Lift Up Your Hearts!

A Million Miles in a Thousand Years:  What I Learned by Editing My Life by Donald Miller (Thomas Nelson, 2009)

I started (mentally) writing this review when only a few pages into the book.  The review began something like this:

Given which of us is the famous author and which is not, it would not be wise to say Donald Miller can't write.  But what is definitively true is that, whether he can or not, he doesn't write in a style that I enjoy reading.  It's narcissistic, informal bordering on stream-of-consciousness and slangy bordering on vulgar.  Considering the endorsements from big-name Christians (Jim Wallis, Brian McLaren, Rob Bell, Gary Haugen, Max Lucado) I was expecting a little less nonchalance about casual sex, drug use, smoking, and nihilism.  And it jumps around like one of those modern movies where you don't know what's real and what's not, what's then and what's now.

Before I met the filmmaker guys, I didn't know very much about making movies.  You don't think about it when you're watching a movie, but there's a whole world of work involved in making the thing happen.  People have to write the story, which can take years; then raise a bunch of money, hire some actors, get a caterer so everybody can eat, rent a million miles of extension cords, and shoot the thing.  Then it usually goes straight to DVD.  It's a crap job....

But I like movies.  There's something about a good story that helps me escape.  I used to go to movies all the time just to clear my head.  If it was a good movie, the experience felt like somebody was resetting a compass in my brain so I could feel what was important in life and what wasn't.  I'd sit about ten rows back, in the middle, and shovel sugar into my mouth until my brain went numb....

I'd go to the movies because for an hour or so I could forget about real life.  In a movie, the world faded away and all that mattered was whether the hobbit destroyed the ring or the dog made it home before the circus people could use him as a horse for their abusive monkey.

Really, how much of that can a reader be expected to take?  But there's a reason I finish a book before publishing the review.  It gets much better, mostly because Miller eventually starts focusing on things other than himself.

The change in Miller's life came when two filmmakers approached him with the idea of making a movie of his best-selling memoir, Blue Like Jazz.  (Here's the movie's trailer, which reminds me of why I don't usually watch movies.)  Miller is not happy to discover how much his life must be changed to make a good film.

"[W]hat is wrong with the Don in the book?" The question came out of my mouth more personally than I wanted.

Steve sat thoughtfully and collected his ideas. ... “In a pure story,” he said like a professor, “there is a purpose in every scene, in every line of dialogue. A movie is going somewhere.”

That last line rang in my ear like an accusation. I felt defensive, as though the scenes in my life weren’t going anywhere. I mean, I knew they weren’t going anywhere, but it didn’t seem okay for someone else to say it.

In the process of discovering what makes a good story for a movie, Miller has a revelation:  What makes a good story for a movie, makes a good story for a life.  I'm not at all sure I agree—I've said many times that romantic tragedy makes for great opera but a lousy life—but when he begins to consider his actions in light of the question, "Is this part of a good story?" Miller turns his aimless life around.  He goes hiking in Peru, finds the father he hasn't seen in 30 years, rides his bike across America, and founds The Mentoring Project, which works with churches to provide mentors for fatherless (and effectively fatherless) children.

I was haunted by a feeling of familiarity—with negative connotations—as I read this book, and I finally realized that the style reminds me of Confessions and Reflections of a Traveler.  What saves A Million Miles in a Thousand Years is that, despite my comments above, Miller writes better than Brett McLean.

It's not my kind of book.  I can't say that it makes me want to ride my bike across America or to (personally) drill wells in Africa, but it does make me want to learn more about the art of telling a story.  And viewing life as a story is a fascinating thought.

[Quoting storytelling expert Robert McKee]  "Writing a story isn't about making your peaceful fantasies come true.  The whole point of the story is the character arc.  You didn't think joy could change a person, did you?  Joy is what you feel when the conflict is over.  But it's conflict that changes a person." His voice was like thunder now.  "You put your characters through hell.  You put them through hell.  That's the only way we change."

I think joy does change a person; plenty of growth comes through real joy.  But the story arc analogy puts a different perspective on the age-old problem of pain.

[Reflecting on a tragic story of terrorism]  When we watch the news, we grieve all of this, but when we go to the movies, we want more of it.  Somehow we realize that great stories are told in conflict, but we are unwilling to embrace the potential greatness of the story we are actually in.  We think God is unjust, rather than a master storyteller.

The belief that we enjoy seeing characters "put through hell" may explain why there are so many movies I don't want to watch.  I love stories of life and growth through the sweet joys and minor tragedies of ordinary life, such as Miss Read's (Dora Jesse Saint) Thrush Green and Fairacre books.  One of my favorite scenes in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is the ordinary dinner at the Beavers' house.  Likewise in J.R.R. Tolkien's epic books, it's the meals, the conversations, and the everyday parts of life that really capture my attention.

In the end, Miller acknowledges that a "good story" life is not all epic adventures.

It's interesting that in the Bible, in the book of Ecclesiastes, the only practical advice given about living a meaningful life is to find a job you like, enjoy your marriage, and obey God.  It's as though God is saying, Write a good story, take somebody with you, and let me help.

I've over 20 post-it notes adorning the pages of A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, but on reflection I'll skip the rest and quote a longer section that is perhaps my favorite.  It's about Miller's first encounter with Bob Goff and his family, while kayaking in British Columbia.  Bob is a real person, and not the local politician of the same name who handed Heather her diploma when she graduated from high school.  His life is the kind of story that makes you remember not all lawyers deserve the opprobrium many have earned.

We broke camp, packed our boats, and began paddling for home.  But before crossing the inlet, our guide wanted to show us a lodge a man had built the previous year, a massive house set on a ledge just off the water.  i thought it was odd that anybody would build a house back there, since you could only get to the place by seaplane or boat.  But indeed, a home had been built.  And it was an enormous and beautiful place, snug against the gray cliff of the mountain, with decks cascading down to the waterfront where there was a dock and some boats and a plane.  The man was a lawyer, one of my friends said, who lived in San Diego but had a law firm in Seattle.  He was also the American consul to Uganda.  He gives most of his money away, my friend said.  He'd actually bought five thousand acres in the area to save the trees and preserve the beauty.  We were only going to paddle by and take a look at the house; but as we got closer, we saw a man coming down the steps to the dock.  "That must be him," my friend said.  "That must be Bob. ...

He walked down the stairs to the dock and smiled and pulled his gray hair back and waved at us in large, graceful swings.  He waved at us then with both hands to call us closer to the dock. ...

"Are you hungry?" we heard Bob shout. ...

