Earthquake at Dawn by Kristiana Gregory

Jul18

Earthquake at Dawn is a book in the series Great Episodes, published in 1992 by Harcourt Brace. The novel is set before, during and after the San Francisco earthquake of April 18, 1906, and the story is based upon the stories of two real women who lived through the earthquake and its aftermath. Edith Irvine was a twenty-one year old photographer who was visiting San Francisco the morning of the earthquake. She hid her cameras in an abandoned baby buggy and took candid shots of the damage from the earthquake that San Francisco officials wanted to hide in an effort to reassure the public that the city was only slightly damaged and ready for more immigration and commerce. The other woman who appears in the book is Mary Exa Atkins Campbell who wrote a thirty-two page letter telling about her experiences during the earthquake and the subsequent fires caused, or at least exacerbated, by the damaged infrastructure and the lack of water.

It makes for a good story. Edith and her servant/friend, the fictional Daisy Valentine, wander about a ravaged San Francisco looking for Edith’s father. They meet up with not only Mary Exa, but also actor John Barrymore and author Jack London, who were actually present during the great earthquake and later wrote about their experiences, too. I always think that well-researched and engaging historical fiction is the most fun and memorable to learn history. You can get a general idea of what happened and how it affected the people involved in the event, and then if you’re interested, look more details for yourself. I especially like stories that are based on real-life characters like Edith Irvine and Mary Exa.

Go here to see some of Edith Irvine’s photographs of the earthquake’s aftereffects.

And here’s a movie made on Market Street in San Franciso just four days before the earthquake in 1906:

Only a couple of of these Great Episodes series books fit into my upcoming study of the twentieth century for this next school year:

Air Raid–Pearl Harbor!: The Story of December 7, 1941 by Theodore Taylor
Keep Smiling Through by Ann Rinaldi (1943)

What other historical fiction set in the twentieth century either for young people or for adults would you recommend?

54 Wonderful Projects

Jul18

I love projects: reading projects, relationship projects, educational projects, travel projects, daily projects, weekly projects, goofy projects, serious projects, all kinds of projects. There’s something about the discipline and the long term commitment to a project that intrigues me, even though I’m much better myself at beginning projects and reading about them than I am at actually completing them.

Here are a few of the projects that I have been working on, or I wish I could do, or I wish I’d thought of, or I plan to try someday, or I at least want to read about:

1. Wave at the Bus. This dad dressed up in a different costume every day for an entire school year to wave at his high school son’s school bus as it passed by the house.

2. The Reading Promise: My Father and the Books We Shared by Alice Ozma. Alice (actually Kristin Brozina) and her dad Jim read together every night for at least ten minutes, usually longer, for 3218 consecutive nights, or nine years. Wow! A review of the book by Sam Sattler at Book Chase.

3. The Whole Five Feet: What the Great Books Taught Me About Life, Death, and Pretty Much Everything Else by Christopher Beha. New York TImes Book Review.

4. Praying for Strangers by River Jordan. Ms. Jordan not only prays for a stranger each day, but she also often feels led to tell the person that she will be praying and asks for prayer requests. That’s a little intimidating. See, I’m really rather shy and reserved. The idea of going up to a complete stranger and telling them that I’ll be praying for them is, well, actually terrifying. I did try doing this, but I can’t make myself go up and talk to people I don’t know. So I’ve been sort of praying covertly.

5. Use a plan to read through the entire Bible in a year. I have done this project and plan to continue doing it each year. THis book looks good (reviewed by Becky): Read Your Bible One Book At A Time: A Refreshing Way To Read God’s Word with New Insight and Meaning by Woodrow Kroll. And here’s a Semicolon post with more ideas for Bible study and Bible reading projects.

6. Scratch Beginnings: Me, $25, and the Search for the American Dream by Adam Shepard. Adam Shepard went to Charleston, South Carolina with $25, a sleeping bag, and the clothes on his back. His goal was, by the end of a year, to have a car, a furnished apartment, and $2500 in the bank.

