Lift Up Your Hearts!

I respect doctors, and am grateful for their skills, knowledge, and compassion. But that respect and gratitude are much the same as my feelings about teachers: individually and personally they can be fantastic, but as a bureaucracy (the medical/educational "establishment") I have serious doubts.

In my own life, the medical establishment's attack on my health began at birth. I don't know the details of my hospital birth, but I know the official policies were long on interference and very disrespectful of the natural birth process. What I know for certain was that my mother was discouraged from breastfeeding and told to feed me "formula," which in those days was a mixture of water, evaporated milk, and Karo corn syrup. (You read that right.)

Somehow i survived that abomination of an infant diet, which also included introducing solid foods at a few weeks of age. But it didn't stop there: I grew up right in the middle of the big push to get people to eat margarine instead of butter. My parents followed that recommendation, too—probably quite willingly, because margarine was so much cheaper than butter. I don't blame them for that, but I do blame the medical establishment for pushing margarine as far healthier than butter. Of course they now tell us just the opposite. Several years ago I made the switch back to butter, but not before exposing our own children to far too much margarine in their diets.

When I was young, my family also switched from drinking whole milk (delivered in glass bottles, with the cream risen to the top) to the skimmed variety, again at the recommendation of the doctors. That one stuck with me—to this day I prefer skim milk, and with skim milk we fed our children. But it would probably have been better if I had never lost my taste for milk with its full complement of fat and natural vitamins. Even the doctors no longer recommend skim milk, though they're still pushing less than the full 4% butterfat version.

I've lived long enough to see doctors insist that all babies must sleep on their backs, then that all babies must sleep on their stomachs, then back to their backs, then their sides...with never an apology for giving the "wrong" advice for so many years. I'm glad that my knowledge of official fickleness enabled me to stand firm in my own decision not to let flip-flopping doctors determine how our babies would sleep. At least we got that one right.

Now there are indications that the intense campaign to come between American skin and the light of the sun is causing problems much more severe and widespread than the skin cancer it's supposedly preventing. The push to slather sunscreen on every time we leave the house has resulted in widespread vitamin D deficiency, and a re-emergence of the bone disorder, rickets. Moreover, the article, Is Sunscreen the New Margarine?, makes the case that sun exposure is necessary for our cardiovascular health, especially for healthy blood pressure levels. Many doctors are now saying that we need to ease up on the sun-phobia, though it's still controversial.

One of the leaders of this rebellion is a mild-mannered dermatologist at the University of Edinburgh named Richard Weller. For years, Weller swallowed the party line about the destructive nature of the sun’s rays. “I’m not by nature a rebel,” he insisted when I called him up this fall. “I was always the good boy that toed the line at school. This pathway is one which came from following the data rather than a desire to overturn apple carts.”

Weller’s doubts began around 2010, when he was researching nitric oxide, a molecule produced in the body that dilates blood vessels and lowers blood pressure. He discovered a previously unknown biological pathway by which the skin uses sunlight to make nitric oxide.

It was already well established that rates of high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, and overall mortality all rise the farther you get from the sunny equator, and they all rise in the darker months. Weller put two and two together and had what he calls his “eureka moment”: Could exposing skin to sunlight lower blood pressure?

Sure enough, when he exposed volunteers to the equivalent of 30 minutes of summer sunlight without sunscreen, their nitric oxide levels went up and their blood pressure went down. Because of its connection to heart disease and strokes, blood pressure is the leading cause of premature death and disease in the world, and the reduction was of a magnitude large enough to prevent millions of deaths on a global level.

Other studies have found more benefits of sun exposure.

Pelle Lindqvist, a senior research fellow in obstetrics and gynecology at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute... tracked the sunbathing habits of nearly 30,000 women in Sweden over 20 years. Originally, he was studying blood clots, which he found occurred less frequently in women who spent more time in the sun—and less frequently during the summer. Lindqvist looked at diabetes next. Sure enough, the sun worshippers had much lower rates. Melanoma? True, the sun worshippers had a higher incidence of it—but they were eight times less likely to die from it.

So Lindqvist decided to look at overall mortality rates, and the results were shocking. Over the 20 years of the study, sun avoiders were twice as likely to die as sun worshippers.

On the other hand,

“I don’t argue with their data,” says David Fisher, chair of the dermatology department at Massachusetts General Hospital. “But I do disagree with the implications.” The risks of skin cancer, he believes, far outweigh the benefits of sun exposure. “Somebody might take these conclusions to mean that the skin-cancer risk is worth it to lower all-cause mortality or to get a benefit in blood pressure,” he says. “I strongly disagree with that." It is not worth it, he says, unless all other options for lowering blood pressure are exhausted. Instead he recommends vitamin D pills and hypertension drugs as safer approaches.

Seriously? Vitamin D supplements have been shown to be ineffective, probably because there's more to the benefits of sun exposure than the vitamin. And can he honestly believe that exposure to the risks of hypertension drugs is better than a little sunshine? I generally take with a grain of salt the blanket pronouncements of some of my more radical friends that the medical industry has no interest in anything they can't make money from. In most of life I'm inclined to attribute bad effects more to ignorance than to evil intent. However, sometimes that optimism is shaken.

Me? I live in Florida. I know the power of the sun, and am grateful for sunscreen when I deem it necessary. All the doctors agree that sunburn is bad. But even in Florida I've always known that some sun exposure is important—another thing I think we got right with our kids.

I still feel guilty about the margarine, though.

Here are four poems that struck me in particular from a book of C. S. Lewis' collected poems.

Irresponsible actions have consequences.