Bob got down on his knees and helped us out [of our boats] as though he'd been waiting a week for our arrival.  "We saw you coming, and Sweet Maria put fruit out on the table," he said.  "There's plenty.  And she made lemonade too.  Let's go up to the house and get you guys fed."  At first I thought Sweet Maria was the maid or something, but it turns out Sweet Maria is Bob's wife. ...

For the better part of an hour, they asked where we'd come from and what we did back home. ... I asked Bob how he'd come to build a lodge sixty miles from the nearest road, and he told us he'd grown up going to the Young Life camp nearby and always loved the place.   He said the real reason for the lodge was to host leaders from foreign countries and talk about peace, to talk about how leaders can bring peace to their countries.

I was curious about how he got world leaders to fly into the middle of nowhere to talk about peace.  Bob smiled and looked at his wife and said, "Well, now, that's an interesting story.  I suppose we stumbled into that one, didn't we?" ...

When his children were young, he told us, he was spending time in Uganda, helping the government work through some legislation, and they asked him if he would be willing to serve as the American consul, essentially Uganda's official American lawyer.  Bob agreed; but while he was a good lawyer, he'd never had to interact with diplomats.

On the flight home, he wondered what he'd say if he had to meet with the president of South Africa or the ambassador from France.  When his kids asked how the trip went, he told them he'd been asked to serve as Uganda's official lawyer, and he was a little nervous to meet the dignitaries.  So Bob asked the kids what they would say if they had to meet with the leader of a foreign country.  Adam, the youngest, said he'd ask them if they wanted to sleep over.  Bob said that was a terrific idea, because when people sleep over you get to know them really well.  Lindsey said she'd want to ask them what they put their hope in, and Bob and Maria agreed that was a beautiful and important question.  Richard, the oldest, who had recently been given a video camera, said he'd want to record the interviews so he could make a movie.  Bob and Maria thought that was a terrific idea, too.  Bob said that if he ever met with a foreign leader, he'd remember their suggestions.  But after thinking about it, Bob decided that the suggestions were too good to risk to chance.

"Let's write letters," Bob said.  The kids wondered what their dad was suggesting.  "I'm serious," Bob said.  "Let's write all the leaders in the world and ask if they want to come over for a sleepover, and if we can interview them and ask what they hope in." The kids got very excited.  Maria smiled and loved the idea.  Bob told the kids that if any of the world leaders said yes to the interview, even if they couldn't come for a sleepover, he'd fly them to that country and they could video tape Lindsey asking what they hope in.

Bob didn't expect anybody to write back, so he brought home more than a thousand pieces of stationery and the kids researched world leaders and came up with more than twelve hundred addresses for heads of state and assistants.  For a while they heard nothing, and Bob confessed he was relieved, but then a single letter came in, and a few days after, another.  Both of them granting an interview.  And then another letter, until in all twenty-nine world leaders contacted the Goffs instructing them on how to make arrangements to interview their countries [sic] leader.  ...

[Bob] put his family on planes, flying them all over the world.  The kids' teachers were furious, saying that he was harming his children by taking them out of school.  But Bob convinced them that his children might learn more interviewing the president of Paraguay than by reading a book about him. ...

Bob said the world leaders fell in love with his kids.  He said there was no way he could have received as much hospitality on his own. ... At the end of each interview, Adam presented the world leader with a box that had a key in it, explaining that the key was an actual key to their family home in San Diego.  He said they sometimes lock the door when they go to the store, but that he could just let himself in, and that if he ever wanted to have a sleepover, he was welcome in their home.

The relationships the family began that year would sustain.  The world leaders wrote the children letters, and the children wrote back.  And one world leader even came to San Diego and used his key and stayed over with the Goff family.

That year Bob said he learned that people are just people, even if they are world leaders.  He said most people want what's best for their friends and their families, and if they are given the opportunity to talk out their differences, they will.  And so when the law firm did very well one year, he bought the land around the lodge and built a place for world leaders to come and have a sleepover.

"And they come?" I asked.

"We've had a few," Bob said.  "I hang their flags from the banister, and we sit and eat and talk.  We explore the inlet on the boats and usually do a little cliff jumping."

I tried to imagine a foreign diplomat jumping from one of the cliffs around the inlet. ... Bob said that before the dignitaries leave, they sit and write a peace treaty, just some informal language that commits to making the world a better place, about how they will live sacrificially and try to do things for others as often as possible.  He said each of the leaders signs the treaty and takes a copy home to remember their [sic] time at the lodge.

Bob and Maria's kids, now grown and in high school and college, each have a quiet dignity and confidence.  They also have an informal charm, as though they just know they would like us if we'd take the time to get to know each other.  It is obvious they'd played the roles in the story their family was living, the roles of foreign dignitaries, traveling with their parents on the important assignment of asking world leaders what they hope in.  Their story had given them their character.

Photo credit Grammy (probably)

Happier at Home:  Kiss More, Jump More, Abandon a Project, Read Samuel Johnson, and My Other Experiments in the Practice of Everyday Life by Gretchen Rubin (Crown Archetype, 2012)

Before I finished The Happiness Project, I knew I wanted to read its sequel.  You have to admire a person who can spend a year concentrating on her own happiness and then write a best-selling book about it.  Twice.  Seriously, I do admire Gretchen Rubin, whose simple-yet-profound ideas are inspirational and potentially life-changing, as I've found those of Don Aslett, Stephen Covey, Malcolm Gladwell, Mary Pride, David Allen, Marla Cilley, John Holt, Glenn Doman and others in my eclectic tribe of inspirational writers.  If you're looking for formulas and specific techniques, however, you won't find them here.  I read books like this for ideas and inspiration, preferring to throw them all into the mix of my thoughts and see what precipitates.  As Rubin herself says, just because something is fun for someone else doesn’t mean it’s fun for you.  But behind her approach to maximizing happiness are principles that are as universal as her applications are specific.

Enough review; on to the quotes!

As I thought about ways to cultivate a loving atmosphere at home, I reflected on my own childhood.  One important element:  My parents had never permitted unkind teasing in the form of mockery, name-calling, or put-downs—even when done in a joking way. ... Teasing ... has more negative weight than many people assume. ... Although the teaser believes he or she is conveying a spirit of warmth and playfulness, to the one being teased, the teasing seems more annoying and mean-spirited. ... True, some skillful people use teasing to help people feel closer to one another, to praise, or to broach a difficult subject. ... More commonly, however, I see people wince at teasing comments, or I hear teasers excuse rude remarks by claiming they're "just joking." But the test of whether I'm being funny is if someone else finds me funny; the test of whether my teasing is friendly is whether the teased person finds it friendly.

