Lift Up Your Hearts!

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, by Barbara Kingsolver,  Steven L. Hopp, and Camille Kingsolver (HarperCollins, 2007)

When we were visiting Janet, a friend of hers was reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.  The friend wasn’t totally happy with it, but it sounded intriguing enough that I borrowed it from the library when we returned. (More)

Two years ago, Andy F. alerted me to a National Review article by Rod Dreher entitled Crunchy Cons.  This was actually a reprint, the original having been published 'way back in 2002.  Andy suggested I might enjoy both the article and the opportunity to turn it into a blog post, and he was right.  It's not his fault it's taken me so long to write.

Dreher has a book of the same title that I haven't yet read, so I'll only be commenting on the article.  But the book's subtitle nearly says it all:  How Birkenstocked Burkeans, gun-loving organic gardeners, evangelical free-range farmers, hip homeschooling mamas, right-wing nature lovers, and their diverse tribe of countercultural conservatives plan to save America (or at least the Republican Party). (More)

I am so tired of being grumpy about the movies we've seen recently in our Oscar-winning Best Picture Odyssey.  I should mention that, although we've beeng going roughly in chronological order, we haven't been watching them all. Some of the early ones aren't available, and of the later ones we've skipped those Porter had already seen.  Our next one is Gladiator (2000), and of all those remaining, the only one I'm looking forward to is A Beautiful Mind.  We recently discovered, however, that we had somehow skipped Driving Miss Daisy (1989).

At last I can report a positive experience!  So many of the recent movies have been downright revolting, or at best blah and dissatisfying.  Driving Miss Daisy was delightful from beginning to end.  The PG rating, I have decided, is far too broad.  This movie was rated PG; as far as I can tell, the cause being one, brief instance of bad language (ask me if you care to know what it is) that was appropriate to the context.  There are plenty of other PG movies I've found much, much more offensive.  There is one scary scene on which I won't elaborate, but it wouldn't frighten anyone ignorant of Alabama history.  Not that the movie is appropriate for young children anyway.  It is an adult film, but only because it's about characters, not action. (More)

I am on an Andrew Pudewa kick.  I first discovered his Institute for Excellence in Writing through an online forum for early childhood education, and—as usual—once I'd heard of him, his name started coming to my attention in other ways.  A friend of ours is the principal of a private Christian school which emphasizes academic excellence as well as a solid Christian worldview, and she and her teachers waxed so enthusiastic about his program for teaching writing that she even sent me a sample videotape of one of his lectures.  It didn't take me long to get hooked.  For the first three minutes, I found Pudewa's voice to be annoying; after that I was so intrigued by what he was saying and how he was presenting it that it didn't matter.

Now I'm not averse to spending money on educational materials for our grandkids, but they're not yet old enough for the writing materials, which are a bit pricey to buy on speculation, especially since there might well be a subsequent edition or two by the time they would be used.  Fortunately for my curiosity, one of our favorite homeschooling families was impressed enough to try it out, and I'm looking forward to hearing about their experiences. (More)

Has anyone here seen the movie, The English Patient?  If so, did you like it?  If you did, why?

It was the latest in our Academy Award Best Picture quest, and I had been looking forward to it, largely because I had remembered positive reviews of it.  I obviously had not paid enough attention to the reviews.  It wasn't the worst movie—I knew enough not to join Porter in watching The Silence of the Lambs—but afterwards I felt I had been walking about in slime to no purpose. (More)

They say trying new things keeps your mind young.  I should be in good shape, having recently ventured into two areas I was sure I'd never touch, finding them useless at best.  One is Facebook, which I had classed—along with MySpace and LifeJournal—as boring, yet time-wasting websites for teenaged girls to gossip and bully each other, and for sexual predators to troll for victims.  But Janet was invited to join by her oboe professor, so how could she say no?  Then she had so much fun finding people with whom she'd lost contact that I decided to see what it was all about.

No doubt it is a good place for teenaged bullying and dangerous liasons, but it doesn't have to be, and I've been surprised at how many friends I've found or been found by already.  I love sending Christmas letters, because it keeps us in contact with friends whose lives for the most part no longer intersect with ours.  I sense that this logic has no appeal to the Facebook generation, which may never lose that contact.  Perhaps the greatest danger (predators and bullies aside) is in being overwhelmed by trivial, shallow contact.  The signal-to-noise ratio is rather poor.  At least in a Christmas letter one is forced by space limitations to keep to the more important issues. (More)

[Part 3 will be the last, at least for a while, since the book must go back to the library.  Here are Part 1 and Part 2.]

[The best state of mind to promote if you want to encourage someone to be successful is] a fully realistic assessment of the difficulty of the challenge ahead of him, and, at the same time, an unrealistically optimistic belief in his ability to overcome it.

This one is suprising, and no doubt controversial, yet resonates so well with my experience that I am compelled to write about it. (More)

The One Thing You Need to Know...About Great Managing, Great Leading, and Sustained Individual Success, by Marcus Buckingham (Free Press, 2005)

[This is Part Two.  Part One is here.] 