7. A Walk Across America by Peter Jenkins. I read this book when I was in high school, I think, and it may be the book that inspired my fascination with people who take on Big Projects. The second half of Mr. Jenkins’ walk across the United States is chronicled in The Walk West.
I also read this nonfiction book about two women at the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century who walked across the country: Bold Spirit by Linda Lawrence Hunt. Two fictional accounts of this mother/daughter walk are The Daughter’s Walk by Jane Kirkpatrick and The Year We Were Famous by Carol Estby Dagg.

8. A family I know had a project of visiting and taking a picture of every county courthouse in Texas. That’s 254 pictures of 254 county seat courthouses. What a great idea for learning and family bonding.

9. From The Bard Blog: “One big undertaking in 2010 was my Summer Shakespeare extravaganza. I made sure to see as many productions of the Bard as I could within a 2 month period.” Or for more Shakespeare madness, one could try out this project: reading Shakespeare’s 38 plays in 38 days, one each day.

10. Tolstoy and the Purple Chair by Nina Sankovich. Sankovitch vowed to read one book a day for an entire year and blog about it as a way of coping and working through her grief over the death of her sister.

11. In A Severe Mercy by Sheldon VanAuken, the author relives his courtship and marriage with his beloved wife Davy, who died of cancer. He celebrates their life together by consuming the music, the books, old letters, notes, diaries, and other artifacts of their marital life. He calls it The Illumination of the Past. It seems to me to be an almost obsessive way to mourn, but the way Mr. Van Auken writes about his journey makes it a healing process.

“I travelled through the past at the rate of a month or two a day. I could not go much faster and still listen to the music–often whole symphonies–and read the poems. The books, novels, and the like, I read at night, after I had written to her.”

12. No-Man’s Lands: One Man’s Odyssey Through The Odyssey by Scott Huler. The author retraces the route of Odysseus from Troy to Ithaca. I haven’t read the book, but I’d like to someday.

13. The Year of Living like Jesus: My Journey of Discovering What Jesus Would Really Do by Ed Dobson. The fact that this book is recommended by Rob Bell, who annoys me, is something of a letdown. But it still sounds intriguing.

14. The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible by A.J. Jacobs. Mr. Dobson was inspired to do his Jesus project by his reading of Mr. Jacobs’ book. Mr. Jacobs was (is) a nonobservant Jewish man who took a year to endeavor to live a strictly Biblical, law-abiding life.

15. The Know-It-All: One Man’s Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World by A.J. Jacobs. Before he “got religion”, Mr. Jacobs chronicled his journey as he read through the entire Encyclopedia Brittanica in a year.

16. Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages by Ammon Shea. If one man can read an entire encyclopedia in a year, why can’t another read the twenty volume Oxford English Dictionary in a year? And then write a book about it.

17. Walking the Bible: A Journey by Land Through the Five Books of Moses by Bruce Feiler. Mr. Feiler. an American Jew, made a 10,000-mile journey from Mount Ararat to Mount Nebo, following in the footsteps of the patriarchs.

18. Howards End Is on the Landing: A Year of Reading from Home by Susan Hill. “In pursuit of a book on her shelves, Susan Hill encountered dozens of others that she had never read, forgotten she owned, or wanted to read for a second time. The discovery inspired her to embark on a year-long voyage through her books in order to get to know her own collection again.”

19. Prayer Walking: A Journey of Faith by Dan Crawford and Calvin Miller. Recommended by Joe McKeever. This prayer project seems to me just as intriguing as the praying for strangers book (#4). But how does one develop the self-discipline to be consistent in prayer?

20. Racing Odysseus by Roger H. Martin. Recommended at Seasonal Soundings. “Roger H. Martin, president (at the time) of Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Virginia goes back to school as a freshman at the age of 61. Martin’s sabbatical takes him to St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland.”

21. Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana. This project is one that I would not dare to undertake even if it were possible in this day and age. Nevertheless, it would be worth reading about. Recommended by Lars Walker at Brandywine Books.

22. A memory project: Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art & Science of Remembering Everything by Joshua Foer. Absolutely fascinating.

