I forgot...

In my New Year Zeal to post yesterday, I forgot a couple things, which is completely in step with the way I live my life. I spend time every day looking for something I've misplaced. Most days it's just my keys and phone. Scott gave me a remote key finder for Christmas--the perfect gift for me.  I've only used it a few times so far since Justin has become my chauffeur. He actually hangs the key on the key hook. But once he's back in school, and I'm driving on my own again, it will get plenty of use.

Today I have looked for three misplaced objects -- a book I need to write up in the next week for class, the two essays that I printed out and read and now need to have feedback ready for Monday, and a checkbook.

So, here are the forgotten things...

This picture.

Anna in the best Christmas present ever (besides my key finder). It's a Totoro cape. It even has whiskers. Miyazaki fans will be jealous. The rest of you need to check out some Miyazaki anime. Then buy Totoro capes.

How could I forget my most looked-forward to book this year? I was sad when I came to the end. I will reread Gilead, Home, and Lila (though I've misplaced Gilead. Maybe I loaned it out? Maybe I gave it to the library in a stack of returned books like i did with Lila).

I felt the same sadness when I finished Don Quixote years ago. I had read it leisurely, over the course of a year. Ending it felt like the end of a friendship. I actually looked for it a couple weeks ago, but, of course, I can't find it. Maybe it didn't make the cut to get shipped here from France. Though seeing how the cat made the cut, I would think Don Quixote would have...

Rescued from the library lost and found.

That's all that I forgot, but you can't have just two pictures on a post, so here's  Pepper in her reindeer costume that she will be happy to see packed away for the next eleven months.

Pepper, oh so happy that her family cares enough to dress her up for the holidays.

A New Year

Today, in honor of the new year, I'm writing on resolutions, my classwork, books, and anything else that comes up.

New Year Resolutions

My friend Tracy posted these New Year's reflections at her blog, Traveling Clues. She writes, "Our lives take on the most value, purpose and meaning when we practice the discipline of reflection. To examine the choices we make and why, to evaluate the values by which we want to live, to consider the relationships in our lives, and such."

Anna's Christmas sweater

I wrote down answers to her questions this morning and looked through some sparse notes that I had taken at conferences and from my reading throughout the year.

I wrote down over a year ago, during a rare few hours of quiet and reflection at Pokagon State Park with a friend, "May I be faithful in the small things and not afraid to do the big things."

That's still where I'm at. What's small and what's big is not always clear, but I do want to be faithful and not afraid.

My knitting niece

It's been two and a half years that we've been back in the US, and I find that I'm resisting the striving that is in the air we breathe here. I feel like I am surrounded by messages to want and be and do something more. Much of it is good--health and relationships and caring for the world.

Notice Justin's ugly Christmas sweater.

But it can lead to a dissatisfaction that is permanent and strips me of the peace and joy of now. Joy that is independent of my weight or the state of my house. Peace that faces messy relationships and mistakes with grace.

And my brother's classy Christmas sweater

Grad School

I'm about to enter my second semester of my master's program in creative non-fiction at Ashland University. My writing for my coursework is focused on our time in France. I have four chapters done and will end with a book-length project that will hopefully become a real book when it grows up.

I've loved the required reading. My two favorites so far are The Empathy Exams and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.

I totally beat these guys at the game in between preparing roasted sprouts, my new favorite food.

Publications

My first published essay, Life in the Infertility Belt, was published at Eclectica this summer. InterVarsity's The Well published three articles this year--Gifts to Empty Places, Ebola, and Louie Zamperini and Loving the Other. I have a few essays out that I've waiting to hear back about, and one almost ready to send out. This new one, which has been percolating for a year, is about issues of race and safety that I've struggled with since preparing to move back here.

My brother performing feats of strength with my nephew.

Four Books

I still haven't finished two of my favorite books this year--Christena Cleveland's Disunity in Christ and Lewis Hyde's, The Gift: Creativity and Artist in the Modern World. Cleveland makes startling statements like, "People can meet God within their cultural context but in order to follow God, they must cross into other cultures because that's what Jesus did in the incarnation and on the cross." Then she backs it up. 

