Ave & Memorare

I’ve been highlighting aspects of my books that are Mary-related.

It’s May – the month of Mary. I’m sharing elements from my books related to the Blessed Mother. First was an entire book – Mary and the Christian Life. 

Then from the Loyola Kids Book of Catholic Signs & Symbols.

Then, from The Words We Pray – first, the Salve Regina

Today, just a couple of scans of pages from the chapters in The Words We Pray about the Hail, Mary and the Memorare. 

As I said, they are random – just to give you a taste of the style of writing and the focus. The chapters in the book, each focused on a particular traditional Catholic prayer, are a mix of history and spiritual reflection.

More about The Words We Pray

(Link does not go to Amazon, but to the publisher. The book should be available at almost every online bookseller.)

The Introduction

An excerpt on praying traditional prayers.

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7 Quick Takes

— 1 —

Other than Writing Things (look for me in Living Faith on Monday, by the way) – a music-heavy week around here. The big state competition is Friday – and may even be over as you read this. So there’s been a lot of practicing, especially of the Kabalevsky concerto movement that he is playing with his teacher.

I’ll have more to say after it’s over. I’m superstitious that way.

I may even post some video.

(If you follow me on Instagram, you’ve seen it in Stories – snippets through the week.)

It’s not that I’m any kind of stage or Tiger Mom as far as this business goes. It’s simply this: He’s been working on these four pieces for almost a year. He’s performed them in various settings (including retirement homes and a temporary residence for cancer patients as part of the requirements for being in the Honors Ensemble). I don’t give a flip whether or not he “wins” – I simply don’t want him to walk into this, bearing the fruit of a year’s worth of hard work, and then blunder in a way that throws him off and then throws off the piece – the consequence being that in this particular setting, the fruit of his work won’t be evident.

— 2 —

The work is bearing fruit in other ways, to be sure. He’s just begun taking jazz piano, which is coming fairly easily to him – but only because of the kind of work he’s been doing in classical piano for three years. Same with rock – his friend down the street takes rock guitar lessons, and they’ve invited M to play with the band for the recital – and he can pull it off with not much time because of Beethoven and Kabalevsky.

But still….dozens, if not hundreds of hours on this Kabalevsky, in particular….it sure would be nice….

— 3 —

So there’s that. Stress levels have also been heightened this week because of

AP Physics exam

The end of the 2^nd year of law school

Ready for the school year to be over. Oh, and you know how parents of older children always say to parents of younger kids: You’ll look back to the years of no sleep and potty training and think…that was easy.

There’s a reason. It’s true. Cleaning up a puddle of urine on three hours of sleep is nothing compared to the stress of giving counsel to young adults worried about the course of the rest of their lives and their relationships  and then watching them drive away in 2-ton death machines.

— 4 —

And then there’s son #2 who has his own news – a writer of many stories and a few novels, all unpublished, he has decided to go the e-book route, and going about it in a very methodical way. He’s publishing short collections of stories over the next few months, and then releasing a novel in the fall.

You can find his website here. There are links to all the collections.

The collection you can purchase now is here.

And here he is on Twitter, chronicling the process of writing his next book.

Please go check it out!!

— 5 —

 Okay, this is fantastic:

https://www.facebook.com/plugins/post.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fstpaulsbhm%2Fposts%2F2020270931557798&width=500

 

Come to Birmingham for Pentecost!!

— 6 —

The Lumen Christi Institute:

Founded in 1997 by Catholic scholars at the University of Chicago, the Lumen Christi Institute brings together thoughtful Catholics and others interested in the Catholic tradition and makes available to them the wisdom of the Catholic spiritual, intellectual, and cultural heritage.

They’ve just started making podcasts of their sponsored talks available as free podcasts. The page with links to the various podcast sites (Itunes, Google Play store, etc.) is here. 

— 7 —

Mother’s Day is  Sunday, so it’s too late to order this online, but I’d bet your local Catholic bookstore has it: 

It would also be a great end-of-year gift for a teacher or DRE! 

For more Quick Takes, visit This Ain’t the Lyceum!

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7 Quick Takes

— 1 —

It’s that time of year…

…the time of year in which spring starts really spring, and the outdoor events and festivals start popping…

…and we can’t go to any of them because of Activities.