Pan’s Purge

I dreamt that all the planning of peremptory humanity 
Had crushed Nature finally beneath the foot of Man; 
Birth-control and merriment, Earth completely sterilized, 
Bungalow and fun-fair, had fulfilled our Plan; 
But the lion and the unicorn were sighing at the funeral, 
Crying at the funeral 
Sobbing at the funeral of the god Pan.

And the elephant was crying. The pelican in his piety 
Struck his feathered bosom till the blood ran, 
And howling at humanity the owl and iguanodon, 
The bittern and the buffalo, their dirge began, 
But dangerously, suddenly, a strange ecstatic shuddering 
A change that set me shuddering 
Through all the wailful noises of the beasts ran.

No longer were they sorrowful, but stronger and more horrible, 
It had only been a rumour of the death of Pan. 
The scorpions and the mantichores and corpulent tarantulas 
Were closing in around me, hissing, Long Live Pan! 
And forth with rage unlimited the North Wind drew his scimitar 
In wrath with ringing scimitar 
He came, with sleet and shipwreck, for the doom of Man.

And now, descending, ravening, loud and large, the avalanche, 
And after it the earthquake, was loosed upon Man.
Towering and cloven-hoofed, the power of Pan came over us, 
Stamped, bit, tore, broke. It was the end of Man; 
Except where saints and savages were kept from his ravaging, 
And crept out when the ravaging 
Was ended, on an empty earth. The new world began.

A small race — a smiling heaven — all round the silences 
Returned; there was comfort for corrected Man. 
Flowered turf had swallowed up the towered cities; following 
His flocks and herds where nameless, untainted rivers ran, 
Leisurely he pondered, at his pleasure wandering, 
Measurelessly wandering... 
Clear, on the huge pastures, the young voice of Man.

Shades of the Irish Rovers!

The Late Passenger

The sky was low, the sounding rain was falling dense and dark,
And Noah’s sons were standing at the window of the Ark.

The beasts were in, but Japhet said, “I see one creature more
Belated and unmated there comes knocking at the door.”

“Well, let him knock or let him drown,” said Ham, “or learn to swim.
We’re overcrowded as it is; we’ve got no room for him.”

“And yet it knocks, how terribly it knocks,” said Shem. “Its feet
Are hard as horn—but oh the air that comes from it is sweet.”

“Now hush!” said Ham, “You’ll waken Dad, and once he comes to see
What’s at the door, it’s sure to mean more work for you and me.”

Noah’s voice came roaring from the darkness down below,
“Some animal is knocking. Let it in before we go.”

Ham shouted back, and savagely he nudged the other two,
“That’s only Japhet knocking down a brad-nail in his shoe.”

Said Noah, “Boys, I hear a noise that’s like a horse’s hoof.”
Said Ham, “Why, that’s the dreadful rain that drums upon the roof.”

Noah tumbled up on deck and out he put his head;
His face went grey, his knees were loosed, he tore his beard and said,

“Look, look! It would not wait. It turns away. It takes its flight.
Fine work you’ve made of it, my sons, between you all to-night!

"Even if I could outrun it now, it would not turn again
—Not now. Our great discourtesy has earned its high disdain.

"Oh noble and unmated beast, my sons were all unkind;
In such a night what stable and what manger will you find?

"Oh golden hoofs, oh cataracts of mane, oh nostrils wide
With indignation! Oh the neck wave-arched, the lovely pride!

"Oh long shall be the furrows ploughed upon the hearts of men
Before it comes to stable and to manger once again,

"And dark and crooked all the roads in which our race will walk,
And shrivelled all their manhood like a flower with broken stalk,

"And all the world, oh Ham, may curse the hour when you were born;
Because of you the Ark must sail without the Unicorn.”

It's presented as a poem, but to anyone familiar with the hymn, "Lead Us, Heavenly Father, Lead Us" it's a song that sings itself.

Evolutionary Hymn

Lead us, Evolution, lead us
Up the future's endless stair;
Chop us, change us, prod us, weed us.
For stagnation is despair:
Groping, guessing, yet progressing,
Lead us nobody knows where.

Wrong or justice, in the present,
Joy or sorrow, what are they
While there's always jam-tomorrow,
While we tread the onward way?
Never knowing where we're going,
We can never go astray.

To whatever variation
Our posterity may turn
Hairy, squashy, or crustacean,
Bulbous-eyed or square of stern,
Tusked or toothless, mild or ruthless,
Towards that unknown god we yearn.

Ask not if it's god or devil,
Brethren, lest your words imply
Static norms of good and evil
(As in Plato) throned on high;
Such scholastic, inelastic,
Abstract yardsticks we deny.

Far too long have sages vainly
Glossed great Nature's simple text;
He who runs can read it plainly,
"Goodness = what comes next."
By evolving, Life is solving
All the questions we perplexed.

On then! Value means survival-
Value. If our progeny
Spreads and spawns and licks each rival,
That will prove its deity
(Far from pleasant, by our present
Standards, though it may well be).

And finally,

The Apologist's Evening Prayer

From all my lame defeats and oh! much more
From all the victories that I seemed to score;
From cleverness shot forth on Thy behalf
At which, while angels weep, the audience laugh;
From all my proofs of Thy divinity,
Thou, who wouldst give no sign, deliver me.

Thoughts are but coins. Let me not trust, instead
Of Thee, their thin-worn image of Thy head.
From all my thoughts, even from my thoughts of Thee,
O thou fair Silence, fall, and set me free.
Lord of the narrow gate and the needle’s eye,
Take from me all my trumpery lest I die.

