Not much. I've made another trip to visit parents in Clifton. Road music: Best of the Righteous Brothers,
Yanni In My Time, Schumann Symphonies Nos. 2 & 4, and Juilio Inglesias Tango.
That list is almost a definition of eclectic. Miss Mandy Whitepaws, my sheltie, is in love with Juilio and
found several of the Righteous Brothers' vocals intriguing. It was a good trip.
But it was not a break from the church library. I spent a lot of time looking at the Highsmith catalog
making lists of furnishings and supplies. When I got home I prepared a budget for the coming year. I spent
all day yesterday on-line making purchases from Highsmith and from Amazon,
http://www.abebooks.com, and
http://www.biblio.com. [If you're looking for a rare out-of-print book, give them a try. My first choice is biblio.com because I like
the way they manage the orders from a plethora of independent booksellers.] I was really fortunate--or should I say
blessed?--to find all but one of the thirty-three books that had to be replaced. Hurricane Ike destroyed four
dozen or so others but I elected not to replace them. Given the state of the church library after the storm, the
losses were really far fewer than I'd expected.
Other than catalogs I've been reading:
Fiction:
Poole, Ernest: His Family. New York: MacMillan, 1917.
Project
Gutenberg. Kindle, free download from
http://manybooks.net. The first winner of the Pulitzer Prize for literature. A beautifully crafted story of the interior life and
family relationships of a man as he nears the end of his life. In New York at a time of transition (early 20th Century),
his three daughters encounter their father, their family, each other, and themselves as three graces, if you will.
What does it mean to be woman in the Modern world? How does a woman decide issues of career, marriage, motherhood?
Poole examines issues of education, urbanization, war and conscience, and eternal life. A delightful read
that is also thought provoking. FICTION 20th CENTURY PULITZER NEW YORK MODERNISM FEMINISIM
Chairside Nibbles:
mostly Kindle sampling for an upcoming reading binge
Bedside Book:
I was slow to make a new selection so I read Gerard Manley Hopkins and finally memorized
That Nature Is a Heraclitian Fire and the Comfort of the Resurrection.
CLOUD-PUFFBALL, torn tufts, tossed pillows | flaunt
forth, then chevy on an air-
built thoroughfare: heaven-roysterers, in gay-gangs |they
throng; they glitter in marches.
Down roughcast, down dazzling whitewash, | wherever an elm arches,
Shivelights and shadowtackle in long | lashes lace, lance, and pair.
Delightfully the bright wind boisterous | ropes, wrestles, beats
earth bare
Of yestertempest's creases; in pool and rut peel parches
Squandering ooze to squeezed | dough, crust, dust; stanches, starches
Squadroned masks and manmarks | treadmire toil there
Footfretted in it. Million-fuelèd, | nature's bonfire burns on.
But quench her bonniest, dearest | to her, her clearest-selvèd spark
Man, how fast his firedint, | his mark on mind, is gone!
Both are in an unfathomable, all is in an enormous dark
Drowned. O pity and indig | nation! Manshape, that shone
Sheer off, disseveral, a star, | death blots black out; nor mark
Is any of him at all so stark
But vastness blurs and time | beats level. Enough! the Resurrection,
A heart's-clarion! Away grief's gasping, | joyless days, dejection.
Across my foundering deck shone
A beacon, an eternal beam. | Flesh fade, and mortal trash
Fall to the residuary worm; | world's wildfire, leave but ash:
In a flash, at a trumpet crash,
I am all at once what Christ is, | since he was what I am, and
This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, | patch, matchwood, immortal diamond,
Is immortal diamond
Peterson, Eugene H.: Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places. A conversation
in spiritual theology. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2005. Kindle.
Can a Kindle book work as bedside reading? Just started but it promises to be informative and inspirational. I
remain grateful to Peterson for his Psalms study, How do I answer the God who speaks to me?
SEASONS:
Linn, Dennis; Linn, Sheila Fabricant; Linn, Matthew: Good
Goats: healing our image of God. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1994. vi, 101 p. Next month will finish this
book and after our last group discussion I liked this book much better.