And we don’t even do that much. No spring sports – it’s just that with piano-related events and serving Mass and my older son’s work – we get kind of stuck on the weekends. Not that the youngest and I can’t go on our own – and we do – but still, it’s not the same. And I walk around in a continual state of low-grade irritation because of it.

Well, after this weekend, things should wind down. The last major piano thing will happen on a Friday, then the older kids’ exams begin and end..and then…freedom!

— 2 —

In case you missed it earlier in the week, I had a post on the present lackadaisical status of homeschooling around here. Nothing’s changed since Monday. In fact, it might have gotten worse.

Well, “worse” in terms of “academics” – but the reason is music: three lessons of three different types, plus extra practice with the teacher for that Friday event. If he were in regular school, he couldn’t do this – which is why we’re loading up on it now and trying to lay solid groundwork before he returns in the fall.

(Also earlier – a rambling Monday morning post.)

— 3 —

For some reason, in that Monday post, I neglected to talk about the one jaunt we were able to squeeze in between serving and something else on Saturday, which was a festival at St. Symeon Orthodox Church, located just down the road from us. We’ve lived here for five years, and it’s been interesting to watch it grow, as they’ve gone from meeting in a multipurpose building to constructing their church. The parish is part of the Orthodox Church in America (in its origins, associated with the Russian Orthodox, but now separate and rather oriented towards converts, and any more than that I will not venture because while there is nothing more confusing in contemporary Christianity than the Anglican communion, the Orthodox come mighty close.)

Anyway, they had a festival last Saturday, which means that we finally had a chance to see the interior of the church – it’s absolutely lovely.

 

 

— 4 —

Much has been written about the terrible case of Alfie Evans. I found these two to be particularly worth the read:

Carter Snead of Notre Dame wrote a piece for the CNN site that, I would imagine, introduced the fundamental issues in an accessible way:

Is this some fictional, dystopian, totalitarian nightmare? Sadly and shamefully, no. It is the reality of the modern-day United Kingdom — a nightmare from which the parents of toddler Alfie Evans cannot awaken.

Little Alfie Evans has recently passed away, but the struggle over his treatment provoked a worldwide conflict over parental rights, how to care properly for the seriously disabled, and the appropriate role of the state in such intimate and vexed matters. What it revealed is that the law of the UK is in desperate need of revision to make room for the profoundly disabled and their loved ones who wish to care for them, despite the judgment of others that such lives of radical dependence and frailty are not worth living.

— 5 —

And then, more strongly, Stephen White at The Catholic Thing:

Margaret Thatcher famously said, “There’s no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families.” That was always a rather anemic view of social life, but the way the Alfie Evans case played out, one wonders if she may have overstated the case. Are there just individuals and their interests – and the state employing experts to instruct the former in regard to the latter?

Catholics know better, or we ought to. Pope Francis grasped what was at stake in the Alfie Evans case – meeting Alfie’s father, Tom, and tweeting his steadfast support. Statements from the bishops of England and Wales were mostly of the pastoral-by-way-of-not-taking-sides; in other words, flaccid and perfunctory. Some Catholics – British writer and papal biographer, Austen Ivereigh, for example – were indignant, insisting that protests against the abrogation of parental rights were somehow evidence of libertarian contagion coming from the American Church.

“The contention,” wrote Pope Leo XIII in Rerum novarum, “that the civil government should at its option intrude into and exercise intimate control over the family and the household is a great and pernicious error.” Pope Leo, it should be noted, was neither American nor libertarian.

When the ministers of the law, purporting to act in the interest of an individual, isolate that individual from the bonds of family, which are the very foundation of human society and which the law exists primarily to protect, they do violence to the individual, to the family, and to society. Again, Pope Leo put it well, “If the citizens, if the families on entering into association and fellowship, were to experience hindrance in a commonwealth instead of help, and were to find their rights attacked instead of being upheld, society would rightly be an object of detestation rather than of desire.”

Alfie Evans was treated – not as a person in full, the son of a father and mother – but as a naked individual whose dignity consists in his “interests,” and who was subject to the ministrations of impersonal forces of the state. The state made itself an object of detestation.