Pepper at the family Christmas party. It's not her favorite.

It was at the Word and Words Conference in Louisville this October that I heard of The Gift. I know exactly where I am in The Gift, page 121, because pages 1-120 are underlined in red and black pen.

Pepper opening her Christmas present--a rawhide bone from the pantry.

Here's a random underlined quote, "When either the donor or the recipient begins to treat a gift in terms of obligation, it ceases to be a gift, and though many in such a situation will be hurt by the revealed lack of affection, the emotional bond, along with it's power, evaporates immediately." It is crazy how much this book has influenced my thinking on writing and life these last few months.

Christmas kitties.

I first heard of An Idea Whose Time has Come about the passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Though politics is not my strong suit, it was helpful for me to understand the myriad factors involved in getting significant, life-changing legislation passed.

I'm looking forward to seeing Selma in a few weeks. One criticism of the movie is its depiction of Johnson as against the Civil Rights Act. The book depicts Johnson's role honestly and fully. Very worth a read.

All dressed up for Christmas Eve.

Last favorite book of the year was Unbroken. I saw the movie last week. My take is that the movie is fine, but the book is excellent.

I think people walk away from the movie with a great appreciation of Louie Zamperini's endurance and story. The same is true of the book, but the book pushes further into the story of Zamperini's struggles post-war and the prison guard's escape from any kind of punishment.  I had to deal with my own feelings of injustice in the face of a man who committed terrible acts, was unrepentant, and then forgiven.

Ok, this is a wonderful thing. We have missed cheese fondu here. I usually made it once or twice a year in France. I priced the cheese I would need last year, and it would have cost a small fortune to have enough for the four of us to have our full fill of melty Emmental, Gruyère, and Comté cheese. But, at Costco, I came across this carton of the magical three cheeses, bought it, and melted it in its container in the microwave.  It was so good. It wasn't cheap at $8, but it wasn't $40 either . Now I just need them to stock frozen French pastries for me to pop in the oven, and all will be well.

Happy New Year to one and all!

An Idea Whose Time has Come

I've just started reading An Idea Whose Time has Come. I heard an interview by the author on the radio a couple weeks ago, then got my name of the waiting list for it at the library. I only had to wait a week, which is funny since I think I'm something like 136th on the hold list for Divergent (which is fine since a friend loaned it to me so I could have mindless reading entertainment during my short convalescence).

Anyway, this book is about the battle for the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and I just read the first chapter last night. It's riveting. 

Here's a quote that puts the civil rights struggle in context for me:

The challenge of the civil rights as the 1960s dawned was simple yet profound: In the century since the Civil War, the nation had neither fully accepted the consequences of the conflict's outcome nor enforced the provisions of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments passed in the war's wake, guaranteeing full citizenship and the equal protection of the laws to all Americans, regardless of race--let alone the Fifteenth Amendment's promise of voting rights. In the Reconstruction era, Congress had at least tried, passing the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which granted full and equal access to public accommodations--hotels, restaurants, trains, and so on--to blacks and whites alike. But in 1883...the Supreme Court of the United States had held that Congress lacked the power to outlaw discrimination by private individuals, a decision that had never been overturned. In 1896, in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson, the High Court had further enshrined segregation by ruling that "separate but equal" facilities for blacks and whites were compatible with the Constitution.

What hit me here was that it had been one hundred years since the Civil War. That's a long time. And full citizenship and equal protection under the law were still denied to many, many people. I knew this already, but thinking about it in terms of full citizenship and basic rights under the law is startling. Because it's so very basic.

In the international community, segregation was "giving the United States an international black eye." Diplomats from the newly independent African nations were refused service in restaurants and motels between New York and Washington.

