What are we reading?

Here’s what I’ve read lately:

Fiction:  Toni Morrison’s Tar Baby, published in 1981, is set between the U.S. and a Caribbean island. While the book has that timeless quality a writer strives for, it is also a period piece, depicting and plumbing the evolution of race relations between Black and Caucasian in the early 1980s. I found the writing as well as the story provocative and imaginative. Strong, vivid images appearing in the characters’ psyches, called up by what is going on around them, add an intriguing touch. I will venture a criticism by saying that the ending seemed too light for the weight of the rest. The awarding of the Medal of Freedom to Morrison recently prompted me to read; now, I am eager to read her more recent works, A Mercy and Home. What a remarkable and inspiring woman, as you can see at the website of the Toni Morrisson Society.

Biography:  Charles and Emma about Charles Darwin and his intriguing, high-spirited wife. Using minute details from family writings, Deborah Heiligman has intertwined the story of Darwin’s well researched and formulated scientific findings with the strong, enduring love story of husband and wife. She portrays (to the point of over-repetition, perhaps) Emma’s concern that she would not be re-united with Charles in an after-life because of his doubts about the existence of God. Darwin did, in fact, put off the publication of his theories for decades because of his apprehensions of how negatively they would be received by the religious community; this surprised me.

    

I felt close to Darwin when I read this quotation: “[I am] hard at work dissecting a little animal about the size of a pin’s head {a barnacle}…and I could spend another month and daily see more beautiful structure.” Yes, my soul resonates, contemplating the amazing wonder of every atom.

I related to him as a parent, too. He was a doting, adoring father to ten children, three of whom died young, sending both Emma and Charles into deep grief, clinging to each other to cope.

A few more highlight quotations:

·        “By 1856 Charles was breeding his own pigeons…” Somehow this surprised me, too, his hands-on research.

·        “…when strangers wrote to him asking what he believed about God…He said that theologians should answer questions about religion, scientists about science."

·        to one of his daughters about Emma  “…dear old mother, who, as you know well, is as good as twice refined gold.”

·        Emma:  “I sometimes feel it very odd that anyone belonging to me should be making such a noise in the world.”

·        “His theory will continue to evolve. The debate between evolution and religion continues, too. He and Emma would certainly say that people from both worlds should keep talking to each other."

Reading about the origins of Darwin’s Origin of Species makes me think of the Scopes trial in Dayton TN in 1925. Several years ago I saw the annual reenactment of the trial which takes place in the courthouse where it happened. Fascinating. The dramatic presentation will take place next week.

Now, what are y’all reading? Please tell us in Comments--by clicking on No comments or however many comments there are. To join the conversation, you will have to sign in with a password and prove you're not a robot by entering a code and so on, but please do, if you have something to say. Once you do sign in, you won’t have to do so again..

Remarkable reconciliation

A remarkable reconciliation occurred recently that’s got me reflecting on the beauty and importance of coming together and resolving differences and difficulties. On Memorial Day weekend in an historic cemetery in Rincon GA, a racially integrated congregation was formed when worshipers joined together to reconsecrate more than 250 graves of slaves which border the main cemetery of JerusalemLutheran Church. Jerusalem is the oldest, continuously worshiping Lutheran church in the country, founded in 1734 by “the Salzburgers” who were fleeing religious persecution in Europe. The Salzburgers were outspoken opponents of slavery, but it is only recently that the graves were made known in the present day, revealed by ground-penetrating radar.

According to an article by Deborah Fontenau in the Savannah Herald, upon the discovery of the burial grounds, “Lutherans laid down a blueprint for reconciliation theology.” And so, people gathered to pray and sing, lay a wreath to honor those long gone, and worship a God who is always calling us to be reconciled, one with another. Fontenau describes the experience as “centuries of solitude, silence, and shame” being put to rest. Remarkable.

