Happy Hanukkah and Merry Christmas

Today is the day before Christmas eve and the space underneath our Christmas tree is filling up with wrapped presents waiting to be opened on Christmas morning.

Tonight is also the 3rd night of Hanukkah, the Feast of Dedication. We lit the 3rd candle of the Hanukah Menorah tonight.

Christmas and Hanukkah go together. Jesus celebrated Hanukkah, why shouldn't Christians acknowledge the great miracle that happended when the Temple was rededicated in Jerusalem?

Want to read about a real "Raider of Lost Arks"? I came across this story of a rabbi who spends his time and money finding, rescuing and restoring Torah scrolls (Hand copied Biblical manuscripts) that were buried to hide them from the Nazis during World War II.

He couldn’t look less like Indiana Jones. His black yarmulke glistens after
our four-block walk in the rain from the bookstore—that’s his day job. His
slender body and high, sweet voice make him seem more like a boy than a
43-year-old father of seven. But as he takes off his glasses to wipe away the
droplets, his blue-green eyes sparkle with energy—a hint that looks don’t begin
to tell the story.

“I rescue Torahs—that’s what I have been doing since 1985,” he says.

“It is not just a book,” he says. “A congregation without a Torah is a
congregation without a bond between them and God.”

A Torah is also, in many of the Eastern European towns he visits, the only
tangible remains of communities that were wiped out in World War II. So he is
doing more than commemorating those whose lives were lost—he is bringing
survivors back to life.

Read the entire story: Raider of the Lost Ark by Susan Seliger

A Blogger's Christmas Card

In case you can't read the caption, it reads: "Oh, I am so blogging about this."
Available at: http://wondermark.com/store/card_blog.jpg

Bunny Trails: Bar Mitzvahs and Bibliophiles

(Note: I have officially run out of time and I need to go cook dinner and grade papers. I'll have to come back to this and add links and quotes.)

I love having a block of time to just sit and surf the internet. This afternoon provided me with just such an opportunity. I started off thinking I’d do a quick search to try to determine the origin of the Jewish Bar Mitzvah ceremony. I know that Jesus’ parents took him to the temple when he was twelve. I was wondering if there was any evidence of a coming of age ceremony while the Jerusalem temple was still standing.

I found some interesting information in the online Jewish Encyclopedia (1906) entry for Bar Mitzwah:

Nevertheless there are many indications…, that its origin must be sought in remote antiquity.

Masseket Soferim xviii. 5 is even more explicit: "In Jerusalem they are accustomed to initiate their children to fast on the Atonement Day, a year or two before their maturity; and then, when the age has arrived, to bring the Bar Mitzwah before the priest or elder for blessing, encouragement, and prayer, that he may be granted a portion in the Law and in the doing of good works. Whosoever is of superiority in the town is expected to pray for him as he bows down to him to receive his blessing."

But I became intrigued and distracted from my original quest by this statement at the end of the Jewish Encyclopedia article.

Regarding a strange custom of cutting a boy's hair when he became Bar Mitzwah, see Abrahams' "Jewish Life in the Middle Ages," p. 144, note 2.

So I googled Abrahams' "Jewish Life in the Middle Ages”, and as “luck” would have it I found a good-sized preview of the book at Google Books.

The description of the preview of the book reads as follows:
Jewish Life in the Middle Ages By Israel Abrahams 1911. A study of the life and lives of Jews during the Middle Ages.
Contents:
The Centre of Social Life; Life in the Synagogue; Communal Organization; Institution of the Ghetto; Social Morality; The Slave Trade; Monogamy and the Home; Home Life; Love and Courtship; Marriage Customs; Trades and Occupations; The Jews and the Theater; The Purim-Play and the Drama in Hebrew; Costume in Law and Fashion; The Jewish Badge; Private and Communal Charities. The Relief of the Poor; Private and Communal Charities. The Sick and the Captive; The Medieval Schools; The Scope of Education; Medieval Pastimes and Indoor Amusements; Medieval Pastimes. Chess and Cards; Personal Relations between Jews and Christians; and Personal Relations. Literary Friendships.

I spent a good portion of an hour reading the chapters of the book that were online. Then I got to the section on schools and education. There I found some kindred spirits as to book lovers and care of books, and some great book quotes to add to my collection. Since the online version of the book on Google books was only a preview, I couldn’t copy the text as text so I ended up retyping the quotes I liked so I could save them in my book quotes collection:

On Page 253, from the section on “The Care of Books”

But unlike most modern bibliophiles, they were very willing lenders.

‘If A has two sons, one of whom is averse to lending his books, and the other does so willingly, the father should have no doubt in leaving all his library to the second son, even if he be the younger.’

This twelfth-century piece of advice comes from Germany; another, emanating at about the same period from Provence, contains the following directions from Judah Ibn Tibbon to his son:

‘Take particular care of your books; cover your shelves with a fine
covering, guard them against damp and mice. Write a complete catalogue of your books, and examine the Hebrew books once a month, the Arabic every tow months, and the bound volumes once a quarter. When you lend a book to any one, make a memorandum of it before it leaves your house, and when it is returned cancel the entry. Every Passover and Tabernacles call in all your books that are out on
loan.’

There is a note of intense love of external as well as internal
beauty in books in another noble remark of Judah Ibn Tibbon:

‘Avoid bad society,’ he says, ‘but make your books your companions. Let your book-cases and shelves be your gardens and your pleasure-grounds. Pluck the fruit that grows therein, gather the roses, the spices, and the myrrh. If your soul be satiate and weary, change from garden to garden, from furrow to furrow, from sight to sight. Then will your desire renew itself, and you soul be satisfied with delight.’

A scheme of study prefixed by the Spanish Jew, Profiat Duran, to the Hebrew Grammar which he wrote before 1403 admonishes:

(vi) Use only books which are beautifully written, on good paper, and well and handsomely bound. Read in a pretty well-furnished room, let your eye rest on beautiful objects so that you may love your work. Beauty must be everywhere, in your books and in your house. ‘The wealthy must honour the Law,’ says the Talmud; let them do this by paying for beautiful copies of the Scripture.

A footnote to the text sent me on another quest to find the source. Footnote (3) on page 352 reads:

Some of the quaint remarks on this subject by the author of the Book of the Pious were translated into English by the Rev. M. Adler in the Bookworm, 1891, pp 251 seq.

It wasn’t as easy to find the Bookworm from 1891 referenced above, but persistence paid off and several pages into my google search I found a NYT Times article from 1891 in which the translation of Rev. Adler was given. Again I had to retype it:

The Bookworm, An Illustrated Treasury of Old-Time Literature. Third series. New-York: A.C. Armstrong and Son.

Of all blessed old book worshippers, but in the broader, higher sense, must have been Rabbi Judah be Samuel Sir Leon, who in 1190 preserved precious manuscripts so as to keep them intact for coming generation. In his “Sefer Chasidim; or, Book for the Pious,” a work popular among orthodox Jews today, he devotes several paragraphs to the treatment of books.

“Do not,” he says, “bind two treatises together, for if you do you will be compelled to lend both, when a man only wants to read one, and somebody else will have to wait.”

“If you sit in the sun with a book, get sunstruck, but do not shield
yourself from the heat with the book. You want to dry a book of which the parchment is damp, and the fire smokes. You must not hold the book before your eyes; rather shed tears than blacken you book. Beware of bending the book on your knee, so as to make the clasps meet. You must never use books for a support for your head when you sleep. If a book and piece of money fall on the ground take the book up first. If there is a fire in the house first rescue the books.”

Happy Thanksgiving!

Here's a Thanksgiving Proclamation issued by Congress in 1782:

Following the Revolutionary War, the Continental Congress recognized the need to give thanks for delivering the country from war and into independence. Congress issued a proclamation on October 11, 1782:

By the United States in Congress assembled.
PROCLAMATION.

