Lift Up Your Hearts!

I know nothing about any of the people or organizations involved in the following video, but the poem hit me hard when I discovered a few months ago. It expresses deeply one part of the groundswell that resulted in the election of President Trump, and seems particularly appropriate in light of President Biden's recent preemptive pardon of Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Thanks to the very valuable eReaderIQ, I learned that C. S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters is currently on sale at Amazon for $0.00. You can't beat that price for excellent content, and it also includes Screwtape Proposes a Toast.

Let me be clear: I am thrilled by much of what I know about the executive orders President Trump issued on his first day in office. And equally thrilled that he rescinded the harmful executive orders executed by President Biden in his time.

But is this any way to run a country? A rich garden that never bears fruit because each president pulls up the "weeds" planted by his predecessor?

President Trump and his team have a lot of true weeds to remove. I wish them the best and pray for them daily. As I also prayed daily for President Biden, I must admit. What sane person would wish harm to his own country just because he didn't like the sitting president?

However, it is the Legislative branch of our balance-of-powers system that is supposed to make the laws. Are you listening, Congress? Making wise laws is your job. And remember this: You are not kings to enact your own will; you are not knights and bishops whose power is to be bought by the highest lobbyist; you are not pawns to blindly follow the will of the majority of your constituents. It is your responsibility to act with honor, wisdom, and honesty for the good of your districts, states, and country.

And it is our responsibility to elect legislators who can and will do so.

The inauguration of President Trump could hardly have been as impressive as the coronation of King Charles III, but it was still very moving. As with the coronation, I watched all of the ceremony, and parts of the other events. One thing I particularly enjoyed: the bands and the singers were great. The only disappointment with the music was the commentators who talked over the piccolo solo in The Stars and Stripes Forever. :(

One highlight for me: speaking of one pipe band's achievements, the commentator mentioned that they had played in Switzerland; I am 99.9% sure that they must have been at the Basel Tattoo. I've never attended the Tattoo itself, but I've thrilled to its parade.

Another: I confess to playing "air cymbals" when one of the bands at the inauguration featured The Liberty Bell March, which I play every Independence Day with the Greater Geneva Grande Award Marching Band. There were many great bands at the inauguration—the military band and chorus were especially impressive.

The GGGAMB should have been there, but we have a strict policy of doing only one performance per year, and Geneva asked first.

How much harm could President Biden do in the few hours before President Trump's inauguration?  Plenty, as it turns out.

I will not sully this day with the words I wanted to say when I heard about President Biden's most recent presidential pardons, especially that of Anthony Fauci. If any government official needs to be brought to justice—and even more, to have his deeds exposed during the "discovery" part of a trial—it is Dr. Fauci. My heart burns at the bare-faced injustice of this presidential action. It's a good reminder that ordinary people face corruption and injustice daily—from families, schools, employers, businesses, and government at every level—only with less visibility.

But we are not limited to human systems.

It is mine to avenge; I will repay. In due time their foot will slip; their day of disaster is near and their doom rushes upon them. (Deuteronomy 32:35)

Fauci's day will come. Not even Josef Mengele could escape forever.

I have seen a wicked and ruthless man flourishing like a luxuriant native tree, but he soon passed away and was no more. (Psalm 37:35)

In the meantime,

Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him; do not fret when people succeed in their ways, when they carry out their wicked schemes. Refrain from anger and turn from wrath; do not fret—it leads only to evil. (Psalm 37:7-8)

Do not fret, refrain from anger—but a well-crafted civil suit against Dr. Fauci may not be out of order.

The Kindle version of The Real Anthony Fauci is currently available from Amazon absolutely free of charge. That's $0.00. Here's the review I wrote in 2022, and a follow-up.  It's not an easy book to read carefully, but at that price you could get a lot out of it by just skimming. Highly recommended.

It's not nice to fool Mother Nature. (The link has nothing to do with the topic here; I include it for those who aren't old enough to remember that series of commercials.)

There are many things I appreciate about Rick Scott, our senator, but sometimes he plunges steadfastly in the wrong direction, and this morning he sent me an e-mail bragging about one of those wrong-headed moves. I had to respond.

