Alternative Energy Source

"Splendid! I just had an idea for a cheap form of power: by bringing pasta and antipasta together, we could be looking at the utter annihilation of ravioli and the liberation of vast quantities of energy. I safely predict that an average-size cannelloni would be able to power Swindon for over a year. Mind you, I could be wrong."

-Jasper Fforde, Thursday Next: First Among Sequels, 18.

Merry Christmas

As a rule, I try not to repeat quotes. But in honor of Christmas, here's a favorite passage on the incarnation. Merry Christmas to all!

***

Rome was a flea market of borrowed gods and conquered peoples, a bargain basement on two floors, earth and heaven, a mass of filth convoluted in a triple knot as in an intestinal obstruction. Dacians, Heruleans, Scythians, Sarmatians, Hyperboreans, heavy wheels without spokes, eyes sunk in fat, sodomy, double chins, illiterate emperors, fish fed on the flesh of learned slaves...all crammed into the passages of the Coliseum, and all wretched.

And then, into this tasteless heap of gold and marble, He came, light and clothed in an aura, emphatically human, deliberately provincial, Galilean, and at that moment gods and nations ceased to be and man came into being—man the carpenter, man the plowman, man the shepherd, with his flock of sheep at sunset, man who does not sound in the least proud, man thankfully celebrated in all the cradle songs of mothers and in all the picture galleries the world over.

-Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago

Tongue Twister

IRRELEVANT BENEVOLENT ELEPHANT

-Jasper Fforde, The Well of Lost Plots, 144.

***

I think this would be a perfect band and/or blog-name...

Kafka

"But this is preposterous!" shouted Hopkins as he was dragged away.

"No," replied the Magistrate, "this is Kafka."

-Jasper Fforde, Lost in a Good Book, 198.

Welcome to Jurisfiction

"Please," said a voice close by, "draw me a sheep!"

I looked down to see a young boy of no more than ten. He had curly golden locks and stared at me with an intensity that was, to say the least, unnerving.

"Please," he repeated, "draw me a sheep."

"You had better do as he asks," said a familiar voice close by. "Once he starts on you he'll never let it go."

It was Miss Havisham. I dutifully drew the best sheep I could and handed the result to the boy, who walked away, very satisfied with the result.

"Welcome to Jurisfiction," said Miss Havisham...

-Jasper Fforde, Lost in a Good Book, 285.

In a Philadelphia...

AL: Because in a Philadelphia, no matter what you ask for, you can't get it. You ask for something, they're not gonna have it. You want to do something, it ain't gonna get done. You want to go somewhere, you can't get there from here.

MARK: Good God. So this is very serious.

AL: Just remember, Marcus. This is a condition named for the town that invented the cheese steak. Something that nobody in his right mind would willingly ask for.

MARK: And I thought I was just having a very bad day....

AL: Sure. Millions of people have spent entire lifetimes inside a Philadelphia and never even knew it. Look at the city of Philadelphia itself. Hopelessly trapped forever inside a Philadelphia. And do they know it?

MARK: Well what can I do? Should I just kill myself now and get it over with?

AL: You try to kill yourself in a Philadelphia, you're only gonna get hurt, babe.

MARK: So what do I do?

AL: Best thing to do is wait it out. Someday the great cosmic train will whisk you outta the City of Brotherly Love and off to someplace happier.

-David Ives, Hat tip Terry Teachout

Readers

No one becomes a reader except in answer to some baffling inner necessity, of the kind that leads people to turn cartwheels outside the 7-Eleven, jump headlong through a plate-glass window, join the circus, or buy a low-end foreign car when the nearest auto-repair shop is fifty miles away. With these dramatic examples fresh in your mind, you'll probably require only a small amount of additional convincing that my little theory--based on years of painful experience--is true. Reading requires a loner's temperament, a high tolerance for silence, and an unhealthy preference for the company of people who are imaginary or dead.

-David Samuels, From Rereadings, ed. Anne Fadiman, 3.

