Got some time to waste...

er, I mean, to spend in sharpening and proving your mental acuity??? And don't mind being insulted...

Then try this:

the idiot test

And if that's not enough:

the idiot test 2!

Brady Bunch Battle of the Bulge

Did you notice the cool alliteration in the title? I know, it’s not that cool, oh well, I try.

Anyway, we watched the latest “Celebrity Fit Club” on TV last night. I actually only watched it because Maureen McCormack, who played Marcia Brady on the Brady Bunch, was on it.

I was sorry to hear that she’s been having a rough time because her mother passed away, and she’s been caring for her handicapped brother. She turned to food for comfort. Of course I felt bad for her, having been through the death of both of my parents. But I have to confess that I had the slightest bit of satisfaction in knowing that someone like her, the perfect teenager of my “generation” is struggling with her weight. We certainly aren't getting any younger.

I’m sure she’ll be back to “fighting weight” in no time. Oh Marcia, Marcia.

Comforting Words

Though an army may encamp against me,
My heart shall not fear;
Though war may rise against me,
In this I will be confident.

One thing I have desired of the Lord
All the days of my life,
To behold the beauty of the Lord,
And to inquire in His temple.

For in the time of trouble
He shall hide me in His pavilion;
In the secret place of His tabernacle
He shall hide me;
He shall set me high upon a rock.

Psalm 27:3,4,5

Trying to make sense of a tragedy

I'm grieving for the innocent victims of a lunatic murderer at Virginia Tech. I know of only one place to go for comfort, into the arms of the One who comforts the comfortless, heals the brokenhearted and calms the raging seas. I'm praying for all the bereaved family members and friends, those injured, and those traumatized by the experience.

This Bequest of Wings

He ate and drank the precious words,
His spirit grew robust;
He knew no more that he was poor,
Nor that his frame was dust.
He danced along the dingy days,
And this bequest of wings
Was but a book.
What liberty A loosened spirit brings!

Emily Dickinson


Books I've 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

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

The Fight for Jerusalem by Dore Gold

Prometheus Bound by Aescylus

He is Risen

And behold, there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord descended from haven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat on it. His countenance was like lightning, and his clothing as white as snow. And the guards shook for fear of him, and became like dead men. But the angel answered, and said to the women, Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified.

He is not here; for He is risen, as He said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay.

And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
Teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo:
I am with you always, even to the end of the age.

Matthew 28

This Bequest of Wings

He ate and drank the precious words,
His spirit grew robust;
He knew no more that he was poor,
Nor that his frame was dust.
He danced along the dingy days,
And this bequest of wings
Was but a book.
What liberty A loosened spirit brings!"

Emily Dickinson

Books I've 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

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

The Fight for Jerusalem by Dore Gold

Passover Menu

I love to cook ethnic dishes. In fact I really only enjoy cooking for special occasions and cooking either something ethnic or something I haven’t done before. My mom was the best cook ever. Growing up French in New Orleans, we ate gumbo, jambalaya, panne meat, oyster stuffing, shrimp creole, stuffed mirliton, po-boys, doberge cake, king cake, and more, just thinking about it makes me hungry. So for traditional holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas, I like to cook Cajun/Creole.

Once, I attempted to cook a traditional Indian meal for a visiting minister from India. I also invited some British friends over when I attempted to make Yorkshire Pudding, actually it turned out pretty good. The Indian meal was okay, but when I asked our friend if it tasted Indian, he told me it was “American Indian”. Okay, it was the spices. I also had my two kids who were eating with us so I couldn’t burn their little mouths. Real Indian food is SPICY! I’m getting my appetite juices ready for tonight: there’s a new Indian restaurant in town and Chuck and I are going to try it out tonight.

Well all of that was by way of introduction to our family’s Passover menu. I’ve been cooking Passover dinner now for a few years, so I have my menu pretty much down. Since I don’t have any background in Jewish cuisine, I’ve had to get everything from cookbooks. I’m getting quite good at making Matzah Ball soup, if I do say so myself. I have a great recipe that requires boiling a whole chicken with some vegetables on the first day, removing the chicken and vegetables and cooling it overnight, defatting the broth, and then starting over with another chicken and more carrots and onions. Means you have to plan ahead because it takes at least two days to cook. Plus, my daughter Aimee is quite an expert Matzah Ball roller, so the soup was good.