Finally, someone puts into print the way I feel about teasing, and especially mockery and put-downs.

If I hadn't already liked Gretchen Rubin from her previous book, she'd have won me over simply for articulating a story that could almost have been taken from my diary.  People will cheerfully confess to all sorts of proclivities, but who will admit to being afraid to drive?  That's positively un-American!  I'm many years further on my phobia-fighting journey than she is, but it's still comforting to find a kindred spirit.

Ever since I was a teenager, I’ve been scared to drive. ... I postponed taking my driver's test until I'd already been sixteen for a few months—a shocking delay for a Midwesterner.  When I lived in Missouri and in Washington, D.C., I did drive every day, but I was a nervous driver.  Once I moved to New York City, I practically quit driving altogether; in fact, easy public transportation is one of my favorite things about living here.  In New York City, having a car is a real luxury, so we're very lucky to have a car to drive, but I made Jamie do all the driving. ... I'm not a particularly fearful person.  Flying doesn't bother me.  I don't carry germ-fighting hand sanitizer in my bag.  I don't worry about child abduction.  I took the subway right after September 11, without even thinking about it.  but driving!  ... I'd adjusted to my fear of driving, but I knew that it cramped my sense of freedom and possibility. ... And although my fear of driving was very personal, it felt like a weight on my marriage, because it loaded too much responsibility on Jamie.  Anytime we had to go anywhere in a car, and even when he was feeling sleepy or needed to take a work call, he had to do all the driving.  To his great credit, he never once complained about it; he never reproached me for feeling scared or not doing my share, and on the few occasions when I did drive, he was encouraging and reminded me that I was a perfectly good driver.  Which I was.

Rubin also understands my obsession with working, the oppression (pleasant as it paradoxically is, sometimes) of a burgeoning to-do list and an increasing sense of mortality.  Perhaps both that and a driving phobia are more common than I think, but few that I know of will admit to either.

I always have the feeling that I should be working.  I always feel pressed for time, as if someone were shoving a pistol in my back and muttering "Move, move, move!" ... I love all this work, and I look forward to working.  But my feeling that I should be working, or my choice to work instead of doing other things that are also important, sometimes interferes with my long-term happiness.  Because I feel this perpetual pull toward my desk, there has always been a tension between my work and other parts of my life. ...

More important than the particular activity ... was the decision to set aside a specific time to be together [with my daughter].  It would be hard for me to give up those prime work hours ... because I always wanted to work.  I wanted more time to think, read, and write—or at least to answer a few emails.  I itched to be reunited with my laptop.  But I knew that looking aback, years from now, these hours would be far more memorable and meaningful if I spent them on an adventure with [my daughter].

I adopted a resolution suggested by a reader who wrote from a research ship in Antarctica.  Her team leader, she reported, had urged them to "Underreact to problems":  not to ignore or minimize problems, but just to underreact to them.  And surely the problems in my apartment were more deserving of underreaction than the problems arising on a ship in the Antarctic.  By "underreacting to problems," and acting in a serene and unflappable way, I'd help myself cultivate a calm attitude. ...

Now, on the spectrum of problems [mine were] very minor. ... Nevertheless, underreaction was a real challenge. ... I didn't successfully manage to avoid a massive overreaction to the computer glitch [that cost me two full days of work].

I'm pretty much an underreactor when it comes to normal computer frustrations, but I don't even want to think about the loss of two days of work.

I considered the three major types of happiness leeches:  The grouches, who are chronically unhappy, pessimistic, anxious, irritable, or needy. ... The jerks, who show no respect for others, who constantly challenge or find fault, behave rudely or cruelly, spread malicious gossip, embarrass others, indulge in mean teasing or pranks, boss others around, unfairly claim credit, withhold necessary information or dominate the conversation. ... The slackers, who don't do their fair share of the work. ... Not only do happiness leeches behave badly themselves, but they also spread their bad behavior. ... [W]hen we see others act like grouches, jerks, or slackers, we're more likely to imitate them. ... In my experience, the grouch is the most common form of happiness leech.

Of course, it's not always possible to avoid a particular happiness leech. ... I came up with a list [of strategies to use as protection against a person who is a constant negative influence]:

• Avoid being alone with the happiness leech.  The presence of other people often dilutes his or her power.
• Communicate through email, if possible.  I find it much harder to control my emotional reactions to people when I'm face-too-face with them.  Email allows me to react more calmly.
• Keep a sense of humor.  Over and over, I see that levity helps diffuse practically any difficult situation—which is too bad for me, because my sense of humor is the first thing that deserts me in a trying situation.
• Instead of contradicting pessimistic or negative statements, acknowledge them.  Happiness leeches are often less emphatic when they feel that others recognize their views.
• Act the way I want to feel; behave the way I want to behave.  Too often, when I find myself around a happiness leech, I ape that behavior—complaining more, making sharper criticisms.  I want to live up to my own standards.
• Most important:  Mind my own business.  It's tempting to try to cheer up a grouch, but instead of trying to fix someone else's mood, I [remind myself] I can't make someone be happy.

Psychologist Robert Levine calculated the "pace of life" in many American cities by considering factors such as walking speed, bank teller speed, and speed of speech, and he found that the more hurried the pace of life, the less helpful people were apt to be:  They were less likely to perform courtesies such as returning a pen that a researcher "accidentally" dropped or giving change for a quarter.  New York City ranked as the third fastest city (after Boston and Buffalo) and the least helpful.

I get New York City, and maybe Boston, though in my experience New Yorkers walk faster than anyone.  But Buffalo?  Maybe they're walking fast in order to keep warm....

Someone else told me of the following e-mail strategy; forgive me, but I don't remember who.  I have that problem a lot, now that there are so many sources of information in my life.  The other day I eagerly told Jon about something that he gently pointed out I had read on his blog....

One friend told me he didn't answer email on the weekend.  "But on Monday morning, how do you face the huge buildup you've accumulated?"  I asked.  "I check my email constantly, just to stay on top of it." ... "Actually," he confided, "I do read and answer email but my emails don't get sent out until Monday morning.  That way, I enforce the expectation that I won't be answering email, and I don't get into back-and-forth exchanges over the weekend."

Brilliant!

The sheer numbers of hours of deliberate training is the factor that distinguishes elite from lesser performers.  Persistence is more important to mastery than innate ability, because the single most important element in developing an expertise is the willingness to practice, and while you can make a child practice, you can't make a child want to practice.