And here's a story that made me gasp:

The United States was already sending black troops to help the government of South Vietnam in its struggle against Communism, but it was not welcoming them back home with a communitarian spirit. One black Army captain, just back from his first tour in Vietnam and stationed at Fort Benning, Georgia, was tired and hungry one day after fixing up a modest rental house for his wife and baby son. He stopped at  a local drive-in in hopes of ordering a hamburger to go. He knew he could not be served inside, but thought he might get curb service. "I pulled in and after a small eternity, a waitress came to my car," he would recall.
"Are you Puerto Rican?" the waitress asked.
"No," the soldier answered.
"Are you an African student?" she wondered.
"No," the soldier replied. "I'm a Negro. I'm an American. And I'm an Army officer."
"Look, I'm from New Jersey," the waitress said, "and I don't understand any of this. But they won't let me serve you. Why don't you let me go behind the restaurant, and I'll pass you a hamburger out the back window."
I'm not that hungry," snapped the Captain, whose name was Colin Powell (that's where I gasped). "As I drove away," he would recall years later, "I could see the faces of the owner and his customers in the restaurant windows enjoying this little exercise in humiliation.

The Civil Rights Act was of course more about being able to buy a hamburger, but it wasn't less than that either. And that's what struck me as I read last night.

I have a too-big pile of books that I'm working through right now (which merits another blog post another day--titled My Book Problem as a follow-up to My Easter Problem), but I'm putting them aside for now to read this one.

W.E.B. Dubois

I’m taking part in a book club at our Reclamation Project office on Thursday nights. We’re making our way through W.E.B. Dubois’ The Souls of Black Folk. It’s challenging reading. I often have to slow down and reread passages, and some of the references to Greek mythology are lost on me.

The book was published in 1903, and he writes that, "The problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line." 

I’ve learned a great deal from the book about the reconstruction period after the Civil War, information that I last read a couple of pages about in high school. Back then, the War was usually the focus of study, and a little information about carpet baggers is all I remember of the aftermath.

After my reading this week, I wonder…

If only there had been another way for slavery to come to an end. War left the South poor and hostile to the newly freed.

If only there could have been some effort at reconciliation like South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission after the end of apartheid.

If only long-term measures could have been put into place for help and support and infrastructure.

If only those freed had been given something to start out with—40 acres, a mule, and maybe even an apology. It would have been so very little.

I wonder the same thing about other groups who endure long-term oppression. We expect instant turnaround and success when the oppression stops, when in reality, the scars are long-lasting, and sometimes passed down through the generations. It was true of Irish immigrants fleeing persecution and famine in the 1800s and the Congolese who survived King Leopold’s brutal reign in the 1900s. It was true of those rescued from concentration camps. It is true of the oppressed in Syria, Central African Republic, North Korea and it is true for the young girl rescued from sex-trafficking.

So today I pray for for the oppressed and those coming out from under oppression. Whether the action of lending a hand is on the part of governments, churches, non-profits, or individuals, may it be wise and long-term and lead to wholeness of individuals and communities.

  

Book Club

Scott started a book club in the fall that has been a deep source of encouragement for us this year. So far, we've read and discussed Surprised by Hope by N.T. Wright,

Brenda Salter McNeil's A Credible Witness: Reflections on Power, Evangelism and Race,

and we're now reading Christ Plays in 10,000 Places by Eugene Peterson.

My Amazon page for this book informs me that we bought in January of 2006. I've read it before, but it's meaty reading, and reading and discussing it with friends is helping me to better digest the content.

Here's a quote from our current section of the book:

"It is not uncommon among people like us to suppose that if we lived in another place or a better neighborhood with more congenial living conditions, voted in a better government, built finer schools, then we would most certainly live a more spiritual life. St. John's Gospel says, Forget it.

It is also common among people like us to look for ways to free ourselves from the humdrum, escape as often as possible into ecstasy, devise ways to live separated from the clamor of traffic and family, associate so far as possible only with people of like mind, and engage in disciplines and ways of dress and speech that set us apart from "the others." John's Gospel says, Forget it."