23. My 20th Century history project.

24. I’ve mentioned this Blank Bible Project before, and I still think it’s a great idea. I’m not doing this project, but I have been writing notes in my Bible for several years with the intention of giving the Bible to one of my children someday.

25. My Newbery project. The plan is to eventually read all of the Newbery Medal books and all of the honor books, too.

26. My Reading Through Africa project.

27. 100 Movies of Summer. I started this project last year, and of course, we didn’t finish. But we did watch several old movies (actually, nine) that I either hadn’t seen or hadn’t shared with the urchins. I think we’ll try again this summer to watch some more—maybe we’ll finish all 100.

28. Make some art, maybe a photograph or a painting or a drawing. Put the art in a nice frame, one that isn’t brand new. Then, hang your framed art in a place you aren’t supposed to, but where people will assume it is supposed to be, like the lobby of your apartment building, in the hallway at your office, on the smallest wall in a motel room, in the quiet corner of a library, outside the downstairs restroom at a restaurant or bar, the back room of a club, in the bathroom of a museum. From the website 52 projects.

29. List the years that you have been alive. Then, in a word, sentence or short paragraph, write down a significant memory from each year. From the website 52 projects. It sounds like a great birthday project, doesn’t it?

30. 1000 Gifts by Ann Voskamp. Anne Voskamp started a list of 1000 reasons to be grateful to God. She ended up with a life full of gratitude and blessing, even in the hard times.

31. In the Neighborhood: The Search for Community on an American Street, One Sleepover at a Time by Peter Lovenheim. “When a murder-suicide occurred in his community, a suburb of Rochester, NY, Lovenheim, a journalist and author who teaches writing at the Rochester Institute of Technology, set out to get to know his neighbors and create a sense of community that is lacking in contemporary America by asking if he could spend the night at their houses.”

32. The Film Club: A True Story of a Father and Son by David Gilmour. I have a feeling from reading the reviews that this book might be a little too male for my taste, but I’d like try it. Father David Gilmour allows his sixteen year old son, Jesse, to drop out of high school with two conditions: he couldn’t do drugs, and he had to watch three movies a week with dad. The book is about their movie-led “homeschooling” experiment.

33. 1000 Places to See Before You Die by Patricia Schultz. If I had the money, I’d do it –or write my own list. No doubt.

34. 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die: A Comprehensive Reference Source, Chronicling the History of the Novel. Preface by Peter Ackroyd. General Editor: Peter Boxall. Arukiyomi has a spreadsheet for keeping track of the book you’ve read from the 1001. Of the books on the 2008 list, I’ve read 126. I think it’s skewed toward the last hundred and eleven years, and I’ve read many more nineteenth century novels than twentieth century and beyond. Nevertheless, it’s a fun project.

35. One Red Paperclip. I remember hearing about this project: this guy traded his red paper clip for something a little better. Then he traded again. And again. “I’m going to make a continuous chain of ‘up trades’ until I get a house. Or an island. Or a house on an island. You get the idea.”

36. England’s Thousand Best Churches by Simon Jenkins and Paul Barker. Now wouldn’t visiting all of these churches be a project to remember!

37. In 2008 Stephanie Dean made a New Year’s resolution to use her slow cooker every single day for the entire year. Here’s a list of the recipes she used.

38. While we’re on the subject of cooking projects, Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously by Julie Powell was the inspiration for the movie Julie and Julia (which I haven’t seen). Ms. Powell’s project was to cook all 524 recipes in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume I in a year.

39. Then, of course, there are the “40 days” spiritual projects (based on the 40 days of Lent?):
Rick Warren’s The Purpose-Driven Life,
Get out of That Pit: A 40-Day Devotional Journal by Beth Moore,
40 Days Living the Jesus Creed by Scot McKnight.

40. Experiencing God: Knowing and Doing the Will of God by Henry Blackaby and Claude King is one of the best Christian “project books” that I’ve ever read. Mr. Blackaby walks you through the steps to knowing God through Christ and then knowing and doing His will in your life. I need to repeat this project.