When I marvel at Joseph's ability, at 28 months, to count to 100 (and beyond) in four languages, or by twos, or by sixes, Janet reminds me that in his mind, numbers are a full-time job.  When I visit Heather's kids, I'm constantly being asked to read books (which of course I love to do).  Joseph, although he enjoys stories, is more likely to want to count with me.  (At this point I'm probably too boring for mere counting, since he already can count in English.  Grossvater scores by knowing Russian.)  When Jonathan marvelled at Joseph's ability, I told him that if he thought as much about numbers as Joseph does, he'd probably be doing 10th grade math next year—and that's close to true.

On the flip side, although we often enjoy activities more when we're good at them, facility doesn't guarantee enjoyment, whether in work or play.  In fact, being good at something can sometimes mask the fact that it's not enjoyable.  I was very good at lawyerly work, which I suspect delayed my realization that I wanted a different career.

I can identify with that.  I started college as a physics major, because the heroes of my favorite books were scientists, and I did well in physics in high school.  (I did well in chemistry and biology, too, but physics was the last high school science course I took.  Heather says her favorite color is green because her "favorite color" was always the color of the bulb in her night light, and green happened to be the color when she gave up using a night light.  Like mother, like daughter, I guess.)  It wasn't until my junior year, when the classes got a lot harder, that I realized that not only did I not understand physics, I didn't actually like it enough to put the necessary time into it.  I had only enjoyed it in high school because it had come easily to me.

In his book The Relationship Cure, relationship expert John Gottman emphasizes the importance of responding to "bids"; when someone makes an attempt to connect with a touch, question, gesture, comment, or look, we should answer with a comment, a laugh, or some kind of acknowledgment.  To be attentive and playful is best; to be nonresponsive, critical, or sarcastic is hurtful.

When I was writing my biography of John Kennedy, I'd been struck by a remark that he made to his aide Dave Powers:  "So much depends on my actions, so I am seeing fewer people, simplifying my life, organizing it so that I am not always on the edge of irritability." I hadn't just been elected president, but I also often found myself on the edge of irritability, and I, too, wanted more tools for self-mastery.

Every once in a while, I spend the day without stepping foot outside our apartment, and I consider it a great treat.

One of Rubin's resolutions was "Embrace good smells."  Her research led her to Demeter Fragrance Library.

I was intrigued by a reference I'd seen in Rachel Herz's fascinating book The Scent of Desire, where Herz mentioned the naturalistic, unusual scents created by Demeter Fragrance.  I looked up Demeter Fragrance online and was staggered by its offerings.  Bamboo.  Clean Windows.  Dust.  Bourbon.  Snow.  Grass.  Laundromat.  Lilac.  Frozen Pond.  Gardenia.  New Zealand.  Steam Room.  At first I thought wistfully, "I wish I could smell some of these myself." Then I realized—I could!  As an under-buyer [someone who hates to shop and tends to buy less than is optimal for her situation], I have to remind myself that, yes, I can buy things. ... I started putting scents in my online shopping cart:  Bonfire, Pure Soap, Salt Air.  Bulgarian Rose, because I love the smell of roses....  And I had to order Paperback.

I could so do that.  I know this sounds weird and out of character to anyone who knows me.  I don't wear perfume, and I don't like smelling perfume on someone else.  I've never been into scented candles.  Or incense—except in church and for a brief teenaged fling in the 60's.  Even when it wasn't masking the smell of marijuana (which in my case, trust me, it wasn't), incense was the thing.  But I do love natural scents—lilac, roses, gardenias, garden soil, fresh-baked bread, newborn baby, the air after a storm—and, like Rubin, I find odors to be strongly evocative of memories.  The Demeter scents I would love to try include, but are by no means limited to, Gardenia, Wet Garden, Vanilla Cake Batter, Tomato (more the scent of tomato leaves on your hands than the fruit itself), Thunderstorm, Salt Air, Snow, Holy Water, Ginger Cookie, and Earthworm.  However, I will pass on Mildew, and Turpentine.  

I looked for ... ways to cultivate a thankful frame of mind—for instance, about money.  Money, like health, affects happiness mostly in the negative:  It's easy to take it for granted unless you don't have it, and then it can become a major source of unhappiness.  We had enough money to feel safe ... and this feeling of security was one of the greatest luxuries that money could buy.  To remember this major contributor to my daily happiness, every time I sat down for another session with my checkbook and a big stack of household bills, I thought, "How happy I am to be able to pay these bills," instead of thinking, "What a drag to sit down to pay bills."

Now is the time ... to be happier—not once I've finished my manuscript, not once I've caught up on my email.  Elias Canetti observed, "One lives in the naïve notion that later there will be more room than in the entire past." If there's not time now to decorate graham cracker houses, or to kiss Jamie good-bye, or to visit the Eleusis panel at the Metropolitan Museum, I must make time.

Earthen Vessels:  Why Our Bodies Matter to Our Faith by Matthew Lee Anderson (Bethany House, 2011)

It took me much too long to read this book, especially considering I had been looking forward to it.  Because the Incarnation—the taking on of human flesh by God, the creator and sustainer of the universe—Christmas!—is a critical distinctive of Christianity, our human bodies should matter to our faith.  The Church must not dishonor that which God himself honors so highly.  Yet it is all too easy to fall into the common belief that who we "really" are is something unrelated to our physical form.  Thus a particularly Christian look at the body should make an instructive and informative book.

Unfortunately, Anderson does not deliver, at least not for me.    I was expecting a book that would address the Church as a whole, but Earthen Vessels is specifically aimed at a very narrowly-defined Evangelical (uppercase E), American subdivision.  Rather than being a book for all Christians, much too much ink is spent trying to reassure those whom "talking about Lent, Advent, and other seasons makes ... nervous."  For them, there is much of substance in Anderson's work.  But I imagine Catholics, Anglicans, Lutherans, Methodists, mainline Presbyterians, and many others gritting their teeth and saying, "All right, already!  Can we get past Step 1, please?"  This is particularly frustrating because the other major flaw of the book is its attempt to cover too much ground.  Consumerism, sexuality, tattoos, cremation, vampires, the Sabbath, worship, yoga ... it's too much.  Especially for a book of only 231 pages.