Eschaton

It's gonna be the future soon: I won't always be this way. When the things that make me weak and strange get engineered away. -Jonathan Coulton, "The Future Soon"

Recent (Good) Reads

Seventy-Seven Clocks, Christopher Fowler (British mystery) The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place, Maryrose Wood (kid lit) Notes from the Tilt-a-Whirl, N. D. Wilson (theological musings) Ten Second Staircase, Christopher Fowler (British mystery) Keeper, Kathi Appelt (kid lit) The Chestnut King, N. D. Wilson (fantasy)

Fall Highs

1. Trying out some of the hikes in AMC's Best Day Hikes in Connecticut
2. Finding my way home again, despite washed out bridges & unblazed trails
3. A used book sale across the street from my apartment
4. Frequent library visits
5. Scads of books, wedged in my bookshelves and piled on my dresser
6. Watching episodes of Avonlea on scratchy library dvd's
7. Jog/walking
8. Kids' Club
9. Pirate vs Ninja raking and volleyball
10. Leadership Core back at my apartment
11. Fabulous fall weather
12. Breathtaking sunsets and sunrises
13. Windows that open
14. Listening to Bill Mallonee bootlegs
15. Not studying

The Scandal of Particularity

The scandal of particularity is a still broader notion, for it includes the understanding that God is at work is certain very specific times and places and ways to accomplish His will. The Christian faith is not a religion of spiritual truths, of moral or inner principles by which one ought to (or even may) live. It is the claim, radical in the ancient world and still more radical today, that God has reached into human history to do those things necessary to restore the relationship between Himself and us that our first ancestors shattered, and which still divide us from Him. This scandal of particularity is at the heart of the claims of the Bible to historicity, and make it fundamentally different from every other religion on earth. -David Adams (quoted here).

Yeast

In the Passover, in the old way, the house was to be purified, every yeast germ removed. Long codes of purification were handed out to characters then, characters in those early chapters. Shellfish tainted you. Polyester tainted you. Foreskins tainted you. Human holiness was fragile in those days.

Things have changed...

Leave the yeast. Be the yeast. Do not fear the shadowy places. You will never be the first one there. Another went ahead and down until He came out the other side.

-N. D. Wilson, Notes from the Tilt-a-Whirl, 155.

Oreo

In this way Penelope's happy and sad feelings got all mixed up together, until they were not unlike one of those delicious cookies they have nowadays, the ones with a flat circle of sugary cream sandwiched between two chocolate-flavored wafers. In her heart she felt a soft, hidden core of sweet melancholy nestled inside crisp outer layers of joy...

-Maryrose Wood, The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place, 175.

Pearly Gates

I do not doubt that whatever gates there may be, they will be pearly. But I know how pearls are made. Do you? In Heaven, the gates will be made of oyster spit.

Exercise: Envision those oysters.

-N. D. Wilson, Notes from the Tilt-A-Whirl, 155.

Great Showdowns: Dread Pirate Roberts vs Vizzini

-Scott C (more showdowns here)

Great Showdowns: Lady vs Birds

-Scott C (more showdowns here)

Great Showdowns: Frodo vs Gollum

-Scott C (more showdowns here)

Wet Laundry

A pudgy young man with slicked sandy hair appeared before them. Shaking his hand was like removing wet laundry from a washing machine.

-Christopher Fowler, Seventy-Seven Clocks, 67.

Camp Songs

*** This Fall I've committed to lead music for a once-a-week after-school kids' program at church (think VBS spread out over the school-year), and I've been all over the internet looking for new songs. These guys aren't terribly scriptural - okay, they aren't even slightly scriptural - but I am just delighted by their videos, and only wish there was something similar for goofy church music. (Totally a legit genre.) Speaking of which - do YOU have any favorite goofy church / camp songs? Leave a comment!

Word of the Day

Our house is in a hooroar, with the back kitchen all ripped to pieces for a face-lifting job, and we can't even find our way to the refrigerator without a compass. But I guess the dust will settle eventually.

-E. B. White, Letters of E. B. White, 446.