Last year I added a potato kugel and cooked it again this year. I’m not going to get my cookbook to look up the names, but it requires some great Yiddish ingredients which include schmaltz and gribbbez?. Please excuse me if I’ve butchered the names, like I said I’m not going to look them up. But schmaltz is melted chicken fat and the gr. stuff is made when you take the chicken fat, melt it and cook thin onion strips and chicken skin for about 45 minutes so it gets really crunchy. Then you mix it in with boiled potatoes, add some chicken broth mash it up and bake them in a casserole for a potato kugel.

Then there’s the charoset, which is a mixture of apples, walnuts, raisins, cinnamon and grape juice or wine. Charoset is a reminder of the mortar used by the Israelites to make bricks for the Egyptians. It goes on the Seder plate and I also serve it with dinner. Then there’s steamed asparagus with lemon juice, avocado salad, matzahs, oh yes and roast lamb. For dessert we always have this great chocolate cake made with matzah meal, grated apple, grated semisweet chocolate and six egg beaten egg whites and sugar. Since there’s no baking powder, soda, etc. to make the cake fluffy, the egg whites and the grated apples do the trick.

Now what are we having for Easter?

A Visit to the "Old City"

Okay, it wasn’t really the Old City of Jerusalem but it was as close as we could get without spending thousands of dollars on a trip to Israel. The Jewish Feast of Passover starts tonight. Our family likes to celebrate Passover. It has become a family tradition, even though we are Christians.

There are many reasons why I love to celebrate Passover, not the least of which is that my Lord Jesus Christ inaugurated the New Covenant at a Passover seder, saying “Do this in remembrance of Me”. So we celebrate Passover in remembrance of The Passover Lamb, Jesus Christ, who was slain for us.

Because I don’t have a family background in celebrating Passover, I’ve sort of put together our own family traditions through the years. I picked up a Seder plate when I visited the Holy Land many years ago, and an “Elijah cup” sometime later. But I thought this year it was time to upgrade our Passover equipment. I looked online for Judaica stores but you really have to see the stuff before purchasing it. So a trip to the Fairfax district of Los Angeles was in order.
Here are a few of the stores we visited:
Ufaratza Judaica Center
The Mitzvah Store
Shmulies Judaica
Solomon’s Bookstore

I haven’t been to the Fairfax district, where most of the Jewish stores in Los Angeles are located, since I was studying Hebrew at UCLA in the 1980s. I remember I picked up a pocket version of the Hebrew Scriptures, called the Tanakh, which I still have. Actually, I have been in the area since then, but for a different purpose. When I was driving my kids all over Los Angeles for auditions we visited W. Pico and Fairfax Blvd. many times. It’s a lot more fun to go there for the purpose of browsing in Jewish stores than rushing to get to an audition on time, finding the address and a parking spot and rushing back on the freeway to try to get kids back in time for sports, acting classes etc. Whew, I don’t miss that one bit.

On our trip we bought a Matzah tray, an afikomen bag, portion cups for the seder plate, silver (plate) candle sticks, and a wine fountain. The wine fountain (pictured above) is the coolest. It is certainly not required for the seder, but it looked so cool that Chuck and I both decided we had to have it. You pour the wine in using the top cup and it comes spurting out into eight little cups below. Since four cups of wine (or grape juice) are obligatory for the service, this will come in handy and did I say it’s really cool too.

Where have all the heroes gone? They're LOST!

This is Wednesday and tonight a new episode of Lost will be aired. Lost and Gilmore Girls are the only two TV shows that I try to watch regularly (well okay in the interest of full disclosure, I also try to keep up with Survivor but I think it’s more out of habit than any particular thrill with the show. We’re probably the only family in the country that doesn’t watch American Idol.) But Lost is really my favorite.