On top of it all, I'm always frustrated with writers who assume their readers are conversant with what's shown on television.  "We are a nation of people who want to be vampires like Edward Cullen."  [Anderson does have the courtesy to explain that Edward Cullen is a character on an American TV show called Twilight.]  Excuse me?  Never in my weirdest dreams have I desired to be a vampire.  I know nothing about the "zombie apocalypse" and care less.  My car does not feature "Counting Crows blaring on the radio."  Until I looked it up, I had no idea whether Counting Crows was a music group, a song, or a talk-show host.  Assumptions such as these lead me to wonder if Earthen Vessels has anything at all to say to me:  If his diagnosis is so obviously wrong, why should I trust his prescription?

And why, I wonder, do I find more that speaks to me in books written 50, 100, 500, or 2000 years ago than I do in many of today's writings?

My own dissatisfaction, however, should not condemn the book in the eyes of those who like to count crows, believe in the undead, and/or are made nervous by the mention of Lent.  Anderson's logic is not always clear, let alone faultless, but he has some good ideas and puts many interesting and important points on the table for discussion.

Moreover, one cannot totally fault someone who quotes G. K. Chesterton more than John Piper, and a plethora of sticky notes festoon my book. Here are a few of the passage that struck me one way or another.

The tools we use, the words we hear, the images we see—each of them shapes our inner lives in ways that we do not always understand.

Young men [today] see more images of beautiful women in a single day than an average man might have seen in a lifetime 200 years ago. ...

[Quoting Hollywood publicist Michael Levine] The strange thing is, being bombarded with visions of beautiful women ... doesn't make us think our partners are less physically attractive.  It doesn't change our perception of our partner.  Instead, by some sleight of mind, it distorts our idea of the pool of possibilities.  These images make us think there's a huge field of alternatives.  It changes our estimate of the number of people who are available to us as potential mates.  In changing our sense of the possibilities, it prods us to believe we could always to better, keeping us continually unsatisfied.

The promise of technological mediation is that we can control how our external lives appear to others.  We choose when we want to update our statuses and what we want to say.  We are not present online—we present ourselves.  But in a mediated world, presentation will constantly threaten to overwhelm our bodily presence, invariably pushing the body to the margins.  When humans gather face-to-face, we take emotional (and sometimes physical) risks.  Yet in a mediated world, those risks either go away or are significantly curtailed.

I absolutely agree with Anderson on the importance of personal, physical, bodily presence.  But as one whose friends and family members are spread all over the world, I'm grateful for the technology that allows us to see and hear, if not touch and hold, those far away in body.

The longing for stability and significance isn't unique to younger evangelicals.  It is a distinctly human need.  We internalize the events that happen to us and incorporate them into our understanding of the world around us, organize them into a coherent pattern, and externalize the meaning through speech, poetry, painting, and other forms of cultural creation.  it is how we make sense of ourselves, how we develop our sense of what it means to be a specific person before God.  Yet before the past twenty years, evangelicals would have never thought to express that self-understanding by marking their bodies.  With all the possible options for organizing and expressing our self-understanding, my question is simply, "Why are tattoos now being embraced?" Something has changed that has made them a plausible option.

If there were a sexual arms race, the evangelicals would be winning. ... Evangelical Christianity has undergone in the past three decades what is tantamount to its own sexual revolution ... [maintaining] a profound focus on maximizing pleasure between the sheets—or wherever else we happen to be when inspiration strikes. ... The implicit—and occasionally explicit—argument is that because God designed sex to be kept within marriage, Christians should be having belter and more frequent sex than anyone else.  Or, as two scholars who analyzed evangelical sex manuals in the early 1980's put it, we are apparently "God's chosen people in matters of sexuality." The increasingly common challenges from evangelical pulpits to have daily sex suggests the calling is irrevocable. ...

The loud arguments from evangelicalism that pleasure is good border on defensively shouting, "Hey, we've got pleasure, too!" in a world that cares about little else.  Evangelicals can and should win the pleasure war but not on the same terms as the world.  And judging by our literature and manner of life, we are closer to treating sexual pleasure as an idol than we have ever been to treating is as a curse.

Most evangelical churches are wary of single male pastors (especially young ones).  The belief is that single men are incapable either of controlling themselves sexually, or of counseling married couples on the dynamics of human sexuality.  This basic inhospitality toward single people in church leadership suggests, i suspect, a tacit commitment to standards of sexuality that are taken less from Scripture and more from the world around us. ...

The idea of a vocation—or a calling—to lifelong celibacy for the kingdom of God does not minimize the importance of marriage.  Each calling bears witness to different aspects of our world. ...

The possibility of finding full human flourishing without sex stands in stark contrast to one of the most prevalent notions of sexuality both inside and outside the church:  Thanks in part to Sigmund Freud and Abraham Maslow, sex has been transformed from an expression of our humanity to a physiological or psychological need that is essential to our human flourishing. ...

The teaching that our wholeness depends upon sexual fulfillment lies behind many of the problems in evangelical teaching about sex.  We implicitly convey to young people that sex is a need by marginalizing those who are single or cordoning them off in singles groups so that they hopefully will get married.  Then we expect them to live some of the most sexually charged years of their lives without yielding to temptation.  No wonder young people struggle to stay sexually pure:  either sex is essential to their flourishing as humans or it isn't.  And if everyone who is married thinks it is, then young people will too—regardless of whatever else we tell them.

[T]he objectification of women—or men—in pornography depends upon a prior objectification of our own bodies.  When we turn people into sexual objects so we can have an artificial sense of connection with them, we treat our bodies as machines meant to maximize our experience of pleasure.  It is fundamentally depersonalizing for everyone involved—for the viewer and the viewed.  Wendell Berry writes, "Our 'sexual revolution' is mostly an industrial phenomenon, in which the body is used as an idea of pleasure or a pleasure machine with the aim of 'freeing' natural pleasure from natural consequence."

[L]abeling oneself gay or lesbian treats sexual orientation as a core part of one's identity as human persons.  Unfortunately, this narrative of sexual identity stops any dialogue about the morality of same-sex desires and practices before it can even begin; any disagreement goes against the core of the other person's identity. ... This means that as long as those with same-sex orientations treat the fulfillment of their sexual desires as a necessary part of their identity, the most sensitive traditional responses to same-sex attraction and acts will inevitably be reduced to bigotry.  The possibility of real conversation is over before it begins.

But what of the log in our own eye?  The language of "sexual identity" (rather than attraction or desire) glorifies sexual expression by establishing it as necessary to our humanity. ... [I]t is heterosexuals who first took this step and made sexual expression a "need" on which human flourishing depends. ... [T]he gay and lesbian communities have simply followed our lead, using the language of sexual fulfillment and identity that heterosexuals have been using since at least Freud.