***

I must find some opportunities to work the word hooroar into my conversation. Perhaps when I have failed to read yet another critical work memo, I could casually remark that my email inbox is in a hooroar? Pretty sure I've also come across some hooroarific databases...

Nothing Special

You can map the lay of the land
Darling, you can describe the sad terrain
Let us survey all the borders
Sugar, don't it all still look the same?
And when you find there's nothing special
About that great big ole hole in your heart
Cause everybody's got one
Yeah with precious little time to talk about it

Nothing like the leaves round your front door
The stages and the pages
Yeah, you've been in love before
And the things you feel inside your bones
Those that won't leave you
Those that won't leave you
Those that won't leave you alone

-Bill Mallonee, "Nothing Like a Train"

News Flash!

According to the WSJ, Salman Rushdie will soon publish a sequel to Haroun and the Sea of Stories! (HATSOS being a really excellent adult-kid book, in the splendidly winsome tradition of The Phantom Tollbooth.) Read an excerpt from the new book here.

Fairer than Florence

If men loved Pimlico, as mothers love children, arbitrarily, because it is theirs, Pimlico in a year or two might be fairer than Florence. Some readers will say that this is a mere fantasy. I answer that this is the actual history of mankind. This, as a fact, is how cities did grow great. People first paid honour to a spot and afterwards gained glory for it. Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her.

-G. K. Chesterton, quoted by Joey Pensak in a recent newsletter

Oh, How I'd Like to Be Queen, Pa

Oh, how I'd like to be queen, Pa,
And ride in my kerridge to Kew,
Wearing a gold crinoline, Pa,
And sucking an orange or two.

Oh, how I'd like to be queen, Pa,
Watching my troops at review,
Sucking a ripe tangerine, Pa,
And sporting a sparkler or two--

With slippers of crimson shagreen, Pa,
And all of my underclose new!

-Joan Aiken, Dido and Pa, 20-21.

Many Sounds But No Noises

It was a beautiful September evening, windless, very peaceful. The park and the old, cream-painted houses facing it basked in the golden light of sunset. There were many sounds but no noises. The cries of playing children and the whir of London's traffic seemed quieter than usual, as if softened by the evening's gentleness. Birds were singing their last song of the day, and farther along the Circle, at the house where a great composer lived, someone was playing the piano.

-Dodie Smith, The Hundred and One Dalmatians, 8.

Dear Diary

When I was young and full of beans, I used to keep a diary, only I called it a "journal" to make it sound more impressive. I wrote in it so steadily and over so many years that it is eight inches thick and contains probably the world's finest collection of callow and insipid remarks.

-E. B. White, Letters of E. B. White, 445.

Love and Science

There's one last thing
I'll tell you if I can
It is not love
That makes a non-stick frying pan
But a top secret trademark conglomerated most likely carcinogenic polyurethane compound spread in a microthin layer over a negatively charged alloy of aluminum, iron, lead, titanium, magnesium, iron, wine, beryllium, geranium, mesopotamian, and some other elements too
And since you're gone
I wish I'd stuck to you

-Josh Ritter, "Science Song" (listen here)

Rejection Letter

We have read your manuscript with boundless delight, and if we were to publish your paper, it would be impossible for us to publish any work of a lower standard. And, as it is unthinkable that in the next thousand years we shall see its equal, we are, to our regret, compelled to return your divine composition and beg you a thousand times to overlook our short sight and timidity.

-Rejection letter, quoted in Brian Doyle's marvelous essay, "No"

Link o' the Day

I just discovered a bunch of free (!) recordings of Bill Mallonee performing live. Flowers is my new favorite - I quoted some of the lyrics in my previous post.

I'm also intrigued to learn that Bill's name is pronounced MALonee, like Melanie with an "Al". I've been saying MaLONee, like Baloney, for years...