At least it has been. Last season I started getting frustrated with the slow-moving story line. It seemed like you would watch the show for a whole hour and barely anything would happen. I was just thinking while watching, “get on with it already”. So this season has been much more exciting as far as the plot moving along. We’re getting some more information about “the others” and as implausible as it all seems it at least is moving forward.

This season, though, I have another complaint. My complaint is that the characters are becoming completely unlikable. The two characters who had (in my opinion) the most heroic and selfless characteristics have turned into self-serving jerks. I was disappointed with Jack when he operated on the “other leader” (okay, I don’t remember his name). But in the middle of the operation Jack deliberately cut some kind of blood vessel and threatened to let him bleed to death unless his demands were met. Now, I know you could argue that “the ends justified the means” and that he was bargaining for the life of his friends. But, what came to my mind was the Hippocratic Oath: Do no harm. Didn’t he swear an oath as an MD that he would never deliberately harm a patient? Is there any circumstance that would make it okay for an MD to threaten to murder a patient in the middle of an operation. Sure it’s just TV, but if I’m going to relate to these characters, I want to see at least some of them live up to standards of decency.

Then last week, John Locke, the guy who was healed when he crashed on the island from paralysis of his legs, went ahead and blew up the submarine that was going to take Jack off the island and back to civilization. (Yes, I know, it’s just a story and what would happen to Jack’s part if he left the island? That is not my problem) But, it was a very self-serving and selfish action to blow up the means of rescue for all those stranded, lost victims of the airplane crash. I expected more from John Locke. So that is why I’m annoyed with Lost this season. But I’m still looking forward to watching the new episode tonight.

Increasing learning

I was reading the book of Proverbs and I came across a great one for Homeschool and really for any kind of learning:

Proverbs 16:21
The wise in heart will be called prudent
and sweetness of the lips increases learning

If I really want to increase learning during homschool, I need to make sure that what comes out of my lips is sweet. I'm not talking not demanding excellence but about being more encouraging and patient. I read this over the weekend and started applying it this week. I've already noticed that school is a lot more fun and I'm getting better results.

Jane Austen on journaling and letter writing
by way of Henry Tilney in Northanger Abbey:

"Not keep a journal! How are your absent cousins to understand the tenour of your life in Bath without one? How are the civilities and compliments of every day to be related as they ought to be, unless noted down every evening in a journal? How are your various dresses to be remembered, and the particular state of your complexion, and curl of your hair to be described in all their diversities, without having constant recourse to a journal? My dear madam, I am not so ignorant of young ladies’ ways as you wish to believe me.

It is this delightful habit of journaling which largely contributes to form the easy style of writing for which ladies are so generally celebrated. Everybody allows that the talent of writing agreeable letters is peculiarly female. Nature may have done something, but I am sure it must be essentially assisted by the practice of keeping a journal."

BBC News has an article about a "new and improved" portrait of Jane Austen which was commisioned for the cover of a new edition of a memoir by Austen's nephew. Apparently the editors of the work decided that the original version of the portrait was "too unattractive". Humph!

St. Patty's Day

Happy St. Patrick's Day! I'm still trying to find something green today to wear. Chuck took Aimee to her gymnastics workout this morning. Tragically, Aimee didn't have a green leotard to wear today. She was concerned that she was going to get pinched but we managed to find a hair scrunchie with some green in it so hopefully that will do the trick.

My most vivid memory of St. Patrick's day growing up was the one when my brother and I asked my dad why he wasn't wearing green. He just kind of grunted and didn't answer so my brother taped a piece of green paper to his back. When Dad discovered it he pulled it off and told us that he hated St. Patrick's day. He refused to wear green because growing up he always had to fight Irish kids. He was a lone French boy growing up in the Irish Channel section of New Orleans and I guess back in those days names like the "French Quarter" and the "Irish Channel" actually meant something.

I've concluded that one benefit he derived from such tough experiences is that he learned to handle his fists so well that he turned into a boxer. He had quite a successful amateur boxing career and even a brief pro stint. Of course all this was way before I was born. When my Granmere, his mother, found out about his boxing ,which I guess he had kept secret from her, she convinced him to give it up.

Despite my father's early experiences with the Irish, when I married an Irish man, I didn't hear a word about it from my dad, who loved Chuck like a son. And now my son proudly wears on his belt buckle a shamrock and the saying, "Proud to be Irish".