IT being the indispensable duty of all Nations, not only to offer up their supplications to ALMIGHTY GOD, the giver of all good, for his gracious assistance in a time of distress, but also in a solemn and public manner to give him praise for his goodness in general, and especially for great and signal interpositions of his providence in their behalf:

Therefore the United States in Congress assembled, taking into their consideration the many instances of divine goodness to these States, in the course of the important conflict in which they have been so long engaged;

the present happy and promising state of public affairs; and the events of the war, in the course of the year now drawing to a close;

particularly the harmony of the public Councils, which is so necessary to the success of the public cause;

the perfect union and good understanding which has hitherto subsisted between them and their Allies, notwithstanding the artful and unwearied attempts of the common enemy to divide them;

the success of the arms of the United States, and those of their Allies, and the acknowledgment of their independence by another European power, whose friendship and commerce must be of great and lasting advantage to these States:

----- Do hereby recommend to the inhabitants of these States in general, to observe, and request the several States to interpose their authority in appointing and commanding the observation of THURSDAY the twenty-eight day of NOVEMBER next, as a day of solemn THANKSGIVING to GOD for all his mercies:

and they do further recommend to all ranks, to testify to their gratitude to GOD for his goodness, by a cheerful obedience of his laws, and by promoting, each in his station, and by his influence, the practice of true and undefiled religion, which is the great foundation of public prosperity and national happiness.

Done in Congress, at Philadelphia, the eleventh day of October, in the year of our LORD one thousand seven hundred and eighty-two, and of our Sovereignty and Independence, the seventh.

JOHN HANSON, President.

Charles Thomson, Secretary.

Preoccupied Parents Trying to Write

Why Does This Remind Me of Blogging???

(ht: Amanda Shaw, First Things )

A Tribute to Preoccupied Parents, Elder Siblings, and Longsuffering Relations
(In all due Respect to their Little Angels)

Playing with children is a glorious thing; but the journalist in question has never understood why it is considered a soothing or idyllic one. It reminds him, not of watering little budding flowers, but of wrestling for hours with gigantic angels and devils.

Moral problems of the most monstrous complexity besiege him incessantly. He has to decide before the awful eyes of innocence, whether, when a sister has knocked down a brother’s brick, in revenge for the brother having taken two sweets out of his turn, it is endurable that the brother should retaliate by scribbling on the sister’s picture book, and whether such conduct does not justify the sister in blowing out the brother’s unlawfully lighted match. Just as he is solving this problem upon the principles of the highest morality, it occurs to him suddenly that he has not written his Saturday article; and that there is only about an hour to do it in. . . .

He sits down desperately; the messenger rings at the bell; the children drum on the door; the servants run up from time to time to say the messenger is getting bored; and the pencil staggers along, making the world a present of fifteen hundred unimportant words. Then the journalist sends off his copy and turns his attention to the enigma of whether a brother should commandeer a sister’s necklace because the sister pinched him at Littlehampton. That is how an article is written.

—G.K. Chesterton

Room with a View (of the fires burning across the Valley)

This was the view from my balcony this afternoon. My prayers are with all those who lost their homes over the last few days in this round of wildfires.


I came across these quotes on the dry Santa Ana winds which bring on the fire conditions in Southern California. The first is from Raymond Chandler:

There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge.
"Red Wind"

Actually the dry conditions make my hair straighter, but the dryness and howling winds do make my nerves jumpy and skin itchy. I wouldn't know about booze parties or full glasses of beer at cocktail lounges, but I think I'll stay away from carving knives.

The next quote is excerpted from a 1968 book of essays by Joan Didion (Slouching Towards Bethlehem):

There is something uneasy in the Los Angeles air this afternoon, some unnatural stillness, some tension. What it means is that tonight a Santa Ana will begin to blow, a hot wind from the northeast whining down through the Cajon and San Gorgonio Passes, blowing up sand storms out along Route 66, drying the hills and the nerves to flash point. For a few days now we will see smoke back in the canyons, and hear sirens in the night.

...

Easterners commonly complain that there is no "weather" at all in Southern California, that the days and the seasons slip by relentlessly, numbingly bland. That is quite misleading. In fact the climate is characterized by infrequent but violent extremes: two periods of torrential subtropical rains which continue for weeks and wash out the hills and send subdivisions sliding toward the sea; about twenty scattered days a year of the Santa Ana, which, with its incendiary dryness, invariably means fire. At the first prediction of a Santa Ana, the Forest Service flies men and equipment from northern California into the southern forests, and the Los Angeles Fire Department cancels its ordinary non-firefighting routines.

Just to watch the front-page news out of Los Angeles during a Santa Ana is to get very close to what it is about the place. The longest single Santa Ana period in recent years was in 1957, and it lasted not the usual three or four days but fourteen days, from November 21 until December 4. On the first day 25,000 acres of the San Gabriel Mountains were burning, with gusts reaching 100 miles an hour.

It is hard for people who have not lived in Los Angeles to realize how radically the Santa Ana figures in the local imagination. The city burning is Los Angeles's deepest image of itself.

Los Angeles weather is the weather of catastrophe, of apocalypse, and, just as the reliably long and bitter winters of New England determine the way life is lived there, so the violence and the unpredictability of the Santa Ana affect the entire quality of life in Los Angeles, accentuate its impermanence, its unreliability. The winds shows us how close to the edge we are.

Prayer for Leadership in our Country

“Lord, give us leaders such that it will be for Your glory to give us victory through them.”

This is a prayer which the late Derek Prince prayed during World War II when he was a British soldier in North Africa. At that point in time things looked bleak for the allied forces in Africa. The British army was forced on a 700 mile retreat, the longest retreat in the history of the British army. The stakes were high. Defeat at the British army's final stand near Cairo would open the way for the Nazis to move unhindered through Egypt into Palestine and to gain control of the Holy Land. It would mean certain annihilation of the Jewish community there.

Derek Prince describes the circumstances which led to the retreat, the result of lack of confidence in the leadership causing low morale among the troops in Shaping History Through Prayer and Fasting.

If there was ever a time when our nation was in need of prayer for righteous leadership, it is now. I was encouraged by Derek Prince's accounts of three different times when prayer turned circumstances around, resulting in earth-changing victories. The first of the accounts took place at the North African front in World War II. Here it is:

From 1941 to 1943, I served as a hospital attendant with the British forces in North Africa. I was part of a small medical unit that worked with two British armored divisions—the First Armored Division and the Seventh Armored Division. It was this latter division that became celebrated as the “desert rats” with the emblem of the white jerboa.

At that time the morale of the British forces in the desert was very low. The basic problem was that the men did not have confidence in their officers. I myself am the son of an army officer, and many of the friends with whom I grew up were from the same background. I thus had some valid standards of judgment. As a group, the officers in the desert at that time were selfish, irresponsible, and undisciplined. Their main concern was not the well-being of the men, or even the effective prosecution of the war, but their own physical comfort.

I recall one officer who became sick with malaria and was evacuated to a vase hospital in Cairo. For his transportation to Cairo, he required on four-berth ambulance for himself, and a one-and-a-half-ton truck to carry his equipment and personal belongings. At the time, we were continually being reminded that trucks and gasoline were in very short supply, and that every effort must be made to economize in the use of both. From Cairo, this officer was than evacuated to Britain (a procedure that certainly was not necessitated by a mere bout of malaria). Some months later, we heard him on a radio broadcast relayed form Britain. He as giving a very vivid account of the hardships of campaigning in the desert!

At that period our greatest hardship was the shortage of water. Supplies were very strictly rationed. Our military water bottles were filled every other day. This was all the water that we were allowed for every purpose – washing, shaving, drinking, cooking, etc. Yet the officers in their mess each evening regularly consumed more water with their whisky than was allotted to the other ranks for all purposes combined.

The result of all this was the longest retreat in the history of the British army – about seven hundred miles in all – from a place in Tripoli called El Agheila to El Alamein, about fifty miles west of Cairo. Here the British forces dug in for one final stand. If El Alamein should fall, the way would be open for the Axis powers to gain control of Egypt, to cut the Suez Canal, and to move over into Palestine. The Jewish community there would then be subjected to the same treatment that was already being meted out to the Jews in every area of Europe that had come under Nazi control.