Flowers

Flowers growing out of your desert
Flowers out of parched ground
Flowers coming right up through the cracks
Of the pavement in this old town
Flowering's not a science
It's more like a fine art
Flowers coming right up through the cracks
Of our beat-down,
Burdened,
Broken,
Bruised,
Bloody,
Bastardized,
Besotted,
Bespotted,
Bamboozled,
Little hearts

-Bill Mallonee

Reading the Fridge

Think about it a moment -- if there's a place in every house that's devoted to stories of every shape and sort and size, that has oceans of prose and photographs, gobs of poetry and paintings, posters and prints, essays and articles, quotes and notes, yards of cards, voices from all over the universe, stories from every corner of the compass, and those stories are read and pondered by all ages and stages of readers every day, well, isn't a refrigerator a kind of large humming book, then? With all sorts of treasures inside? And how many books have such extraordinary added value as being excellent caves for ale and ice cream? And how many books can ever be said to have also housed shoes, spectacles, and a former sparrow, as a certain refrigerator of my acquaintance has?

-Brian Doyle, "Brian Doyle Reads a Refrigerator" (Read the entire short essay here)

Psalms

So this summer I've been studying the book of Psalms with a bunch of college-type girls. At the beginning of the summer, we each shared a favorite Psalm, and we've been working through them week by week. Here's our list:

Psalm 1 - Beth
Psalm 27 - Emily
Psalm 32 - Lydia
Psalm 34 - Leta
Psalm 37 - Bella
Psalm 51 - Sarah
Psalm 131 - Ali
Psalm 136* - Courtney
Psalm 139 - Lissy

*See Bella's post on this one!

End-o-Summer Highs

1. Looking for shooting stars after Friday Night Bible Study
2. Toy Story 3 (finally!)
3. New laptop
4. Psalms
5. Piles of unread books, purchased earlier in the summer
6. Dainty diving contest @ the Swim Thing
7. Looking forward to Backyard & Hudson Valley Shakespeare

Tonight You Belong To Me

-Josh Ritter & Erin McKeown

***

So sweet.

Time...is Marching On

Our ancestors could believe that their achievements had a chance of bearing up against the flow of events. We know time to be a hurricane. Our buildings, our sense of style, our ideas, all of these will soon enough be anachronisms, and the machines in which we now take inordinate pride will seem no less bathetic than Yorick's skull.

-Alain de Botton, The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, 320.

Bean Counters

History may dwell on stories of heroism and drama, but there are ultimately few of us out on the high seas, and many of us in the harbour, counting the ropes and untangling the anchor chains.

-Alain de Botton, The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, 241.

Idle Thoughts

I concluded that there were few troubling situations in contemporary life from which one could not distract oneself by wondering where the electricity had arrived from.

-Alain de Botton, The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, 209.

Rose Standish Does the Laundry

"Ho Rose!" quoth the stout Miles Standish,
As he stood on the Mayflower's deck,
And gazed on the sandy coast-line
That loomed as a misty speck.

"On the edge of the distant offing;
See! yonder we have in view
Bartholomew Gosnold's 'headlands.'
'Twas in sixteen hundred and two

"That the Concord of Dartmouth anchored
Just there where the beach is broad
And the merry old captain named it
(Half swamped by the fish)--Cape Cod.

"And so as his mighty 'headlands'
Are scarcely a league away,
What say you to landing, sweetheart,
And having a washing-day?"

"Dear heart"--and the sweet Rose Standish
Looked up with a tear in her eye;
She was back in the flag-stoned kitchen
Where she watched, in the days gone by;

Her mother among her maidens
(She should watch them no more, alas!),
And saw as they stretched the linen
To bleach on the Suffolk grass.

In a moment her brow was cloudless,
As she leaned on the vessel's rail,
And thought of the sea-stained garments,
Of coif and farthingale;

And doublets of fine Welsh flannel,
The tuckers and homespun gowns,
And piles of the hose knitted
From wool of the Devon downs.

So the matrons aboard the Mayflower
Made ready with eager hand
To drop from the decks their baskets
As soon as the prow touched land.

And there did the Pilgrim Mothers,
"On a Monday," the record says,
Ordain for their new-found England
The first of her washing-days.