Dear Senator Scott:

I appreciate your efforts to end the semi-annual changing of our clocks, but you are going in the wrong direction by trying to impose Daylight Saving Time on us.

Why are you, as a Floridian and one who represents our great state, so against Standard Time (sun time)? Daylight Saving Time doesn't "save" daylight at all, as you know, but only moves our clocks out of sync with the sun. While the necessity of time zones makes it impossible to keep our clocks totally in accord with nature, Daylight Saving Time takes us deliberately, artificially, and unnecessarily further out of step. This is a bad idea.

Especially in the southern latitudes, there's no good reason to steal sunshine from the morning hours and bestow it on the evening, when most people are inside staring at screens and couldn't care less what the sun is doing.

I would heartily support efforts to move permanently to Standard Time, but would far prefer resetting the clocks twice a year to having to live perpetually with DST. (What's the fun part of changing the clocks in the fall? Getting back the hour we lost in the spring. Stay on DST and that hour is gone forever.)

Please reconsider your priorities in this. Thank you.

Linda Wightman

Now I guess I need to follow up by writing to a few more politicians. Writing is my passion; writing to politicians is not. But I'm haunted by the lesson my mother taught me, which she learned early in my life:

After weeks of hearing complaints from the parents of my fellow classmates about some nonsense that was going on in our school, and feeling the same way herself, my mother spoke up to the school authorities. She was immediately dismissed with a curt, "You are the only one who opposes this; no one else has expressed any concerns."

From then on, she determined not to stay silent, but to be a voice for those who could or would not speak for themselves.

Noah made us snow globe pastries from Ann Reardon's Crazy Sweet Creations cookbook. They were a lot of work, and he had to improvise in several places for equipment we didn't have. (Did you know that if you don't have a hemispherical silicone mold, you can used a water-filled balloon?) You can see Ann herself making her version on YouTube.

Sooo good! Pistachio and hazelnut crust, orange curd, cream, and the amazing sugar globes, with strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries. It's hard to pick a favorite part, but I will say that I'm a big fan of almond paste, and if you like that, you should try pistachio paste!

This was a good year for books; not a record, but a very respectable 76 books, 6.33 per month. The fiction/non-fiction ratio was almost exactly the same as last year. No doubt about it: fiction is a lot easier to read when you are at risk of being interrupted. I've been working on RFK Jr.'s The Wuhan Cover-Up for many weeks. It's fascinating, frightening, and frustrating; having read The Real Anthony Fauci two years ago, I'm certain it will also be enlightening, important, and highly accurate. But like that book, it's also so packed with references and documentation that it takes focus to be able to do it justice. The book that is capturing my attention at the moment, Brandon Sanderson's Warbreaker, is not light reading—nearly 600 pages of a complex story filled with unpronouncable names—but there's no denying it's more fun to read.

The stats:

• Total books: 76
• Fiction: 63 (83%)
• Non-fiction: 12 (16%)
• Other: 1 (1%)
• Months with most books: April (10)
• Month with fewest books: July (2)
• Authors read most frequently: Four stood out: Mark Schweizer (15), Jenny Phillips (10), Brandon Sanderson (9), and Robert Heinlein (8). The next highest was three, a position held by several authors.

Here's the list, sorted by title; links are to reviews. The different colors in the titles only reflect whether or not you've followed a hyperlink. The ratings (★) and warnings (☢) are on a scale from 1 to 5, with 1 being the lowest/mildest. Warnings, like the ratings, are highly subjective and reflect context, perceived intended audience, and my own biases. They may be for sexual content, language, violence, worldview, or anything else that I find objectionable. Nor are they completely consistent. For example, Brandon Sanderson's books could easily rate a content warning in all of the above categories, yet they are mostly not inappropriate to the context and could be considered quite mild—for a modern book. Your mileage may vary.

The Slight Edge: Turning Simple Disciplines into Massive Success and Happiness by Jeff Olson (Greenleaf Book Group, 2013)

The trouble with having a very long "to read" list is that by the time I get around to reading a book, I'm likely to have forgotten who recommended it to me. That's the case with this one. But someone did, and I recently read it.