About eighteen months previously, in a military barrack room in Britain. I had received a very dramatic and powerful revelation of Christ. I thus knew in my own experience the reality of God’s power. In the desert, I had no church or minister to offer me fellowship or counsel. I was obliged to depend upon the two great basic provisions of God for every Christian: the Bible and the Holy Spirit. I early came to see that, by New Testament standards, fasting was a normal part of Christian discipline. During the whole period that I was in the desert, I regularly set aside Wednesday of each week as a special day for fasting and prayer.

During the long and demoralizing retreat to the gates of Cairo, God laid on my heart a burden of prayer, both for the British forces in the desert and for the whole situation in the Middle East. Yet I could not see how God could bless leadership that was so unworthy and inefficient. I searched in my heart for some form of prayer that I could pray with genuine faith and that would cover the needs of the situation. After a while, it seemed that the Holy Spirit gave me this prayer:

“Lord, give us leaders such that it will be for Your glory to give us victory through them.”

I continued praying this prayer every day. In due course, the British government decided to relieve the commander of their forces in the desert and to replace him with another man. The man whom they chose was a general named W.H.E. “Strafer”:Gott. He was flown to Cairo to take over command, but he was killed when his plane was shot down. At this critical juncture the British forces in this major theater of the war were left without a commander. Winston Churchill, then Prime Minister of Britain, proceeded to act largely on his own initiative. He appointed a more-or-less unknown officer, named B. L. Montgomery, who was hastily flown out from Britain.

Montgomery was the son of an evangelical Anglican bishop. He was a man who very definitely fulfilled god’s two requirements in a leader of men. He was just and god-fearing. He was also a man of tremendous discipline. Within two months, he had instilled a totally new sense of discipline into his officers and had thus restored the confidence of the men in their leaders.

Then the main battle of El Alamein was fought. It was the first major allied victory in the entire war up to that time. The threat to Egypt, the Suez Canal and Palestine was finally thrown back, and the course of the war changed in favor of the Allies. Without a doubt, the battle of El Alamein was the turning point of the war in North Africa.

Two or three days after the battle, I found myself in the desert a few miles behind the advancing Allied forces. A small portable radio beside me on the tailboard of a military truck was relaying a news commentator’s description of the scene at Montgomery’s headquarters as he had witnessed it on the eve of the battle. He recalled how Montgomery publicly called his officers and men to prayer, saying , “Let us ask the Lord, mighty in battle, to give us the victory.” As these words came through that portable radio, God spoke very clearly to my spirit, “That is the answer to your prayer.”

I believe that the prayer which God gave me at that time could well be applied to other situations, both military and political:

“Lord, give us leaders such that it will be for Your glory to give us victory through them.”

Aramaic Professor meets Hollywood

I wrote before about one of my Professors at UCLA named Yona Sabar. Prof. Sabar's son, Ariel, just happens to be a journalist and an author. He has written a book about his father, My Father's Paradise: A Son's Search for His Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq.

He relates some interesting encounters between Aramaic and Hollyood in this article: When a Professor of Aramaic Meets Hollywood: You get asked some pretty strange things when you speak the language of Jesus.

Chinese 2008 Gold Medal Gymnasts

all met the minimum age requirement of 16 says the FIG...

Case Closed!

HT:Live.Breathe.Love Gymnastics

How Do You Spell Relief?

G-U-S-T-A-V!

Thank God that Gustav was no Katrina and that New Orleans was spared from major destruction!

God is good!

More Fun

Here's a picture of my daughter having fun at the beach this summer. The summer wasn't a total loss. Now that her knee is better things are looking up!

Olympic Proportions

How about those Olympic gymnasts? I managed to stay up until after midnight last night to watch our "Golden Girls" clinch their Olympic silver medal. I really felt for Alicia Sacramone who struggled on both beam and floor. But hey, the Olympic silver medal is a great accomplishment, and even if Alicia would've been perfect, the Chinese would probably still have taken the gold.

Have you heard about all the injuries plaguing the US Olympic team? Well we've been dealing with a gymnastics injury of our own all summer. I'm thanking God that our little gymnast got the okay from her physical therapist to start easing back into tumbling again. Whew! Do you have any idea how hard it is for a kid who is consumed by gymnastics fever to be off of tumbling for three months?

Ask Jeeves

“Jeeves, who was the fellow who on looking at something felt like somebody looking at something? I learned the passage at school. But it has escaped me.”

“Jeeves, what was it Shakespeare said the man who hadn’t music in himself was fit for?”

I just finished reading P. G. Wodehouse’s Thank you Jeeves. These are two of the questions Bertie Wooster asks his valet, Jeeves, in the first chapter of the book. It reminded me of one of the old internet search engines, Ask Jeeves. I decided to try these two questions on the internet version, but I soon discovered that Ask Jeeves has been renamed simply ask.com.

This is a personal favorite use of the internet for me, to find quotes that I vaguely remember, but can’t put my finger on the exact wording, or even who said it. So I decided to try these two questions on ask.com. I found that the first question was too much for both ask.com and Google. None of the results returned the correct answer or even matched the quote to P.G. Wodehouse’s Thank You Jeeves.

The second question did turn up a reference to Wodehouse and thus to the answer to the question, which for number 2 is “treasons, stratagems and spoils”.

Wodehouse’s Jeeves' answer to question number 1 is:

“I fancy the individual you have in mind, sir, is the poet Keats, who compared his emotions on first reading Chapman’s Homer to those of stout Cortez when with eagle eyes he stared at the Pacific.”

Maybe I should ditch the internet and hire a smart British valet. Nah!

Fathers and Sons

I happened to run across this soon-to-be published book at Amazon, My Father's Paradise: A Son's Search for his Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq, by Ariel Sabar. The reason I am anticipating the publication of this book is because I know the father in the book. Yona Sabar was one of my Hebrew professors at UCLA. He was a member of my Ph.D. committee. He is one of the kindest and most godly men I have ever met.

He is also one of a very few native speakers of Aramaic that I have met. I knew that he had fled from Kurdistan in Iraq as a young person and settled in Israel before coming to the US. I’m looking forward to reading the book.

My Secret History Part II

I think I’m ready to jump back in to blogging on a regular basis. I sort of drew back from it as a response to an attack on my personal privacy through the internet with which I’ve been dealing for a while, and which has thankfully come to a resolution. (Thank you God!) Even so, the memory of it will stay with me as a caution to the dangers of this online society in which we live.

I love the fact that virtually anything I want to know about is at the tip of my fingertips on the internet. What a few short years ago would have taken many trips to libraries around the world, is there for the Googling. And yet, I have learned a hard lesson, that an unintended consequence of this wealth of information is a grave lack of privacy, which can be exploited by the unprincipled, and used against me in ways I never dreamed possible. I am sadly the wiser and more cautious for the experience. As I recently asked a lawyer,“Don’t I have a right to privacy in this country?” (You know, the much touted defense for the legality of killing of innocent babies in the womb.) His answer, “That went out with the internet.” Well, okay, I’m better now.'

So, enough about that. I’ve been searching for a C.S. Lewis quote that I wanted to use to go with the quote from the Secret History on Greek Prose Composition in my previous post. If memory serves me (which it often doesn’t), the quote is something about him being so at home in Greek and Latin that he had basically a native speaker’s fluency in them; that he was a product of a bygone system of education, a dying breed of classically educated scholars. Anyway, I couldn’t lay my hands on it, but I did find a quote where he said losing his Greek and Latin would be like losing a limb.


Eureka! I have found it!: It’s from C.S. Lewis’ inaugural address at Cambridge in 1954, De Descriptione Temporum. See for yourself if my memory of the quote matches up at all with what he said:

One thing I know: I would give a great deal to hear any ancient Athenian, even a stupid one, talking about Greek tragedy. He would know in his bones so much that we seek in vain. At any moment some chance phrase might, unknown to him, show us where modem scholarship had been on the wrong track for years. Ladies and gentlemen, I stand before you some what as that Athenian might stand. I read as a native texts that you must read as foreigners. You see why I said that the claim was not really arrogant; who can be proud of speaking fluently his mother tongue or knowing his way about his father's house? It is my settled conviction that in order to read Old Western literature aright you must suspend most of the responses and unlearn most of the habits you have acquired in reading modem literature. And because this is the judgement of a native, I claim that, even if the defence of my conviction is weak, the fact of my conviction is a historical datum to which you should give full weight. That way, where I fail as a critic, I may yet be useful as a specimen. I would even dare to go further. Speaking not only for myself but for all other Old Western men whom you may meet, I would say, use your specimens while you can. There are not going to be many more dinosaurs.