— 6 —

Ascension Thursday is next week. And yes, it’s still Ascension Thursday even though our episcopal betters believe us incapable of celebrating it then.

Click on graphic or here for more on Daniel Mitsui and this piece.

Speaking of art – my friend and collaborator Ann Engelhart is on Instagram now – follow her here! 

— 7 —

Mother’s Day is a week from Sunday – have you considered this? I have loads here if you’d like a personalized copy – just go to the bookstore or email me at amywelborn60 AT gmail.com

 

For more Quick Takes, visit This Ain’t the Lyceum!

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7 Quick Takes

— 1 —

This coming Sunday is, well, a Sunday – so that means Sunday takes precedence over any saints’ days – but since it is April 29, and that’s St. Catherine of Siena’s day – here’s a link to a section from Praying with the Pivotal Players on St. Catherine – reprinted last year in Aleteia: Catherine of Siena –  Drunk on the Blood of Christ. 

At the end of his life, stripped naked, scourged at the pillar, parched with thirst, he was so poor on the wood of the cross that neither the earth nor the wood could give him a place to lay his head. He had nowhere to rest it except on his own shoulder. And drunk as he was with love, he made a bath for you of his blood when this Lamb’s body was broke open and bled from every part … He was sold to ransom you with his blood. By choosing death for himself he gave you life. (Dialogue)

Blood. Some of us are wary of the sight of it or even repulsed, but in Catherine’s landscape, there is no turning away. The biological truth that blood is life and the transcendent truth that the blood of Christ is eternal life are deeply embedded in her spirituality. We see these truths in the Dialogue, in passages like the one above, and even in her correspondence.

For in her letters, Catherine usually begins by immediately setting the context of the message that is about to come:  Catherine, servant and slave of the servants of Jesus Christ, write to you in his precious blood….

The salutation is followed by a brief statement of her purpose, which, by virtue of Catherine’s initial positioning  of her words in the context of the life-giving blood of Jesus, bear special weight and authority: in his precious blood…desiring to see you a true servant….desiring to see you obedient daughters…desiring to see you burning and consumed in his blazing love…desiring to see you clothed in true and perfect humility….

In both the Dialogue and her letters, Catherine takes this fundamental truth about salvation – that it comes to us through the death, that is, the blood of Christ – and works with  it in vivid, startling ways.

More.

— 2 —

Look for me in Living Faith on Monday. 

—3–

My youngest son and I went to a local production of Children of Eden for two reasons – someone we know was involved, and we had free tickets. The person we know did a spectacular job – and it was a huge job, and we’re very proud – but geez louise the theology  is appalling and the show itself – musically and dramatically  – is  mediocre. I’d never seen it, and hardly knew anything about it except that it was about Genesis and is by the Godspell guy. Here’s a history of the show from Wikipedia – and it’s sort of interesting – it had a very short, poorly received run in the West End and, aside from local productions, that’s it. After seeing it, I understand why.

And what’s so bad about the theology? Well, think – Phillip Pullman belting 80’s show tunes – and you’ve nailed it.

I mean – when the show climaxes with Noah telling his son to take Adam’s spear, made from the wood of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil – and to go out, replant it, and share the fruit with their descendants – you’ve got a mess on your hands.

Probably the worst of all of the late 20th century “Hey Kids, Let’s Put on a Bible Show!” creations. Well and enthusiastically performed though. So there’s that.

–4––

Since this is “quick takes” – let’s be appropriately random. I ran across these from Catholic Truth Society, which strike me as quite useful: short, inexpensive basic prayer books in a bunch of different languages. 

These new prayer books will help bring together in prayer and worship Catholics of different nationalities. They offer a reliable translation of the Mass and some common prayers and devotions, in the familiar CTS pocket-size format, with the English text always set out on the facing pages. Prepared with the help of chaplains serving immigrant communities, these inexpensive booklets are principally designed to help newcomers to the United Kingdom. Catholics travelling to other countries will also find them useful travelling companions. 

Nice! But wouldn’t it also be great if we could pray together in a single language that is a concrete expression of our unity?

Yes, that would be truly awesome. Can someone make that happen maybe?

–5 —

Let’s add to the already massive amount of great video material out there on the Internet: a new art history site – Heni Talks. 

