Thing I Don't Understand #7*: Complaints About Small Type in Books

I hear nothing but praise for large type and damning of small type in books.

At the book club, I showed my Collectors Library edition of Jane Eyre,delighting in the small format, someone dismissed me with, "Oh you still can read small type."

As if I haven't heard this one before and she couldn't see the glasses on my face.

Then this morning I read someone who said, "I couldn't read the small type. Must be my aged eyes."

My question: is this not the modern age? Have we not got reading glasses? Why the complaints?

As someone who has worn glasses since the 4th grade for nearsightedness and whose eyes have aged in the expected manner so that I now have some farsightedness, I wear trifocals (smoothed over so y'all can't tell ... ha!)

Man up, get some reading glasses and stop forcing those of us who do to lug around gigantic books with monstrous type of the sort that used to be featured only in the Dick and Jane stories for tykes.

(I'm talking about the "average" here, not the unusual exception condition ... so we need not go there.)

* Numbered in no particular order except that I'm sure there are six other things I don't understand more often than this. Be glad I didn't drag you through those questions so early in the day! :-)

An Everlasting Feast by Tamar Adler

Tamar Adler was inspired by M.F.K. Fisher's How to Eat a Wolf. Is she a worthy successor to the legacy of eating well using simple ingredients?

My review is at Meanwhile, Back in the Kitchen.

Jane Eyre or Katniss?

What do our heroines say about our culture?

Heroines Past and Present is the topic of discussion at A Good Story is Hard to Find.

Joseph Susanka and two other guests (including my own daughter Rose) join Scott and me for our first "topic" discussion.

No one wants their first words of the day to be, "Damn it" ...

... when they hear the election results on the clock radio. (Yes, we still have one of those.)

But there were the results and there I was.

It took a while to regain perspective and recall that I am, in fact, a monarchist. As one of that family, my duty is to convey His Majesty's wishes as best I can in this minor principality to which I have been assigned.

I do my best. And sometimes it can get me down. But I answer to a higher power, a monarch who has all our best interests deep in his sacred heart.

For now, that is enough.

And I curse no more.


NOTE
If you don't click through on the "monarchist" link this post might not make sense. I count on HC readers to be thorough! :-)

An Election Day Prayer

From The Curt Jester.

Let nothing disturb you,
Let nothing frighten you,
All things are passing away:
God never changes.
Patience obtains all things
Whoever has God lacks nothing;
God alone suffices.

– St. Teresa of Avila

Reading Yours is the Church by Mike Aquilina last week, I was struck by a comment he made about not letting things like current events get you down. The Church has been here for 2,000 years. Before us, God guided the Hebrews for ... what ... 2,000 years before that. We do the best we can with what we've got in front of us and trust in God's providence.

So I'll go to vote at lunch and trust that we will all do our best ... in charity ... in love ... in wanting the best for each other, even if we disagree on how best to do it.

(I'm just glad I don't have to vote on some of the issues that Rose was reading to us from the L.A. County voters ballot info. Ugh.)

May God bless us and our country.

Now get out there and vote!

Suicide by Choice? Not So Fast

I received this link last week from a friend who said: "An interesting article in the New York Times by a man who suffers profound disabilities. The writer explains he is against the assisted-suicide bill pending in Massachusetts (I think) because of concerns that disabled patients might be coerced into death."

It was enlightening indeed.

NEXT week, voters in Massachusetts will decide whether to adopt an assisted-suicide law. As a good pro-choice liberal, I ought to support the effort. But as a lifelong disabled person, I cannot.

There are solid arguments in favor. No one will be coerced into taking a poison pill, supporters insist. The “right to die” will apply only to those with six months to live or less. Doctors will take into account the possibility of depression. There is no slippery slope.

Fair enough, but I remain skeptical. There’s been scant evidence of abuse so far in Oregon, Washington and Montana, the three states where physician-assisted death is already legal, but abuse — whether spousal, child or elder — is notoriously underreported, and evidence is difficult to come by. What’s more, Massachusetts registered nearly 20,000 cases of elder abuse in 2010 alone.

My problem, ultimately, is this: I’ve lived so close to death for so long that I know how thin and porous the border between coercion and free choice is, how easy it is for someone to inadvertently influence you to feel devalued and hopeless — to pressure you ever so slightly but decidedly into being “reasonable,” to unburdening others, to “letting go.”

Perhaps, as advocates contend, you can’t understand why anyone would push for assisted-suicide legislation until you’ve seen a loved one suffer. But you also can’t truly conceive of the many subtle forces — invariably well meaning, kindhearted, even gentle, yet as persuasive as a tsunami — that emerge when your physical autonomy is hopelessly compromised.

Do go read the whole thing, especially if you live in an area where this is an issue to be voted upon tomorrow.

I Greet You, People of the Past

I will not turn my clock back. I will be living one hour in the future. I greet you, the People of the Past. Your ways are quaint.

Best Twitter Quote of the Day ... via Joseph Susanka.

Health-Care Law Spurs a Shift to Part-Time Workers

Some low-wage employers are moving toward hiring part-time workers instead of full-time ones to mitigate the health-care overhaul's requirement that large companies provide health insurance for full-time workers or pay a fee.