We're snowed in this morning, and about to go out and tackle the driveway. Today is, of course, another snow day and tomorrow may be as well. There will at least be a delay, which messes with work schedules and plans. We've been annoyed with each other, and there is in me sometimes a longing to escape, retreat. I would be so much more good if I wasn't holed up in the house trying to manage screen time and food consumption and chores and science fair projects.

But, this is where I am, this is my calling today, and Peterson's words today point me towards full engagement, not retreat.

Off to shovel some snow...

Hiccup

We love Cressida Cowell's How to Train Your Dragon series. We were introduced to it years ago one summer when we were preparing to drive from Texas to Indiana. Some friends loaned us the audio book, and we've been hooked ever since.

The books are written through the eyes of Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III, who is not living up to the Viking image, in spite of being the son of the chief, Stoik the Vast.  The illustrations are silly, and the humor is definitely on the boy side--as in lots of belching and snot. We've read all the books together. And Justin reads and re-reads them.

Hiccup and his dragon, Toothless

We were excited when we heard about the movie in the making, but Justin was absolutely furious when he saw the preview. It was clear that they had drastically changed the plot. In Justin's book to movie experience, movies have stayed close to the plot (think Lord of the Rings), and we have lively discussions about when the movies are different and why those choices were made and whether we agree with those choices. So, this was his first book to movie experience where the movie was a different thing entirely.  He eventually made peace with the film, but it took him a while. He was seriously angry. We do love the movie. Even Justin.

Book nine, How to Steal a Dragon's Sword, has just come out on this side of the Atlantic, so it'll be wrapped up under the tree for Justin.

Chapter Books

After trying to consistently read chapter books to Anna over the years, it has finally 'taken', and I have her hooked on them. I love reading picture books as well, but there are so many good chapter books out there (and in here--as in, in our apartment) that I want to share with her.

We started with the BFG in  September. She loved it. The giant is charming, and his words are great fun to read aloud.

Since we have a set of Roal Dhal books, we moved on to the next one, Fantastic Mr. Fox. Anna had seen the movie, so often knew what was going to happen next. It's not as charming as the BFG, but we liked it.

Then we read George's Marvelous Medicine. Justin had read it, but I'm not sure if I have before. Dahl books are like fairy tales in that there are good and evil characters. Good triumphs in the end, and there isn't much redemption for evil characters, whether they be giants, farmers, or naughty children (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory--which we have read together as a family). Our problem with George's Marvelous Medicine is that the evil character is George's grandma, which makes it hard to be really happy at the end when she gets her due. I was hoping for some kind of redemption.

Now we're at the beginning of Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, which at this point is pretty bizarre. It takes place where Charlie and the Chocolate Factory leaves off. 

Anna had wanted to read the BFG again, but I think she could try reading it on her own. I'm happy to read picture books over and over (except Amelia Bedelia books--which drive me up the wall), but I don't see re-reading a chapter book until a year has gone by. If the Great Glass Elevator disappoints, we may move on to another author for now. 

Justin and I are reading The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm. It takes place in Zimbabwe a couple hundred years from now and has an interesting mix of futuristic and African world view elements. I like the title characters, and the worldview elements will be worth discussing.

The kids have a week and a half of fall break now, which is great timing. It's been a good start all around for the school year, but it's been intense. We will be visiting dear friends and taking lots of pictures next week in Paris. 

Books

We have lots and lots of books.

 Today I am giving a tour of the Harris family library...

There are four IKEA shelves in our hallway with books stacked in a way that is probably not good for the bindings. But this is the only way they all fit, and it reduces the dust. I have them more or less in Dewey decimal order, which needs to be redone occasionally since I'm better at putting them in order than keeping them in order.

Most of the hallway books are Scott's and mine, but there are a few shelves with picture books. 

At the end of the hallway, there's just enough room for a small hodgepodge of shelves and boxes that hold more children's books, with some random Bible reference material on the top. The shelves underneath these two wooden boxes hold mostly kids' non-fiction. 

This is probably not safe, but it has held for several years now, and since we don't have climbing toddlers in the house, I think we're ok.

Anna has a couple shelves of books in her room where the picture book overflow gets tucked away.