What I especially appreciate is that they offer transcripts of the audio – always helpful.

Here’s a video on the Lady Chapel of Ely Cathedral, wrecked by Protestants:

People come into this building to be healed, cheered up, but above all they would have thought about this in kind of medicinal terms. That you’re sweetened by the Virgin Mary. My thought is this. Was the curving Ogee arch and the beautiful, slightly fleshy, consistency of the architecture here, in a way a metaphor, or a communicative vehicle, for the idea of femininity?  What they were doing at Ely was producing an architecture that in itself would have made people subliminally aware of the Virgin Mary as a kind of physical presence, as something which we love, which we’re drawn to.

The second thing was colour. This building was like a hothouse of colour. What we see now is like a bleached remnant of something that was altogether more exotic. And finally stained glass. So, much more striking. We might not have liked it, but we would undoubtedly have been impressed by it.

Iconoclasm literally is the destruction of images. Basically, the censorship off anything that is a representation. This building was absolutely packed with sculpture. A lot of that is gone, simply torn away. In the 16th and 17th centuries, when the English Reformation occurred, a long-drawn out and violent process, a very divisive process, the deliberate targeting of the central symbols of Catholicism was important. And certainly in this part of England, which was really the birthplace of the Protestant Reformation, there was a violent sentiment against all the things that had, two centuries before been extremely loved, respected and regarded. And the cult of the Virgin Mary, was swept away. The theory is always that by getting rid of the concrete expression of something, by erasing it, you disempower the idea and you disempower the perpetuation of the idea. It’s a way of erasing memory.

So when I speak about the art and architecture here being persuasive, being sweetening, you have to understand that to a Protestant reformer, all these little what they would call ‘puppets’ these statues all around the room, all the little stories, would be deeply interesting, but also repulsive and dangerous. And, as a result of that, what I call ‘hammer-happy iconoclasts’ went for this building with a kind of enthusiasm. All the statues were pulled down in the upper parts of the wall, all the stained glass just smashed out, and all the delicate little stories of the Virgin Mary, all of her little miracles, whacked off with hammers. All heads went, some of them are unrecognisable, and the colour was scrubbed off, and the whole thing, it was an effort to kind of cancel it, to destroy its power.

–6–

This one is also excellent – it’s on Pisaro’s Pisa Pulpit – 

It is now over seven hundred years since the Italian Gothic sculptor Giovanni Pisano set chisel to stone. Though long regarded as his masterpiece, the Pisa Pulpit fell out of favour in the 20th century.

The rise of photography had given a new generation of historians outside of Italy access to the work, but photos failed to convey the pulpit’s complexity. Basing their opinions on two-dimensional reproductions, critics thought the carvings to be distorted and the narrative scenes grossly cluttered.

Art Historian Jules Lubbock examines a plaster cast of the pulpit in the Victoria and Albert Museum’s collections and argues that it was the critics who were ill-judged. As an inscription on the pulpit implores: ‘You who marvel, judge by the correct law!’

–7–

As you may recall, our Bishop Emeritus David Foley passed away last week. I didn’t make to any of the actual rituals – I was going to go to Vespers on Sunday evening, but I got a phone call and by the time I was done, it was too late. The funeral Mass itself was ticketed (our Cathedral is small), so I didn’t even consider that – but I knew they were going to process with the body from the church around the block to the courtyard where the episcopal burial plot is located, so I thought we would dash downtown for that (it’s a ten minute drive). I kept an eye on the progress of the funeral on EWTN (you can watch the recording here) and as Communion drew to a close, we got ourselves out the door and into the car. Now – the word had always been that the procession was of course, contingent on weather – and it’s been rainy here lately. But that morning had been clear, and at the moment we left, it still was. We parked and walked to the street where they Knights of Columbus were standing at the ready, waiting. Still clear. Around the corner come the servers, followed by the first set of priests – looking okay – but then…..sprinkles. Then more. Still more – and then a minute later, le deluge. It just poured down on all those priests and bishops in their vestments. You can see it on the video – starting around the 1 hour fifty minute mark. 

More on Instagram. 

 

Seeking gifts for First Communion, Confirmation, Mother’s Day…etc?

Try one of these!

