Cold

The world awaits in barren splendor
For someone to stir the embers

-Bill Mallonnee, "Extreme North of the Compass"

Courage

You can't have brave without scared.

-Linda Urban, Hound Dog True, 92.

❧

This is a beautiful book that perfectly captures what it's like to be 10 going on 11 and afraid of so many things - recess and lunch (the "lawless times"), teenager-looking 12-year-old girls, not belonging. Highly recommended for your inner shy kid.

The Fullness of our Manger

He is the fullness of our manger because 'the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.' So that man might eat the Bread of angels, the Creator of the angels became man...

...But, what eye has not seen, what ear has not heard, and what has not entered into the heart of man He promised to show to those who love Him. Until this favor is granted to us, until He shows us what will completely satisfy us, until we drink to satiety of that fountain of life, while we wander about, apart from Him but strong in faith, while we hunger and thirst for justice, longing with an unspeakable desire for the beautiful vision of God, let us celebrate with fervent devotion His birthday in the form of a servant. Since we cannot, as yet, understand that He was begotten by the Father before the day-star, let us celebrate His birth of the Virgin in the nocturnal hours. Since we do not comprehend how His name existed before the light of the sun, let us recognize His tabernacle placed in the sun. Since we do not, as yet, gaze upon the Son inseparably united with His Father, let us remember Him as the 'bridegroom coming out of his bride-chamber.' Since we are not yet ready for the banquet of our Father, let us grow familiar with the manger of our Lord Jesus Christ.

-Augustine, "Sermon on the Nativity"

❧

Ah, how had I missed the symbolism of the manger - filled, not with the bread of beasts, but with the Bread of angels, the Bread of life! Merry Christmas, and may your manger be full!

Thou Hast Enlarged Me...

Hear me when I call, O God of my righteousness: thou hast enlarged me when I was in distress; have mercy upon me, and hear my prayer.

-Psalm 4:1, KJV

Philadelphia Highs

1. Arriving (despite my navigational shortcomings)!
2. Slot car racing fanatics at the local hobby store
3. Introducing Mikr to major chain restaurants (P. F. Chang's, Chipotle)
4. Watching Say Yes to the Dress
5. Creepily monolithic architecture in Harrisburg
6. Used book shopping at the Midtown Scholar Bookstore and Harvest Book Company
7. Banjo-playing accompaniment to used book shopping
8. Beautiful stone architecture in Philadelphia environs
9. Church with Mikr's landlord / college roommate and family
10. Bill Mallonee concert...
10a. BYOB
10b. Presbyterian bonding
10c. Meeting Bill!!!
11. Making it home (despite my check engine light and alarming car misbehavior)!

Other People's Heads

Other people's heads are too wretched a place for true happiness to have its seat.

- Alain de Botton, Status Anxiety

The Wrong Things

If we cannot stop envying, it seems especially poignant that we should be constrained to spend so much of our lives envying the wrong things.

- Alain de Botton, Status Anxiety

Howling and Stubborn Characters

Babies cannot, by definition, repay their caretakers with worldly rewards. In so far as they are loved and looked after, it is therefore for who they are, identity understood in its barest, most stripped-down state. They are loved for, or in spite of, their uncontrolled, howling and stubborn characters.

- Alain de Botton, Status Anxiety

Hedera

Behold the hedera: ❧

According to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, "[the hedera] appears in 8th-century manuscripts, separating text from commentary, and after a period out of fashion it made an unexpected return in early printed books. Then it faded from view."

Just the punctuation mark I've been searching for—bring back the hedera!

Regrets

-Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes

❧

Click on this comic for a sharper, easier-to-read image.

Two Love Stories

Every adult life could be said to be defined by two great love stories. The first--the story of our quest for sexual love--is well known and well charted, its vagaries form the staple of music and literature, it is socially acceptable and celebrated. The second--the story of our quest for love from the world--is a more secret and shameful tale. If mentioned, it tends to be in caustic, mocking terms, as something of interest chiefly to envious or deficient souls, or else the drive for status is interpreted in an economic sense alone. And yet this second love story is no less intense than the first, it is no less complicated, important or universal, and its setbacks are no less painful. There is heartbreak here too.