And there did the Pilgrim Fathers,
With matchlock and axe well slung,
Keep guard o'er the smoking kettles
That propt on the crotches hung.

For the trail of the startle savage
Was over the marshy grass,
And the glint of his eyes kept peering
Through cedar and sassafras.

And the children were mad with pleasure
As they gathered the twigs in sheaves
And piled on the fire the branches
And heaped up the autumn leaves.

"Do the thing that is next," saith the proverb,
And a nobler shall yet succeed:
'Tis the motive exalts the action;
'Tis the doing, and not the deed;

For the earliest act of the heroes
Whose fame has a world-wide sway
Was to fashion a crane for a kettle
And order a washing day!

-Margaret Preston, "The First Proclamation"

***

It was my great honor to read this poem at our 4th of July festivities. My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of laundry!"

A Life Well Lived

The great question for the old and dying, I think, is not if they have loved and been loved enough, but if they have been grateful enough for love received and given, however much. No one who has gratitude is the onliest one. Let us pray to be grateful to the last.

-Wendell Berry, Andy Catlett, 120.

Sunset

You make the going out of the morning and the evening to shout for joy.

-Psalm 65:8b

Stuff I Brought Back From the Cape

A bucket of beach rocks
Sand (in my car, clothes, backpack, etc)
Just a hint of sunburn
Made-in-Kenya earrings
Lemonheads
Used books:
Letter from New York, Helene Hanff
Emil and the Detectives, Erich Kastner
Carry On, Mr. Bowditch, Jean Lee Latham
On the Art of Reading, Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch
The Wonderful O, James Thurber
The Eye of the Story, Eudora Welty
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Kate Douglas Wiggin
Comedies, Oscar Wilde
Hot Water, P.G. Wodehouse

All is Well

The Shunammite woman's grief was perfectly warranted; but there was also nothing ridiculous about her "All is well" when Elisha put her living son in her arms. In thanksgiving, we force ourselves to cling to the moment of resurrection before it reaches us.

-Leta Sundet, "Fierce Gratitude," Thought Meadow, Issue 5.

***

Lately, the phrase "it is what it is" has crept into my vocabulary, a handy non sequitur when things don't go quite the way I'd like. But it's a phrase that kind of bugs me, I think because it's a verbal shrug of the shoulders - life is rough, don't sweat it, just move on. Que sera sera, whatever will be will be. But if I believe in a sovereign God, that doesn't really jive with an it-is-what-it-is attitude. Whatever is, is because God intended it to be. I can rejoice, or get angry, but an emotionless "hey, whatever" doesn't really make a lot of sense. So, maybe I'll try out the Shunammite's "all is well" instead. When a meeting at work goes poorly because I was inadequately prepared, when we hit a major roadblock in our Fairmont trip prep, when Ben & Jerry's doesn't have any of my favorite ice cream flavors (brownie batter, oatmeal cookie chunk, cinnamon bun - in case you were wondering)...all is well. I have a sovereign God, and I can rejoice in his good plans, even when I am exasperated beyond measure.

Thanks, Leta. :)

Packing List

The night before my father sailed he borrowed his father's knapsack and he and the cat packed everything very carefully. He took chewing gum, two dozen pink lollipops, a package of rubber bands, black rubber boots, a compass, a toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste, six magnifying glasses, a very sharp jackknife, a comb and a hairbrush, seven hair ribbons in different colors, an empty grain bag with a label saying "Cranberry," some clean clothes, and enough food to last my father while he was on the ship. He couldn't live on mice, so he took twenty-five peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and six apples, because that's all the apples he could find in the pantry.

-Ruth Stiles Gannett, My Father's Dragon, 20.

***

Note to self: Must remember to pack two dozen pink lollipops for my impending trip to the Cape. Also a very sharp jackknife and seven hair ribbons in different colors.