It's 43 degrees in Central Florida today, a fitting reminder of thirty-three years ago when it was below freezing and we chose to watch the launch of the Space Shuttle Challenger from our front window instead of from the front yard. Heather, who was in first grade at the time, watched from outside, with her classmates.

"It exploded, like when you pop a balloon," she later reported.

She had no idea then that she would later graduate from Carnegie Mellon University, alma mater of Judith Resnik, one of the seven astronauts who died in that explosion. At CMU she found others who understood her emotional response. The loss of Challenger before our eyes left an indelible mark on Central Floridians. For us, it was similar to that left on the rest of the country two decades earlier by the assassination of President Kennedy, and two decades later by the destruction of the Twin Towers.

We still remember.

I also remember this poem by John Gillespie Magee, Jr., quoted at the time to great effect by President Reagan:

High Flight

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air....
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace.
Where never lark or even eagle flew —
And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

One key to holding on to our sanity is realizing that it is in the interest of so many others to keep us in a state of fear. Fearful people stay riveted to news programs, they buy lots of stuff they don't need, they indulge in expensive and unhealthful habits to dull the pain, they give up their vital freedoms and basic rights in the name of security, and their anxiety is all too easily turned to anger and hatred. Fearful people are sheep, easily manipulated and ready prey for the politician, the salesman, the agitator, the televangelist, the gang leader. 

Another key is to understand that as horrific as are the events we hear about on the news, they are much more rare than we are led to believe by those who profit from our fears. From school shootings to vaccine reactions, from raw cookie dough illnesses to child kidnappings by strangers, we are given the impression that statistically infinitesimal risks are looming over us daily. They're not.

Generally, crime rates in America are much lower now than they were when my own children were young, but it's today's parents who are afraid to let their kids walk to school—or even play in the back yard without an adult present—and won't leave 11-year-olds alone at home for a few hours. (Twenty years ago, 11-year-olds were considered responsible babysitters.) When one is bombarded daily, and repeatedly, with stories of crime, and crimes against humanity, it's hard not to think that our world is worse than it is. More concerning still, studies show that fictitious violence (movies, television, video games) has the same effect on our gut as real news stories.

In any case, here's the very important paradox: No matter how bad we may think the world is, the way to raise healthy, well-adjusted children—the kind who will contribute to making the world better—is to avoid passing on our anxieties. Children need to know that the world is, generally, a safe place, beginning with their own families, and that where it is not, it can be faced with courage and hope. Growing up fearful is not conducive to good mental health.

How to resolve this? For one thing, we should help our children to become as competent as possible in basic life skills, so that they have—and know that they have—the tools to face the world as it comes to them. I also recommend the Fred Rogers quote about the importance of looking to the helpers in any bad situation. And stories. Lots of good stories, from biographies of heroes to heroic fairy tales, where evil is defeated by goodness and strength and courage. As C. S. Lewis said, "Since it is so likely that they will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage."

Maybe that can work for adults as well. It's worth a try.

I need to read Flannery O'Connor. I've been more than intimidated by the 617-page copy of The Habit of Being that is sitting on my shelves. But I just came upon the following quotation and am inspired to tackle this writer who so obviously understands why I write.

I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say.

We did it. We took the title away from Harrison County, Mississippi. Our very own Seminole County was the #1 spot for lightning strikes in 2018, with 17.3 strikes per square kilometer. Nearby Orange County came in second, with 15.6. In fact, Florida counties claimed the top 13 places.

Overall, Florida was second in the country for total number of strikes, with 1.4 million. Texas—four times our size—took top honors with 2.5 million.

I'd say the President and the Speaker of the House are acting like two-year-olds, but I have more respect for two-year-olds than that. That said, in their recent spat—in which the Speaker told the President that in light of the partial government shutdown he should postpone his State of the Union Speech or submit it in writing, and the President told the Speaker that in light of the same she couldn't use a military jet for her planned foreign travel but was welcome to fly a commercial airline—each made an excellent point.

The subject, "As Go the People, so Go the Leaders" has two meanings. One, that while we should be able to expect our leaders to be better in every way than the rest of us, that never happens, and can not realistically be expected in a democracy. For the record, I believe democracy to be the best form of government, and do not believe that our political system is broken, as so many are fond of saying. What is broken is our culture, especially our culture as seen through our media—and all too often we deserve what we get.

The second meaning is more to the point here. I'll give the Executive their Air Force One. But the Legislative Branch? The branch that is supposed to be made up of representatives of the American people? I'm sick of Congress exempting itself from the rules it imposes on the rest of the country, and the practices that further divide our representatives from the reality of American life. Let them fly the way the rest of us do. Preferably coach class.

And having a written State of the Union speech instead of a political grandstanding media circus? Sounds great to me!

Go Wild: Free Your Body and Mind from the Afflictions of Civilization by John J. Ratey and Richard manning (Little, Brown and Company, 2014)

I've neither the time nor the inclination for a full review of Go Wild, which I borrowed from the library while waiting for them to acquire Spark, another book by John Ratey, which was highly recommended by a friend. Fortunately, the friend said about Go Wild that she found it good but not worth paying for, so I'm still looking forward to Spark. I found Go Wild too annoying to call "good," but I am glad I read it, as there's a reasonable amount of inspiring information in it.

To begin with, the author pushes several wrong buttons for me, from the trivial to the overwhelming. As an example of the former, there's this (emphasis mine):

Even the child's song knows that the leg bone is connected to the thigh bone; we mean to press this idea a lot further to provide some appreciation of the enormous complexity and interconnectedness of the various elements of human life.