[T]he path to closing [the gap between our lives now and the life to which we are called] may not always seem straight, especially as same-sex relationships become more embedded in the structures of American life.  For instance, what would happen ten or twenty years from now if an atheist lesbian couple and their eight-year-old adopted daughter became Christians and affirmed traditional sexual morality?  Should the home be broken up so the child can have a father?  Should the couple live together as celibates so the child's stability is preserved?  And do the answers change if the child is six—or sixteen?  The questions are but variations on a theme:  How does the gospel pervade cultural institutions that are inhospitable to its presence?  Does Paul's suggestion in 1 Corinthians 7 that each person should "remain in the condition in which they were called" provide a template for a sensitive pastoral response, one akin to that which some missionaries have taken in polygamous cultures?

The danger of turning worship of the living God into theater isn't limited to any denomination.  The evangelical liturgy—welcome, worship, announcements, worship, prayer, giving, reading, sermon, worship—has just as much room for becoming theater as the "highest" liturgical church.

Well, duh.  I would say more so—because traditional liturgical worship doesn't look at all like the "theater" of today, whereas many modern church formats do, with some even being nearly indistinguishable from rock concerts.  And I certainly agree with him on this point:

A practical place to start ... would be to turn down the volume.

I appear to be in the mood for quick posts sharing other people's brilliance.  They're much more entertaining than what I can come up with on my own at the moment.  Try me again after Li'l Writer Guy is revived by a week with four creative and lively grandchildren.  :)

This gem is from thduggie's blog, the work of a creative and lively son-in-law.  Thanks, Stephan!

Once again, Eric Schultz (The Occasional CEO) has come up with just the right note.  My list of his serious posts I want to share and comment on grows longer, but this one popped right to the top.  So true, so true.

As I said in a comment to his post, it reminded me of a Christmas scene from 2003:  Like this one, it's a living room setting with five people. Three are busy with computers on their laps. (This was almost 10 years ago: no iPhones, no iPads.) The fourth is also intently focussed, not on a computer screen but on the fifth, a newborn baby. No, not that newborn baby, but I did title the picture, We Three Nerds.  Oh, wait.  This is my own blog; I can include the picture itself.

Sorry it's such a lousy picture.  Our camera at the time was an old Sony Mavica, at one time high tech, but it created small files and saved them to a 3.5 inch floppy disk, which couldn't hold even one picture from my present (inexpensive, Kodak) camera.

Don't you love what you can do with statistics and charts?  This chart is from a great article in the New England Journal of Medicine:  Chocolate Consumption, Cognitive Function, and Nobel Laureates.  For a less scholarly report on the data, see this Reuters article.

The article begins like this.

Dietary flavonoids, abundant in plant-based foods, have been shown to improve cognitive function. Specifically, a reduction in the risk of dementia, enhanced performance on some cognitive tests, and improved cognitive function in elderly patients with mild impairment have been associated with a regular intake of flavonoids. A subclass of flavonoids called flavanols, which are widely present in cocoa, green tea, red wine, and some fruits, seems to be effective in slowing down or even reversing the reductions in cognitive performance that occur with aging.

One day, while apparently bored in a Kathmandu hotel room—I'm guessing it was night, or cloudy—the author, Franz H. Messerli, began to think.

Since chocolate consumption could hypothetically improve cognitive function not only in individuals but also in whole populations, I wondered whether there would be a correlation between a country's level of chocolate consumption and its population's cognitive function. To my knowledge, no data on overall national cognitive function are publicly available. Conceivably, however, the total number of Nobel laureates per capita could serve as a surrogate end point reflecting the proportion with superior cognitive function and thereby give us some measure of the overall cognitive function of a given country.

The results astonished him, though perhaps he should not be surprised:  he is Swiss.

There was a close, significant linear correlation (r=0.791, P<0.0001) between chocolate consumption per capita and the number of Nobel laureates per 10 million persons in a total of 23 countries.  When recalculated with the exclusion of Sweden, the correlation coefficient increased to 0.862. Switzerland was the top performer in terms of both the number of Nobel laureates and chocolate consumption.  [emphasis mine]

The only possible outlier ... seems to be Sweden. Given its per capita chocolate consumption of 6.4 kg per year, we would predict that Sweden should have produced a total of about 14 Nobel laureates, yet we observe 32. Considering that in this instance the observed number exceeds the expected number by a factor of more than 2, one cannot quite escape the notion that either the Nobel Committee in Stockholm has some inherent patriotic bias when assessing the candidates for these awards or, perhaps, that the Swedes are particularly sensitive to chocolate, and even minuscule amounts greatly enhance their cognition.

Which perhaps explains why I need to eat more chocolate than Porter does, he being 1/4 Swedish.

Dr. Messerli reports regular daily chocolate consumption, mostly but not exclusively in the form of Lindt's dark varieties.

The above quotations were all from the NEJM article; the final ones from Reuters.

Messerli ... said that despite the tongue-in-cheek tone, he does believe chocolate has real health effects—although people should stay away from the sweeter kinds.

"[D]ark chocolate is the way to go. It's one thing if you want like a medicine or chemistry Nobel Prize, ok, but if you want a physics Nobel Prize it pretty much has got to be dark chocolate."

In case you were wondering, the date on Messerli's article is October 10, 2012.  I guess they couldn't wait six more months.

We're now into the fourth season of Murdoch Mysteries, and I'm sorry that will be our last season for a while, unless we move to Costa Rica, Papua New Guinea, or some other place in DVD Region Code Four.  (I've been an anti-fan of region codes since 2006, when we discovered we couldn't watch our Japanese copy of Swing Girls.)

My new respect for Murdoch Mysteries may have something to do with my disappointment on Except the Dying, the first book of the series on which the TV show is based.  Now that I know I like the show's characters and approach better than the book's, I'm happier with it.  But it's also true that Season Four toned down the love affair, and though the 21st century social attitudes are still there, so far they haven't been as in-your-face.  Most of all, either it has taken a less-serious turn, or I have finally recognized that it's not intended to be an accurate portrayal of late nineteenth century Toronto—or anyplace else.  In its use of of modern technology it is more like the old TV show The Wild, Wild West, or maybe A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, though it's been a long time since I've seen the one or read the other, so my memory may not be quite accurate.

In any case, I'm finding easier to take the show for what it is, and enjoy it.  Especially the way it laughs at its own anticipate-the-future tricks.  While Murdoch invents gadgets to help catch criminals, George Crabtree—still my favorite character by far—is always seeing a different side.  Murdoch builds a complicated house model to help him picture the movements of the suspects, complete with conservatory, library, hall, potential weapons, and a token for each person.  All he sees is the crime, but Crabtree recognizes the potential for a great new board game.