 

For more Quick Takes, visit This Ain’t the Lyceum!

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7 Quick Takes

— 1 —

This week has been Exhibit A in “Why I could never lease a car.”  Back and forth to Montgomery on Monday for a talk, then over and back from Atlanta today to pick up some stuff from my oldest’s condo – he moved to NYC in January, has the closing on his Atlanta place on Friday, and had a few things in it that he will probably want someday, but can’t have up in NYC right now, considering he’s renting one room in a house in Brooklyn at the moment.

Plus the usual at least 40-50 miles/day I put on in my rounds to various schools…I can’t imagine a life of only putting 10-15,000 miles/year on a car. I’d like to, but right now…it can’t happen.

— 2 —

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! More about him here, including from two of my books, the Loyola Kids Book of Saints and The Words We Pray. 

Is your diocese dispensing from the Lenten Friday abstinence? Ours is, with a caveat: 

To eat meat on this Friday, Catholics in Diocese of Birmingham must do one of these penances:

1. Pray the rosary for increase of vocations in the Diocese of Birmingham;
2. Participate in public celebration of the Stations of the Cross;
3. Do an act of charity;
4. Read scripture on the Passion of the Lord;
5. Spend time and pray before the Most Blessed Sacrament

May St. Patrick intercede for us to celebrate his memory well and to practice our Lenten penance with contrite heart with prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.

Rocco has a Master List at his place. 

Charles Collins, formerly of Vatican Radio, now writes for Crux – a superb call on Crux’s part – and has thoughts on this patchwork of regulations and dispensations:

Instead we get a hodgepodge of contradictory rules, and people get upset because their bishop didn’t give the dispensation, or they fret that no one really cares about Lent anymore, or they just find the conditions attached to the dispensation confusing.

There is no other day on the Church calendar which causes such a fuss. No scorecards are needed for St. Stanislaus or Saint John of God, which also often fall during Lent, despite the strong devotion of segments of the population to these saints.

Saint Patrick is different. The Church in Ireland has had an outsize influence on the Church in the United States, even when taking into account the large number of Irish immigrants who came to the country. In many ways, American Catholicism grew from an Irish root, and in Ireland, St. Patrick’s Day is a solemnity and meat is allowed.

 

— 3 —

What a glorious anniversary! It’s been a whole week since the BBC Dad explosion, and did you ever? Yes, it’s true that one of the things I hate about writing on the Internet – are questions about what people write about on the Internet.  As in: Why are you writing about that? And not this Important Thing?  Hate it. 

BUT.

Think for a minute about the people who spent a whole lot of time last weekend extrapolating Big Themes from 30 seconds in another family’s life and fighting with each other about said Big Themes.

God almighty, it was not a big deal. It was cute. It was funny. It just happened. It really was not a deeply meaningful leading indicator of Gender Relations. And…there were more interesting things to do last weekend than fight on Facebook about this, I’m pretty sure.

He told the Wall Street Journal: ‘As soon as she opened the door I saw her image on my screen. She was in a hippity-hoppity mood that day because of the school party.’

Prof Kelly, 44, said he gamely tried to continue with the interview but then nine-month-old James tottered into the room. ‘Then I knew it was over,’ he said.

To complete the farce, his wife Jung-a Kim then came skidding through the door.

She grabbed the two youngsters and attempted to drag them out of the door, but one of them could be heard wailing and the baby’s walker got stuck in the door.

More. 

(The WSJ article mentioned is behind a paywall now, but it mentioned that Jung-a Kim was recording the interview airing on the television in the other room – recording it with her phone – and didn’t notice the kids were up to anything until they appeared on the screen.)

— 4 —

Gene Luen Yang is a favorite around here – a great storyteller and graphic novelist. He’s also a Catholic. Christianity Today has a nice article about the McArthur “Genius” grant winner, his art and his faith:

Yang admits these tensions were not always easy for him to navigate, but his perspective on not fitting in has changed over time. “Now, when I look back, I feel really grateful and appreciative of being an outsider,” Yang told me. “When you are in a place of comfort, there are things you end up taking for granted.” While his upbringing and education were privileged in many ways, Yang is familiar with the feeling of cultural discomfort.