41. Do you believe this one? Organizing Magic: 40 Days to a Well-Ordered Home and Life by Sandra Felton. I tried Flylady, and I crashed. I’ve read other organizing books, and the authors obviously didn’t have eight children and a husband who wants to store everything in the attic until he can get around to using it or fixing it.

42. The Six Hundred Club was a project for memorizing some of the most famous and inspirational 600 lines of poetry or 600 lines from Shakespeare’s plays, a brainchild of my English professor, Dr. Huff. Dr. Huff invented The Six Hundred Club, and I am a proud member. You can read more about it here, and if you would like to embark upon this particular project, email me. I’ll be happy to send you the lines from Shakespeare or the particular poems to be memorized.

43. A poem-writing project: Where I Am From. Here are some instructions for writing your own “where I am from” poem. If you write one, please come back and share it with the rest of us.

44. The U.S. Presidents Reading Project has a list of all of the U.S. presidents and suggested reading selections (non-fiction) for each one. The challenge is to read one biography of each one. A couple of years ago I read biographies of George Washington, John Adams, James and Dollie Madison, and Alexander Hamilton (I know, not a president, but closely related). Last year I read about John Quincy Adams and his wife Catherine and about my favorite president, TR, “Teddy” Roosevelt. I have American Lion by Jon Meacham on my shelf awaiting me, and I also have two presidential books in my library basket, 1912: Wilson, Roosevelt, Taft and Debs–The Election That Changed the Country by James Chase and Florence Harding: The First Lady, the Jazz Age, and the Death of America’s Most Scandalous President by Carl Serrazza Anthony.

45. Texas Tuesday Project. I also plan to go back to posting about books set in or published in or related to Texas on Tuesdays. Or at least on most Tuesdays. Some Tuesdays?

46. My Madeleine L’Engle reading project, with a goal of reading or re-reading her complete oeuvre, is ongoing. It started out as a project for January 2007, but I quickly saw that I’d need more time to read all of the books. Here’s a link to my annotated bibliography of Madeleine L’Engle’s books.

47. The Happiness Project: Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun by Gretchen Rubin. Reviewed by Amy at Hope Is the Word.

48. I forgot all about Carrie’s Reading My Library Challenge. She and her children are reading all of the children’s picture books in her library. And BekahCubed plans to read Every Single Book in her local branch library in Lincoln, Nebraska. Maybe the two of them should write a book together.

49.Among Schoolchildren by Tracy Kidder. Back in the 1980’s author Tracy Kidder spent a year in a fifth grade classroom—and lived to write about it. I remember it as an excellent and insightful look into the life of a teacher and her students. Kidder also wrote House about the trial and joys of having your own house built. Now that’s a project!

50. Moonwalking With Einstein by Joshua Foer. Mr. Foer spent a year developing his memory so that he could compete in the U.S. Memory Championships. Reviewed by Alice at Supratentorial.

51.

52.

53.

54.

Can you suggest more projects or project books to fill out the list? Why 54? Stay tuned to find out . . . next week.

Saturday Review of Books: July 16, 2011

Jul15

“What I like best is a book that’s at least funny once in a while… What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn’t happen much, though.” ~J.D. Salinger

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger was published for the first time by Little, Brown and Company on July 16, 1951. Have you read it? I must admit that I haven’t, and I’ve never been able to work up an interest in reading it, even though I’m rather fond of young adult literature in general.

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.

The Fear: Robert Mugabe and the Martyrdom of Zimbabwe by Peter Godwin

Jul11

Peter Godwin is the award-winning author of When a Crocodile Eats the Sun and Mukiwa. Born and raised in Zimbabwe, he was educated at Cambridge and Oxford and became a foreign correspondent, reporting from more than 60 countries. Since moving to Manhattan, he has written for National Geographic, the New York Times Magazine, and Vanity Fair. He has taught at Princeton and Columbia, and in 2010 received a Guggenheim fellowship.