Scaling Down:  Living Large in a Smaller Space by Judi Culbertson and Marj Decker (Rodale, 2005)

Prepare NOW; don't let the headache of dealing with your estate be your children's last, vivid, and painful memory of their parents.

A good friend has recently been embroiled in our generation's nightmare:  moving her widowed mother out of her house-of-many-years and into assisted living, then having to clear out the house and sell it.  (Thank you, Dad, for having made the process as easy as it gets, and to all my siblings for staying friends and even having some fun through it all.)  Scaling Down is one of two books she recommended; it was available in our library, so I decided to check it out.

I wasn't expecting much, having already dealt with that heart- and headache.  And if you're like me, you'll almost give up in the first chapter, where you're asked to write a "mission statement."  But hang in there; the book's about a lot more than selling the old homestead, and you can easily ignore the annoying bits.  Anyone who is merging two households, moving into a smaller space—or moving, period—fending off sibling rivalry over Grandpa's Kitchenaid mixer, or simply feeling overwhelmed by "stuff," can benefit from the book's suggestions.

One thing that differentiates Scaling Down from other decluttering books is the authors' sympathy for the emotional complications attached to our belongings. Although they are very practical and sometimes in my judgement a little too harsh in their methods, they do provide some helpful ideas for keeping the feeling and/or memory without keeping everything.  Collectors, for example, are not asked to give up their collections, but to be wiser in their collecting:  financing quality by selling off quantity.

The chapter headings:

• How Did We Get Here?
• I Need to Do This But...
• But Aunt Winnie Gave It to Me!
• Collaring the Paper Tiger
• The Tyranny of Collections
• The Secret Live of Clothing
• Clearing Out Your Family Home
• Your Cuisinart or Mine?
• Moving in a Hurry
• The Saga of the Rain Bonnets
• Finding Good Homes [for your stuff]
• "This is Your Life!"
• Shop Till You Drop ... Out
• How to Keep from Cluttering Your New Place
• Starting a New Adventure
• Using Your Space for You

Did you catch "How to Keep from Cluttering Your New Place"?  I know from painful experience that without the exercise of an iron will, bigger refrigerators, bigger closets, and bigger homes all soon become just as crowded as the smaller counterparts they replaced.

Another surprising, but potentially life-changing idea is expressed by the last chapter:  Using your space for you.  Actually, it's a major theme throughout the book:  You stuff, from clothes to cupboards to collectibles, should be what pleases you, what makes you feel comfortable and happy, what works for the vision you have of what your home should be.  Quantity rarely provides that, but we keep buying things for all the wrong reasons, having never taken the time and effort to discover what we really like.  I suppose that seems obvious, but there are a lot of things I keep for no reason other than that I have them, and they work.  We still have the kitchen wallpaper that was there when we moved in, even though I'd never have chosen it out of a wallpaper book.  I don't think that's all bad—and I still dread the idea of even looking through a wallpaper book, let alone tearing up my kitchen—but the authors do have a point.  And I do like their answer to this objection:

"I don't want to make any changes that would hurt my home's resale value."

This statement strikes us as sad.  It is similar to someone buying a new car, then saying, "I'm only going to drive it when my other car is in the shop, because I want to keep the mileage low for the trade-in." That attitude makes you the caretaker of the property, keeping it nice for some future owner, instead of behaving like it's yours.  If you've always dreamed of a vaulted-ceiling library, and your garage is the perfect place to create one, why not do so?  You'll have years of pleasure, and if you or your heirs get a little less because it's too nice to park a car in, your satisfaction is worth the difference.  Most of the time individualizing a space actually adds to the selling price.  But even if it doesn't, don't sell yourself short.

I won't be buying the book, at least not yet.  But I'll keep it in the back of my mind, and might get it out again when I need to be re-inspired.  Not only is an organized, uncluttered home one of the best legacies we can leave our heirs, it also makes life a lot nicer in the meantime.

Recently, I bought a new 500GB hard drive from Western Digital.  This despite the fact that the salesman told me external drives will soon be a thing of the past.  All will be in The Cloud.  I'm all for cloud storage, but I still like to have some of my data on a drive I can hold in my hand.

I still read books, too.  Paper ones.

But back to the matter at hand. 

What you see is the entirety of the instructions for installing the drive.  And it really was that simple:  I plugged one end of the cord into the drive and the other into a USB port on the computer; Windows 7 recognized the device, installed the drivers, and almost before I could blink, it was ready to go.  I wasn't expecting anything less; what made the experience noteworthy was subsequently reading the somewhat different instructions located in the instruction manual—which is a pdf located on the drive itself.  They begin as follows:

1. Turn on your computer.
2. Connect the My Passport drive to your computer as shown in Figure 3.
3. If a Found New Hardware screen appears, click Cancel to close it.  The WD SmartWare software that is on the drive installs the proper driver for your My Passport drive.

They continue with instructions for making that installation happen.  But as should have been obvious to the manual-writers, the "Found New Hardware" screen isn't up long enough to cancel it.  And in any case, you can't read the instructions to cancel the installation until after you've finished the installation.

I ignored it all, and the drive works fine.

H/T Stephan.

or ?

I keep writing about our new church while the main post of introduction is still rambling about in my head.  But so it goes sometimes.

Today we celebrated Feast of Saint Francis with the Blessing of the Animals.  Although we've been in several churches that observe this practice, this is the first in which the blessing was done during the service, and thus the first we've experienced.  (It's technically not true that we have no pets, but I declined to bring our uncountable number of worms—well over 2000, I believe, and they don't stay still enough to count; plus, they keep hatching.)

For the occasion, we combined our two services into one, and held it outdoors in the warm (but not too hot) Florida sunshine.  The rest of the service was a normal, Episcopal, mostly Rite II worship service.  The Blessing of the Animals occurred after the Passing of the Peace and before the Eucharist.  (And in case you were wondering, after touching all those animals, the priests did wash their hands before serving Communion.)

By far the majority of the beasts were dogs, but I also saw cats and rats (but no elephants) and birds, including an owl (barn owl, I think, but I didn't ask), which came with someone who works at a birds of prey rescue center.  And, there was ... a snake.  A sweet little corn snake, and not only did both priests handle it, one let it climb around over his neck.  So yes, we are now attending a church of snake handlers. 

Through the magic of YouTube I can also include a record, for myself if no one else, of the two anthems we sang.  Not of us singing them, however.

First,  Praise His Holy Name by Keith Hampton.