Spurred on by the complex tensions between his Chinese-Christian and Western-American heritage, Yang’s work represents an ongoing quest to better understand himself, his faith, and the world around him. He often takes his characters on similar journeys of exploring identity, place, and purpose—something that readers of any cultural and faith background can connect with.

Update:  I didn’t know the CT article was behind a paywall – I don’t subscribe, and somehow I could read it – perhaps because it was in an email link from CT? Anyway…sorry!

— 5 —.

From last December, a local (Atlanta) news feature on the Hawthorne Dominicans’ ministry in the city:

— 6 ––

The Monk who saves manuscripts from ISIS:

Under Stewart’s direction, HMML has expanded its activities to India, where it recently photographed 10,000 palm-leaf manuscripts, and to Ethiopia, where it digitized the Garima Gospels, believed to be the oldest surviving Ethiopian manuscripts. The organization has also worked in Middle Eastern countries like Egypt, Lebanon, and Turkey, photographing thousands of manuscripts of all confessions and languages, from Coptic to Maronite and from Greek to Latin.

In 2013, the organization decided to start digitizing Islamic material as well. In Mali, HMML is currently digitizing more than 300,000 Islamic manuscripts, which risked being destroyed when Islamists associated with al-Qaeda took over the city of Timbuktu in 2012.

With the rise of ISIS, 2,000 out of the 6,000 manuscripts that HMML managed to digitize in Iraq between 2009 and 2014 have been lost or destroyed. Other manuscripts digitized in Syria may have suffered the same fate.

— 7 —

Starting to think about Easter gifts? First Communion? Confirmation Mother’s Day?

Check out my bookstore. It will be closed from 3/25-4/2, so you might want to get on those Easter orders….

For more Quick Takes, visit This Ain’t the Lyceum!

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7 Quick Takes

— 1 —

First, an article about two religious women who served Hansen’s Disease patients in South Korea for decades:

After graduating from nursing school, the two nuns arrived in South Korea in the 1960s to work on Sorok Island, where a medical facility, more concentration camp than hospital, had been set up.

Whilst others who worked there armed themselves against possible infection with masks, gloves, and quarantine gear, the two women, then in their mid-20s, wore only white gowns as they tended to the patients. Even when their faces were spattered with blood and pus from wounds, they paid no attention.

Recalling her time on the island, Sister Marianne said, “It was through the power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ that I was able to serve”. Above all, “The greatest joy came from seeing patients being discharged from the island and meeting their family members after their wounds healed.”

 

 

— 2 —

From another part of the East:

Some of you might already be aware of the conversion of Chinese artist Yan Zu to Catholicism, as recounted on National Catholic Register and Catholic News Agency. A Dominican friar from the Western Province who is from Taiwan originally recently brought this story to my attention.

It was the study of European art history, and specifically of medieval illuminated manuscripts, that brought Yan to the Faith. She has a Chinese language blog from which these images of her own work are taken.

 

–– 3—

One of the reasons I like having my sons serve at the Casa Maria retreat house is the opportunity to hear generally excellent homilies from the priests leading the retreat on a particular weekend. This past weekend, the retreat master was Fr. James Kubicki, national director of the Apostleship of Prayer.  I spoke with Fr. Kubicki after Mass, and he immediately made the connection with the chapter on the Morning Offering from The Words We Pray, which was nice!

 — 4 —

Italy trip prep continues. Well, not really. I haven’t done much, since there really isn’t much left to do.  I have almost been convinced to just leave Tuscany to chance, the winds and the Spirit. We’ll see.

 

— 5 —

I’m serious about upping my social media game for the trip. I certainly don’t want it to dominate the experience as I juggle phones and cameras and spend the evening on the computer.. Absolutely not. But I do want to share various aspects of the trip – new sight  and sounds, a story or two per day. So if you are interested be sure to follow me here, and then on Instagram. I will probably try to Periscope, but I have to practice here on this side of the world, so look for that via Twitter at some point over the next couple of weeks.

 

— 6-

I’m excited about the new Richard Russo book, Everybody’s Fool.  I’ve always thought Nobody’s Fool to be one of the great American 20th century novels, and this one is sounding good.  If you want to laugh until you weep, read Straight Man. 