And Justin has a cupboard crammed with chapter books. His are in an enclosed cupboard because of his dust allergies. The cupboard is deep enough to have two rows of books on most of the shelves.

These small shelves in our room hold my favorite fiction, biography, autobiography, and creative non-fiction. 

I won't take a picture of the stack of books and papers on my bedside table or the French kids' magazines that get stuffed back on the shelves willy nilly, or the random literature that ends up in the bathroom, but they are here too and never ever stay organized for more than a week.   

You may have noticed that there's not much in French on the shelves. I aspire to read more in French, and I have a library card, but I have a serious problem with getting books back on time, and French books feel slightly unfriendly to me. The pages are stiff. And I don't like the library, probably because I usually feel guilty there because of all the late fees that I have to pay.

I'm going to devote my end of the week post for the next couple months to books--what I'm reading, what we're reading with the kids, some of our favorite books, and maybe some favorite authors.

Books

If you come to our apartment and peruse our book shelves, you will find out a lot about me. There are biographies, from Saint Augustine to Malcom X; novels, from Don Quixote to the Kite Runner; and plenty of books on Christian living, prayer, and theology. There is my brief foray into researching the plague. Not kidding.

But my books tell someone else's story as well. Today I am writing about our journey to understand our daughter.

I read lots and lots of adoption books early on. Now that I'm in the middle of actually raising my adopted children, I don't read them at all. Maybe because I'm too busy actually raising them.

That said, I will be dusting this one off as Justin is speeding ahead into adolescence and issues will need to be revisited and talked about on a deeper level.

This one is a more recent arrival on our shelves. Our children are growing up in a country that is not their "passport" country. So, their sense of identity, who they are and where they belong, will likely take a while figure out.

Anna has never ever slept well. Ever. She takes a long time to get to sleep, and easily gets to a state of panic if she has seen something disturbing or scary.

The research and principles here have helped us at least to understand what is going on.

I ordered this one last fall, when Anna was having tantrums when she came home from school, when she saw what we were having for dinner, when she didn't want to walk anymore...you get the picture. Although it didn't lead me directly to the real solution (get her out of her school and get her difficulties diagnosed), it did help me find ways to reduce her stress and help me to react appropriately to help her calm down.

So, in the end, I guess my explosive child was trying to tell me that she had a diagnosable condition that needed treatment and, "Get me out of the French school system now!"


So, all of this has led us to a diagnosis of sensory processing disorder. It may be genetic in her case, or could be a result of her time in an orphanage where she was not getting the stimulation and care that she would have had in a family. Justin was in an orphanage for the same amount of time, and clearly had some sensory processing issues, but they were not as debilitating as Anna's.

One note about the orphanage. This was not a place where the children were not cared for. It's just that a few nurses, no matter how loving and attentive, cannot give full attention and stimulation to each baby. Especially if a baby already has unknown special needs.

What SPD means for Anna is that she has trouble processing oral, auditory, tactile, proprioceptive, and vestibular information. Yes, two of those words are new for me too.

She is hyper sensitive in some ways, especially orally. Teeth brushing was a battle when she was little. Some of our most painful moments in the last few years (painful as in both of us were in tears) involve dentists, orthodontists, and mouth x-rays. Now we know why.

She is hypo sensitive in others, like her tactile sense. This explains her habit of practically squeezing the life out of Negra as Justin yells, "Stop torturing the cat!" This happens just about every day in our house.

Some of her issues are easy to fix. For example, she has always gotten sick to her stomach and somewhat panicky when we travel in a car, train, or airplane. She will panic after just a few minutes in an airport and complain about feeling ill. Now that I know that she is hyper-sensitive to smells, I give  her a small bottle of aromatherapy lemon scent that I picked up at a pharmacy and  she uses it whenever she needs it when we travel. Easy fix.

Other things will be more difficult. I'll post about writing to give an example later this week.

Other things she might always have to deal with. We don't know what these things will be yet.