I'm sure he's referring to the spiritual, Dem Bones, which is not a child's song, even if it might end up in a collection of songs intended for children. And I know there are different versions, as there always are with songs of the people, but all the versions I've found acknowledge that the thigh bone is connected to the knee and the hip, not the "leg bone" (or "shin bone" as I know it). Yes, it's trivial—but to me it points to carelessness on the part of the author, which doesn't increase my confidence in what he says. (Or maybe I should blame his proofreaders.) There are other occasions where I get the same feeling.

Then there's this, which to me undercuts all his arguments: I'm fine with evolution as a scientific theory of origins and change. I'd go so far as to say it does an excellent job of explaining much of the available data. But I am not okay with evolution personified and deified, which is what happens in this book. All over, everywhere: "Evolution endowed," "evolution created," "evolution designed." Not only is evolution the basis for all the book's arguments, but the language makes evolution seem like a living, sentient, personal entity—though not, the authors are careful to point out, a loving one.

I was late in coming to the appreciation of religion, but I've always loved science. The religion of science horrifies me, however, and with that this book abounds. Add to that a significant dose of Eastern spirituality, and the feeling that the authors have been, perhaps, a little too selective in the studies they choose to believe—well, I wasn't too happy with the book.

It's also hard to take too seriously someone who—although he loves the outdoors and runs ultramarathons, will also drive 45 minutes to find a gym in the middle of nowhere.

That said, it's almost amazing that I found much of value here, but I did.

The authors cover a lot of ground. Here's a brief summary, although it doesn't come close to doing the ideas justice.

Overall

• Do what works for you. There is no one-size-fits-all. Take the first step in any of the areas they recommend changing, and you will find yourself gradually taking on more and more.

Food

• Don't eat sugar in any form.
• Eat no wheat, rice, oats, or any other grain, not even in whole-grain form. No high-carb vegetables like sweet potatoes. No manufactured fats, no processed food, no fast food.
• Eat eggs, grass-finished beef, cold-water fish, nuts, simple fresh fruits and vegetables—but no fruit juices.
• Variety is important—as long as you avoid the long list of don'ts.

Movement

• Find a form of exercise you like, and do it.
• Exercise that invovles a variety of movements, the whole body, and lots of variation is best.
• Exercise is better out in nature.
• Exercise is better with other people.

Sleep

• Get more sleep. If you live in 21st century America, it's guaranteed you're not getting enough sleep.
• Sleeping in the same room with the rest of your family is more healthful. (And we thought better sleep at the Maggie P. was due to the salt air.)
• Don't make your babies sleep alone.
• Soothing sounds, such as a crackling fire, or trusted adults moving around and talking quietly, lead to more satisfying sleep.
• Sleep doesn't have to happen all at once. Naps are fine. If you find yourself lying awake in the middle of the night, don't fight it, but get up and do something. Go back to bed later.

Awareness

• The authors clearly admire Eastern spirituality, and thus promote the practice of meditation. But what they are trying to replicate is the relaxed hyper-awareness common among hunter-gatherer peoples, an ability to calm the brain of distractions while being alert—even more alert than otherwise. This turns out to be good for both brain and body health.

Nature

• Being out in nature is enormously healthful. Even an indoor potted plant helps.

People

• We need other people. We need our own "tribe."
• I wish he had dealt with the differences between introverts and extroverts in this section. We all need people, but they way we need each other is very different for the different personality types, and the authors appear to consider only the extrovert point of view.

As usual, this started out as the place to record a few interesting quotations, and ended up being a long review after all, though my summary did peter out at the end. There's a lot to think about here. I steadfastly reject the authors' extremes: for example, when it comes to food I am an omnivore by inclination but even more by principle, and I would no more adopt this no-carb regimen than I would go vegetarian. At the same time, it's good to eat a lot of vegetables, and it's also good to reduce our intake of carbohydrates, at least of the empty variety. I won't become a marathon runner, much less tackle an ultramarathon—but the book's thesis on the importance of movement is not only convincing, but provides inspiration to do things I've known for a long time that I should be doing.

Here are the random quotes:

Cows evolved to eat grass, but mostly we no longer feed them grass; we feed them the corn and soybeans that are the prime products of our industrial agriculture system. The practice of fattening beef in feedlots and the preponderance of factory beef in the fast-food system passes this omega-3 shortage into our bodies. ... [T]his is also why eating red meat itself has gotten a bad rap, with endless strings of studies linking it to heart disease and a variety of other issues. The beef that is the basis of these conclusions is factory beef, and no wonder.

Although I agree with the authors' complaint that the studies were made with the wrong kind of beef, they provide no evidence that beef from grass-fed cows does not have the same bad effects. I suspect that to be the case, but a citation of some evidence would have been nice.

[W]e begin to understand why social sleeping seems to be a nearly universal characteristic of cultures.... While we are sleeping, we continue to monitor our surroundings for cues of safety: relaxed conversation, relaxed movement of others, popping fire. Those cues, subtle sounds signaling safely, tell us we can retreat to our deepest sleep.

Many cultures are, in fact, conscious of all of this and the importance of these arrangements, and no place is the importance more pronounced than in the case of infants. ... All of this helps explain ... an almost universal perplexed response among most other cultures upon hearing of the Western practice of making babies sleep alone. "They think of this as child abuse. They literally do."

A very recent paper correlates an increase in the incidence of autism with receiving Pitocin during delivery. [Neurobiologist Sue Carter] says that Pitocin is routinely administered to delivering mothers in, she estimates, 90 percent of cases, although there are some signs that this practice is waning.

Why does aggression persist beyond reasons for it? Why are we so riven with senseless killing and warfare?

I picked up on that last one just because it highlights the central problem for people who have no sense of the reality of sin, only of its consequences.