My Secret History

I recently finished reading the book, The Secret History by Donna Tart. I was attracted to the book when I heard it centered around a cohort of students of Ancient Greek at a small private college. Having been a student of Greek in college and a lover of dead languages to this day, I decided it was a book I should read. Of course I enjoyed the book. I found it a suspenseful page-turner; I couldn’t put it down.

I enjoyed the book even though the plot to me was rather creepy, sort of a cross between Tom Wolfe’s I am Charlotte Simmons and Golding’s Lord of the Flies. From what I had read about the book I was expecting a kind of murder mystery, whodunnit. Actually, there was never any doubt about, “who done it”, not just once but twice. The mystery and suspense was in whether they would be caught or not. Whether or not the perpetrators were brought to justice in a court of law, they for the most part, seemed to have received a sort of divine retribution for their crimes.

The most fascinating parts of the book to me though, were the parts about the actual language classes and learning. The author’s observations on Greek prose composition, which I quote below, were worth the time spent reading the book. You see, I too took Greek Prose Composition in college. It was probably the hardest class I ever took, more difficult to me than Old Akkadian or Engineering Physics. Of course, I was at a disadvantage, being the only person enrolled in the class who wasn’t a Classics major (My major was Near Eastern Languages).

I’ll never forget the look the Professor gave me after I read aloud one of my compositions to the class. He looked my squarely in the eyes and asked if I had meant to say such-and-such. “Yes”, I answered meekly. “Well that is not at all what you said.” I wish I could convey the sarcasm in his voice and the embarrassment I felt, but you get the idea. So I haven’t yet mastered the art of thinking in Ancient Greek. But I can’t say I didn’t try.

Here's an excerpt from The Secret History:

Back in my room, dizzy and exhausted, I wanted more than anything to pull the shades and lie down on my bed -- Which suddenly seemed the most enticing bed in the world, musty pillow, dirty sheets and all. But, that was impossible. Greek prose composition was in two hours and I hadn't done my homework.

The assignment was a two page essay, in Greek, on any epigram on Callimachus that we chose. I had done only a page and started to hurry through the rest in an impatient and slightly dishonest fashion, writing out the English and translating word-for-word. It was something Julian asked us not to do. The value of Greek prose composition, he said, was not that it gave one any particular facility in the language that could not be gained as easily by other methods, but that if done properly, off the top of one's head, it taught one to think in Greek. One's thought patterns became different, he said, when forced into the confines of a rigid and unfamiliar tongue. Certain common ideas become inexpressible; other, previously undreamt of ones spring to life, finding miraculous new articulation. By necessity, I suppose, it is difficult for me to explain in English exactly what I mean. I can only say that an incendium is in its nature entirely different from the feu with which a Frenchman lights his cigarette, and both are very different from the stark, inhuman pur that the Greeks knew, that pur that roared from the towers of Illion or leapt and screamed on that desolate, windy beach, from the funeral pyre of Patroklos.

Pur: that one word contains for me the secret, the bright, terrible clarity of Ancient Greek. How can I make you see it, this strange, harsh light that pervades Homer's landscapes and illumines the dialogues of Plato, an alien light, inarticulable in our common tongue? Our shared language is a language of the intricate, the peculiar, the home of pumpkins and ragamuffins and bodkins and beer, the tongue of Ahab and Falstaff and Mrs. Gamp; and while I find it entirely suitable for reflections such as these, it fails me utterly when I attempt to describe in it what I love about Greek, that language innocent of all quirks and cranks; a language obsessed with action, and with the joy of seeing action multiply from action, action marching relentlessly ahead and with yet more actions filing in from either side to fall into neat step at the rear, in a long straight rank of cause and effect toward what will be inevitable, the only possible end.

In a certain sense, this was why I felt so close to the others in the Greek class they, too, knew this beautiful and harrowing landscape, centuries dead; they'd had the same experience of looking up from their books with fifth-century eyes and finding the world disconcertingly sluggish and alien, as if it were not their home. It was why I admired Julian, and Henry in particular. Their reason, their very eyes and ears were fixed irrevocably in the confines of those stern and ancient rhythms -- the world, in fact, was not their home, at least not the world as I knew it -- and far from being occasional visitors to this land which I myself knew only as an admiring tourist, they were pretty much its permanent residents, as permanent I suppose it was possible for them to be. Ancient Greek is a difficult language, a very difficult language indeed, as it is eminently possible to study it all ones life and never be able to speak a word; but it makes me smile, even today, to think of Henry's calculated, formal English, the English of a well-educated foreigner, as compared with the marvellous fluency and self-assurance of his Greek -- quick, eloquent, remarkably witty. It was always a wonder to me when I happened to hear him and Julian conversing in Greek, arguing and joking, as I never once heard either of them do in English; many times I've seen Henry pick up the telephone with an irritable, cautious, 'Hello?', and may never forget the harsh and irresistible delight of his 'Khairei!' when Julian happened to be at the other end.

Happy Fourth of July!

Here's a quote from a letter John Adams wrote to his wife. He expected July 2 to become the national holiday because the Continental Congress declared the "United Colonies free and Independent States" on July 2. The document justifying the act of Congress was dated July 4th.

"The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. . . . It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfire and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more."

Enjoy your Pomp and Parades, Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations!

(For more info see: Three Cheers for July 2! )

Reading

... We get no good
by being ungenerous, even to a book,
and calculating profits... so much help
by so much reading. It is rather when
we gloriously forget ourselves and plunge
soul-forward, headlong, into a book's profound;
Impassioned for its beauty and salt of truth --
Tis then we get the right good from a book.
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
(from Aurora Leigh)

God's Grandeur

THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89)

Angels in the Locker Room

I'm not normally a big sports fan, but this report really intrigued me. Paul Pierce of the Boston Celtics suffered a knee injury in Game 1 of the NBA finals. He had to be hoisted in his teamates' arms and carted off the floor in a wheelchair. He returned to the game a short time later and led the Celtics to a 98-88 win over the LA Lakers. He had this to say about his speedy recovery:

"I think just God sent this angel down, and the angel said, 'Hey, you're going to be alright. You need to get back out there and show them what you've got'"

Pentecost

Could we with ink the ocean fill,
Were every blade of grass a quill,
Were the world of parchment made,
And every man a scribe by trade,
To write the love
Of God above
Would drain the ocean dry;
Nor would the scroll
Contain the whole
Though stretched from sky to sky.

(Opening lines of the piyut of Akdamus, traditionally read on the 1st night of Pentecost or Shavuot, which btw, is tonight.)

Happy Birthday

to the Flowergirl!
(my Mom)

Headline News!

Bald Eagles

Oh My, it's been almost a month since I posted last. I've been taking a little blogging sabbatical.

I found this live webcam of a Bald Eagle's nest on Santa Cruz Island. The chicks were born in early April and will be full grown in about 4 weeks. In the meantime, we're all welcome to check in on them anytime day or night.

Here's the link at The Nature Conservancy.

All My Ways

I'm so glad that He's acquainted with ALL MY WAYS!

You comprehend my path and my lying down,
And are acquainted with ALL MY WAYS!

Psalm 139:3

The Subjunctive in the News

I came across this blog post on Geraldine Ferraro's (in)?famous quote about Barack Obama, "If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position.", which focuses, more interestingly (to me), on the grammar of the sentence.