[Update 10/11/2019.  I'm pretty sure there was orginally more post between this and the final paragraph, but it seems to have disappeared.]

And those who know me well will get an inkling of why I love this church when I say that I happened to be standing right in front of the speaker (this being an outdoor service, we relied on an electronic keyboard for accompaniment), and while I would rather have not been so close, it was bearable, even without earplugs, unlike many of my previous experiences.

We watched the first half of the PBS documentary Half the Sky last night.  (Quarter the Sky?)  The conclusion is tonight.  I highly recommend it, but not for grandchildren.  Here's the trailer.

The shows will be available for one week at PBS video (maybe not in Europe, sorry).  Here is the link for Part 1.  I'll update with Part 2 when it is released, which should be tomorrow.  And here's Part 2.

Note on flu shots:  This year they're pushing the intradermal shot.  Personally, I think it's because they can use a lower dose, and therefore make the supply go farther.  But they're hyping it as less painful ("90% smaller needle").  No matter how many times I told him needles don't bother me ("I gave blood yesterday!"), the nurse practitioner who administered the shot kept emphasizing the small needle and consequent reduced pain.

Based on a sample size of two, I'm here to say that that is bunk.  Both Porter and I agreed that the intradermal shot hurt more than a regular injection, not less.  I hope our grandkids appreciate the sacrifice.  :)

 Last Saturday was the opening concert for the Orlando Philharmonic's 20th Anniversary season.  Pausing only briefly to wonder how the "new kid on the block" can be twenty years old already—I've done that several times already, the latest being only last month, with the first of our nephews to leave the teenage years behind—I'll just say that Maestro Christopher Wilkins once again began the season with a blockbuster program guaranteed to fill the house.  One work:  Mahler's Third Symphony.  No intermission.  Nearly 110 minutes long.  The first movement alone is longer than the entirety of Beethoven's Fifth.  The orchestra did a great job, but I have to say that they were upstaged by the members of the Florida Opera Theatre Youth Program.  Some of those kids were as young as seven, they were highly visible on a platform well above the orchestra, the part that they had to sing was brief and late in the symphony, and they did not fidget.  They sat still, they kept their hand in their laps most of the time, and they at least appeared attentive.  In short, they did better than me.

I was not familiar with Mahler's Third; it's not programmed often, and I can see why:  the orchestra is much larger than that required for most performances, and there's a large chorus as well.  E-X-P-E-N-S-I-V-E.  I'm glad the OPO took the plunge to offer it.  I do have to say, however, that—unlike Mahler's First, which was love at first hearing for me—this one may take a little more exposure for me to appreciate.  I found most of the movements reasonably enjoyable, but the sixth and last was interminable.  I don't think that had to do with the fact that we'd been sitting for so long as that to my ears it didn't seem to get anywhere.  Slowly.

Still, it was a good experience, quite possibly once-in-a-lifetime.  We don't even have a copy of Mahler's Third in our extensive music library, though that of course could be remedied.

It's been the required eight weeks since I last gave blood, so I made an appointment to do so.  It's pretty convenient now; you can do it online, and there's a Big Red Bus scheduled to be nearby at frequent intervals.

I have been tempted to ask if they handle the blood better than other aspects of the donation process.  Tempted, but I haven't given in, there being no point in unnecessarily angering the person who's about to plunge a needle into my arm.  But I do wonder sometimes.

My appointment was for Friday, at our local Best Buy parking lot.  When I received my appointment confirmation, I was confused, because the address they gave me was not the Best Buy address.  Nevertheless, I was assured that the bus would be at Best Buy.  And, indeed, there was a big red vehicle in sight as I approached, but it proved on closer inspection to be a Budweiser truck, which deals in a different sort of liquid altogether.

I decided to check out the actual address I had been given, but the bus wasn't there, either.  "Weren't you informed?" asked the friendly person on the other end of the phone when I called the blood center.  "The drive was changed to Sunday."  No, I had not been informed, unless you count the e-mail I had received on Friday, reminding me of my appointment.  It was simply a form notification, which I hardly looked at, as Google Calendar had been there, done that for me already.  My mistake, I suppose, because although nothing was said about a date change, the e-mail did have Sunday as my appointment date.

No problem, though, just about 20 minutes of time wasted.  I returned today, and there, where it was supposed to be, was the blood bus.  It was busy but not crowded, and all went almost smoothly.

I say almost, because as I said last time, they wanted details for all of my trips overseas.  It shouldn't have been a big deal, since I was prepared this time with the dates of my Swiss trips.  (I'll admit to being a little fuzzy on the number and extent of side trips to Germany, France, and Italy, which are always a few hours here, a few hours there.)  So I was surprised when there seemed to be some concern, and the lady came back to me after consulting the master book, asking, "What cities, what regions did you visit?"  "All over the map," I replied, "but mostly in Basel and the Luzern area."  Back to the book she went.  Finally, she returned to me, with the page in question:  "We're concerned about malaria," she said.  "You see this region over near Mozambique...."  The light dawned.  "Switzerland," I sighed.  "Switzerland.  Not Swaziland."

After that, actually losing a pint of blood was a piece of cake.

Except the Dying by Maureen Jennings (St. Martin's Press, 1997)

I had been looking forward to reading the first of Jennings' detective stories, the inspiration for the Murdoch Mysteries television series; as I stated in my review of the shows, I'd hoped the book would be less anachronistic than the TV version.  In that I got my wish:  Except the Dying presents a much more believable view of the seamy underside of late 19th century Toronto.  Much to my surprise, however, I plan to continue to enjoy the shows without reading any more of Jennings' other stories.

The movies are perhaps the greater more pernicious lie:  the prostitutes are clean and well-mannered; the abortionists are thoughtful, civilized gentlemen; the streets are free of manure and of emaciated children; not a spittoon nor a chamber pot is to be seen.  Which is worse, to make the darkness light or the light darkness?  The book's lurid detail of evil and filth overwhelms the story, and stains the small glimmers of goodness.  How I long for the more restrained writers of the past, who could describe a cesspool without making the reader feel as if he had fallen into it.

Except the Dying is not a terrible book.  Jennings writes well, and with more historical accuracy than the TV writers.  But as for me, I have had enough.  There are more uplifting books waiting to be read.

Whenever I see a title that looks as if it comes from something I feel I should know, I renew my gratitude for Google.  (Google the search engine, that is, even though I have mixed feelings about Google the large company.)  Except the Dying is from a poem by Emily Dickenson:

The last night that she lived,
It was a common night,
Except the dying; this to us
Made nature different.