The vagus nerve links up all the tools we need to respond to an existential threat, and so the vagal brake is a signal sent through the system for everything to stand down and engage—at ease. ... There is a simple measure of this. It can be read in the tension or lack of tension in facial muscles, heard in voice timbre and edge, and counted in rate of respiration. ... There is such a thing as vagal tone, completely analogous to muscle tone—and the tone shows how clear and distinct a given individual's ability to apply the brake is.

The vagal brake can be driven by breath, a clear connection readable as blips on a chart. You are in control of your breath, to some degree. Thus, this is not simply a point for measuring or sensing arousal; it is a point for controlling arousal and, downstream, the health problems that stem from lack of control.

If you force yourself to smile, the specific spots in the brain that register depression suddenly say your depression is better. ... It turns out that a halfway, forced smile won't do the trick, because it won't light up the neurons of increased happiness in your brain. But if that forced smile goes so far as to engage the little muscles in the corners of your eyes—that is, if you do what socially adept people understand instinctively—these neurons do indeed light up. And the muscles at the corners of your eyes are within the reach of the vagus nerve.

[The breath] exerts control through the alarm system that is the autonomic nervous system. [Researcher Stephen Porges] says he realized a long time ago—because he is a musician, specifically a horn player—that the act of controlling the breath to control the rhythm of music and at the same time engaging the brain to execute the mechanics of music works like a mental therapy. To his mind, it has all the elements of pranayama yoga, a form of yoga that stresses breath control.

The act of controlling the breath has a parallel brain response of calming our instincts for fear and danger. It's easy enough to see this in deliberate practices like yoga, but the same idea applies in many more time-honored practices: choral singing, Gregorian chants, even social music like bluegrass or blues derived from the chants and work songs that African slaves developed to help them tolerate oppression.

Music or evidence of music appeared fifty thousand years ago in that sudden flourish of evidence of cultural evolution that defined humans as humans—and ever since, music has loomed as a cultural universal. All known cultures and people make music. Yet all of this also suggests that we lose something when the crane's leg bone gets replaced by an iPod. We lose the benefits of sitting in a circle of fellow humans and driving the breath and beat that drives the music. [Emphasis mine]

As my friend said, Go Wild is worth reading—but not worth buying. If what I can only describe as bizarre spirituality—bizarre for a book that claims to be scientific—doesn't bother you, and if you can overlook the extremities, which are at their worst in the section on food, there are a number of interesting and worthwhile points.

I laughed, I cried, I groaned, I was on the edge of my seat till the very end!

A romance novel? An thriller? Murder mystery? Action-packed drama?

Well, no. The most recent blog post from The Occasional CEO, entitled, "25 Rules for Writing a Book." This actually showed up in my feed reader at the same time as the announcement of a new book by another friend, who writes as Blair Bancroft.

Eric Schultz writes completely different books from Blair Bancroft, though I wouldn't be surprised if Blair recognizes herself in some of Eric's points. I'm pretty sure that in this post he's writing about a book I've been waiting years for, ever since he dropped a hint in another post. If you read his 25 rules, you'll understand why I say I hope it's still the book I've been looking forward to.

To Eric:

• Don't throw anything away! No experience is ever really wasted, but becomes fodder for something in the future. You never know when you might find it useful. (That attitude is why I have trouble decluttering my house, my photos, and especially my computer.)
• When I accidentally deleted and had to rewrite a very long blog post, you assured me that the re-written post was guaranteed to be better. Based on this, I predict that when the new book is finally published, it will be your best ever.
• I'm an Oxford comma person. But I also like semicolons.
• #9!
• Finish the hat???
• Love the snowy owl!
• I'm still looking forward to reading it, even if it is now more of a business book than a history book.

To everyone else: read it. Even if you don't consider yourself a writer. It's not just about writing; it's about life. Mothers especially can relate.

The Problem of Pain by C. S. Lewis (Simon & Schuster, 1986; originally published 1940)

This is not a review, but a collection to replace the sticky notes I had affixed to this book as I re-read it recently. With some comments. The emphasis is my own.

Chapter Three: Divine Goodness

The association of ... man and dog is primarily for the man's sake: he tames the dog primarily that he may love it, not that it may love him, and that it may serve him, not that he may serve it. Yet at the same time, the dog's interests are not sacrificed to the man's.  The one end (that he may love it) cannot be fully attained unless it also, in its fashion, loves him, nor can it serve him unless he, in a different fashion, serves it. Now just because the dog is by human standards one of the "best" of irrational creatures, and a proper object for a man to love—of course with that degree and kind of love which is proper to such an object, and not with silly anthropomorphic exaggerations—man interferes with the dog and makes it more lovable than it was in mere nature. In its state of nature it has a smell, and habits, which frustrate man's love: he washes it, house-trains it, teaches it not to steal, and is so enabled to love it completely. To the puppy the whole proceeding would seem, if it were a theologian, to cast grave doubts on the "goodness" of man: but the full-grown and full-trained dog, larger, healthier, and longer-lived than the wild dog, and admitted, as it were by Grace, to a whole world of affections, loyalties, interests, and comforts entirely beyond its animal destiny, would have no such doubts.

The man (I am speaking throughout of the good man) takes all these pains with the dog, and give all these pains to the dog, only because it is an animal high in the scale—because it is so nearly lovable that it is worth his while to make it fully lovable. He does not house-train the earwig or give baths to centipedes. We may wish, indeed, that we were of so little account to God that He left us alone to follow our natural impulses—that He would give over trying to train us into something so unlike our natural selves: but ... we are asking not for more Love, but for less.

