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The 2nd Gift of Christmas at Lake Truckee, California, 1846

Dec2

Margret [Reed] did her best to revive a few hours of Christmas joy for her hungry children. She’d saved a meager hoard for the occasion–a few dried apples, a few beans, a little tripe, and a small piece of bacon. The children watched as the treats simmered in the kettle, and when they sat down to this Christmas feast, Margret told them, ‘Children, eat slowly, for this one day you can have all you wish.’ For the rest of her life, not matter how grand a Christmas dinner spread on her table, Virginia never forgot what her mother did for them. ‘So bitter was the memory relieved by that one bright day, that I have never since sat down to a Christmas dinner without my thoughts going back to Donner Lake.'” ~Women of the Frontier by Brandon Marie Miller

The Reed family was a part of the famous, or infamous, Donner Party, a group of families headed for Oregon/California who attempted to cross the Sierra Nevada Mountains in the fall of 1846. Many of the settlers in the party perished of cold or starvation when the winter snows trapped the group at Lake Truckee, now called Donner Lake to commemorate the unfortunate Donner Party. Margret Reed, her husband, James, and their four children—Virginia, Patty, James, Jr. and Thomas—survived the ordeal to settle in California.

Today’s gifts from Semicolon:
A song: One of my favorite songs by one of my favorite singers, Karen Carpenter singing I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.

A movie: I’ve become fond of The Ultimate Gift with a really aged James Garner as the grandfather/gift-giver. It made me feel old to watch and remember The Rockford Files when James Garner was young(ish) and played one of the great TV detectives. The movie has a great message, and if the plot gets a little thin at times, the characters and the heart make up for a creaky plot.
A booklist: Gift books for what they want to be when they grow up.
A birthday: David Macaulay, b.1946.
A verse: Christmas Bells by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The entire poem has seven stanzas or verses.

The 1st Gift of Christmas: The Christmas Cat by Maryann Macdonald

Dec1

“This perfect Christmas read-aloud was inspired by Leonardo da Vinci’s drawings of La Madonna del Gatto, which show Mary cuddling both the baby Jesus and a cat.” ~inside blurb of The Christmas Cat

What ever happened to “the Little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes?” Well, like all idealized portraits, the image of a Jesus, even as a baby, who never cried, never expressed any emotions at all, and certainly never made any trouble or expressed a preference, has become inadequate, and we’ve come around and circled back to a Renaissance view of a Jesus who laughed and cried and pooped and even maybe, had a pet cat.

The Christmas Cat tells the story of Jesus’ birth in a stable where a tiny kitten comforted him with it purrs. The story continues with Jesus’ early childhood, and then the flight to Egypt, during which the cat again saves the day, and Mary’s frayed nerves. “The rhythmic rumbling, as always, soothed the baby, and Jesus fell sound asleep.”

I’m not all that fond of cats (or dogs), but The Christmas Cat is a story that will captivate the imagination of young animal lovers everywhere and give them an image of the baby Jesus with whom they can identify. Of course, I would tell my children that The Christmas Cat is an imaginary story, that we don’t really know if Jesus had a pet. But we can be sure that according to Scripture, Jesus was “fully human in every way” (Hebrews 2:17). Why not a pet cat for the boy who would grow up to preach that not even a sparrow falls without the Lord’s notice and care?

The illustrations in this Christmas picture book are by Amy June Bates, who has several children’s boos to her credit, including the easy reader Martin’s Dream by Jane Kurtz. The illustrations in The Christmas Cat a soft and colorful bringing the animals and people and first-century travels of the Holy family to life.

If you want to add a Christmas picture book to your collection this year, The Christmas Cat is a good, solid choice.

Today’s Gifts from Semicolon
A song: Mark Steyn on White Christmas by Irving Berlin.

A movie: Semicolon family’s favorite Christmas movie is White Christmas, corny jokes and all.

Phil Davis: When what’s left of you gets around to what’s left to be gotten, what’s left to be gotten won’t be worth getting, whatever it is you’ve got left.
Phil Davis: I want you to get married. I want you to have nine children. And if you only spend five minutes a day with each kid, that’s forty-five minutes, and I’d at least have time to go out and get a massage or something.
Phil Davis: How can a guy that ugly have the nerve to have sisters?
Bob Wallace: Very brave parenting.
Bob Wallace: Miss Haynes, if you’re ever under a falling building and someone offers to pick you up and carry you to safety, don’t think, don’t pause, don’t hesitate for a moment, just spit in his eye.
Betty Haynes: What did that mean?
Bob Wallace: It means we’re going to Vermont.