For an interesting article on the real St. Patrick click here.

Happy Pi Day

Today is March 14,and I almost missed it, but just in the nick of time I wanted to wish you a heartfelt Happy Pi Day! On 3-14, actually at 1:59, math geeks everywhere celebrate. It is also appropriately Albert Einstein's birthday.

Here's a link to an NPR article about a guy who holds the North-American record for reciting the most digits of pi (too bad he only made it to the 12,887th digit). If you have nothing better to do you can actually hear him recite it.

Virtual Church

Our church, Harvest Rock, now webcasts both Sunday morning services live. Sunday morning services are at 9am and 11am California time. It comes in handy when the family is under the weather, or too lazy to get up and get dressed for church. If you want to check out the service, go to the church web page and click toward the bottom right on the Live Webcast button during one of the service times.

The week that was

I'm glad this week is over. My son was sick most of the week with a fever and sore throat that he caught when he went snowboarding last Sunday. He missed two and a half days of school.

Then Aimee started coughing last night and woke up with a fever. She missed gymnastics today and hasn't moved out of bed all day. I also started feeling feverish this morning and took to the couch. I haven't moved much from it all day either.

Chuck has been taking care of two sick kids and cleaning the house all day. I spent most of the day on the couch reading "Amazing Grace" by Eric Metaxas, the book on which the movie is based. I still haven't seen the movie but I'm looking forward to it. The book was inspiring. Wilberforce's life story shows clearly that one person fueled by a mission from God can change the world.

Trying to Use Words

I just finished reading The Good Nanny by Benjamin Cheever. It caught my eye in the library. I’m focusing on reading books that fit into a few themes, either Classics, books about books, biographies, some science, mostly popular physics or mathematics or devotionals.

This book didn’t seem to fit in any of those categories but the nanny theme caught my attention. I read Anne Bronte’s Agnes Grey last year and also on the same theme but not quite the same level or time frame, You’ll Never Nanny in This Town Again. I haven’t read The Nanny Diaries yet but it’s on my list of books I want to read this year. So I picked up The Good Nanny.

There are a number of things not to like about this book, including mostly unlikable characters and a fairly improbable ending, but I was surprisingly pleased by it. It didn’t take long for me to notice that this really was a “book about books” or at least a book about people in the book industry – editors and authors.

I especially enjoyed the section where the main character decides to finally write the novel he’s been planning to write for years – full time. He starts off staring at a blank page, writes the title, and proceeds to fill several pages with first lines from other people’s books, including the well known, “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.

Then he gets out his quotation book. Here's an excerpt:

His quotation book was a black plastic binder into which he’d inserted the pages of his quotation file. He flipped to a quote from H.L. Mencken: “Writing, they all say, is the most dreadful chore ever inflicted upon human beings. It is not only exhausting mentally; it is also extremely fatiguing physically. The writer
leaves his desk, his day’s work done, with his mind empty and the muscles of his back and neck full of a crippling stiffness. He has suffered horribly that the babies may be fed and beauty may not die.”
He’d always felt Mencken meant to be funny now he wondered…

He reread the famous Flaubert quote:
“Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.”
He considered this a grand hyperbole. Maybe it wasn’t hyperbole at all…

The longing among the people he knew who wanted to be writersnow seemed comical It was as if all the beef cattle out in the west had yearned for a trip to the Chicago stockyards.

I love the dry humor. You can just imagine that the author has lived this and is speaking from his own experience. I was also amused because I keep a quotation book just like this myself.

Later on in the same day, after being rejected by a literary agent the narrative goes on:

He went back downstairs and got his T.S. Eliot. Turned to
the dog-eared page and copied:

“Trying to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure.”

Reading this made the whole book worthwhile in my book. Did you notice that it’s the same quotation from East Coker that I posted on Friday? Well I did. I love it when seemingly random things are connected in this way.

So I heartily recommend the book to any aspiring author or book-lover. Not so much for inspiration but for the humor.