What if we humans valued reconciliation as the right and proper way of relating to each other? In Syria and Iraq and Afghanistan and so on throughout history…  In American politics… In personal relationships…

I treasure a moment of reconciliation between me and another that occurred a long time ago. An unkind remark of mine was met with silence. The silence created a space devoid of retaliation, competition, or judgmentalism, a space in which I could catch my frustrated breath. And then the two of us trudged through the rest of that hard conversation until the issue was resolved and harmony restored.

Sometimes reconciliation comes through gracious silence, sometimes through raucous demands for justice. Sometimes in a fleeting glance or sudden laugh, sometimes in grueling negotiation. Sometimes in a quick minute, sometimes after centuries.

Any thoughts on reconciliation? If you’ve experienced or seen a moment of reconciliation worth sharing, please do! 

I don't have time to blog because...

I’m finishing up a booklet for each of my sons-in-law for Father’s Day, a compilation of funny, kooky things their kids have said. Four boys, two for each dad, and they keep us laughing.

Like Carter, 7, announcing at the dinner table recently, “I’d love Eggplant Parmagiana if it didn’t have eggplant in it.”

And this heard when he and his cousin Sam, 5, were playing baseball the other day:  “That was a great pitch, Sam. You just got it on the wrong side of me.” And when Sam hit the ball, Carter yells at him to run. “Okay, I will,” Sam says, kneeling in the grass to examine a roly-poly.

Ben, Carter’s kid brother who is 3, loves to tag around with the bigger guys. When Sam arrived at his house to play, Ben ran up to him, eyes sparkling, “Hi, Sam. Here I am!”

And then there’s Kevin, 10 weeks old today and baptized tomorrow, Sam’s little brudder. This baby boy is high on life, smiling and cooing and gurgling and flailing arms and legs in excitement at what he sees and hears. His mother heard him utter his first word a couple weeks ago:  “diagonal.” Sam said he was trying to say “Pentecost” on Pentecost Sunday. I’m not so sure about all that, but he distinctly said “elf” and “boo” on my watch this week.

I’m telling you, these guys crack me up. All three of the older ones have asked, precisely at the appropriate developmental stage of learning about human anatomy, “Grammy, do you have a penis?” They’re quite puzzled when the answer is no. “Then what do you have?” one of them wondered.

Every one of you reading this undoubtedly has a favorite saying of a favorite kid. Why not share it here in Comments—which will put you in the running to win a Sunday by Sunday deluxe boxed gift set.

Gotta’ go and finish those booklets… Enjoy tomorrow. Think of your father.   

I started my new book this week

No drum roll, please. On a minimal, modest level, I eased in to working on my next book this week. The target schedule is 6-7 am Mon-Thurs mornings and then four to six hours on Fri and Sat with Sun off. I started with sketches of the three main characters. Just like the ankle bone being connected to the leg bone, all elements of the story affect each other. Even though results so far are less than a typewritten page, focusing on the characters has implications for the setting and has also helped develop the plot. One big development dictates major research; I will be contacting the local VFW to try and connect with a Vietnam vet in that regard.

How pleased and grateful I am to be doing this. I’ve said that about 100 times because of the truth of it.Still profoundly true.

Any comments? Are you, perhaps, involved in a writing project? I know those of you are pastors are:  weekly sermons. I know my sister who works with crisis care and my daughter who works in research development are:  reports. Some of you may journal. Composing an email—or even a handwritten letter or card, if you remember those—is the craft of writing.

If you enter a comment about the writing process as you observe it or do it, love it or hate it—or comment on anything, even, “Good luck on the book, Cristy!”—you are eligible to enter a drawing and possibly win a lovely deluxe gift boxed set of my Sunday by Sunday series.

One person reported that she had complications trying to comment, and her comment didn’t, in fact, come through. Please email me if you’ve had that problem. I’ll be checking this out with my IT guy.

And now, on to my writing enterprises. I've already, on this Friday morning, hung out a load of wash and fixed myself fabulous whole wheat and oatmeal pancakes, and it's only, er-ah, 12:30. Oh, well. Y'all enjoy your Friday and take care.