 And then there was that time I had contacted Richard Russo, my writing hero,  through either his agent or his publisher with the faint, crazy hope that he would write an introduction for a volume in the Loyola Classics series.  I am not one hundred percent sure, but I think it was Jon Hassler’s North of Hope.  As I said, it was pretty insane, and I thought nothing would come  of it.

One Friday morning, I went to the grocery store. I returned. There was a message on the voicemail.

Hi, this is Richard Russo. 

WHAT.

Yes, Richard Russo HAD CALLED MY HOUSE.

FIVE MINUTES before I walked back in the door.

And of course, he was calling (very politely and kindly) to tell me that he was swamped with work and couldn’t do the introduction.

So what was I going to do, fangirlishly call him back just to tell him…what? That I was sorry, but I certainly understood, and by the way, hey I’m talking to you right now, Richard Russo, writing hero?

No. I couldn’t do that. So I just stood there in my kitchen holding milk or green beans or whatever other meaningless object had made me miss talking to Richard Russo.

Writing Hero.

— 7 —

Well, speaking of writing, but on a less-exalted scale – you still have time….if your local Catholic bookstore has it in stock, you can grab it before Sunday. Or maybe even get super-quick delivery!

For more Quick Takes, visit This Ain’t the Lyceum!

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Mother’s Day

Quick! Have you gotten anything yet?!

Well, you can still grab this – perhaps your local Catholic bookstore has it (if they don’t…demand it!), but you can for sure order it online.

I have a few copies here, and if you contact me at amywelborn60 – at – gmail.com  we can talk about non-media mail shipping.

It’s a 365 day daily devotional for Catholic women. Because it was written to be used beyond a single year, the daily devotionals couldn’t be tied to a specific season, except for most feasts (except Easter).  But I did my best to be as reasonably seasonal as possible – so the entries from February-March tend towards themes of penitence, April-May, Eastery-themes and December, Adventish.

It’s also written for women of any state in life. It doesn’t presume that the woman reading and praying along has children, is of a certain age, is married, works outside the home, is a stay-at-home mom, and for sure does not presume that all women are into shopping or shoes. That sort of thing.

So check it out!

 

And don’t forget…First Communion and Graduation! 

 

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Monday Miscellaney

First off, we’re in the thick of First Communion season….get your signed books here.

Friendship  with  Jesus – B16’s dialogue ith First Communion children

Be Saints!  – B16’s dialogue with British children

I don’t have copies of the next two in the bookstore, but you can find them in most Catholic bookstores and online.

Loyola Kids Book of Saints

Loyola Kids Book of Heroes

Also – Mother’s Day isn’t too far away…..how about The Catholic Woman’s Book of Days?

 

• Over the weekend, I blogged on pseudo-culture – the BBC show Happy Valley and the post-war noir In a Lonely Place. 
• Not much going on this past weekend. 11-year old had a piano competition/judging thing on Saturday and they served at Casa Maria on Sunday, so we were tied to home. That’s okay, we’ll be flitting about soon enough.
• We watched Ben-Hur. Over three days. I hadn’t seen it in years. Probably close to forty of them. You know it’s about four hours long, right? You can see how that happened – given the filmmaking conventions of the day and the fact that if you are going to spend a heap of money on a production, you might as well go all-out and give the audience its money’s worth.

  There is a remake of Ben-Hur coming out and I’ve read a bit of well I never online and can’t remake a classic!

  Well, yes you can. The 1959 version was a remake of the classic silent version, and really, don’t make pronouncements about it being impossible to improve on the ’59 film until you actually rewatch it.

  The length is unnecessary. Those long, lingering dialogue scenes are melodramatic and often risible. Charlton Heston is a terrible actor in this thing. I mean…terrible. The best scenes are the famed set-pieces: The galley scenes, the chariot race and the leper-colony material. The chariot race remains spectacular. Everything else is overlong, stiff and too reverent. The score, as per usual with films like this is overwhelming. Shut up.

  The new version doesn’t look particularly good, though – just judging from the trailers and given that the production team is that Roma Downey crew,  we can be sure that the Christian content will remain intact. But it’s also a good guess that an in-your face CGI-enhanced chariot race will have nothing on the Boyd/Heston matchup of ’59.