Posts this week: Writing and Strengths

Story Time

A couple weeks ago, Anna, in the second grade, had several photocopied pages to read for homework. She was less than enthusiastic, but we settled onto the couch and began reading.

Here's a summary:

Mister Seguin had a beautiful little white goat. He made sure she had everything she needed. The goat wanted to go into the mountains. Mister Seguin said that it wasn't safe, that last year Renaude, another of his goats, had gone to the mountain. She had fought off a wolf through the night, and it ate her in the morning.

The beautiful white goat insists that she wants to go, so Mister Seguin locks the goat in the barn, but forgets to close the window. The beautiful white goat escapes.

She spends a lovely day frolicking in the mountains.

The beautiful white goat is happy. Really, really happy.

Night falls, she hears Mister Seguin calling for her. She hears a wolf. She chooses to stay on the mountain.

At this point in the story, I have a bad feeling about this. Anna is getting teary-eyed. I skim ahead. Anna is right.

The goat fights off the wolf all night. Morning is coming, and the beautiful white goat lays down, covered in blood, and the wolf eats her.

Really.

Is that not the worst bedtime story you have ever heard?

I don't think Disney will be making this into an animated feature anytime soon.

I know there are plenty of disturbing stories out there for kids. Hansel and Gretel comes to mind. Little Red Riding Hood. But the witch doesn't get to eat the kids. Little Red Riding Hood, even in its most gory version, gets cut out of the wolf's stomach and has a nice lunch with Grandma.

Poor Anna. To put salt on the wound, she had to memorize a poem on the goat as well. At least it was the happy part about her frolicking in the mountains, but still...

Bonhoeffer

I've been reading this biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer this month. Scott got it for me for Christmas. I read the Cost of Discipleship years ago and had a general idea of Bonhoeffer's life.

I'm having a hard time with it though. Not because it isn't extremely well-written. Not because Bonhoeffer isn't fascinating. And not because his story isn't gripping. It's because Bonhoeffer was executed for his role in a plot to assassinate Hitler weeks before Hitler's suicide. Because Bonhoeffer was engaged. Last night I had to put the book down because he and his fiancé are fully expecting his release from prison and are writing each other about wedding plans.

The problem is that I like my endings happy.

This is hard because I also love reading autobiographies and biographies. And because most of them are about people who died. This isn't a criticism of the biography/autobiography industry. Just a statistical reality.

Malcom X's autobiography sat on my shelf for two years before I could read it. Joan of Arc (burned alive) took a while to get to as well.

Seriously though, it is hard to read about evil. And hard to see evil triumph in the short term. It drives me to pray for countries where oppressive regimes destroy lives. And helps me to understand the psalmists' pleas for justice and peace.

Airport Bookstore Shopping

I think it was in Miami International Airport that we had extra time to browse in a large bookstore. Anna was interested in this pop-up book. I was willing to consider it since it was on sale and actually a good value.

However, even the cover was a give-a-way that this was not a well-conceived children's book. Pop-ups are usually for young children, and pop-ups on frightening things could lead to nightmares, right?

Then again, these seem to be classical kinds of monsters, and since I'm exposing the kids to Shakespeare's tragedies already (through the Shakespeare for Kids series), why not throw in Medusa for good measure?
The griffin seemed harmless enough and quite classical (thus, acceptable).

But then we flipped to this, which is just gross. There were more like this, but I was shy about photographing the whole book without buying it. And I certainly didn't want to buy it. Anna agreed.

Some poor child probably received this from a traveling relative who picked it up while rushing through the airport thinking they got a good buy on a last-minute gift.

Annaboo

Thought I'd put some Anna pics up today.

Our kids have school on Wednesday mornings, but then are off for the afternoon. Most schools don't have school on Wednesdays at all, so for the kids in nursery school (three, four, and five year olds), Wednesdays are optional.