The Slight Edge is not a book I would necessarily have picked up on my own, especially not after having flipped through it. It has the feel of one of those self-help books that spend a lot of words reiterating things we already know. And really, it could have been a lot shorter; in this, it has the defects of a Presbyterian sermon, only worse.

And yet, it was Martin Luther, I believe, who when asked, "Why do you preach on justification by faith every week?" replied, "Because you forget it every week." Sometimes we need to be reminded of what we already know. And sometimes the 40th repetition finally gets through.

Most of what Jeff Olson says here can be summarized by referring to the ancient story of the rice on the chessboard. You've heard it before: small actions (good or bad), repeated consistently and persistently over time, can result in huge gains (or losses) that can change your life dramatically.

What's the purpose of still another book telling us what we should already know? Is The Slight Edge worth reading for you? I have no idea. It's not great writing, and, as I said, repetitive. But I was able to read it for free thanks to our library, and found it worth the greater cost in time. Sometimes even those of us who don't have that many more squares on our chessboards need reminding of the simplest strategies.

Also, I found the second half much better than the first, as Olson expands his ideas further. I still wouldn't call it good writing, but there are a lot of good ideas there.  Even if we've heard them a hundred times before. Martin Luther would understand.

I'll reproduce each of the chapter summaries here. I don't know as they'll mean much to you if you haven't read the book, but they may give you a taste. And if you have read the book (like me) you may find them helpful reminders of what you learned (again). (Click on a page to enlarge it.)

King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table by Roger Lancelyn Green (1953)
The Adventures of Robin Hood by Roger Lancelyn Green (1956)

Roger Lancelyn Green's assembling and retelling of the stories of King Arthur and of Robin Hood makes me want to read his other collections of ancient tales (e.g. Egyptian, Greek, and Norse); he writes well and provides an excellent introduction to these classic stories. The only negative I would report about these particular editions is that the publisher apparently decided it would be a good idea to append a stomach-turning school-ish section. ("Can you see any similarities between Arthur and modern heroes such as Harry Potter or Luke Skywalker?") Somehow I don't think Green would have approved at all.

One thing I found delightful in both books was recognizing in Green's work echoes of the writing of C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien. Not in the sense of copying or imitation, but that they all spring from the same roots.

Another is that these stories of chivalry and idealized behavior make it clear both that heroes are flawed people, and that they are nonetheless heroes.

In the 1950's and early 1960's, when I was young, our hero stories were highly sanitized—and not just those for children. What mattered was the good that was done; negative events and characteristics were largely ignored. Fables are expected to be larger-than-life (think Paul Bunyan), but real people, no matter how amazing, should be, well, real people. It's important to know that God can do extraordinary things with ordinary people—being weak, fallen, broken, and/or stupid is no excuse for not doing the right thing.

Later decades turned the idealized hero narrative 180 degrees. It became de rigueur to take the people we admire and portray them not so much as flawed, but evil; to take delight in showing people at their worst, and pointing out that the good they did might have actually been harmful. This may have been a necessary corrective for a brief time, but it is the worse of the two errors.

Green does not hesitate to admit the flaws, errors, and sins of his characters, but lets their heroic actions shine. It's a good balance.

It's January 6; it's Epiphany! Time to move the Wise Men the final steps on their journey from the (literal, in our house) East to Jesus.

And to chalk the door!

Our chalk was personally blessed in 2020 by our never-forgotten Father Trey Garland and kept sacred for its once-a-year use.

Bless this house and all who live here and all who visit.

We're all set for 2025!

You were expecting maybe Happy New Year?

Well, of course I wish you that as well.

But in our house, Christmas lasts 12 days. Here are some 8th Day of Christmas treats from our second-oldest grandson, who is playing all parts.

I love books. I've loved books for longer than I can remember, since my parents read to me long before I could read for myself—as naturally as a bird-parent drops food into its hatchlings' mouths.

The transition from non-reader to reader was not without its stumbles. Even at my advanced age, I still remember Charlotte's Web with both pleasure and pain. My parents had been reading the book out loud to the family. As the oldest child, the one who could now read on my own, I grew impatient with the one-chapter-at-bedtime pace, and the next day picked up the book and continued the story on my own.

Maybe that's not always a bad thing, but it meant that I was alone when I encountered Charlotte's death. If there was some of the deadly sin of Avarice in my action, it carried its own punishment with it. Ah, well—rites of passage are not meant to be easy.

The transition from non-reader to reader is one of the most significant milestones in modern life, one we don't share with our more primitive ancestors. As recently as 1900, more than 10% of the American population was illiterate. Somewhere between 1969 and 1979, that dropped to below 1%. This, of course, takes no account of how well people read, nor the more disturbing trend of can read but don't. But that's not the question that emerged recently, prompting me to write.

(Yes, this is a new post, not one pulled from my storehouse. It was supposed to be a quick and easy post to make. I should have known better.)

The question is whether or not there are other decisive milestones on the literacy journey, once one has mastered reading Of course there are significant steps in the progress of that mastery, a big one being the transition from being able to decipher words to the technique having become so automatic that it is accomplished with no conscious thought at all to the process, only the content. For example, I can read French well enough to enjoy some books, but it's nowhere near an automatic process.

(I think that there's a point still further, when conscious thought creeps back in, but I never made it through Mortimer Adler's How to Read a Book, much less apply his techniques, so I can't say from personal experience.)

What I'm wondering is how significant to the reader has the advent of e-books been. It's not of the order of the act of reading itself, but the Kindle has certainly changed our lives and reading habits. I'm definitely bimodal when it comes to books: There's nothing like the pleasure of reading a physical book, but e-books have distinct advantages as well, such as being able to carry a vast library in a handheld device, and to search the text, and make notes, and highlights, and to copy excerpts via cut-and-paste rather than laborious typing. On the other hand, e-books don't really belong to us; we may like to think so, but they can be taken away from us at any point. So I will read with the physical books, and I will read with the e-books also.

After that long introduction, here's the incident that gave me pause: After reading six Kindle books in a row, I began another in physical form. (Brandon Sanderson's Warbreaker, if you're curious.) I was reading along, and when it came time to turn the page, I unthinkingly swiped my finger across the lower right-hand corner of the book. That's the way I turn the page with my Kindle

Guess what? It didn't work with the physical book, and I was momentarily taken aback. Even more interesting, I still find myself repeating the motion on occasion, and I'm 143 pages into the book.

The human mind can be peculiar, sometimes.

Citoyen de la Galaxie by Robert A. Heinlein (original publication 1957, this French edition 2011)

Back in August, I quoted a passage from Robert Heinlein's Citizen of the Galaxy. Inspired by this, and a good deal available for the Kindle version, I decided to reread it—in French.

It was a surprisingly delightful experience.

I had three years of mediocre French classes in high school, and have been working very casually, though consistently, with DuoLingo since I was a beta tester for them back in 2012. I have many frustrations with DuoLingo, but this week I discovered that it has actually given me a lot of French vocabulary and a pretty good feel for grammatical structures. I really enjoyed reading Citoyen de la Galaxie.

Naturally I didn't read it as quickly as the English version, but I surprised myself. My goal had been to work my way through ten pages per day. Instead, I was so caught up in the story that I finished it in just about a week.

It must be admitted that I was not a stranger to the story, which helped enormously. I first read Citizen of the Galaxy when I was in elementary school, and I've reread it several times since. How many times I have no idea, but I know that I last read it in 2017—before that, I don't know, except that it was earlier than 2010, when I began keeping track of the books I read. As I read the French, I was astonished to find the words of the English version coming back to me. Between that, the DuoLingo vocabulary, and occasional help from the Kindle French-English dictionary available at a touch, the reading was easy enough to keep me going.

I would not at all expect the same ease with an unfamiliar book. But the experience was exciting, especially since I would often find myself actually thinking in French for a few minutes after a session of reading.