By the time I finished the book I was curious about the author, Benjamin Cheever. The name, at least the Cheever part, sounded familiar, so I googled him. He is the son of the Pulitzer Prize winning author John Cheever, which is why the name sounded so familiar. Benjamin Cheever has some well-written and entertaining essays on the Web about getting published. Here are some links if you’re interested:

The Writing Life

Selling Ben Cheever

Celebrating Books

Did you know that March 1 was World Book Day? That is if you live in the United Kingdom or Ireland it is.
The organizers polled around 2000 people for their list of top 10 books they can't live without. The results are listed below and more information is available on the web page. I find it somewhat disturbing that the Bible comes in 6th, behind Harry Potter and To Kill a Mockingbird.

If you missed the celebration on March 1, as I did, there is another (competing?) world book day celebrated on April 23. April 23 is World Book and Copyright Day. It was established by UNESCO in 1995.

According to the website, April 23 is a symbolic date in world literature, marking the birth or death of such writers as Miguel de Cervantes, William Shakespeare and the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega.


Here is an excerpt from the (March 1) world book day web page:

World Book Day 2007
In a survey to mark the tenth anniversary of World Book Day, a survey has been conducted to find the ten books the nation cannot live without. Over 2000 people voted online at www.worldbookday10.com

Results reveal that Pride and Prejudice tops the list, with Tolkein’s fantasy trilogy, The Lord of the Rings, in second place. Two of the Bronte sisters appear alongside Charles Dickens, showing that classics are still the most essential reads. The Bible is also still relevant to many, coming in sixth in the poll.
The top ten are as follows:
1) Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen 20%
2) Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkein 17%
3) Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte 14%
4) Harry Potter books – J K Rowling 12%
5) To Kill A Mockingbird – Harper Lee 9.5%
6) The Bible 9%
7) Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte 8.5%
8) 1984 – George Orwell 6%
9)His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman 6%
10) Great Expectations – Charles Dickens .55%

Coffee Spoons

I haven't posted in a while. I have a list of all kinds of posting ideas but haven't had the time or energy to write them up. One thing I'm very happy about is that I did our taxes early this year. I don't think I've ever got them in this early. Last year I had to file an extension and barely got them done before the extension ran out, so this is a great accomplishment for me.

I e-filed with Turbo Tax on Feb. 19! I checked our account today and both the federal and state refunds are posted. Yeah!

On another note, I came across a news article about Hilary Clinton's thesis from Wellsley which had been hidden from public view until recently. Okay, so I'm not going to comment on this except to say, I wonder what she's hiding? Here's the article from MSN: Reading Hillary Rodham's hidden thesis

But I was intrigued by the title of the thesis: 'There Is Only the Fight...’: An Analysis of the Alinsky Model . "There is only the fight" is a quote from T.S. Eliot's East Coker from Four Quartets.Here is a portion of the poem:

So here I am..
Trying to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it.
And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate,
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion.
And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate - but there is no competition -
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious.
But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.

Amazing Grace

Amazing Grace, the movie about William Wilberforce, the 18th century British reformer who put and end to slavery in Great Britain is due to be released on Friday. Wilberforce is one of my heroes and I'm looking forward to seeing the movie. It was released by Walden Media, the company that also recently released Bridge to Terabithia.

Micheal Flaherty, President of Walden Media, talked about the vision of his company to inspire and to promote reading good books in a recent talk at Hillsdale college:

"You are what you read. We are shaped and influenced by the books that we read. They prepare us for more than interesting conversations—they actually prepare us to face real crises that we encounter in life. Few people would dispute this simple statement, so let’s ask a simple related question: What are we reading today?

Walden Media was started several years ago by myself, Cary Granat, and Phil Anschutz. We wanted to create a company dedicated to recapturing imagination, rekindling curiosity, and demonstrating the rewards of knowledge and virtue. All of our films would be based on great books, great people, and great historical events. They would be made by the best talent in entertainment and they would all be linked to educational materials developed by some of the best talent in education. We were taking Henry David Thoreau’s famous advice—to march to the beat of a different drummer—to Hollywood, which is why we decided to name our company after Thoreau’s most famous book, Walden."

Read the entire speech here:
Let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage