facilities could be cleared as soon as possible. But, as I told my daughter, I have no expertise or experience in the area of crisis or disaster relief, so I defer to those who do. I understand wanting to make sure that everyone receives the services they need. Anyway, it seems that the Red Cross changed their minds:
Updated 9/3 at 9:05PM: Just as the school busses provided by CCISD rolled in this morning to transfer our shelter residents, we received new information from the crisis management officials. We were “turned back on” and asked to immediately prepare for the return of our guests and the addition of more. So as of this evening we are at our current shelter capacity and our guests are enjoying 400 lbs. of fine Texas Bar-B-Q!.
Did anyone ask the peo0ple from Louisiana what they would prefer to do? Are they still free citizens with the right to make their own decisions? Churches helping refugees to survive and get back on their feet, this is what we need. At least, it seems so to me. But I’m no expert.
Clear Lake Methodist Church is accepting donations for flood buckets, school supplies for children who are here from NO and will be enrolling in school, and other supplies. They’ve already created a disaster relief committee to coordinate their church’s efforts and maximize the help they can give. In addition:
Bishop Huie has asked the Houston East District, which includes Clear Lake United Methodist Church, to help feed the Astrodome folks on Thursday, September 15. Our church’s goal is to have 100 volunteers support this effort. Other United Methodist churches and districts will cover other days during the week of September 14-20. There are three daily shifts: 4am-10pm/ 10am-4pm/ 4pm-10pm. Our combined task will be to prepare, serve and clean up 75,000 meals/day. It will require 720 trained volunteers per day. State law requires that every volunteer must be trained (2 hours) in food handling. Training dates are: Sat., Sept. 3 @9am; Sun., Sept 4 @ 2pm, and Monday, Sept. 5 @1pm. These training events will be held at Second Baptist Church(NOTE: Second Baptist is one of those “mega-churches people are asking about) (6400 Woodway).
Southern Baptist churches in the Houston area that have opened shelters.
Gateway Community Church is collecting non-perishable food, water, baby items and bedding to send to hurricane victims. They have three tractor trailers in their parking lot for sorting, collecting, and distributing donations.
Calvary Chapel is an official collection point for the Salvation Army. They are collecting all sorts of donations. They are also forming teams to serve meals and to go to Louisiana to help with rebuilding as soon as that is possible.
St. Thomas the Apostle Episcopal Church and School, Nassau Bay are assisting in supplying food, clothing, miscellaneous supplies and volunteers to the Red Cross shelter at Gloria Dei Lutheran. St. Thomas School has offered to educate the children while at the center and the children are invited to use the school’s playground. Nine-year-old student and church member, Garrett Howard, gave an impassioned request for monetary funds while attending his neighborhood civic club with his mother. He was given a check for $1000. The church will be collecting donations for Interfaith Caring Ministries Sunday morning, September 4 and will help transport donated materials to an offsite distribution center beginning Saturday.
Archbishop Fiorenza of the Catholic ArchDiocese of Houston-Galveston will celebrate Mass at 10 AM Sunday in Reliant Park (part of the Astrodome complex) for evacuees and their families. Catholic Schools in the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston are welcoming displaced Catholic school students taking refuge in Houston from Hurricane Katrina. For more information call the Catholic Schools Office at (713) 741-8704. A special collection will be taken up at all Masses at all parishes in the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston this weekend. All donations will be given to Catholic Charities USA which is one of the primary responders at this time. Several Catholic churches are designated Red Cross shelters and are already sheltering evacuees.
There’s much more. I am making these lists because I want people to know that The Church (made up of many, many loving and hardworking Christians) is mobilizing and sacrificing time, energy, and money to meet the almost overwhelming needs that have come to our doorstep. This list only scratches the surface.
To be continued.
Technorati tags: Hurricane Katrinaflood aidhouston
The following churches and Christian groups are working here in southeast Houston to help evacuees from Louisiana and other Gulf Coast states:
Camp Good News (6205 Delany Rd. Hitchcock, TX 77563 Phone: 409-316-0501 Fax: 409-986-4219) is open as a shelter for hurricane victims. My church will be serving meals a couple of nights this week at the camp. I don’t know how many people are being housed there. A member of our church writes:
I just came from Camp Good News and what they desperately need are phone cards and small denomination Wal Mart Cards ($5 & $10). The people there are needing unique items like denture cream that they don’t want to have a lot of. It is easier just to give them a small gift card to get what they need. Also, the phone cards are for getting in touch with relatives. Several people have been able to leave after they were able to get in touch with relatives which is the goal.
Clear Lake Church of the Nazarene has opened a shelter in their building. They had about 30 people living there as of this afternoon, and the lady I spoke with said that they could house up to 50 people. The church is not a Red Cross certified shelter (would take too much time), so they’re doing this ministry on their own with a little help from Nazarene Compassionate Ministries.
The people who are staying at the Nazarene church are going to the church next door for lunch and for supper each day, and this church, Bay Area Christian Church, is also feeding storm victims who come in from the motels and other shelters. They told two of my teenagers who went over to help today that they are spending about $1500 per day so far and will continue to do so as long as there is a need and as long as funds hold out.
University Baptist Church in Clear Lake is supporting the Red Cross shelter at Gloria Dei Lutheran Church by preparing and taking meals to the shelter. There are already 300 people living in the shelter at Gloria Dei, and according to UBC it costs the church about $1000 per meal to feed these people. So far members of UBC have contributed enough to cover the cost of some of the meals the church will be providing. Another member of UBC is working with the Salvation Army to provide pastoral care and counseling to some of the New Orleans residents who have taken refuge in the Astrodome. Here’s an idea that churches all over the country could use:
The UBC Wednesday Night dinner on 9/7 is red beans and rice with cornbread. We are asking you to pay full price for this meal and the proceeds will go to the UBC Hurricane Katrina Fund to help feed refugees. At the dinner, you may also donate money to the UBC Hurricane Katrina Fund.