In Memoriam

The fear of forgetting anything precious can trigger in us the wish to raise a structure, like a paperweight to hold down our memories. We might even follow the example of the Countess of Mount Edgcumbe, who in the late eighteenth century had a thirty-foot-high Neoclassical obelisk erected on a hill on the outskirts of Plymouth, in memory of an unusually sensitive pig called Cupid, whom she did not hesitate to call a true friend.

-Alain de Botton, The Architecture of Happiness, 123-124.

Stuff I'm Taking to the Cape

Bubble Thing + Bubble Juice Ingredients
Episodes of In Plain Sight to share with the peripatetic Jessie Gac
An Ideal Husband (the movie...)
The Art of Travel by Alain de Botton + scads of other library books (any suggestions?)
Sunglasses
Sneakers
Hats
???

Tidiness

Rum idea this is, that tidiness is a timid, quiet sort of thing; why tidiness is a toil for giants. You can't tidy anything without untidying yourself; just look at my trousers.

-G. K. Chesterton, Manalive, 42.

Bubbles!

Bubble Juice - New & Improved Recipe

Measure into a clean bucket and stir together:

16 cups warm water
1 cup Joy or Dawn dish soap (if you're abroad, use Fairy or Palmolive Aloe)
2 tablespoons baking powder (not baking soda)

Tip: It's STILL best to let your bubble solution sit overnight.

-David Stein & the Editors of Klutz

Bubble Juice - Original Recipe

Measure into a clean bucket and stir together:

12 cups water
1 cup Ultra Dawn
1/4 cup glycerine

Tip: It's best to let your bubble solution sit overnight.

-David Stein & the Editors of Klutz

A Few Good Books (Lately Discovered)

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card Gossamer, Lois Lowry The Magician's Elephant, Katie DiCamillo The Underneath, Kathi Appelt

Stars

...He would show her the star that was sometimes visible through his window. He would say to her, "Have you, in truth, ever seen something so heartbreakingly lovely? What are we to make of a world where stars shine bright in the midst of so much darkness and gloom?"

-Katie Dicamillo, The Magician's Elephant, 147.

But They Who Wait

Even youths shall faint and be weary,
and young men shall fall exhausted;
but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength;
they shall mount up with wings like eagles;
they shall run and not be weary;
they shall walk and not faint.

-Isaiah 40:30-31

Kuyper on Calvinism

Thus it is shown that Calvinism has a sharply defined starting point of its own...for our relation to the world: the recognition that in the whole world the curse is restrained by grace, that the life of the world is to be honored in its independence, and that we must, in every domain, discover the treasures and develop the potencies hidden by God in nature and in human life.

-Abraham Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism

***

I've been doing some haphazard on-line research on vocation recently. I'm especially interested in what the reformers (Luther & Calvin) had to say about this topic, and so one of the sources I've been dipping into is Kuyper's Lectures on Calvinism.

In the quote above, Kuyper is talking about our relation to the world. He puts a strong emphasis on common grace - we engage with the world, knowing that God is active in it, although his activity may be concealed. And so we are treasure seekers - working to discover and develop the good work that God has begun.

Three applications to my own vocation: (1) I am an actuary (a pricer of insurance). I observe patterns in data, and interpret and present those patterns to other people in a way that helps them make business decisions. What does Kuyper's quote have to do with pricing insurance? Well. Why does data behave predictably? Why do my statistical tools work? Because I live in an ordered universe. Even though the effects of the Fall are widespread - after all, there wasn't much of a demand for insurance in Eden - the world still operates in a predictable, orderly way. That is common grace. And I am literally a pattern seeker (a treasure seeker) in my day to day work.

(2) I am also a youth group leader. And this is a different type of treasure seeking. I work with youth from 7th grade to 12th grade, which means I get to see them grow up A LOT. And it is amazing to watch. Amazing to look at a 7th grader, and think THIS person will be one of my best friends in six years.

