Lift Up Your Hearts!

Yesterday I completed my 95 by 65 Goal #57:  Finish chronological Bible reading plan.  Ever since I read a review copy of The Chronological Guide to the Bible (five years ago), I've wanted to read the Bible through in the approximate order of the events.  There isn't complete agreement among scholars on the details of the order, but "approximate" is good enough for me.  I've made various stabs at the project over the years, and even put the information from the Guide onto a bookmark—actually a set of bookmarks—to help me jump from place to place in my Bible correctly.  It shouldn't have been that hard, but flipping back and forth and keeping track of where I was and where I was going next was just enough of a pain that my efforts kept petering out.  Pitiful, I know, but the point of this post is not to talk about my failures, but my success at last.

What turned the tide was the YouVersion Bible app on my phone.  They have a gazillion reading plans, most of which are not interesting to me, but one of them is set up to lead the reader through the entire Bible, chronologically, in one year.  I owe a lot of thanks to our friend Christina S., who first introduced me to YouVersion, because I found this plan to be great!

The plan does all the work—except, of course, for the reading itself.  Every day they send a notification to your phone:  click on the notification and it takes you right to the plan.  Click on the next day's reading and boom, there you are, at the right place in the Bible of your choice (they have lots to choose from).  The end of one reading takes you directly to the next, until you've completed all the chapters for that day.  You get a nice little congratulatory note, then close the app.  Repeat every day for a year.  Or, if you fall behind at any point, there's a catch-up function that shifts the plan dates for you.  I took advantage of that once, in the beginning, but once I got the habit established, I found it easy to keep up.  Really, the app makes it simple—easy enough that even in especially busy times I managed to squeeze the reading in.  Because, as I said, it was right there, waiting for me.  The folks at YouVersion, though I doubt they've ever heard of Glenn Doman, remind me of his saying that one of the secrets of the success of his educational and therapeutic programs is, "we arrange for the child to win."  The YouVersion app arranged for me to win, and I did.

I loved the chronological path through the Bible, especially seeing how various events fit together, and reading one after the other the passages that are parallel but not identical.  I came through the process with a much stronger feeling of the integrity of the Bible as the record of real people living their lives in the context of real history and culture, and of God revealed:  gradually and progressively, though still imperfectly, through that record.  Perhaps the feeling was stronger because of the contrast I experienced while reading through the Qur'an at the same time.

The chronological plan was so enjoyable that I'm sure I'll do it again, but at the moment I feel it's better to mix things up a bit.  I'm sticking with the YouVersion app and their plans, however.  Today I started a 30-day reading of the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John), one that covers every word but weaves together the events from the different books.  As I said, I'm not interested in most of the YouVersion plans—many of them are "devotional," with more to read than just the Bible.  Scholarly commentary I would be interested in, but just some random person's thoughts?  Not so much.  Yet there are still some plans with straight Scripture to try out, and the chronological plan to return to.  I'm thrilled that the YouVersion people have arranged for this child to win.

Joseph wanted to go to the grocery store, and made his own shopping list.  (Click to enlarge.)

He did not have enough money to make the purchases, especially in the quantities he wanted, but I told him I'd gladly pay for one package of butter, so we went off eagerly to the store.  Grandmotherly hearts—and appealing grandchild eyes—being what they are, the plan escalated a bit.

While Janet and the others did their own shopping, Joseph and I started filling his little cart.  He found at least one of everything on his list (milk, pizza, oranges, bread, butter, orange juice, apple juice, peanut butter, and water), and I added several other items of interest to me (e.g. Swiss chocolate half off).

At checkout, he put his items on the belt, and got out his purse.  He handed the lady his widow's mite—all he had.  I slipped her a 50-franc bill; she smiled, and handed the change to Joseph.  His eyes opened wide, as the change was a bit over six francs, about twice the sum he had started with, and monumental compared with his weekly allowance.