A birthday and a book(list): Rex Stout, b.1886.
A verse: Mistletoe by Walter de la Mare and Lines for a Christmas Card by Hillaire Belloc.
A Christmas idea: Let Us Keep the Feast: A Book Recommendation for the beginning of Advent (today)

Poetry Friday: David McCord

Nov14

Children’s poet David McCord was born on November 15 (or December 15 or 17), 1897 in New York City. (Most internet sources say December 15th or just 1897.) He grew up in New Jersey and Oregon, and went to school at Harvard, where he later worked as a fundraiser for the Harvard College Fund.

He once said about writing poetry for children:

“Whatever may be said about this small but graceful art, three things should be remembered: good poems for children are never trivial; they are never written without the characteristic chills and fever of a dedicated man at work; they must never bear the stigma of I am adult, you are a child.”

“McCord said he developed a love of words and a fine sense of rhythm from reading aloud the Bible to his elderly grandmother.” (Obituary, Harvard Gazette, April 17, 1997)

This poem is the one by Mr. McCord I remember reading over and over again until I practically had it memorized. I used to read my library books while perched in the mulberry tree next to my house, so I suppose this poem was something close to my own experience.

51VY32VQ2hL._SY344_PJlook-inside-v2,TopRight,1,0_SH20_BO1,204,203,200_Every time I climb a tree
Every time I climb a tree
Every time I climb a tree
I scrape a leg
Or skin a knee
And every time I climb a tree
I find some ants
Or dodge a bee
And get the ants
All over me.

And every time I climb a tree
Where have you been?
They say to me
But don’t they know that I am free
Every time I climb a tree?

I like it best
To spot a nest
That has an egg
Or maybe three.

And then I skin
The other leg
But every time I climb a tree
I see a lot of things to see
Swallows rooftops and TV
And all the fields and farms there be
Every time I climb a tree
Though climbing may be good for ants
It isn’t awfully good for pants
But still it’s pretty good for me
Every time I climb a tree

Lee Bennett Hopkins discusses David McCord and his poetry.

Poetry Friday Roundup this week is at Jama’s Alphabet Soup. I can’t think of a more poetical place to visit on a crisp November day.

Saturday Review of Books: December 10, 2011

Dec9

“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.” ~~Jane Austen

Jane Austen’s birthdate is December 16, 1775.

SatReviewbuttonIf you’re not familiar with and linking to and perusing the Saturday Review of Books here at Semicolon, you’re missing out. Here’s how it usually works. Find a book review on your blog posted sometime during the previous week. The review doesn’t have to be a formal sort of thing. You can just write your thoughts on a particular book, a few ideas inspired by reading the book, your evaluation, quotations, whatever.

Then on Saturday, you post a link here at Semicolon in Mr. Linky to the specific post where you’ve written your book review. Don’t link to your main blog page because this kind of link makes it hard to find the book review, especially when people drop in later after you’ve added new content to your blog. In parentheses after your name, add the title of the book you’re reviewing. This addition will help people to find the reviews they’re most interested in reading.

After linking to your own reviews, you can spend as long as you want reading the reviews of other bloggers for the week and adding to your wishlist of books to read. That’s how my own TBR list has become completely unmanageable and the reason I can’t join any reading challenges. I have my own personal challenge that never ends.

Saturday Review of Books: December 3, 2011

Dec3

“Books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was, whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve, as in a vial, the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. As good almost kill a man, as kill a good book; who kills a man kills a good reasonable creature, God’s image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself––kills the image of God, as it were, in the eye.” ~~John Milton

John Milton, Puritan poet, has a birthday on December 9th.

SatReviewbuttonIf you’re not familiar with and linking to and perusing the Saturday Review of Books here at Semicolon, you’re missing out. Here’s how it usually works. Find a book review on your blog posted sometime during the previous week. The review doesn’t have to be a formal sort of thing. You can just write your thoughts on a particular book, a few ideas inspired by reading the book, your evaluation, quotations, whatever.

Then on Saturday, you post a link here at Semicolon in Mr. Linky to the specific post where you’ve written your book review. Don’t link to your main blog page because this kind of link makes it hard to find the book review, especially when people drop in later after you’ve added new content to your blog. In parentheses after your name, add the title of the book you’re reviewing. This addition will help people to find the reviews they’re most interested in reading.

After linking to your own reviews, you can spend as long as you want reading the reviews of other bloggers for the week and adding to your wishlist of books to read. That’s how my own TBR list has become completely unmanageable and the reason I can’t join any reading challenges. I have my own personal challenge that never ends.

On the Twelfth Day of Christmas, England, c. 1930

Dec10

The Borrowers Avenged by Mary Norton:

“Oh,” cried Arriety. “I know all about Christmas. My mother’s always talking about it. And the feasts they always had. When she was a girl, there were a lot more borrowers in the house, and that was the time–Christmas time–when she first began to notice my father. The feasts! There were things called raisins and crystal fruit and plum puddings and turkey and something called game pie . . . And the wine they left in glasses! My father used to get it out with a fountain-pen filler. He’d be up a fold in the tablecloth almost before the last human bean had left the room. And my mother began to see what a wonderful borrower he might turn out to be. He bought her a little ring out of something called a cracker, and she wore it as a crown . . . ” She fell silent a moment, remembering that ring. Where was it now? she wondered. She had worn it often herself.

Today’s Gifts:
A song: Joy to the World by Isaac Watts.

A booklist: 100 Magnificent Children’s Books of 2010 at Fuse #8

Birthdays: Actor/director Kenneth Branaugh, b.1960, Emily Dickinson, b.1830, Geroge MacDonald, b.1824, Rumer Godden, b.1907, Mary Norton, b.1903.

A poem: Twas just this time, last year, I died by Emily Dickinson.

On the Seventh Day of Christmas, Nashville, TN, 1828

Dec5

From the biography, American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House by Jon Meacham:

Shortly after nine on the evening of Monday, December 22, three days before Christmas, Rachel [Jackson] suffered an apparent heart attack. It was over. Still, Jackson kept vigil, her flesh turning cold to his touch as he stroked her forehead. With his most awesome responsibilities and burdens at hand she left him. ‘My mind is so disturbed . . . that I can scarcely write, in short my dear friend my heart is nearly broke,’ Jackson told his confidant John Coffee after Rachel’s death.

At one o’clock on Christmas Eve afternoon, by order of the mayor, Nashville’s church bells began ringing in tribute to Rachel, who was to be buried in her garden in the shadow of the Hermitage. The weather had been wet, and the dirt in the garden was soft; the rain made the gravediggers’ task a touch easier as they worked. After a Presbyterian funeral service led by Rachel’s minister, Jackson walked the one hundred fifty paces back to the house. Devastated but determined, he then spoke to the mourners. ‘I am now the President elect of the United States, and in a short time must take my way to the metropolis of my country; and, if it had been God’s will, I would have been grateful for the privilege of taking her to my post of honor and seating her by my side; but Providence knew what was best for her.'”

Today’s Gifts
A song: In the Bleak Midwinter, lyrics by Christian Rossetti, music by Gustav Holst.

A booklist: Biographies of the U.S. Presidents (books I’m planning to read)

A birthday: Christina Rossetti, b.1830.
Walt Disney, b. 1901.

A poem: Love Came Down at Christmas by Christina Rossetti.

On the Sixth Day of Christmas, New York City, 197-

Dec4

Madeleine L’Engle is one of my favorite writers. Her memoir, The Irrational Season, includes a chapter about Christmas in which Madeleine tells the story of one Christmas in her family in which a close relative died and yet Christmas came and the Word was flesh and dwelt among us.

“The chapel is small, and in this smallness, holding Charlotte in my arms, with Lena leaning against me, I began to move into Christmas. The Sisters sang Solemn Vespers for Christmas Eve, and their high, clear voices, moving antiphonally back and forth across the chapel, contained for me the same reality I felt in the strong words of the Kaddish. Then we all gathered around the creche, the children on tiptoe to see the shepherds, the animals, Mary and Joseph and the infant in the crib, the helpless thing containing the brilliance of the galaxies and the shadow of the cross.

It was impossible, but for the moment I was the White Queen, and the loving and beautiful bodies of my grandaughters made it possible for me to believe: they have not been created to be discarded like dross; the baby lying between the ox and the ass affirms the ultimate value of all life.”

This is the irrational season
When love blooms bright and wild.
had Mary been filled with reason
There’d have been no room for the child.

Today’s Gifts
A song: “I understand Christmas as I understand Bach’s Sleepers Awake or Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring. . . When I am able to pray with the mind in the heart, I am joyfully able to affirm the irrationality of Christmas.” ~Madeleine L’Engle

A booklist: A Madeleine L’Engle Annotated Bibliography

A birthday: Rainer Maria Rilke, poet, b.1875.

A poem: Sunset by Rainer Maria Rilke.

A Walk With Jane Austen by Lori Smith

Apr21

I’m a Jane Austen fan myself, maybe not quite so much as some others I could name including the author of this book, but I definitely get the attraction. Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy coming out of the water after a swim, check. The whole chemistry between Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy, check. Marianne and Elinor in Sense and Sensibility and the contrast between one sister’s reserve and the other sisters’ romanticism, check. All of Austen’s female protagonists and their struggles with relationships with men in particular, check. Emma and Mr Knightley! Yeah, I get it. And I would absolutely love to take a trip to England and “walk where Jane Austen walked.” (Or where C.S. Lewis walked or JRR Tolkien, Charles Dickens, the Brontes, Shakespeare, etc. I’m an Anglophile.)