(3) Thirdly, and just a whim - not quite vocation or even avocation - I am also a collector of beach stones. I usually visit beaches that have more rocks than shells, and I am fascinated by the shapes, patterns, sizes, the feel of a stone in my hand. I always bring home a few, and my favorite rocks are pretty liberally scattered around my apartment. I love discovering an unusual stone, knowing that other people may have passed by without noting it, and that in a few hours or minutes it might be buried in a sandbar or washed back out to sea. Treasure seeking again, and a nice metaphor for what I am up to when I sift through data or plan a youth retreat.

Common Grace

When Francie bought a pound of coffee or an ounce of pepper she watched while a polished silver block with the weight mark was placed in one scale and the fragrant purchase was conveyed gently by means of a silverlike scoop into the other. Francie, watching, held her breath while the scoop dropped in a few more grains or gently eased some out. It was a beautiful peaceful second when both golden plates were stilled and stood there in perfect balance. It was as if nothing wrong could happen in a world where things balanced so stilly.

-Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, 137.

Calvin on Vocation

Every individual's line of life, therefore, is, as it were, a post assigned him by the Lord, that he may not wander about in uncertainty all his days.

-John Calvin

Review: Inkspell by Cornelia Funke

Really, really long. Grade: B

Review: When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead

I really liked this book. A lot. I do find it very reminiscent of The Westing Game and From The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frakweiler. Partly because it’s a puzzle, and all of the pieces don’t fall into place until the end. Partly because the characters are complex, but not overwhelming - just real. Partly because it’s set in the late 70’s in a very non-cheesy way (latchkey kids and game shows, but no bell-bottoms or disco). An added bonus - the story is sprinkled with references to A Wrinkle in Time. Grade: A

Review: Love Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli

Meh. The story is very predictably PC: an unconventional teenager makes friends with a bunch of quirky outcasts (an angry pre-teen, an agoraphobic woman, a goofy little girl, a crazy guy, a kid that steals stuff), knitting them into a community that finds its culmination in a winter solstice ceremony/celebration - and at the same time she tries to figure out if she still loves the boy that dumped her (in Stargirl) because she was too unconventional. Really? This book has its moments, but there’s way, WAY too much meditation. Grade: C+

Review: Eliza's Daughter by Joan Aiken

This was a terrible book. The dust jacket suggests that Aiken wrote this book out of "love and admiration" for Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility - but she doesn't seem to have particularly liked any of Austen's characters. Edward Ferrars is a legalistic, penny-pinching, and narrow-minded parson. Elinor is a dreary housewife, making the best of a lukewarm marriage. Marianne is domineering and jealous. Colonel Brandon is spoken well of (mostly) but never appears in person and eventually dies in the Napoleonic wars. I'm not sure what the point of all this is, other than a cynical rejection of a happy-ever-after ending. But not only does Aiken not seem to take any pleasure in Austen's characters, she doesn't seem to like any of her own characters. Austen's characters are often flawed, and sometimes very shallow and silly, but she has the grace to be amused and even delighted by them. Aiken doesn't seem to give a hoot for any character other than Eliza - the supporting cast are killed off one at a time by strokes and drownings and wasting sicknesses, but the book trots along and they're barely missed. And Eliza herself is hardly the sort of person I'd like to spend much time with (certainly not 316 pages!). It does seem odd that Aiken's writing should be so uneven - so winsome in her children's novels, and so heavy-handed and bitter here. But this book was written fairly late in her career, so maybe that's an explanation. Or maybe Dido Twite is just more fun to write about. Grade: D

Teenagers

"So, Alvina...how old are you?"

She poured syrup into the cold remainder of her coffee. We hadn't allowed her a refill.

"Eleven and three-quarters."

"You sure it's not eleven and four-fifths?"

She shrugged. "Could be."

"Well," he said with exaggerated dismay, "that's too bad."

She took a sip of the cold, syrupy coffee, decided she liked it, and gulped down the rest. Then looked up at him, debating whether to ask the obvious question. She did. "Why's that?"

He wagged his head grimly. If you hadn't known my father, you'd have thought he had just come from a funeral. "Why? Because you're coming to the end of a beautiful, wonderful time. Your kidhood is almost over. You know what happens next, don't you?"