One hundred percent return on investment, and a cart full of food, too.  Even I might learn to like shopping under those circumstances.

Over the years I have been astonished at the technical prowess of our grandchildren.  Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised:  advancing technology has made it clear that it's physical coordination more than mental ability that has in the past held children back.

In 2006: Jonathan, who just turned three, met me on the stairs with a blue cable in his hand. As I passed, I remarked, "That looks like a Cat 5 cable." "No it's not," he responded, "It's a USB cord." (He was right.)

And in 2010:  One day Heather discovered two-year-old Faith sitting at the computer, typing away in their Open Office word processing program.  She assumed Jon had set it up for her, but that was not the case.  No one knows how Faith did it.  This is no consumer-friendly iPhone, nor even Windows, but a Linux-based system only a geek could love.

There were many more examples I did not record, but I thought of these the other day, when it happened again.

Joseph, just shy of his fifth birthday, had been using his mother's GMail program to compose and send me a letter.  He then told me he wanted to make a copy.  I wasn't sure what he meant, so I showed him how to click on the Sent folder to see the e-mail again.  That wasn't what he wanted, but his sister required some immediate assistance, so I said I'd help him when I returned.

Just a couple of minutes later I came back, and he was in the process of removing a page from the printer.  He then shut the printer down and put the tray back into its folded position.  When he handed the printout to me, I asked him how he knew what to do.  "I clicked on the print button," he replied.

I don't use GMail to compose or read my mail, but I logged on to see see if the process was really that simple.  It's not.  First of all, the print icon is small (though I'll admit his eyes are quite a bit younger than mine, so maybe that doesn't matter much), and once you click on it you have at least one more step before the print actually happens.

Technology is not strange, nor frightening, to those who grow up with it as ubiquitous as air.

One of our grocery stores is inside a small mall with a play place.  The rest rooms are not far away, but on a different floor, so a visit involves an elevator ride, and Vivienne was reluctant to go alone.  No problem; Janet went with her and I stayed with the others.  What makes this  something worth reporting is what happened a little later.

Daniel was still happy in the play place, but Joseph and Vivienne decided they wanted to explore.  They had a particular plan in mind, worked out the details with Mom, and off they went:  up the elevator to the fifth floor, check out a particular store ("from the outside only, not going in"), come back down again and check in with Mom before going back into the play place.  They did exactly that, returning in just a few minutes with big grins.

Only a few minutes later Vivienne left the play place again, and asked permission to take another exploratory trip.  This was a slightly larger stretch for Mom and Grandma, since this time she would be on her own, without her older brother.  But she did just great, and immediately announced that she had to use the bathroom again, and would do it all by herself.

She did just that.  The look of triumph on her face was priceless.  Well worth the maternal and grandmaternal nervousness we experienced upon watching the elevator doors close on our little adventurer.

I say this is growth and learning at its best.

• Her initial fears and dependence were accommodated without shaming.
• She stretched her comfort limits as part of her older brother's project.
• She repeated the same experience without her brother, making all the decisions (and pushing all the buttons) on her own.
• Finally, she repeated the bathroom trip completely independently.

This triumph was accomplished within a span of perhaps half an hour, with no pressure, no tears, at her own pace, when she was ready.

Joy all around.

This is for everyone, but especially our grandkids.  It's a safe video if you watch it here and don't go directly to YouTube.  Actually, there's nothing wrong with watching it on YouTube, except that then the comments are harder to avoid.  Internet anonymity is an uncivilizing influence.  (H/T Susan D.)

I think anyone should be able to get to the Posit Science BrainHQ Daily Spark exercises.  At least, the e-mail states,

Every weekday, the Daily Spark opens one level of a BrainHQ exercise to all visitors. Play it once to get the feel of it — then again to do your best. Come back the next day for a new level in a different exercise!

If you try and can get to them without paying (even better if without registering), let me know.  Or let me know if you can't.  Since I have a subscription, I'm not sure what others see.

I find the BrainHQ exercises interesting and challenging, and I really have to get back to doing them on a regular basis....  (95 by 65 goal #70)

I've written before about Stephen Jepson and his Never Leave the Playground program.  Now he has added brachiation to his collection of fitness "toys."  Note his interesting form, without the usual swinging action of the body.

Note that Jepson's solution for an easier version while building up strength is very similar to ours, though his also works when the weather's too cold for swimming.  I'll have to remember that!

Forty Ways to Look at Winston Churchill by Gretchen Rubin (Ballentine Books, 2003)

What can Gretchen Rubin, famous for her books on happiness (The Happiness Project, Happier at Home), add to the multitude of books written about Churchill?  Plenty, it turns out—at least if you are as ignorant of history as I am.  Porter found it less interesting, because for him, there was little new.

My own interest in this book was piqued for a couple of reasons.  While I was checking our library for Rubin's latest book, Better than Before, this—written well before her happiness books—popped up.  Because we had recently watched the excellent Great Courses series on Churchill, I snapped it up.

My knowledge of Churchill being essentially no more than I had learned through those lectures, it was good, not tiresome, to hear the same stories again.  Plus, the strength of Rubin's book is not in depth or special insight, but because she pulls together views of the man from many different biographical sources, demonstrating in the process just how difficult it is to write a biography—and impossible to write an unbiased one.  In fact, the only real weakness I see in Rubin's book is that she can't hide her own great admiration for the man:  she can't write the opposing side convincingly.  But the facts are there, positive and negative, and I highly recommend Forty Ways as an easy-to-read introduction to this brilliant, complex man and his indomitable spirit.

Our grandson has a birthday coming up.  Okay, two grandsons have a birthday coming up—the same day, in fact—but that's for the moment beside the point.  The problem is that we were given a great gift idea, but I'm having an astonishingly hard time fulfilling it.  He loves to read, and science books would be particularly welcomed.  His current interest is planets but it's just as likely to become airplanes or frogs or the periodic table—just about any appropriate subject would be good.  Reading/grade level is hard to determine.  I'd have guessed maybe third, but I've seen plenty that Amazon has rated fifth through ninth that could be appropriate—I'm sure they're underestimating fifth graders, let alone ninth!  But generally I'd say I'm looking for books aimed at elementary school age.

You'd think there'd be plenty, and there certainly is no dearth of apparently appropriate books.  But oh, my.  I don't want something obviously intended for schools, with questions and lesson plans.  I don't want jokes, especially not dumb jokes, and most especially not jokes about flatulence.  Flatulence?  Really?  In a discussion of Brownian motion?  This was in an otherwise appealing book, and leads me to suspect the whole series; Amazon only lets you preview a few pages, and I'm left wondering what unpleasant surprises lurk, unexamined.  Sad, because the series (Basher books) is otherwise one of the most attractive.

Condescension is almost as bad as flatulence.  Isn't it possible to present facts simply without talking down to your audience?  National Geographic books looked promising at first, but they don't have a lot of choice and are not free from condescension and stupid jokes.  I'll probably get some nonetheless, but I'm hoping for suggestions from those of you with more experience.  Bring them on, please!

In the first comment to Saturday's Pi(e) post, Kathy Lewis asked about the math legacy of my mother (the one who introduced Kathy to strawberry-rhubarb pie).  This inspired the genealogist in me to answer the question visually.  (Click image to enlarge.  Family members, please send me corrections as needed.)

Math-related fields clearly run in the family, by marriage as well as by blood.  Some other facts of note:

• Most of the grandchildren (and all of the great-grandchildren, not shown in the chart) have not yet graduated from college.  Their intended fields, where known, are shown in italics.  One is very close to graduation, so I've left him unitalicised.
• In each generation from my parents through my children, there's been an even split between mathematics and engineering.  However, with the next generation at nine and counting, I doubt that trend will continue.
• The other fields don't come out of nowhere:  both of my parents had a vast range of interests.
• With one short-term exception in a time of need, every woman represented here clearly recognized motherhood as her primary and most important vocation, forsaking the money and prestige that come with outside employment to be able to attend full time to childrearing and making a good home.  Every family must make its own choice between one good and another; this is not a judgement on other people's choices.  Nonetheless, homemaking and motherhood as careers are seriously undervalued these days, so it's worth noting when such a cluster of women all choose to focus their considerable intelligence and education on the next generation.  As daughter, wife, mother, aunt, and grandmother, I'm grateful for the choices these families (fathers as much as mothers) have made.
• Engineering is a long-time family heritage.  My father's father (born 1896) was a mechanical engineer, and the first chairman of that department at Washington State University.  His father (born 1854) was a civil engineer.

How do you get kids to practice their instruments?

That's the question of all parents who can't help having occasional misgivings about the large outflow of cash going toward music lessons.  As far as I can tell, the only honest answer is, "I don't know.  It's different from child to child, anyway."  Nonetheless, I have made a couple of observations while visiting Heather and family and will set them down for what they're worth.

• Every child here over the age of three takes formal piano lessons.  The just-turned-four-year-old is eagerly awaiting informal lessons in the summer, and the start of the "real thing" in the fall.  They all enjoy their lessons, partly because their teacher is one of the best-loved in the area, and partly because she's also known to them as Grammy.
• Everyone over the age of six walks or bikes to Grammy's house for his lesson.  Not only is this convenient for their parents, but I believe it helps them "take ownership" of the lessons.  It also means that if they forget their music books, they're the ones who have to turn around and go back, so responsibility is naturally encouraged.
• Even with these advantages, practice time was hit-or-miss, until a simple change was made.  All the kids have morning and afternoon chores, which they are (mostly) in the habit of completing with minimal fuss,  "Practice piano" was simply added to the list, and voilà, regular practicing.
• Best of all, the piano is located in the middle of everything.  You can hardly go from one place to another without passing the piano.  It gets played a lot, because it's there.
• Here's something I'd never have thought of:  practicing is a whole lot more fun because the piano is not just a piano.  It's a "real piano" rather than just a keyboard, but it is actually an electric keyboard built into a piece of furniture.  Thus it comes with all the extras of a keyboard:  the ability to record one's playing, multiple timbres, the ability to split the keyboard (have different instruments in the bass and the treble), and more.  Yes, this leads to a lot of fooling around, but how many times do you think the kids would practice a particular piece or passage on a mere piano, compared with playing it with the piano sound, then the bagpipes, then organ, then flute, then with various sound effects?  Multiple repetitions, painlessly.

I still don't know the secret to getting kids to practice.  But I can recognize good tools for a parent's toolbox when I see them.

I'm still enjoying the Life of Fred math series, as you can see from my booklist; I hope to finish all that the Daleys have before I leave here.  Despite what the author claims, it's not really a complete curriculum, but it's a fun supplement, it covers a lot of math, and there's really nothing like it.  It covers a lot more than math, too, as five-year-old math professor Fred Gauss makes his way through his busy days.  For obvious reasons, the following excerpt from Life of Fred:  Jelly Beans caught my eye:

It is not how much you make that counts; it is how much you get to keep.  Taxes make a big difference.

In the United States, the top federal income tax is currently 35%.  The top state income tax is 11%.  The top sales tax is 10%.  TOTAL = 56% (56 percent means $56 out of every $100.)

In Denmark, the top income tax is 67%, and the VAT (which is like a sales tax) is 25%.  TOTAL = 92%.

If you want to keep a lot of the money you earn, Switzerland's top income tax rate is 13%, and the top VAT is 8%.  TOTAL = 23%.

Yes, it's an over-simplification (the book is meant for 4th graders), but it certainly helps distinguish Switzerland from Sweden.

Gifted Hands:  The Ben Carson Story.  This movie needs no more review than this:  See it.

But of course I can't leave it at that.  There are so many films, shows, books, and even Great Courses lectures I'd love for my grandchildren, especially the older ones, to experience, but there's always something that turns a great story into something NSFG.  We used to be able to portray the rawer side of life in a way that left something to the imagination, but that sensitivity is now out of style.  Gifted Hands, despite being non-rated, is a happy exception.  There are some difficult situations and heartbreak, but nothing to detract from the story.

Ben Carson from inner-city Detroit, raised by a single mom (but what a mother!), failing in school, headed for trouble.  Dr. Ben Carson, world-famous director of neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins.  Gifted Hands tells the tale—fictionalized and condensed, but remarkably accurate for all that—of the transformation.  The movie is enjoyable on many levels, from watching Ben's mother inspire her children to learn, to getting a glimpse of the Biltmore House library (professor's house in the movie), to realizing that it's possible to be both a top-notch neurosurgeon and a humble and good-natured person.

Great story.  No caveats.  Much inspiration.  Enjoy!

The two best things about Geneva, Florida may be our friend Richard and the Greater Geneva Grande Award Marching Band, but thanks to Jon I've discovered a third:  Stephen Jepson. Take time to watch this Growing Bolder video.  It's less than eight minutes long and will show you why I'm enthusiastic about this 73-year-old man's ideas.

I'm looking forward to exploring his Never Leave the Playground website.  After watching the Growing Bolder interview, my only negative reaction was that keeping so mentally and physically fit takes up so much of his time he can't possibly fit in anything else, and few people can (or would want to) live that way.  But clearly that's not true—he's an artist, an inventor, and a motivational speaker—and his website promises you can begin with easy baby steps.

I wonder if we've passed him among the spectators at our Independence Day parades.  Nah, he'd more likely be in the parade himself.  But I'll keep my eye out this year for someone juggling on a skateboard.

I hope you all had a very merry Christmas.  Ours began with a live cello carol concert and included the opportunity to serve Christmas dinner at the community kitchen where my nephew volunteers.  Although the church was packed, there were actually more hands than work to do, so after a while Porter and I found ourselves part of the entertainment:  singing Christmas carols for an appreciative audience.  That was great fun, though pehaps a litte too much of a workout for my throat.  Now we're enjoying the peace and rest of a Christmas evening at home.

But on to the business at hand.

I may have to amend this if I finish another book before the end of the year, but since I made my 52-book goal and have lots of other things going on this week, I'm going to go ahead and publish my 2014 reading list post now.

It's amazing that I can read at a pace of a book a week and still make so little progress on the shelves and shelves of unread books lining our walls.  Some are gifts, some are books I bought because they looked promising, and most are from the many boxes of books I brought here when my father moved out of his large home into a small apartment.  All of the books are ones I want to read, eventually.  But a book a week is only 52 books read in a year, and what with all the new (to me) interesting books that come to my attention, plus books that are so good I want to reread them on a regular basis, the "unread" stack is growing rather than diminishing.  Yet I keep on keeping on.

One particular feature of 2014 was the beginning of my determination to read all of the books written by Scottish author George MacDonald, in chronological order of their publication.  This is an ongoing project, as there are nearly 50 books on that list.  I didn't make this decision until April, which resulted in my reading a one of the books twice—once early in the year, and once when it came up in its chronological ranking.  I have no problem with that.

I own beautiful hardcover copies of all these books, a wonderful gift from my father, collected over many years.  I would prefer to be reading them book-in-hand, with my family all reading around me, enjoying a toasty fire in the fireplace or cool back-porch breezes.  But in reality, this year I have read most of the MacDonald books on my Kindle (or the Kindle app on my phone), in spare minutes snatched here and there from a busy life, or in the few minutes between crawling into bed and falling asleep.  George MacDonald's books are public domain and thus free on the Kindle, and are very good material with which to end the day on an uplifting note.  This also liberates other time for reading books that I only have in physical form.