So, I enjoyed A Walk With Jane Austen, even as I cringed a little when the author shared with us her innermost feelings and thoughts, her insecurities, and her love life. It was transparent and brave, but also a bit too introspective in some places. Also her season of life is not mine. Ms. Smith is 30-something and single, wanting to love and be loved, often comparing herself to Jane Austen and to Austen’s characters. I’m 52 and married with eight children. I could understand Ms. Smith’s stresses and obsessions but I’m just not there.

That said, I think my daughters, ages 18, 20, and 24, would enjoy this book. The Jane Austen aspect gives it some weight and keeps it from becoming just the emotional ramblings of an evangelical Christian spinster. And Ms. Smith does have some good insight into the single life, courtship among evangelical Christians, and the evangelical culture in general. She writes about things that many of us are afraid to say: why are so many Christian single guys so weird? What is the balance between loading one’s emotions onto other people and being so reserved/repressed that you never share anything? What do you do if you’re “in love” and he’s not? Why do guys so often send such mixed signals? If he’s not willing to commit as soon as you are, do you exercise patience or move on? Are there any Mr. Darcys around anymore? Can any guy live up to Jane Austen’s male leads?

Lori Smith is a good writer, and I did develop an interest in her and in what happened to her after the end of the book, enough so that I looked her up on the web. What I found is a bit disturbing and curious. She had a blog called Jane Austen Quote of the Day, but it hasn’t been updated since November, 2008. And her other blog, Following Jane, also has lain dormant since November 2008. Her twitter feed was last updated November, 2009. I can’t find any more recent information about Ms. Smith on the web, although with such a common name there could be stuff that I missed, and since she had just been diagnosed with a rather serious disease at the end of the book . . . It was enough to make me stop and pray for Lori Smith, even though I don’t know her really. The book was good enough and intimate enough to make me feel as if I do.

Jane Austen on Christmas

Dec16

Jane Austen was born on December 16, 1775.

Mr. Elton: “This is quite the season indeed for friendly meetings. At Christmas everybody invites their friends about them, and people think little of even the worst weather. I was snowed up at a friend’s house once for a week. Nothing could be pleasanter. I went for only one night, and could not get away till that very day se’nnight.”
Emma, volume 1, chapter 13

Caroline Bingley: “When my brother left us yesterday, he imagined that the business which took him to London might be concluded in three or four days; but as we are certain it cannot be so, and at the same time convinced that when Charles gets to town he will be in no hurry to leave it again, we have determined on following him thither, that he may not be obliged to spend his vacant hours in a comfortless hotel. Many of my acquaintances are already there for the winter; I wish that I could hear that you, my dearest friend, had any intention of making one of the crowd– but of that I despair. I sincerely hope your Christmas in Hertfordshire may abound in the gaieties which that season generally brings, and that your beaux will be so numerous as to prevent your feeling the loss of the three of whom we shall deprive you.”
Pride and Prejudice, chapter 21

“I thank you for your long letter, which I will endeavour to deserve by writing the rest of this as closely as possible. I am full of joy at much of your information; that you should have been to a ball, and have danced at it, and supped with the Prince, and that you should meditate the purchase of a new muslin gown, are delightful circumstances. I am determined to buy a handsome one whenever I can, and I am so tired and ashamed of half my present stock, that I even blush at the sight of the wardrobe which contains them. But I will not be much longer libelled by the possession of my coarse spot; I shall turn it into a petticoat very soon. I wish you a merry Christmas, but no compliments of the season.”
Letter to Cassandra from Jane Austen, December 25, 1798.

I am sorry my mother has been suffering, and am afraid this exquisite weather is too good to agree with her. I enjoy it all over me, from top to toe, from right to left, longitudinally, perpendicularly, diagonally; and I cannot but selfishly hope we are to have it last till Christmas — nice, unwholesome, unseasonable, relaxing, close, muggy weather.
Letter to Cassandra from Jane Austen, December 2, 1815.

And here are links to a few book reviews if you’re in an Austen-ish mood:

In the Steps of Jane Austen by Anne-Marie Edwards. Reviewed by Fleur-Fisher, a Cornish bookworm.
Jane Austen: A Biography by Carol Shields. Reviewed at Rebecca Reads.
Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict by Laurie Viera Rigler. Reviewed by Jayne at Dear Author.
Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict by Laurie Viera RIgler. Reviewed at Booking Mama.
Jane Austen Ruined My Life by Beth Patillo. Reviewed by Lisa at 5 Minutes for Books.
Jane Austen: A Life by Claire Tomalin. Reviewed by JenClair at A Garden Carried in My Pocket.