Experience had taught Alvina nothing—she rose to the bait again. "What?"

"Twelve. That's what happens. And you know what then?"

She didn't really want to answer such a dumb question, but she couldn't resist finding out where all this nonsense was leading. "Thirteen," she said.

My father snapped her a finger-point. "Exactly! In other words, you'll become a teenager." He sighed mournfully. "Such a shame." Alvina looked at me, at him. "Why?"

"Why? Because you know what they say."

"Who's they?"

I thought: Score one for you, girl.

My father ignored the question. "They say teenagers are rotten. They go from being cute and cuddly little kids to monsters who want to stay out late and walk a block behind their parents."

I was a little uneasy. I knew my father was just toying with her, trying to provoke her, but I wasn't sure if Alvina knew...She twiddled her spoon in the empty coffee cup. She shook her head. "Not me."

My father and I were both caught by surprise. The spoon twiddled in the cup. Finally my father prompted her. "Not you?"

The twiddling stopped. She stared into the cup. "No. I'm backwards. I'm a rotten kid now, but I'll be an amazing teenager."

-Jerry Spinelli, Love, Stargirl, 174-175.

Fear

If I'm afraid of someone on the street, I'll turn to him (it's always a boy) and say, "Excuse me, do you happen to know what time it is?" This is my way of saying to the person, "I see you as a friend, and there is no need to hurt me or take my stuff. Also, I don't even have a watch and I am probably not worth mugging."

So far, it's worked like gangbusters, as Richard would say. And I've discovered that most people I'm afraid of are actually very friendly.

-Rebecca Stead, When You Reach Me, 25-26.

Library Books

Inkspell by Cornelia Funke - according to the book jacket, "The capitivating sequel to Inkheart," which in turn was a "Delectably thick and transfixing fantasy..." according to Publishers Weekly. I can quite reliably confirm that Inkspell is also thick. Love, Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli - the sequel to Stargirl, which I do not adore as much as Maniac Magee and Crash - but it's still a good read. When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead - I've been hunting for this book for a while - I read a review somewhere that piqued my interest. It's a mystery/puzzle of sorts set in 1979. I'm hoping that it will turn out to be in the grand tradition of The Westing Game. Eliza's Daughter by Joan Aiken - I ADORE Aiken's Wolves Chronicles, and I recently remembered that she wrote several romances that are loosely based on supporting characters from Jane Austen.

Nunc Dimittis

LORD, now lettest thou thy seruant depart in peace: accordyng to thy worde.
For mine iyes haue sene: thy saluacion.
Whiche thou hast prepared, before the face of al people;
To be a light to lighten the Gentiles: and to be the glory of thy people Israel.
Glory be to the father, &c.
As it was in the, &c.

-From "An Ordre for Evening Prayer Throughout the Yere," The Second Prayer-Book of Edward VI

***

I received The First and Second Prayer Books of Edward VI (Everyman Library Edition, 1938) for Christmas. I also own an old copy of The Book of Common Prayer (1892 edition?), so I think I am now an official collector of ancient-ish prayer books. I read through the order for Evensong a couple nights ago - stumbling over (and thoroughly enjoying) the idiosyncratic spelling* - and was particularly struck by this quotation of Simeon's prayer in Luke 2. I have always read this as the prayer that Simeon prayed - i.e., part of the Christmas narrative, a matter of historical fact, but not of any particular use for personal devotion. But I don't think it's included in the Order for Evening Prayer as a historical remembrance or quote - I think it's intended to be prayed. Every night! And what a fitting epitaph for the day: "Lord, now lettest thy servant depart in peace...for mine eyes have seen thy salvation."

*Re idiosyncratic spelling, it is fascinating to me how much more peculiar the spelling is in the 1549 version (First Prayer Book) as compared to the 1552 version - just three years apart?! E.g., now/nowe, seruaunte/seruant, woorde/worde, lyght/light, bee/be!

Hmmm

Think before sharing with others.

-My fortune cookie at dinner