  And remember that when the snarky protests come about Ben-Hur being “too Christian” the book was subtitled A Tale of the Christ. It’s about forgiveness, a forgiving heart and mercy that was only found through an encounter with Christ. It comes through in the ’59 version of course, since the movie was part and parcel of that late-50’s Biblical epic boom, but it is pretty stilted and dramatically reverent.

  We had watched Gladiator the week before and had good conversations comparing the two (as in – the plot was just lifted and transposed)  and then digging a bit into history, checking the accuracy (not much on Gladiator, of course)  and looking into the history of the filming of both, as well.

• Random bloggy link of the day: Taking class notes by hand is far better than doing so on a computer.   Tech-crazy schools always bragging about being all-digital, take, er, note.  You’re helping no one except tech companies.

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7 Quick Takes

— 1 —

Almost done. MAN I am ready to be done with this. It’s not a huge project, but it’s been in the front of my brain for two months and I’m ready to think about something else. I should finish it this evening (Friday), thank goodness, because I have possible articles about Better Call Saul and Walker Percy on the horizon over the next few weeks, a trip to plan, plus an actual paper book to read and a television show (season 2 of the BBC’s Happy Valley) to watch.

Oh. Taxes. Thanks for reminding me.

— 2 —

I wrote about Dorothy B. Hughes here – her The Expendable Man was very interesting, dealing with racial issues and abortion in a mid-century context, in ways that might surprise you. I wrote about season one of Happy Valley here – also with a surprising life-related angle.

–– 3—

Yeah, yeah. An exhortation, too. I’ll get to it. I’ll let everyone else have their say, first. More efficient that way.

 — 4 —

As usual, the Homeschool Daily Reports become less daily by the end of the week. Some highlights: After “The Open Window” he read “The Interlopers” also by Saki. I said, “Where you surprised at the ending?” He said, “No, because you know the story couldn’t happen without something bad happening.” This time I printed out an unadapted version the first time around, and I used this as a supplement for discussion. Part of the discussion (and I mention this just to show you how the Homeschool Rabbit Holes work) began with the concept of the omniscient narrator. Well, first off, he didn’t know what “omniscient” meant, so we picked it apart, along with omnipotent and omnipresent. We talked about how those are attributes of God. Then we swung back around to literature, looked for evidence in the story of an omniscient narrator and then talked about other examples of non-omniscient third person narration, and then touching on first person point of view.

— 5 —

I think we’re done with copywork, and will do only dictation from now on. The blogger at this site said that is what she does – go to this link for a good explanatory series on copywork/dictation – and it struck me that yes, it’s time. He’d gain much more from writing passages being dictated (after studying them) than copying at this point. So this week, I had him grab the book he was currently reading – Spy Camp – and pick out a passage he liked. He found one, he copied it yesterday, and then I dictated it to him today. The lessons contained in this sample were spelling of a couple of challenging words and the use of punctuation within quotation marks.

— 6–

Watched some videos over the last couple of days. Highlights were:

The Hip History video on the Indian Removal Act.

Brain Scoop on explaining taxonomy via candy, water beetles and Death Rocks. Love Emily Graslie!

 

— 7 —

And…books. As I wrote here, I have some copies of Prove It God, plus all the picture books. Get your First Communion gifts!

 

 

For more Quick Takes, visit This Ain’t the Lyceum!

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Holy Week Resources

A quick reminder:

• More on all of these here. 
• The Bible study I did for Loyola on the Passion in Matthew’s Gospel is available for Kindle – so you could grab it right now and use it for the week.
• Kris McGregor of Discerning Hearts  and KVSS radio has been using The Power of the Cross for daily Lent podcasts.  You can listen here.   The book is out of print – used copies (not cheap) are available here, but you can also download a free (pdf) copy here. 
• The How To Book of the Mass would be a great gift for a new Catholic.  You can get it here (or probably any Catholic bookstore). I also have copies for sale from by bookstore – the old cover, but same material. 
• The Words We Pray might also be a nice gift. More on that one here. 

• Easter Gifts and First Communion gifts? Got you covered.  Buy from me here or just poke around at your favorite Catholic bookstore on online retailer. 

 

 

 

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