Chapter Four: Human Wickedness

This chapter will have been misunderstood if anyone describes it as a reinstatement of the doctrine of Total Depravity. I disbelieve that doctrine, partly on the logical ground that if our depravity were total we should not know ourselves to be depraved, and party because experience shows us much goodness in human nature. Nor am I recommending universal gloom. The emotion of shame has been valued not as an emotion but because of the insight to which it leads. I think that insight should be permanent in each man's mind: but whether the painful emotions that attend it should also be encouraged, is a technical problem of spiritual direction on which, as a layman, I have little call to speak. My own idea, for what it is worth, is that all sadness which is not either arising from the repentance of a concrete sin and hastening towards concrete amendment or restitution, or else arising from pity and hastening to active assistance, is simply bad; and I think we all sin by needlessly disobeying the apostolic injunction to "rejoice" as much as by anything else. Humility, after the first shock, is a cheerful virtue: it is the high-minded unbeliever, desperately trying in the teeth of repeated disillusions to retain his "faith in human nature" who is really sad.

It's important to realize that when Lewis talks about sadness as being bad, he's not referring to the kind of sorrow, for example, that we feel when someone we love dies. The chapter is about sin and human wickedness.

Chapter Seven: Human Pain, continued

We must never make the problem of pain worse than it is by vague talk, about the "unimaginable sum of human misery." Suppose that I have a toothache of intensity x: and suppose that you, who are seated beside me, also begin to have a toothache of intensity x. You may, if you choose, say that the total amount of pain in the room is now 2x. But you must remember that no one is suffering 2x: search all time and all space and you will not find that composite pain in anyone's consciousness. There is no such thing as a sum of suffering, for no one suffers it. When we have reached the maximum that a single person can suffer, we have, no doubt, reached something very horrible, but we have reached all the suffering there ever can be in the universe. The addition of a million fellow-sufferers adds no more pain.

I'm not sure I buy this argument completely. I'm quite certain God knows (and feels) the fullness of that "composite pain"—though if there's a human limit, Jesus as man could not have experienced more than that. Lewis is speaking of human suffering so maybe what Omniscience knows doesn't count. And I do believe that to some extent pain is additive (or multiplicative): If I am sufferning x, and my child is suffering x, if we remain ignorant of each other's suffering, then we are indeed each only experiencing x. But if we know, if we can see, if we can hear each other's agony, then our own pain becomes greater: 1.5x, 2x, 10x, whatever—but definitely greater. This is why the media's fascination with reporting tragedies in all their gory details, over and over, is a problem. The graphic portrayal of even false suffering (think movies, TV shows, and video games) affects us badly. It might be worthwhile if it resulted in an outpouring of effective efforts to address the needs represented, but I believe the net effect is actually an increase in the natural responses to viewing suffering we cannot alleviate: depression and callousness.

Chapter 10: Heaven

Each of the redeemed shall forever know and praise some one aspect of the divine beauty better than any other creature can. Why else were individuals created, but that God, loving all infinitely, should love each differently? And this difference, so far from impairing, floods with meaning the love of all the blessed creatures for one another, the communion of the saints. If all experienced God in the same way and returned Him an identical worship, the song of the Church triumphant would have no symphony, it would be like an orchestra in which all the instruments played the same note. Aristotle has told us that a city is a unity of unlikes, and St. Paul that a body is a unity of different members. Heaven is a city, and a Body, because the blessed remain eternally different: a society, because each has something to tell all the others—fresh and ever fresh news of the "My God" whom each finds in Him whom all praise as "Our God."

Union exists only between distincts; and, perhaps, from this point of view, we catch a momentary glimpse of the meaning of all things. Pantheism is a creed not so much false as hopelessly behind the times. Once, before creation, it would have been true to say that everything was God. But God created: He caused things to be other than Himself that, being distinct, they might learn to love Him, and achieve union instead of mere sameness. ... Even within the Holy One Himself, it is not sufficient that the Word should be God, it must also be with God. The Father eternally begets the Son and the Holy Ghost proceeds: deity introduces distinction within itself so that the union of reciprocal loves may transcend mere arithmetical unity.

[The preacher] began to discover one peculiar advantage belonging to the little open chamber of the pulpit—open not only or especially to heaven above, but to so many of the secret chambers of the souls of the congregation. For what a man dares not, could not if he dared, and dared not if he could, say to another, even at the time and in the place fittest of all, he can say thence, open-faced before the whole congregation; and the person in need thereof may hear it without umbrage, or the choking husk of individual application, irritating to the rejection of what truth may lie in it for him.

This passage from George MacDonald's Thomas Wingfold, Curate (chapter 7) applies not only to the pulpit, but also to the blog. The trouble with opinions, complaints, suggestions, and exhortations spoken in person (or e-mail, or text—anything addressed to an individual or a distinctive group) is that the hearer often takes the words personally, as directed towards himself, even when they are not. A blog post, on the other hand, is an offering, one of many in a smorgasbord, presented to the world so that one might take, and another reject the offering, in whole or in part, without offense to either the giver or the recipient.

My brother used to tell me that drinking orange juice was no better than drinking Coke, as it was no better than sweetened water.

Being a Floridian, that has rankled ever since.

It was brought to mind recently in a discussion with my nephew, the medical student, in which I heard him say that the recommendation for drinking juice was no more than two or three times a week. I may have heard the details wrong, because I don't see that when I look online for official recommendations, which are a bit more generous. Or it may be the newest medical-school thinking that hasn't yet been set in stone. But the upshot of the discussion was that whole fruits are good for you and should be encouraged, while fruit juice is bad for you, with no real benefits, and should be severely restricted. This opinion piece in the New York Times is an example of the bad rap juice is getting.