Here's the list from 2014, sorted alphabetically.  A chronological listing, with rankings, warnings, and review links, is here.  I enjoyed most of the books, and regret none.  Titles in bold I found particularly worthwhile.

1. 2BR02B  by Kurt Vonnegut
2. Adela Cathcart  by George MacDonald
3. Alec Forbes of Howglen  by George MacDonald
4. Annals of a Quiet Neighborhood  by George MacDonald
5. At the Back of the North Wind  by George MacDonald (read twice)
6. The Blue Ghost Mystery: A Rick Brant Science-Adventure Story #15  by John Blaine
7. The Brainy Bunch  by Kip and Mona Lisa Harding
8. The Caves of Fear: A Rick Brant Science-Adventure Story #8  by John Blaine
9. David Elginbrod  by George MacDonald
10. The Egyptian Cat Mystery: A Rick Brant Science-Adventure Story #16  by John Blaine
11. The Flaming Mountain: A Rick Brant Science-Adventure Story #17  by John Blaine
12. The Flying Stingaree: A Rick Brant Science-Adventure Story #18  by John Blaine
13. The Golden Skull: A Rick Brant Science-Adventure Story #10  by John Blaine
14. Guild Court  by George MacDonald
15. Handel's Messiah: Comfort for God's People  by Calvin R. Stapert, audio book read by James Adams
16. Half the Church  by Carolyn Custis James
17. The Hobbit  by J.R.R. Tolkien
18. The Jungle  by Upton Sinclair
19. Life of Fred: Australia  by Stanley F. Schmidt
20. Life of Fred: Cats by Stanley F. Schmidt
21. Life of Fred: Dogs by Stanley F. Schmidt
22. Life of Fred: Edgewood by Stanley F. Schmidt
23. Life of Fred: Farming by Stanley F. Schmidt (all the Life of Fred books are worthwhile, but I particularly enjoyed Edgewood and Farming)
24. The Life of Our Lord  by Charles Dickens
25. The Locust Effect  by Gary A. Huagen and Victor Boutros
26. Melancholy Elephants  by Spider Robingson
27. The Miracles of Our Lord  by George MacDonald
28. The Mysterious Affair at Styles  by Agatha Christie
29. Not Exactly Normal  by Devin Brown
30. The Peculiar  by Stefan Bachmann
31. Phantastes  by George MacDonald
32. The Pirates of Shan: A Rick Brant Science-Adventure Story #14  by John Blaine
33. The Portent and Other Stories  by George MacDonald
34. The Princess and Curdie  by George MacDonald
35. The Princess and the Goblin  by George MacDonald
36. Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood  by George MacDonald
37. Robert Falconer  by George MacDonald
38. The Scarlet Lake Mystery: A Rick Brant Science-Adventure Story #13  by John Blaine
39. The Seaboard Parish  by George MacDonald
40. The Secret Adversary  by Agatha Christie
41. The Shadow Lamp  by Stephen R. Lawhead
42. The Silent Swan  by Lex Keating
43. Smuggler's Reef: A Rick Brant Science-Adventure Story #7  by John Blaine
44. Something Other than God  by Jennifer Fulwiler
45. Sometimes God Has a Kid's Face  by Sister Mary Rose McGeady
46. Station X: Decoding Nazi Secrets  by Michael Smith
47. Unbroken  by Laura Hillenbrand
48. Unspoken Sermons Volume I  by George MacDonald
49. The Vicar's Daughter  by George MacDonald
50. The Wailing Octopus: A Rick Brant Science-Adventure Story #11  by John Blaine
51. Wool Omnibus  by Hugh Howey (Wool 1 - Wool 5)
52. Your Life Calling  by Jane Pauley

Onward to next year!