Since my schedule is more flexible this year, I decided that Anna and I would hang out together on Wednesday mornings and do school in English. It's pretty low-key. We are still working on the alphabet, we count to 100, read, and do a crafty thing or draw. I'm using the book Drawing with Children by Mona Brookes.
Here is a lion Anna did a few weeks ago. She cut it out, taped it up on her bedroom door, and took the picture. She named it too, but I can't remember. She did a parrot this week who she named Pixie.

Here she is drawing a picture of me. She was working on coloring in my black shawl. I was trying to paint fruit and getting nowhere.

And here are some pictures I discovered on my camera.... Anna's bottle of seaglass nestled here on the top of her much loved pet hospital and...

...a picture of what is probaby my least favorite book to read. Fortunately, it only makes the rotation a couple times a month.

We read some of Tomie dePaola's Mother Goose at lunchtime today and have just restarted the first Boxcar Children book. Anna desperately wants to be able to read, so after reading a few chapters, we went back to the beginning and she tried to memorize it (this was not my idea). She has me read a sentence, then she repeats. The funiest/weirdest part is "now the baker's wife did not like children." Anna loves saying it. Makes Disney Princesses not seem so bad...

Reading List

Time to update my reading list.

I did finish The Double and was none too happy about the ending. The main character is referred to as "The Hero" throughout the book. So, I naively assumed all would work out in the end for him. Three pages before the end he was dubbed "Our Sorry Hero" and ended up being carted off to the insane asylum. Very irritating. I like my endings happy, thank you...

...which is why I have still not finished Uncle Tom's Cabin. Too much tragedy and melodrama. But, I've gotten back to it and will read to the weepy end.

Seeing Past Z by Beth Kephart was a delight. She has a passion for engaging children in literature and a beautiful writing style.

I'm in the middle of Thomas Merton's autobiography, The Seven Story Mountain. He converts from to Catholicism in his twenties and then enters a Trappist monastery. I wish he wasn't so very anti-protestant, but it's still fascinating stuff.

Finished

Finished.

I finally finished reading Don Quixote a few nights ago. I am 99% sure that I have never taken this long to read a book. Ever. I have to say that I'll miss my rendezvous (ok, I have no idea how to make that plural--rendezvouses???) with the Knight of the Sorry Face. And I do recommend it, not just because it's a classic. It's entertaining, and even if you're less stubborn than I and don't read through all 982 pages, there is plenty to enjoy.

Faulkner reread it once a year. Can't say that I will, but I may dip into it again just for fun.

Cervantes and Me

The Da Vinci Code is a big deal here, and we are looking forward to talking about it with students when the movie comes in May. So I read it. I had decided not to post any of my many irritations with it (didn’t want my blog to be too negative). But then last night I came across a passage in Don Quixote that summed up a large part of what bugged me about Dan Brown’s book:

"…although the play is based on fictitious actions, historical veracity is claimed for it, and bits and pieces of other histories involving different people and periods are mixed in, and without any attempt at verisimilitude, either, but with obvious mistakes that are quite inexcusable. And what’s worst of all is that there are people ignorant enough to say that this is sheer perfection…

…all this works to the detriment of truth and to the prejudice of history…"

Thank you, Cervantes, for saying it better than I could have (even if I did have to look up verisimilitude).

My other big issue with the book is Brown’s view of truth. The people who believe in truth strongly enough to want others to know about it are generally either misguided (the church) or downright evil (the Teacher). The heroes are the ones who know the real “truth”, but are content to keep it safe and secret knowing that, “Hey, we’re entering the Age of Aquarius, so it’ll all work out in the end.”

On a more positive note, I went to see Pride and Prejudice (in English—woo hoo hoo!) with some friends the other night. Here’s another Cervantes quote that sums it up for me…

"...The audience that has gone to see an ingenious and well-crafted play comes out at the end cheered by its jests, instructed by its truths, amazed at its action, wiser thanks to its speeches, warned by its roguery, shrewder for its examples, incensed against vice and enamored of virtue; for a good play will provoke all these reactions in anyone who watches it…"

I won’t be going to see The Da Vinci Code in theaters, but they can keep remaking Pride and Prejudice every couple years, and I’ll be there.