You can read the entire post at The Language Log: The Subective Tense:

Subjective tense

William Safire's most recent "On Language" column (NYT Magazine 3/30/08, p. 18) looks at the now-famous quote from Geraldine Ferraro, "If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position." Then comes a parenthetical digression on grammar:


"Get this," Sam Pakenham-Walsh, member of the Nitpickers League, said in an e-mail message, "we no longer use the subjective tense! Has all our education been for naught?" Because Ferraro's statement posed a condition contrary to fact, her "if Obama was a white man" should have been were.


Yes, "subjective tense", in a grammar peeve. Has all our education been for naught?

Seems this particular language nitpicker was outraged because Ms. Ferraro neglected to use the subjunctive form which should have been: "If Obama were a white man,...". Of course the irony of the nitpicking is that he wrongly identifies the subjunctive mood as the subjective tense and then laments, "Has all our education been for naught?" Apparently his education was. I guess if you're going to nit-pick, it's a good idea to get your terms right.

The Robots are Coming!

Have you seen the latest? Well maybe it's not the latest, but I just saw this on amazon.com today. It's Pleo, the dinosaur pet that learns and changes. It actually looks pretty cute. If I had an extra $300.00 to spend on a pet dinosaur I'd probably buy one.
Play Pleo Video

The Earliest Easter in our Lifetime

Today is Resurrection Sunday, more commonly known as Easter. It's the day set aside to celebrate Jesus' resurrection from the dead.

HE IS RISEN!

We know from the New Testament that Jesus was crucified on Passover and rose from the dead on the 3rd day, so why are Easter and Passover almost a month apart this year? Here's an excerpt from Chuck Missler's K-house newsletter that explains the discrepancy:

A QUESTION OF DATES
This year we celebrate Easter on March 23rd, almost a month before Passover. Yet Christ was crucified on Passover, so why are they an entire month apart?

Passover is observed on the 14th day of the month of Nisan, the first month of the religious year. Jesus was crucified on Passover and rose on the 3rd day, appropriately on the Feast of Firstfruits (the morning after the Sabbath after Passover). This was always on a Sunday, irrespective of the day of the week of Passover. Thus, Christians have traditionally celebrated His resurrection on Sunday.

In the West, most of our major holidays occur conveniently on fixed dates. However unless you are an astronomer, the date of Easter can be much more difficult to determine. That's because its date is set by the lunar calendar. The rules for determining the date of Easter were imposed by Constantine and the Council of Nicaea in AD 325, long before the advent of the Gregorian calendar that is most widely used in the world today. Easter is celebrated on the first Sunday, after the first full moon, after the spring equinox. Therefore, it is held on a Sunday on varying dates between March 22 and April 25.

This year Passover begins at sunset on April 19th, almost a month after Easter, in part because it is a Jewish leap year. During leap years, an entire month is added to the Hebrew calendar. Furthermore, this year Easter comes early, very early. In fact, the next time Easter will fall this early will be in the year 2228 – not for another 220 years. The last time it fell on March 23rd was the year 1913. Easter sometimes falls on March 22nd, a day earlier, however that hasn't happened since 1818 and won't happen again until the year 2285 – in another 277 years. What does that mean? No one alive today has or will ever celebrate it any earlier.

Raising Successful Kids

The Secret to Raising Smart Kids
Hint: Don't tell your kids that they are. More than three decades of research shows that a focus on effort—not on intelligence or ability—is key to success in school and in life

The head-coach/owner of the gym where Aimee lives, uh, I mean, spends inordinate amounts of her time training with her competitive gymnastics team, scheduled an all-team parent meeting last Friday night. One of the main agenda items was a discussion of the above article from Scientific American. The article relates not only to academic success, but also to success in any kind of endeavor that requires effort.
While talent certainly is important to success in gymnastics, it isn't necessarily the most talented kids that are the most successful. This article gives a great explanation of why that is.

St. Patty's Day, or Is it?

Top O’ the Mornin to You!
Happy St. Paddy’s Day!

Oh but wait, is today really St. Patrick’s Day? Well it’s March 17th, isn’t it? Isn’t March 17th St. Patrick’s day? Well, yes and no. Because of the extremely early occurrence of Easter this year, St. Patrick’s Day occurs during the week preceding Easter, known as Holy Week. This overlap is causing some conflict for St. Patrick’s Day celebrations. According to the BBC News, Why is it 'not' St Patrick's Day today?:

The Catholic Church in England and Wales says St Patrick's Day is simply not on the calendar of feast days this year. This week is known as Holy Week in the church and takes precedence over all saint's days.
Any saint's feast day that clashes with it is omitted from the calendar.
But the position is different in the Republic of Ireland, where St Patrick's Day was observed on Saturday 15 March, instead of Monday 17 March.

The situation in the U.S seems even more complicated. Different cities have responded in different ways to the dilemma:

Savannah, Georgia, Milwaukee, and Philadelphia moved their St. Patrick’s Day parades and celebrations to accommodate the wishes of Catholic leaders.

New York and Columbus, Ohio are having their parades as scheduled, on Monday.

From CNN, St. Patrick's Day causing Catholic dilemma:

For the first time since 1940, St. Patrick's Day will fall during Holy Week, the sacred seven days preceding Easter.
Because of the overlap, liturgical rules dictate that no Mass in honor of the saint can be celebrated on Monday, March 17, according to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
But a few Roman Catholic leaders are asking for even more moderation in their dioceses: They want parades and other festivities kept out of Holy Week as well.

Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m wearing green TODAY!

A Week for Holidays

This is a busy week, crammed chock full of holidays. Let’s see:

Today is Sunday, March 16 : Palm Sunday, Beginning of Holy Week

Monday, March 17: St. Patrick’s Day

Thursday, March 20: First Day of Spring

Thursday, March 20: Purim begins at Sunset in Israel

Friday, March 21: Good Friday, Purim Celebrated in Israel

Saturday, March 22: Purim celebrated outside of Israel

Ides of March

Today, March 15, is the anniversary of Julius' Caesar's assasination. Here is an excerpt from an interesting blog post about Caesar:

Read the entire post here.

Caesar was a man of talent made great by the exceptional times he lived in. As Machiavelli said, “prowess” must also have “opportunity” or it cannot make itself felt. And so felt and remembered Caesar would be. As Christian Meier put it, "The way in which Caesar played this game--risking his very existence and then raising the stakes, seeking out immense opportunities, finding them and savoring them--affords an absorbing spectacle." I highly recommend on some rainy day you pickup a copy of Caesar's commentaries and absorb the spectacle.

Remembering Caesar on the Ides of March.

Hail Caesar!

I'll put it my to-read list!

How Do You Spell Relief?

I received this in an email this morning...

Congratulations! The IRS has accepted your federal tax return. There's nothing else you need to do.

Whoopee!

(When there's no "Complete Jane Austen" on Sunday night, there's nothing else to do but e-file taxes.)

For the fun of it...

Here's a fun link to a Nostalgic Candy store. It brought back memories of riding bikes to the corner store and coming home with a sack of loot uh, I mean candy. Just looking at those pictures makes my teeth ache.

Enjoy!

Nostalgic Candy.com

Pwnage?

I learned something new today about Internetspeak or "Leet" from Mags at the Jane Austen blog. She was so kind as to mention my blog post about Jane Austen's use of the subjunctive on the Jane Austen blog. The title of the post is: "How does one say
“pwn3d” in the subjunctive?"

From Wikipedia:

Owned and Pwned
Main articles: Owned and Pwned
Owned and pwned both refer to the domination of a player in a video game or argument (rather than just a win), or the successful hacking of a website or computer.[1][17][23] For example, in a multiplayer first-person shooter game, a player with a default starting gun defeats an opponent carrying a vastly superior weapon. This would indicate dominant skill in the player with the inferior weapon, who outplayed (owned or pwned) the player with superior firepower. As in a common characteristic of Leet, the terms have also been adapted into noun and adjective forms,[17] ownage and pwnage, which can refer to the situation of pwning or to the superiority of its subject (e.g., "He is a very good player. He is pwnage.").

A 3 is commonly used to replace the letter e as in pwn3d.

Thanks Mags, for mentioning me so kindly on your blog and for the introduction to "Leet".

Don't [sic] Jane Austen

"A woman, especially,if she have [sic] the misfortune of knowing anything,should conceal it as well as she can."
Jane Austen,
Northanger Abbey

Back to Jane Austen and subjunctives from my previous post...
The picture above is from page 11 of Masterpiece's The Complete Guide to Teaching Jane Austen, a beautiful, full-color, teaching guide aimed at educators who want to use the film adaptations of Jane Austen's works in the classroom. I was looking through the guide and came across the above-referenced quote with the bracketed [sic].

Inserting a [sic] in a quoted text draws attention to the fact that an apparent error in spelling or grammar is part of the original and not an editorial blunder:
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English defines sic as follows:

sic: Latin used after a word that you have copied in order to show that you know it was not spelled or used correctly.

and the The American Heritage® New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy:

sic: A Latin word for “thus,” used to indicate that an apparent error is part of quoted material and not an editorial mistake.

So, what's wrong with the quote? Obviously, a present-day speaker would most likely say, "A woman, especially,if she has the misfortune of knowing anything...", well actually a modern speaker probably wouldn't give this kind of advice to a young woman, but that's a cultural difference and we're talking about grammar here. And then there's the author's intent, Jane Austen was a master of verbal irony and satire, so even though she seems to be telling women to hide their "smarts", she is really exposing such a view to criticism, but again, I digress from the grammatical point I was making.

Back to the point, is "if she have the misfortune of knowing anything..." grammatically incorrect? Should it be, "if she has the misfortune of knowing anything..." The answer lies in the grammatical mood (also called mode) of the verb (have/has), and progressive dwindling of the use of the subjunctive in English. The word if, lets us know that this is a conditional statement.

The mood or mode of a verb is "the manner in which the action, being, or state is expressed. There are five modes: the indicative, subjunctive, potentioal, imperative, and infinitive. The indicative mode asserts a thing as a fact, ... as, "The man walks,"

"The subjunctive mode asserts a thing as doubtful, as a wish, a supposition, or a future contingency; as, "If this be true, all will end well,..."(Harvey's Revised English Grammar)

So what form should the subjunctive of the verb "to have" take in the quoted sentence, "A woman, especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can."? To find the answer to this, (I know my readers are burning up with desire for the answer to this question, as I was.) I had to look at 18th century English grammar:
from : The Treatment of the Subjunctive in Eighteenth-century Grammars of English by Anita Auer:

White (White, James. The English Verb (London, 1761))describes the formal aspect of the subjunctive by explaining the way it differs from the indicative mood:
All the difference, then between the Present of the Subjunctive Mood, and the Present of the Indicative, is; that the word expressive of the Verb undergoes changes of termination in several of the persons of the Present Tense of the Indicative, but none in the persons of the Subjunctive. Thus, in the Present of the Indicative, have changes into hast or have, has or hath, in the Person of the Singular Number, before in the Plural it return again to have; whereas, in the Subjunctive Mood, it continues have without variation, in every Person of each Number.

There it is! Eureka! The subjunctive form of the verb "to have" stays the same, "have", even in the singular, "I have", "You have", "He, she it have".

I rest my case! Don't go [siccing] Jane Austen! She was a master of polite English grammar, and knew her subjunctives from her indicatives; we should all be so nice!

(To see Henry Tilney's lamentation over the degradation of the word nice in Northanger Abbey, click on the bold word nice, and read the page, or after clicking, search on the page for nice.)

Cherry Blossoms and Subjunctives

I was going to post a picture I took of my neighbor's cherry tree covered with pretty blossoms. I just took the picture this afternoon, (it looks so pretty in the front of their house), but I can't find the cable to connect my camera to the computer, and I only have a minute to post this so I googled this picture instead. I'm sure it's better than the one I took anyway. (thanks to http://www.alexisleon.com/figs/cherry.jpg for the picture)

Oh yeah, and I do have something to say about subjunctives (and Jane Austen of course) but it will have to wair because I just got a call to pick up my son and I need to be back by 4 to take my daughter to gymnastics... gotta run!

All Jane Austen, All the Time

So it seems...

To make the most of the Masterpiece's presentation of The Complete Jane Austen on PBS Sunday nights, I've been re-reading all of Jane Austen's novels and watching as many film adaptations as I can. I picked up Sense and Sensibility from the library and, I rented the DVD of the Jane Austen Book Club and watched it this weekend. So, it's not surprising that I have Jane Austin "on the brain". There are worse things to be stuck on I guess.

It was Grigg from the Jane Austen Book Club who said, "All Jane Austen All the Time." Last night we watched the final episode of Pride and Prejudice (1995) with the dreamy Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy.

One of the things that makes Pride and Prejudice such a classic work of literature is the sterling cast of supporting, perfectly pitched, comic characters. The genre of Pride and Prejudice is a comedy of manners and the manners of the minor characters are truly comical. One of the most unforgettable comic characters of all times is the smarmy Rev. Mr. Collins. Tonight as we sat down for our Sunday family fellowship time, Chuck threatened to read Fordyce’s sermons to us for an hour or two, for our moral edification. (See, even my macho husband is being sucked into the Austen frenzy.)

And who can forget the annoyingly loud and nervous Mrs. Bennet, along with her permanently bemused husband, Mr. Bennet. To my mind the most perfect Mr. Bennet is Donald Sutherland in PandP 2005, in fact the most perfectly cast and perfectly acted character in any of the Jane Austin adaptations I’ve seen is Sutherland’s Mr. Bennet.

Another supporting character is Lizzy’s pedantic sister Mary Bennet. Mary spends all her time with her nose in a book and thinks that books alone make her wise and someone worth listening to. In honor of the comic supporting cast of Pride and Prejudice here are some choice Mary Bennet quotes:

Mary had neither genius nor taste; and though vanity had given her application, it had given her likewise a pedantic air and conceited manner, which would have injured a higher degree of excellence than she had reached.

…she was eagerly succeeded at the instrument by her sister Mary, who having, in consequence of being the only plain one in the family, worked hard for knowledge and accomplishments, was always impatient for display.

“…What say you, Mary? for you are a young lady of deep reflection I know, and read great books, and make extracts."
Mary wished to say something very sensible, but knew not how.


They found Mary, as usual, deep in the study of thorough bass and human nature; and had some new extracts to admire, and some new observations of thread-bare morality to listen to.

And even Mary could assure her family that she had no disinclination for it.
"While I can have my mornings to myself," said she, "it is enough. -- I think it no sacrifice to join occasionally in evening engagements. Society has claims on us all; and I profess myself one of those who consider intervals of recreation and amusement as desirable for every body."

"Pride," observed Mary, who piqued herself upon the solidity of her reflections, "is a very common failing I believe. By all that I have ever read, I am convinced that it is very common indeed, that human nature is particularly prone to it, and that there are very few of us who do not cherish a feeling of self-complacency on the score of some quality or other, real or imaginary. Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonomously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us."

"I admire the activity of your benevolence," observed Mary, "but every impulse of feeling should be guided by reason; and, in my opinion, exertion should always be in proportion to what is required."

Gone Too Soon

My sixteen year old son Eric walked in the door on Monday evening with a disturbed look on his face. "One of my good friends from school died this weekend", he said. "Look Mom, here he is on Myspace." A good-looking blonde kid's picture stared me in the face.

"He died in a dirt-biking accident. A friend texted me this morning about it, but I thought it was a bad joke. I can't believe he's gone. I just talked to him Thursday after school. He's the last person I would think wouldn't make it."

Fifteen year old Taylor LaKamp was killed this President's day weekend when his dirt bike collided with another biker while making a jump. The funeral is this Friday at 11am at Santa Clarita's Eternal Valley. I didn't know the kid but he looks like he was a great kid, good-looking, with his whole life ahead of him.

My son says he's okay, but after school yesterday he came home and went to his room. I heard him playing his guitar and when he came out of his room his eyes were red like he'd been crying. I know he wouldn't cry in front of me, but I know he's grieving and it's very important to him to be at the funeral on Friday, even though it's in the middle of a school day.

I'm praying for Taylor's family and friends to be comforted in the midst of this tragedy. Read the Bakersfield Newspaper report here.

Getting "Crabbey" with Jane Austen

On Sunday, Feb 3, I watched Masterpiece's, The Complete Jane Austen's new biopic Miss Austen Regrets. One scene shows Miss Austen's introduction to a young MP (member of parliament) named Stephen Washington. The meeting takes place in a library, and the young man begins to quote a poet named Crabbe:

"All around these silent walks I tread
These are the lasting memories of the dead."

Since I collect library and book quotes and I had never heard this one before, I had to find out more about Crabbe and the source of the quote.I found that George Crabbe was one of Jane Austen's favorite poets, and that the source of the quote is a poem he wrote called The Library. It's a very long poem, but here is the section that the quote came from:

With awe, around these silent walks I tread;
These are the lasting mansions of the dead:-
"The dead!" methinks a thousand tongues reply;
"These are the tombs of such as cannot die!"
Crown'd with eternal fame, they sit sublime,
"And laugh at all the little strife of time."

Hail, then, immortals! ye who shine above,
Each, in his sphere, the literary Jove;
And ye the common people of these skies,
A humbler crowd of nameless deities;
Whether 'tis yours to lead the willing mind
Through History's mazes, and the turnings find;
Or, whether led by Science, ye retire,
Lost and bewilder'd in the vast desire;
Whether the Muse invites you to her bowers,
And crowns your placid brows with living flowers;
Or godlike Wisdom teaches you to show
The noblest road to happiness below;
Or men and manners prompt the easy page
To mark the flying follies of the age:
Whatever good ye boast, that good impart;
Inform the head and rectify the heart.

Crabbe also seems to have been Jane Austen's source for the name of the heroine of Mansfield Park, Fanny Price.

"In The Parish Register, Part II (1807), Jane Austen’s favourite poet Crabbe had written:

Sir Edward is an amorous knight
And maidens chaste and lovely shun his sight;
His bailiff’s daughter suited much his taste,
For Fanny Price was lovely and was chaste”

(from E.E. Duncan-Jones in Jane Austen and Crabbe, The Review of English Studies, 1954) ht: oldgreypony

Crabbe also appears on a table in Fanny Price's study. The speaker in the following excerpt is Fanny's cousin, Edmund Bertram, speaking to Fanny:

Mansfield Park
Volume I
Chapter 16
You, in the meanwhile, will be taking a trip into China, I suppose. How does Lord Macartney go on?"--opening a volume on the table and then taking up some others. "And here are Crabbe's Tales, and the Idler, at hand to relieve you, if you tire of your great book. I admire your little establishment exceedingly; and as soon as I am gone, you will empty your head of all this nonsense of acting, and sit comfortably down to your table. But do not stay here to be cold."

Valentine's Day love Poem

Invitation to Love
by Paul Laurence Dunbar

COME when the nights are bright with stars
Or when the moon is mellow;
Come when the sun his golden bars
Drops on the hay-field yellow.
Come in the twilight soft and gray,
Come in the night or come in the day,
Come, O love, whene'er you may,
And you are welcome, welcome.

You are sweet, O Love, dear Love,
You are soft as the nesting dove.
Come to my heart and bring it rest
As the bird flies home to its welcome nest.

Come when my heart is full of grief
Or when my heart is merry;
Come with the falling of the leaf
Or with the redd'ning cherry.
Come when the year's first blossom blows,
Come when the summer gleams and glows,
Come with the winter's drifting snows,
And you are welcome, welcome.

How to Marry a Millionaire

Watch PBS' Masterpiece Pride and Prejudice tomorrow night, Sunday, Feb. 10, to find out. (You'll have to come back on the 17th and 24th to catch the whole story.)

IT is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

Lover's Vows

It's been too long since my last post.

Going on with the Jane Austen theme, I've been enjoying immensely the Sunday night Masterpiece Jane Austen novels adapted for TV. Mansfield Park was the offering last Sunday. Fanny Price is the heroine of Mansfield Park and one of my favorite Jane Austen characters. Many people feel Fanny is too tame and too much of a goody-two shoes to be a favorite heroine. But I like her quiet ways and her absolute confidence to do the right thing in spite of her anxiety and fears and in the face of strong opposition.

The latest PBS version of Mansfield Park stars Billie Piper as Fanny. The character is written for the movie with a bit more spunk than comes across in the book. Her constant running here and there in the movie is definitely not in the book. But, I like the liveliness that comes across on the screen.

One of the key plot elements in the book is the preparation for a play by the residents of Mansfield Park and their friends. The play is entitled Lovers Vows. Fanny and her cousin Bertram disapprove of the endeavor and especially the choice of the play and the decision to cast the engaged Maria Bertram in the part of Agatha (the victim of a seduction and the resulting unwed pregnancy).

Reading the play helped me to understand the story of Mansfield Park better.


Fanny's Opinion of "Lovers' Vows"

From Chapter 14

The first use [Fanny] made of her solitude was to take up the volume [of "Lovers' Vows"] which had been left on the table, and begin to acquaint herself with the play of which she had heard so much. Her curiosity was all awake, and she ran through it with an eagerness which was suspended only by intervals of astonishment, that it could be chosen in the present instance—that it could be proposed and accepted in a private Theatre! Agatha and Amelia appeared to her in their different ways so totally improper for home representation—the situation of one, and the language of the other, so unfit to be expressed by any woman of modesty, that she could hardly suppose her cousins could be aware of what they were engaging in; and longed to have them roused as soon as possible by the remonstrance which Edmund would certainly make

More to come, got to run to take Aimee to gymnastics...

Soul Piercing

The Masterpiece presentation of Persuasion on Sunday was not a disappointment. Watching Miss Anne Elliot brought back to life by the return of her true love, Captain Wentworth, after an eight year separation was quite enjoyable.

I am re-reading each of Jane Austen's 6 novels in preparation for watching the Masterpiece presentations. The climax of the novel Persuasion and the movie comes with the unveiling of one of the greatest love letters ever written (well certainly better than any I ever received.) Here is Captain Wentworth's impassioned epistle to Miss Anne Elliot, for your enjoyment and mine:

I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. You alone have brought me to Bath. For you alone, I think and plan. Have you not seen this? Can you fail to have understood my wishes? I had not waited even these ten days, could I have read your feelings, as I think you must have penetrated mine. I can hardly write. I am every instant hearing something which overpowers me. You sink your voice, but I can distinguish the tones of that voice when they would be lost on others. Too good, too excellent creature! You do us justice, indeed. You do believe that there is true attachment and constancy among men. Believe it to be most fervent, most undeviating, in F. W.

I must go, uncertain of my fate; but I shall return hither, or follow your party, as soon as possible. A word, a look, will be enough to decide whether I enter your father's house this evening or never.

Next Sunday watch out for Gothic twists and turns in Northanger Abbey.

Milestones

January 2008 has already been a month of milestones. This past week my son turned sixteen. And the week before that yours truly, turned, ahem, fifty. That’s right. FIFTY! But I don’t feel like fifty. Well, I’m not sure what fifty’s supposed to feel like, but I don’t feel any different than I did at say, forty-nine.

I guess I have some good company and lots of it. I read somewhere that since 2001 someone turns fifty every six seconds. Here are some other people turning fifty in 2008:
1958: Grandmaster Flash, Ellen DeGeneres, Ice-T, Sharon Stone, Holly Hunter, D. Boon, Alec Baldwin, Andie MacDowell, Michelle Pfeiffer, Rick Santorum, Drew Carey, Annette Bening, Prince, Keenen Ivory Wayans, Jello Biafra, Kevin Bacon, Mark Cuban, Bill Berry, Madonna, Angela Bassett, Belinda Carlisle, Steve Guttenberg, Tim Burton, Michael Jackson, Thomas Dolby, Tim Robbins, Viggo Mortensen, Jamie Lee Curtis, Charlene Tilton, George Saunders, Nikki Sixx, Bebe Neuwirth. Elsewhere: Andy Gibb, Gary Numan, Gary Oldman, Simon Le Bon.
Source : Braniac

In the Bible, fifty is a Jubilee year. It’s a year of liberty and release from debt. It's a year that to enjoy the increase of the land without sowing or reaping:

Leviticus 25:10, 12
And you shall consecrate the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a Jubilee for you; and each of you shall return to his possession, and each of you shall return to his family.

That fiftieth year shall be a Jubilee to you; in it you shall neither sow nor reap what grows..., not gather the grapes of you untended vine.

For it is the Jubilee; it shall be holy to you; you shall eat its increase from the field.

I'm ready for some JUBILATION! Let's Party!

On Turning Fifty
Today I turned fifty. I feel really good.
My body's still working quite well thanks. (Touch wood!)
My hair's not too grey, my wrinkles are few,
I can still touch my toes with my knuckles. (Can you?)
I'm quite full of vigour, just getting ripe.
(But they now print the phone book in much smaller type.)
Inside this old body I'm still young, but then
If life starts at forty, I'm really just ten.
By Sue Taylor

You'll Be a Man, Son

For my son on the week he turns sixteen:

If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!
Rudyard Kipling

Where's My King Cake?

Today, January 6, is Kings Day. Kings Day, also known as Ephiphany, is the day when according to tradition, the Magi brought their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh to the baby Jesus. For me, growing up in New Orleans, that meant one thing, King Cake! I love King Cake. I am craving King Cake, I have been all day. Last night I did a google search asking "where to buy a King Cake in Los Angeles".

Google gave me one suggestion. The suggestion Hansen's Bakery. Oh yes, Hansen's Bakery does have King Cakes, but this is not a New Orleans King Cake, not by any stretch. This is a fake King Cake:




I could order one online from New Orleans, but I just can't bring myself to spend $40.00 to $50.00 to ship one here. I could make one, but it just wouldn't be the same, so here I sit, craving King Cake.

Jane Austen's Captain Wentworth

I’m looking forward to Sunday evenings this winter. I’ll be tuning in to PBS for The Complete Jane Austen on Masterpiece 2008. (9pm/8pm CT) Here’s the schedule:

January 13 Persuasion
January 20 Northanger Abbey
January 27 Mansfield Park
February 3 Miss Austen Regrets
February 10 Pride and Prejudice
to 24
March 23 Emma
March 30 to Sense and Sensibility
April 6

In preparation for watching the film adaptations I’ve started re-rereading the Austen novels. I’m reading Persuasion now. Miss Anne Elliott is pining away for her lost love when he suddenly reappears in her life. Anne had fallen in love with a young naval officer, Frederick Wentworth, eight years earlier. She was persuaded to break it off by well-meaning friends and relatives on the grounds that he was not a suitable match for her in station or fortune. Now that he is a naval captain and has made his fortune and she a spinster the chances of them being reconciled seem slim. You’ll have to read the book and/or watch the movie for the rest of the story.

I came across something interesting pertaining to the possibility that Jane Austen had a romance with a real naval officer who perhaps became the model for Captain Wentworth. This is from Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters, by her nephews, William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh:

A story is given in the Reminiscences of Sir Francis H. Doyle, to the effect that Mr. Austen, accompanied by Cassandra and Jane, took advantage of the Peace of Amiens, in 1802, to undertake a foreign tour. Whilst in Switzerland, they fell in with a young naval officer, who speedily became attached to Jane. His love was returned, and all seemed to be going smoothly. The party were making for Chamonix; but while the Austens kept to such high road as there was, their friend was to make his way thither over the mountains. The Austens reached Chamonix safely, but their friend never arrived, and at last news came that he had over-tired himself and died of brain fever on the way. The Austens returned to England, and Jane resumed her ordinary life, never referring to her adventures abroad.

Here's an excerpt from a poem by W.H. Auden about Jane Austen:

A Letter To Lord Byron, W. H. Auden
"...
There is one other author in my pack
For some time I debated which to write to.
Which would least likely send my letter back?
But I decided I'd give a fright to
Jane Austen if I wrote when I'd no right to,
And share in her contempt the dreadful fates
Of Crawford, Musgrove, and of Mr. Yates.

Then she's a novelist. I don't know whether
You will agree, but novel writing is
A higher art than poetry altogether
In my opinion, and success implies
Both finer character and faculties
Perhaps that's why real novels are as rare
As winter thunder or a polar bear.
...
I must remember, though, that you were dead
Before the four great Russians lived, who brought
The art of novel writing to a head;
The help of Boots had not been sought.
But now the art for which Jane Austen fought,
Under the right persuasion bravely warms
And is the most prodigious of the forms.

She was not an unshockable blue-stocking;
If shades remain the characters they were,
No doubt she still considers you as shocking.
But tell Jane Austen, that is if you dare,
How much her novels are beloved down here.
She wrote them for posterity, she said;
'Twas rash, but by posterity she's read.

You could not shock her more than she shocks me;
Beside her Joyce seems innocent as grass.
It makes me most uncomfortable to see
An English spinster of the middle-class
Describe the amorous effects of 'brass',
Reveal so frankly and with such sobriety
The economic basis of society.

New Year's Reading Roundup

Happy New Year!

You crown the year with your goodness and your paths drip with abundance.

Psalm 65:11


Here's a list of the books I read in 2007, at least all the ones that I finished and remembered to write down in my journal. I didn't read as many books this year as I did last year. There are probably a number of reasons for this. I think that I probably started more books and didn't finish them. Right now I'm in the middle of four or five books. I also spent more time online this year reading blogs, social networking and just chasing bunnies around the internet. I did a lot more reading when I was driving my daughter to gym 50 miles away in 2006. Not wanting to make two round trips and not really feeling comfortable with leaving her there alone, I was "stuck" there for four to six hours at a time. Needless to say that gave me quite a bit of time to read. Now she's at a local gym and I'm not "stuck".

The books are listed in the order that I read them, except that I found a few that I had missed in another list and stuck them at the end. The books marked with asteriks are those that I bought this year.

Books Read in 2007

The Princess and the Wise Woman by George McDonald

Emily Bronte and her Sisters

*The Book of Hours by Davis Bunn

Codex by Lev Grossman

The Good Nanny by Benjamin Cheever

*The Jane Austen’s Guide to Manners by Josephine Ross

Lileth by George McDonald

*The Know It All by A. J. Jacobs

Phantastes by George McDonald

Middlemarch by George Eliot

An Acceptable Time by Madeleine L'Engle

*Amazing Grace, William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery by Eric Metaxas

*The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde

Christ in the Passover by Cecil and Moishe Rosen

Tess of D’Ubervilles by Thomas Hardy

*Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde

*The Well of Lost Plots by Jasper Fforde

The Histories by Herodotus

The Bookwoman’s Last Fling by John Dunning

The Mill on the Floss George Elliot

Never Before in History by Gary Amos

Misquoting Jesus By Bart Ehrman

The Sunday Philosophy Club by Alexander McCall Smith

*Many Waters by Madeleine L’Engle

The Case of the Missing Books by Ian Sansome

*Rashi’s Daughters, Book I: Joheved by Maggie Anton

The Holiest of All by Andrew Murray

Under the Lilacs by Louisa May Alcott

*Thursday Next: The Sequel by Jasper Fforde

*The Narnian by Alan Jacobs

*Rashi’s Daughters, Book II: Miriam by Maggie Anton

*Rotten Tomatoes by Jasper Pford

*The Copper Scroll by Joel Rosenberg

*How the Irish Saved Civilization by Thomas Cahill

Our Father Abraham by Marvin R. Wilson

The Gift of the Jews by Thomas Cahill

Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton

The Collectors by David Balladuci

Studies in Words C.S. Lewis

The Light Princess by George Macdonald

Prometheus Bound by Aescylus

The Truth War by John MacArthur

God’s Gold: A Quest for the Lost Temple Treasures of Jerusalem

The Last Secret of the Temple by Paul Sussman

1 Dead in Attic: After Katrina by Chris Rose

The World of the Talmud by Morris Adler

Reordering Your Day by Chuck Pierce

*Water Babies by Charles Kingsley

*The Fight for Jerusalem by Dore Gold

*1453 by Roger Crowley