The doctors have good intentions, but I wouldn't be surprised if the real impetus behind this negative attitude towards juice comes from those who want to push soda consumption. After all, if orange juice isn't any better than Coke, why not drink Coke for breakfast, as the granddaughter of an acquaintance used to do?

The real question is: Why is juice so radically different from the whole fruit from which it is (supposedly) made, that the recommendations for consumption are polar opposites?

My answer is that what is called juice these days may have started as fruit, but has been so processed—strained, filtered, heated, added to and subtracted from, torn apart and put (somewhat) back together—that its source is no longer recognizable. Consider the following products:

1. Oranges, freshly-picked from the tree, and reamed to extract the juice and much of the flesh
2. Fresh orange juice that has not been pasteurized (I can buy this at local specialty stores, and also at Costco!)
3. "Not from Concentrate" orange juice from the grocery store, which has been processed and pasteurized but at least looks like orange juice because it includes pulp
4. #3 but without any pulp
5. #3 or #4 with calcium added
6. Orange juice from concentrate (John McPhee's book, Oranges, has a graphic description of what happens in that process)
7. Orange juice drink, orange drink, orange-flavored drink, and other designations of something that may or may not have some real orange juice in it
8. Tang and other pseudo-orange beverage mixes

The legal definitions are fuzzy—it's amazing what you can do to a product and still call it "orange juice"—and doctors rightly draw a line between #6 and #7, but say "orange juice" to the general public, and you could evoke thoughts of any of the above.

As far as I'm concerned, the list is in decreasing order of flavor. I suspect it is also in decreasing order of nutrition. But this definition of "juice" is so broad, even if you exclude #7 and #8, that it's useless. What do the doctors mean when they say "fruit is good, juice is bad"? Are they even considering how slippery the definition is?

This is orange juice.

It is juice I squeezed from oranges Porter picked from our own Page orange tree. Technically, the above statement is incorrect, because the Page orange is not a true orange, but a hybrid developed in Orlando in the 1940's that is 3/4 tangerine and 1/4 grapefruit. I should have said, This is citrus juice. I have no idea what the Food and Drug Administration would call it. I call it delicious.

Drinking this juice is not the same thing as eating the fruit, I'll grant. Some of the membranes are left behind in the juicing process. But a lot gets through, as you can see in this picture of the juice before I shook the bottle.

I'd say the experience is pretty close to eating the fruit. I acknowledge that the experience of drinking processed, grocery-store juice is radically different from that of eating fruit. However, the problem is not in the juice. The problem is in the processing, and the labelling.

Don't fight to eliminate juice. Fight to bring back real food!

The year of 2018 may stand as the one in which I read the most books ever. Records were made to be broken, of course, but this year's effort was helped considerably by the completion of my project of reading my entire collection of books by Miss Read, which tend to be under 300 pages and easy reading. When I realized that I had tied my previous record before the end of September (73, set in 2015), the thought crossed my mind, "Wouldn't it be cool to reach 100 by the end of the year?" "Impossible," I told myself. Well, you know how I feel when someone says, "impossible," even it's myself to myself. So I set a goal of reaching a full century, without resorting to padding the list with books chosen merely for their brevity. I confess that the goal did change my reading habits somewhat, since after making that decision I put off any particularly lengthy books—such as my grandson's favorite Wheel of Time series with its 900 or so page average—until 2019.

The month with the fewest books read was January, no surprise since we were overseas part of the month, and that's when I read the first of the Wheel of Time books. I read the most books (14) in October. Once again I'm pleased with the mixture, though as I said it was pretty heavily weighted towards Miss Read. I enjoy these projects of binge-reading a particular author; I've also done Shakespeare, George MacDonald, and J. R. R. Tolkien. My current project is C. S. Lewis, which will weigh in very heavily next year, given that our home library alone contains 50 books by or about him.

Here's the alphabetical list; links are to reviews. Titles in bold I found particularly worthwhile. This chronological list has ratings and warnings as well.

1. Affairs at Thrush Green by Miss Read
2. American Terroir by Rowan Jacobsen
3. At Home in Thrush Green by Miss Read
4. Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild
5. Battles at Thrush Green by Miss Read
6. The Bible (ESV - English Standard Version)
7. The Big Burn by Timothy Egan
8. The Birth of the United States: 1763 - 1816 by Isaac Asimov
9. The Black Star of Kingston by S. D. Smith
10. By the Shores of Silver Lake by Laura Ingalls Wilder
11. C. S. Lewis: A Biography by Roger Lancelyn Green and Walter Hooper
12. C. S. Lewis: Images of His World by Douglas Gilbert and Clyde S. Kilby
13. Celebrations at Thrush Green by Miss Read
14. Changes at Fairacre by Miss Read
15. The Christmas Mouse by Miss Read
16. Country Bunch by Miss Read
17. Dancing Shoes by Noel Streatfeild
18. The Dark Tower and Other Stories by C. S. Lewis
    