The Fear covers events and stories of people in Zimbabwe mostly during 2008-2009, the time of an historic election in Zimbabwe which resulted in a new government to replace that of the octogenarian dictator, Robert Mugabe. I knew a very little about current and recent events in Zimbabwe going into this book—only that Mugabe was a dictator and that the economy of Zimbabwe was in a shambles as a result of his rule.

Now, I know a lot more, even though the narrative was somewhat confusing at times. Godwin travelled around the country, interviewing this person and that, and telling the stories mostly of the opposition party that actually won the election in 2008, the MDC. Mugabe’s thugs, the ZANU-PF, are uniformly seen as just that—thugs, murderers, and torturers. I tend to think that one-sided picture is accurate. Even though MDC presidential candidate Morgan Tsvangirai won the election in 2008, Mugabe refused to give up power, and eventually the two men and their political allies were forced to enter into a power-sharing agreement brokered by South Africa. In spite (because of) of widespread election violence and persecution of those who voted for the MDC, Tsvangirai decided to avoid a civil war by becoming part of the government and trying to work for change from within.

The Fear is a harrowing book. The tales of torture and suffering that fill the book are quite overwhelming. I wondered how people could be so cruel and evil, and then I remembered that we are all capable of great evil and only held in check by the grace of God. I also wondered how people can continue to live relatively normal lives in the face of such brutality, and I remembered that humans are remarkably resilient.

Sometimes I had trouble remembering who was who as the narrative moved from one political figure or common person to another, and much of the terminology was not explained. I could have used a glossary, at least. Part of the problem was reading the book on my Kindle, where I’ve found it is difficult to look back and remind oneself of what has gone before, who a particular character is, or what information may have been explained in the second chapter and merely referenced in the fourth or fifth. I prayed for the people of Zimbabwe as I read, however, and I was moved to pity by their plight.

Of course, the questions in my mind throughout my reading were: “What is going on now in Zimbabwe? How have these people fared? Have conditions improved?” Recent headlines are not encouraging:

Bomb blast hits Zimbabwe official’s home
Police violently break up Zimbabwe rally
Zimbabwe in a state of ‘crisis’
Mugabe depends on diamonds for power
Mugabe begins anti-sanctions campaign

If you are interested in Zimbabwe in particular or African governments and politics in general, you will appreciate the information in Mr. Godwin’s book. You will also wonder how people can be so cruel and how you can help the people of Zimbabwe who have suffered so much for so long. I would suggest prayer and possibly a contribution to one of these charities in Zimbabwe.

Once Was Lost by Sara Zarr

Jul10

Last year I read Sweethearts by Sara Zarr, but I wasn’t that impressed. Maybe the story of childhood sweethearts who meet again but realize that their lives have changed just didn’t hit any of my buttons.

Once Was Lost certainly did intersect with my fascinations. Samara is a PK (preacher’s kid), and she used to think she had a handle on faith. But now Sam’s mother is in rehab dealing with her alcohol problem. And Sam’s dad is ignoring the problem, and pretty much ignoring Sam. And whatever faith in God Sam used to have is getting shaky.

Then, to compound the problems, an abduction takes place in the small town where Sam and her family live, and everyone is so wrapped up in dealing with that tragedy that Sam’s personal grief and confusion over her mother’s illness is overshadowed. And Sam starts to feel like Job, or doubting Thomas, or maybe Lazarus when he was dead and no one was sure Jesus would or could bring him back to life.

This book was so real. The pressures on a pastor’s family to be perfect and have all the answers lest they let the church down or damage God’s reputation were depicted so well. And Sam’s dad, Pastor Charlie, was exactly like other Christian men I know, not a hypocrite or a bad person but just a regular guy struggling to deal with unexpected tragedy and unfathomable pain and questions about where God is all of the suffering. Sam is just a girl, not a perfect pastor’s daughter or an obedient little girl, but a teenager who misses her mom and wants her dad to talk to her and explain what’s happened to their family.

If you’re interested in Christian faith and young adults, or how God really works in the world, or questions about faith, or just a good story, I would recommend Once Was Lost. I read this book last year for the INSPY awards judging, and it’s still with me. It also won the young adult literature INSPY Award last year.