♥ing the Public Library

       How I ♥ public libraries, especially the big, downtown ones like Columbia’s largely glass structure on Assembly Street. There are trees growing inside it, planted at the lower level where the kids’ stuff is and growing up through the main level. Very cool. The kids’ section is called “The Wild Place for Children;” huge reproductions of the characters from beloved Maurice Sendak’s beloved book adorn the walls.   

And oh, the people you see! Grand diversity of cultures and personalities. Cheerful, competent staff eager to help. Parents conscientiously and gladly guiding their children into literature and the arts.

And, for several decades now, lots of people in transition, living on the street, needing a place to be through heat, hail, and cold. They use resources to search for jobs and houses, etc. Uniformed security guards have become standard along with that socioeconomic development. I wonder at the change in the mission of libraries to include this population, many of whom are living on sharp edges of mental illness, poverty, and who-knows-what. Quite the challenge, but I appreciate what seems to be an effective effort to accommodate those in need and consider my taxes well-spent in that regard.

I stopped by to get materials for summer learning with a student I tutor, and was, once again, pulled forward by techno-progress. Expecting to check out compact disks of educational games and programs, the staff provided instead a list of websites on their website. Of course. So much easier. kahnacademy.com and coolmath.com, here we come!

Once upon a time circa 1983, I had a techno-progress moment in my public library in Lionville PA that nearly sent me under. The card catalog had been replaced with an online catalog. From one week to the next that had happened! I was incredulous, disoriented. That was during my full-time mothering stint, and I’d never done anything with a computer. I stood in line waiting for a terminal, blinking back tears and thinking that if I could just pull out a drawer from the card catalog I’d be checking out my book by now. Wow. That was lots of history ago, wasn’t it?

My library in Albany GA loaned out artwork. There was a gallery of beautifully framed paintings in the basement, over a hundred of them, and my 4-year-old would select one and enjoy it hanging in her room for the three weeks until it was due back. Degas’s ballerinas I particularly remember. I only censored her choice once—a vivid, large, close-up oil of one boxer punching another in the head. Don’t you think I was right? There was blood, for goodness sake.

One of the best aspects of visiting the library now—I just have to say this—is that the three books I have written are on the shelves. All three were checked out this time, and that’s the way I like it. But there’s also great pleasure in seeing them in the collection, waiting for a reader. They’re next to Karin Fossum. She’s a Norwegian mystery writer, pretty good, I think—and it’s very possible that we’re related.

Do you still go to the library in this day of downloading books or buying them online? Do you have any stories or memories about public libraries? (Remember, the names of all who enter comments between now and June 30 will be put in a drawing for a Sunday by Sunday gift set. Your chances of winning are very high as no one has commented yet! C’mon. I know you have a thought or two. Please help me get started here…)

What are we reading?

Since posting The Reading Habit on Feb. 23, I’ve decided to post on a monthly basis about what we’re all reading. Please share, won’t you?

As I mentioned previously, I’m usually reading at least three books at a time, from different genres and for different times of the day. Presently:

Devotional/spiritual – Still working on Hans Schwartz’s Christology, begun for the Lenten season. I’m over halfway through Christology, taking a long time not because the book is heavy or hard, but because I’ve read infrequently due to other early morning priorities. Recently, in this book that, according to Carl E. Braaten, “tells us what Christians have believed about Jesus from the beginning” to the present, I learned about the “Johannine Comma,” extra words in 1 John 5:7-8 in some early printed editions of the Greek New Testament. The import of these words regards the then-developing doctrine of the Trinity. A comma or a few extra words may seem trivial in our present age, but there were times when believers died over these controversies. Here’s what Rose Harris, a believer but not a dogmatist regarding the Trinity, said in Sunday by Sunday I:

How would I have fared as a person of faith in the days when professing what you believed could be a matter of life or death? In light of modern thought and contemporary ecclesiastical/religious culture, the Trinity hardly seems worth dying over. So, if a stern, squinty-eyed inquisitor had asked me, “Do you believe in the Holy Trinity as ultimate Truth?” I would have looked him straight in the eye and said, “Youbetcha.” I can see the headline:  “Hypocrite Heretic Not Burned at Stake.”