19. Ember Falls by S. D. Smith
20. Ember Rising by S. D. Smith
21. Emily Davis by Miss Read
22. The Excellence Habit by Vlad Zachary
23. The Fairacre Festival by Miss Read
24. Farewell to Fairacre by Miss Read
25. Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder
26. Farther Afield by Miss Read
27. The First Four Years by Laura Ingalls Wilder
28. Force 10 from Navarone by Alistair MacLean
29. Foster's War by Carolyn Reeder
30. Fresh from the Country by Miss Read
31. Friends at Thrush Green by Miss Read
32. From a Northern Window by Ronald MacDonald
33. George MacDonald: 365 Readings by C. S. Lewis
34. George MacDonald's Fiction: A Twentieth-Century View by Richard Reis
35. The Golden Door: The United States from 1865 to 1918 by Isaac Asimov
36. Gossip from Thrush Green by Miss Read
37. The Green Ember by S.D. Smith
38. The Harmony Within: The Spiritual Vision of George MacDonald by Rolland Hein
39. Heidi by Johanna Spyri
40. Highest Duty by "Sully" Sullenberger
41. The Howards of Caxley by Miss Read
42. Invitation to Number Theory by Oystein Ore
43. Killing Lincoln by Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard
44. The Last Archer by S. D. Smith
45. Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading by Maureen Corrigan
46. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien edited by Humphrey Carpenter
47. Life Essential: The Hope of the Gospel by George MacDonald, edited by Rolland Hein
48. The Light in the Forest by Conrad Richter
49. Lincoln's Last Days by Bill O'Reilly and Dwight Jon Zimmerman
50. Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder
51. Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
52. Little Town on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
53. The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder
54. The Lost Empress by Steve Robinson
55. The Man Who Counted by Malba Tahan
56. The Market Square by Miss Read
57. Mindless Eating by Brian Wansink
58. The Mindverse Chronicles by Anaya Roma (Diana Villafaña)
59. Momo by Michael Ende
60. Moonshiner's Son by Carolyn Reeder
61. The Pilgrim's Regress by C. S. Lewis
62. Mrs. Pringle of Fairacre by Miss Read
63. Proving the Unseen by George MacDonald
64. New Worlds to Conquer by Richard Halliburton
65. News from Thrush Green by Miss Read
66. Night Without End by Alistair MacLean
67. No Holly for Miss Quinn by Miss Read
68. Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t by Steven Pressfield
69. On Stage, Please by Veronica Tennant
70. On the Banks of Plum Creek by Laura Ingalls Wilder
71. On the Way Home by Laura Ingalls Wilder and Rose Wilder Lane
72. One Beautiful Dream by Jennifer Fulwiler
73. Our Federal Union: The United States from 1816 to 1865 by Isaac Asimov
74. Out of the Silent Planet by C. S. Lewis
75. Outlaws of Time #1: The Legend of Sam Miracle by N. D. Wilson
76. Outlaws of Time #2: The Song of Glory and Ghost by N. D. Wilson
77. Outlaws of Time #3: The Last of the Lost Boys by N. D. Wilson
78. A Peaceful Retirement by Miss Read
79. Planet Narnia by Michael Ward
80. The Problem of Pain by C. S. Lewis
81. R & M (beta version) by MB
82. Return to Thrush Green by Miss Read
83. The School at Thrush Green by Miss Read
84. Shades of Gray by Carolyn Reeder
85. The Shaping of North America: From Earliest Times to 1763 by Isaac Asimov
86. Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog by Kitty Burns Florey
87. Spirits in Bondage by C. S. Lewis
88. Summer in Fairacre by Miss Read
89. Theatre Shoes by Noel Streatfeild
90. These Happy Golden Years by Laura Ingalls Wilder
91. Thrush Green by Miss Read
92. Time Remembered by Miss Read
93. Toby Tyler; or, Ten Weeks with a Circus by James Otis
94. Tyler's Row by Miss Read
95. Village Affairs by Miss Read
96. Village Centenary by Miss Read
97. The War of Art by Steven Pressfield
98. What the Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell
99. The Wheel of Time Book 1: The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan
100. White Fang by Jack London
101. The White People by Frances Hodgson Burnett
102. The White Robin by Miss Read
103. The Wind from the Stars by George MacDonald, edited by Gordon Reid
104. Winter in Thrush Green by Miss Read
105. The World Encyclopedia of Christmas by Gerry Bowler
106. The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan
107. The Wreck and Rise of Whitson Mariner by S. D. Smith
108. The Year at Thrush Green by Miss Read

George MacDonald, from a sermon preached at the Christ Church, Addiscombe. Proving the Unseen, chapter 8: "Growth in Grace and Knowledge."

We should give ourselves an opportunity to understand humanity, to know those who are about us, and from them to know the individual, until we are a hiding place from the wind, a covert from the tempest, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. Every Christian ought to be a refuge. I believe that, if we were like Christ, even the wild beasts of our woods and fields would flee to us for refuge and deliverance.

By the title above I do not mean that I am remembering C. S. Lewis. I'm sharing from pp. 42-43 of Walter Hooper's book, C. S. Lewis: A Companion and Guide, which I am slowly reading as I progress in my current project of reading all the books by or about C. S. Lewis that we have in our home library.

The girls and I have been talking about memory recently, so this passage jumped out at me. Hooper is quoting one of Lewis' former students, Kenneth Tynan.^*

He had the most astonishing memory of any man I have ever known. In conversation I might have said to him, "I read a marvellous medieval poem this morning, and I particularly liked this line." I would then quote the line. Lewis would usually be able to go on to quote the rest of the page. It was astonishing.

Once when I was invited to his rooms after dinner for a glass of beer, he played a game. He directed, "give me a number from one to forty."

I said, "Thirty."

He acknowledged, "Right. Go to the thirtieth shelf in my library." Then he said, "Give me another number from one to twenty."

I answered, "Fourteen."

He continued, "Right. Get the fourteenth book off the shelf. Now let's have a number from one to a hundred."

I said, "Forty-six."

"Now turn to page forty-six! Pick a number from one to twenty-five for the line of the page."

I said, "Six."

"So," he would say, "read me that line." He would always identify it—not only by identifying the book, but he was also usually able to quote the rest of the page.