Saturday Review of Books: July 9, 2011

Jul8

“The leader who intends to grow spiritually and intellectually will be reading constantly.” ~J. Oswald Chambers

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.

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson

Jul6

Published in 1938, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day is a book about grace and joy. Miss Pettigrew, a poverty-sticken, middle-aged, rather incompetent governess accidentally finds herself in the apartment of a promiscuous night-club singer, Delysia LaFosse. Even though Miss Pettigrew knows she should tell Miss LaFosse the truth, that she is there under false pretenses, and even though she knows the folly of Miss LaFosse’s way of life with men in and out of the apartment as if it had a revolving door, Guinevere Pettigrew can’t tear herself away from the first adventure that has ever presented itself in her entire life.

I found this one oddly delightful. Miss Pettigrew begins as the stereotypical repressed spinster, but she turns out to be surprisingly full of wisdom and intuition and zest for life. She just needs the right soil in which to grow and bloom, and Delysia LaFosse and her friends provide that avenue for growth. Delysia and her set are rather shocking in their behavior, but one gets the idea that they are more naive than calculating. And Miss Pettigrew is able, with her clear-sighted advice and her knack for saying the right thing at the right time, to straighten them out and make sure that the right man wins the hand of the fair lady and that the lady takes her chance when it is offered.

I’m rather skeptical about the movie based on this book. I think it would take a deft hand to keep the story from becoming a sexually titillating farce, and I see very little indication in the reviews that it didn’t become just that when Hollywood got hold of it. If I’m right, the book is much better.

Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys

Jul5

Nominated for 2011 Cybil Awards, Young Adult Fiction category. Nominated by Lisa Schroeder.

Who was the greater monster: Adolf Hitler or Josef Stalin? This website says that Hitler was responsible for the death of about 12 million civilians while Stalin killed more than 20 million with his purges, executions, and repressive and ruinous policies. Who knows exactly? But one of the worst places to be would be caught between the two men and their armies and their insane, competitive desire for power. Lithuania in 1941, the setting for this novel, was in exactly that place: caught between the Nazis and the Stalinist Russians and crushed, co-opted, and destroyed by first one evil regime and then the other.

Fifteen year old Lina is preparing to go to art school when the NKVD comes to arrest her, her younger brother, Jonas, and her mother. Lina’s father has already disappeared, assumed to be arrested, and sent to some unknown prison. Or perhaps he’s dead, executed for the same unknown “crime” that causes the deportation of the rest of the family. What follows this beginning is a story as harrowing and cruel as any Jewish Holocaust story that you’ve read. Lina and her family starve, freeze, suffer, are mistreated, experience callous injustice, and barely survive their experience.

Author Ruta Sepetys is the American born daughter of a Lithuanian refugee. She wrote this story to “give a voice to the hundred of thousands of people who lost their lives during Stalin’s cleansing of the Baltic region.” Of course, this story, even though it is written to be representative of what happened to many Lithuanians during World War II, doesn’t tell the whole story. Some Lithuanians collaborated with the Nazis in opposition to the Russians. Some fought against the Soviet occupation. Some Lithuanians with ties to Germany fled to Germany during the first or second Soviet occupation of Lithuania. Some Lithuanians betrayed their neighbors to the NKVD or to the Nazis. Some Lithuanians saved their Jewish neighbors form the Nazis. It was a complicated and horrific time, and the book Between Shades of Gray reflects those complications. It is an excellent look into one family’s experience. Lina’s journey is based on interviews that Ms. Sepetys had with many Lithuanian survivors and their families.

Lithuania gained its independence from the Soviet Union on March 11, 1990.

Happy Fourth of July

Jul3

A favorite song for the day: Ben Shive’s 4th of July

From last year: 52 Ways to Celebrate Independence Day

From 2008: Celebrate the Fourth of July

From 2005: Read, White and Blue: Books and Links for the Fourth of July

We will be enjoying the parade in the morning and fireworks in the evening in Friendswood, TX. If you live in the USA, what are you doing to celebrate God’s grace and mercy upon our nation?