-Alain de Botton, Status Anxiety

How to Read

The critic said that once a year he read Kim; and he read Kim, it was plain, at whim: not to teach, not to criticize, just for love—he read it, as Kipling wrote it, just because he liked to, wanted to, couldn't help himself. To him it wasn't a means to a lecture of article, it was an end; he read it not for anything he could get out of it, but for itself. And isn't this what the work of art demands of us?...So I say to you, for a closing sentence, Read at whim! read at whim!

-Randall Jarrell, quoted by Alan Jacobs in The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction

Packing for the Cape!

Kidlit
The Middle Moffat, Eleanor Estes
The Defense of Thaddeus A. Ledbetter, John Gosselink
Reckless, Cornelia Funke
Penny From Heaven, Jennifer L. Holm
Unexpected Magic, Diana Wynne Jones
Hattie Big Sky, Kirby Larson
The Savage, David Almond, illus. Dave McKean
A Single Shard, Linda Sue Park
The Sherwood Ring, Elizabeth Marie Pope
Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy, Gardy D. Schmidt

Adultlit
Cover Her Face, P. D. James
Gilead, Marilynne Robinson
Joy in the Morning, Betty Smith

The Cataract of the Cliff of Heaven...

The cataract of the cliff of heaven fell blinding off the brink
As if it would wash the stars away as suds go down a sink,
The seven heavens came roaring down for the throats of hell to drink,
And Noah he cocked his eye and said, “It looks like rain, I think,
The water has drowned the Matterhorn as deep as a Mendip mine,
But I don’t care where the water goes if it doesn’t get into the wine.”

-G. K. Chesterton, "Water and Wine" (full poem posted here)

Hurrican Preparedness

1) Apartment thoroughly cleaned from top to bottom, including window washing and a (surprise) complimentary carpet shampoo. Not sure about the logic of this cleaning frenzy, but I think it has something to do with battening the hatches.
2) Laundry laundered.
3) Bathtub / fridge / freezer filled with water.
4) Electronic gizmos fully charged and unplugged, in case of power surges.
5) Flashlights loaded and operational.
6) Stack of books and DVDs acquired from the library.
7) Chex mix made.
8) Slowly recovering from injuries incurred while washing windows. (See #1, and bear in mind that my windows are pretty tall, and washing them involves standing on a chair...that I may have fallen off of. Ouch.)

Bananas

In the whole story of the world, bananas have never once been a special treat.

-Gary Schmidt, Okay for Now

Broken Things

There aren't too many things around that are whole, you know. You look hard at most anything, and it's probably beat up somewhere or other. Beat up, or dinged up, or missing a piece, or tattoed. Or maybe something starts out whole and then it turns into junk, like Joe Pepitone's cap getting rained on in a gutter somewhere. Probably you can't even tell it's a cap anymore. Probably you wouldn't even want to pick it up if you saw it. But it didn't start that way. It started as Joe Pepitone's cap, and when he was out in the field, the sun was beating down on it from above the stands of Yankee Stadium and he could smell the grass and the dirt and the infield beneath its brim.

When you find something that's whole, you do what you can to keep it that way.

And when you find something that isn't, then maybe it's not a bad idea to try to make it whole again. Maybe.

-Gary Schmidt, Okay for Now

90 Second Newberry Presents: A Wrinkle in Time

"A Wrinkle In Time" In 90 Seconds from James Kennedy on Vimeo.

Heartless

All children are heartless. They have not grown a heart yet, which is why they can climb tall trees and say shocking things and leap so very high that grown-up hearts flutter in terror. Hearts weigh quite a lot. That is why it takes so long to grow one. But, as in their reading and arithmetic and drawing, different children proceed at different speeds. (It is well known that reading quickens the growth of a heart like nothing else.) Some small ones are terrible and fey, Utterly Heartless. Some are dear and sweet and Hardly Heartless at all.

-Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, 4.

Unruly Things

Stories have a way of changing faces. They are unruly things, undisciplined, given to delinquency and the throwing of erasers. That is why we much close them up in thick, solid books so they cannot get out and cause trouble.

-Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, 36.