Texas Baptist Men, an organization of men that are members of Baptist churches in Texas, “is providing assistance to disaster victims in Louisiana and Texas shelters. Currently we have 20 units and approximately 220 volunteers responding. Texas Baptist Men has been asked to provide assistance to those affected over the next four months.” They ask that we help in the following ways:
Pray:
– Pray for those that were affected by Katrina.
– Pray for those responding and providing assistance in Christ’s name.
– Pray about how you can be personally be involved in assistance.
Give:
– Please mark checks for Hurricane Katrina and send to Texas Baptist Men, Disaster Relief, 333 N. Washington, Dallas, Texas 75246. To give by credit card please call (800) 558-8263. 100% of your gifts go directly to disaster relief.
Go:
– Volunteers are needed in providing assistance. If you are available to help, please call (214) 381-2800.
Eddie Butler, a blogger from Kansas City, Missouri, asked in this post “Where Is the Church?” Well, here’s the answer, and there’s much more.
To be continued.
Technorati tags: Hurricane Katrinaflood aidhouston
Shakespeare, of course. A couple of weeks ago we made our annual trek to Shakespeare at Winedale where the plays are presented by college students in an old country barn converted to theater. We saw A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Hamlet, and The Taming of the Shrew.. We learned that Hamlet is Shakespeare’s longest play, but the time is worth the use on’t, that the younger generation is seriously annoyed by The Taming of the Shrew, but I think they enjoyed being annoyed, and that Bottom is a funny name for a funny character.
So now a week and a half later we haven’t had our fill of Shakespeare, so we’re hosting our own Shakespeare festival. Since none of us is an actor that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, we’ll be taking advantage of the miracle of DVD. Here’s the invitation I gave out to a few families this evening:
You�re invited to:
The First Annual Semicolon Shakespeare Festival
Presenting at 7 p.m. each evening:
Tuesday, August 9th Much Ado About NothingWednesday, August 10th Romeo and Juliet
Thursday, August 11th Henry V
You and any or all of your family are invited to attend any or all three of the plays. Much Ado and Henry V are the movie versions directed by Kenneth Branagh. Romeo and Juliet is the 1968 version directed by Franco Zeffirelli.
I’d be happy to invite all my blog buddies, but the trip to Houston might be a little too long for some of you, and my living room might be a tad too small. So if you want to rent the movies and watch them in the comfort of your own home, you’re hereby invited to host your own Shakespeare festival.
Which of the three plays we are planning to watch contains which quotation and who said it?
1. “In brief, since I do purpose to marry, I will think nothing to any purpose that the world can say against it; and therefore never flout at me for what I have said against it; for man is a giddy thing, and this is my conclusion.”
2. “O, swear not by the moon, the fickle moon, the inconstant moon, that monthly changes in her circle orb, Lest that thy love prove likewise variable.”
3. “Is love a tender thing? It is too rough, too rude, too boisterous; and it pricks like thorn.”
4. “The game’s afoot:
Follow your spirit; and, upon this charge
Cry ‘God for Harry! England and Saint George!'”
5. “If we are marked to die, we are enow
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.”
6. “O, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you!
She is the fairies’ midwife, and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agate-stone
On the fore-finger of an alderman,
Drawn with a team of little atomies
Athwart men’s noses as they lie asleep.”
7. “Some Cupid kills with arrows, some with traps.”
8.”See, how she leans her cheek upon her hand!
O that I were a glove upon that hand,
That I might touch that cheek!”
9. “O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend
The brightest heaven of invention;
A kingdom for a stage, princes to act
And monarchs to behold the swelling scene.”
10. “He that hath a beard is more than a youth, and he that hath no beard is less than a man; and he that is more than a youth is not for me, and he that is less than a man, I am not for him.”
Next reading assignment: Molly at My Three Pennies Worth writes Quiverfull Schmiverfull. Good stuff to continue our discussion. Summation quotation:
“There are some good reasons why limiting family size can be godly, and I have friends who have had to make that difficult decision due to life-threatening issues. They are the minority, though. For many, the decision to “have 1.7 children” is not birthed (pardon the pun) from prayer, but from a nonchalant acceptance of what our godless society says is Normal.”
So to review from Quiver Full Revisited, Part 1, my first point was:Our culture is becoming anti-child, and this attitude is bad for our society and wrong for Christians.
My second point is easy to state and understand, too. The anti-child attitude and the lack of prayer and careful thought about the issue of contraception among Christians is a problem—not the number of children a couple chooses to have or not to have.
I consider myself “quiverfull.” We have eight children, and we don’t use contraceptives (anymore). We came to this place slowly after several years of the same prayerlessness and lack of careful thought that I decry in the above statement. I’m glad to see Christian women (and men) thinking about the issue of contraception and asking what the One who is supposed to be Lord of our entire lives would have them do in this area of decision.
A few years ago a leader of women’s ministry in my (Baptist) church told me, laughingly, in front of the younger of her two children, that she and her husband should have only had one child. The second one was a mistake. They were really only able to handle one child, and after the second one was born, they got that “fixed” right away so that there wouldn’t be any more mistakes. I couldn’t believe she was telling me this, and I was literally speechless. I have since thought of many responses, both good and bad, but the main question I would like to ask that lady if I were able to do so is this: “Do you really believe God made a mistake in giving you a second child?”
For Christians, children are never mistakes; children are blessings.