The mediocre manager believes that most things are learnable and therefore that the essence of management is to identiry each person's weaker areas and eradicate them.

The great manager...believes that the most influential qualities of a person are innate and therefore that the essence of management is to deploy these innate qualities as effectively as possible and so drive performance. 

I find Marcus Buckingham's belief in the essentially unalterable effect of our genetic makeup on our abilities to be disturbing, to say the least.  However, that doesn't change my appreciation of his observation that we spend too much time and effort trying to shore up our areas of weakness, and not enough building on our strengths.  True, we can't afford to ignore our weaknesses, and well-directed efforts at overcoming them are often in order.  Spending the majority of our energy on our strengths, however, generally leads to the most progress, the most satisfaction, and the most achievement. (More)

The One Thing You Need to Know...About Great Managing, Great Leading, and Sustained Individual Success, by Marcus Buckingham (Free Press, 2005)

Reading, for me, is not a luxury but a necessity, like eating.  Ideally, meals should be eaten slowly, savored, and appreciated, preferably in the company of good companions and interesting conversation.  So it also should be with books.  All too often, however, under the pressures of the day, we gulp a hasty meal and move on. Alas, I have not done justice to The One Thing You Need to Know, but when I read about it on the Prodical Kiwi(s) Blog, I knew I had to grab what I could from it now, and hope to give it a better reading later. (More)

I just posted my complaint that the movies are getting weirder and less enjoyable now that we've reached the last quarter of the 20th century in our Academy Award Best Picture survey, but the very next year (1979) gave me hope.  Kramer vs. Kramer is a great film, and not just because it followed on the heels of the horrible Deer Hunter.  Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep deserved the acting Oscars they won, and I strongly suspect the only reason Justin Henry did not win Best Supporting Actor was reluctance on the part of some to give an Oscar to an eight-year-old child.  But he was awesome.

Kramer vs. Kramer works so well, I believe, because of the dedication on the part of director and the cast to  making a true story.  In The Deer Hunter, truth was sacrificed for the sake of the story; here the director, someone else whose role I forget, and Dustin Hoffman spent months setting the foundation for the movie, in order to tell the truth about divorce. (More)

Our Academy Award "Best Picture" quest is getting squirrelier as we move into more modern times.  (Okay, so the 70s isn't exactly modern, I know.)  We were married but without kids when The Deer Hunter came out, and so might have actually seen it in the theater, but we didn't.  Now I know why.  We did see One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest during that time, and I was haunted and depressed for weeks.  I'm a little more hardened now, I guess, or better at thinking of other things, or, more likely, too busy to be able to afford giving it much thought, but this one would have had the same effect.  I guess I can understand why someone would make a depressing move, but why anyone would want to watch one is beyond me.  It's not that there weren't some redeeming features about it—but not enough to induce me to see it again, or recommend it.

The director did state that he wasn't particularly interested in historical accuracy—to me a fatal flaw if you're going to have a historical setting—but he could at least have gotten the mountains right.  Substituting a steel town in Ohio for one in the Pittsburgh area is one thing, and Thailand can do in a pinch for Vietnam, but using the Cascade Mountains in Washington to portray Western Pennsylvania?

I found this great site while procrastinating doing research for our Christmas letter and want to share it.  Did you ever want to know how far it really is from Orlando to Basel?  Or the path your airplane would probably take from New York to Paris?  Check out Great Circle Mapper!

The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal, by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz (Free Press, 2003)

I must send this book back to the library without a proper review, but it deserves a few comments.  After hearing a friend's summary, I had to find out more.  I'm afraid I was somewhat disappointed, but I think that was more because my friend's summary was so good, causing me to expect more than was there.  I almost, though not quite, would have been as well off with just the summary.  I also might have appreciated it more if I had not already read so many books by Stephen Covey, of which this book reminds me very much.  I think Covey's books are well worthwhile, and this too, but there wasn't as much new as I had expected. (More)

We watched Bridge to Terebithia yesterday, and I've been struggling with what to say about it ever since.  As usual, Porter knew exactly what he liked and didn't like, and had no trouble expressing himself on the issues.  Often I can, too; in fact, I did so easily with the other movie we watched this weekend, the Oscar-winning The Apartment.  (In brief, it started off slowly and the story was unpleasant, but Shirley MacLaine's acting was amazing and powerful.)

I should have known Bridge to Terebithia would be harder to critique, because Porter's commentary—during and immediately after—which I usually find informative and interesting, was more annoying than not.  That happens when I have been very much drawn into a movie, and anything that calls me back prematurely is jarring, rather like being jerked out of a deep meditation by the telephone.  Whenever I am thus entranced by a movie, I know rational analysis will be difficult. (More)

Organizing for Your Brain Type by Lanna Nakone (St. Martin's Press, 2005)

Heather reviewed this book, and generated quite a discussion, some of which was actually related to the topic.  I started adding my reflections as i read it, but have decided it's best not to clutter up her post anymore and have started a new post here.  Below are a few of my reactions copied from her post; I'll add more in the comments to this post as I continue through the book. (More)