Fiction – A self-published novella I plucked off the local author exhibit at the library. Started out pretty good with a compelling story and articulate language but didn’t go the distance. I have to think the author made the common mistake of foregoing an editor.

(Auto)Biography – Population 385: Meeting Your Neighbors One Siren at a Time. Have you discovered Michael Perry yet? Funny, charming writing about his experiences as volunteer in a small town in Wisconsin. I think I love it a lot because it reminds me so much of Ringwood IL, my hometown. “Population 250, counting the dogs,” I always heard.

What are you reading? I eagerly anticipate receiving some responses. Don’t forget:  The name of any of you who comment between now and June 30 will be put in a drawing for a Sunday by Sunday gift set, lovely for your bookshelf or as a special gift. So, tell us what you’re reading today…     

War veterans I have known and loved

       My dad, Gordon Fossum – Dad would cajole us kids into scratching his back and would figuratively divide his back into a tic-tac-toe board of nine squares numbered across and then direct us to his itches. “Right in the middle of 2,” he’d say, or “Right on the line between 7 and 8.” I think his Purple Heart scar was in the lower right corner of square # 6. Many times I scratched it, fingered it, rubbed it, and had questions I couldn’t even find words for. Like so many, he didn’t talk about the war much. During one conversation I found out that it was flying shrapnel that had wounded him during a confrontation with the enemy in the Pacific arena of WW II. I sure wish I’d captured that conversation because I think he went into details, most of which I’ve forgotten. I was older by then, and I do remember us talking about the sheer terror he felt.

Years later, 1968, to be exact, in the middle of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, we had another war-related conversation, this time by phone. I was in the city, and he was ranting against Vietnam War protesters. When I told him I was one of them, he hung up on me. Upset and hungry for reconciliation, I took the next commuter train out to my hometown, to him. We did our best, but it wasn’t pretty.

I’ve always felt like Dad’s war experience killed something in his soul. I wonder how much it fueled his alcoholism. Maybe not that much, considering that his father was alcoholic, too. Of course, Grandpa Fossum fought in WW I...

My maternal grandfather, Kenneth Cristy – Grandpa Cristy and I never talked about his war experiences in France in WW I, but I have copies of letters that he wrote to Clara Nelson, his sweetheart back in Wisconsin.  He wrote something like, “Don’t forget me while I’m gone. If you find someone else, I’ll be in a hard place.” She didn’t. She became my Grandma Cristy.

John – I knew this delightful man in rural Chester County, Pennsylvania in the 1980s. I had moved there, and we went to church together. On a visit to his home on church business, he told me about being among the first troops to enter Nagasaki (or was it Hiroshima?) after the atomic bomb blast. Unimaginable. He shook his head a lot. I remember him talking about sitting safely in his nice home nearly 40 years later telling about such horror, incredulous that it ever could have happened.

A guy in the waiting room – Again in PA, another WW II vet. My toddler and I spent most of a morning with him while our cars were being worked on. He talked his head off about his war experiences. When the manager told him his car was ready, we said goodbye, but after paying, he came back to us and took my hand in his, tearfully thanking me for listening; he said h'ed never told anyone else those stories. He pressed a $10 bill in my hand and told me to go get some lunch for me and my baby.

Bob – Recently returned from combat duty in Vietnam. I can’t remember how we got connected, through a bulletin board notice, I think, but he gave me a ride from Waverly IA where I was in college, to home, Ringwood IL on a cold winter night in 1968. Side by side in his Jeep, we drove through the dark for hours. This was our first meeting, and yet, before long, detailed, sickening horrors of his time in Nam poured forth. I was strongly opposed to the war by this time, radicalized at Wartburg College, but did not fully admit to that. How I felt for him and admired him…and deeply regretted that his courage and service seemed to be spent  for a lost cause.

What veterans are special to you?