Several restaurants, hotels and retailers have started or are preparing to limit schedules of hourly workers to below 30 hours a week. That is the threshold at which large employers in 2014 would have to offer workers a minimum level of insurance or pay a penalty starting at $2,000 for each worker.

The Wall Street Journal's story Health-Care Law Spurs a Shift to Part-Time Workers discusses a change that never even occurred to me in considering the Affordable Care Act. When does health insurance hurt workers? When employers are squeezed so that they can't take any other measures.

Reading the article, I thought these employers were jerks. And then I got to the examples.

Pillar Hotels & Resorts this summer began to focus more on hiring part-time workers among its 5,500 employees, after the Supreme Court upheld the health-care overhaul, said Chief Executive Chris Russell. The company has 210 franchise hotels, under the Sheraton, Fairfield Inns, Hampton Inns and Holiday Inns brands.

"The tendency is to say, 'Let me fill this position with a 40-hour-a-week employee.' "Mr. Russell said. "I think we have to think differently."

Pillar offers health insurance to employees who work 32 hours a week or more, but only half take it, and Mr. Russell wants to limit his exposure to rising health-care costs. He said he planned to pursue new segments of the population, such as senior citizens, to find workers willing to accept part-time employment.

And I had to think differently. This employer is offering insurance in good faith. But the government's Affordable Care Act would penalize him for something that half of his employees are essentially turning down. They evidently don't need it.

And the employers are going to have to find ways around it to survive.

A bad situation forced upon all of them by the lack of thought that went into the Affordable Care Act.

If you have to ask, you're streets behind.

Pierce: Ay-bed, your social skills aren't exactly "streets ahead." Know what I mean?

Abed: [thinks] I don't.

Jeff: You're not alone in this case. Pierce, stop trying to coin the phrase "streets ahead."

Pierce: Trying? Coined and minted! Been there, coined that! "Streets ahead" is verbal... wildfire!

Annie: Does it just mean "cool," or is it supposed to be like, "miles ahead"?

Pierce: If you have to ask, you're streets behind.

Any Community watchers remember the episode where Pierce tried to coin "streets ahead" as slang. Which rapidly spread throughout the campus.

However, Rose was watching Help (that great old Beatles movie) lately and was stunned that one of the electricians used "streets ahead" as slang. Yes, way back in 1965 in England.

Turns out it is actual British slang.

In looking around, Tom found this great site, Not One Off Britishisms, which tells us all about it.

Who knew we were all streets behind on this? No one. That's who.

Yours is the Church: How Catholicism Shapes Our World - Mike Aquilina

Yours Is the Church: How Catholicism Shapes Our World by Mike Aquilina

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

What has the Catholic Church done for humanity?

If you listen to popular culture today, you might get the impression that the Church is the universal enemy. The Church stands inthe way of progress. It exploits the poor. It oppresses women and children. It condemns everything that's good in our culture. And above all, it stands opposed to science and reason.

You've heard it all so often that, even if you're Catholic, you might half-believe it. But it's all wrong, and this book is going to show you why.

There are lots of books about great Catholics who have also been scientists, musicians, artists, or leaders--people who have done some good inthe world, even though they're Catholic. This book isn't like that. This book makes a much bigger and more startling claim: Everything about our modern world we think is good is there because of the Church.

The only reason we care about the poor is because Christianity has won. The only reason the rights of women and children are important is because the Church has made them important. The only reason we have science is because the Church taught us how to think.

This book is full of unbelievable statements like that. My hope is that, by the end of the book, you'll believe them all.

Yours is the Church that built up the best in modern culture. And yours is the church that has constantly defended the best against the horrors that rise against it. It's an exciting story, roaming up and down through two thousand years of history.

This introduction to the book gives a better overview than I could.

Aquilina covers various ways our civilization has benefited overall, and continues to do, from Catholicism's 2,000 years of cultural influence. Topics include: respect for women, the dignity of children, art, literature, music, charity, and more. He makes the points clearly by showing what pagan culture was like before Christianity, the influence of Christians on that culture overall, and then shows how our Christianity-infused culture is still shaped by that influence.

One of the things I liked best about this book is that Aquilina comes from such a positive point of view. As our priest often says, teaching from a positive point of view gets much further than stressing the negative continually. I have read many a book that sets out to refute the myths of what "everyone knows" about the Catholic Church. They may be effective for a few but they are often negative in tone which makes them difficult to read or care about if you are not fascinated by that particular topic. Aquilina's positive stance is evenhanded and makes one interested to see just how he's going to pull off the next "fantastic" claim.

Another thing that I really liked is that Aquilina doesn't sugar coat it when there is blame to be taken by the Church. I have never really been able to swallow defenses I've read of the later Crusades. Aquilina makes sure everything is put in perspective, such as making sure the context of an "inquisition" and the court systems of the times are covered, and then point out where blame is to be had. He does not leave matters there, often putting our own times in proper context in ways that open our eyes further. One of the most surprising instances for me was this bit of insight about the sex abuse scandals.

So our natural horror at child abuse--which by the way, is a good sign that our culture, for all its faults, may still be reasonably healthy--didn't come from the Greeks or the Romans. It came from the Christians. It was the Church that taught us to acknowledge the sacred rights of children as human beings.

The world judges Catholics by Christian standards now; the Christian victory has been so complete that it's practically invisible. When the babbling bloggers blame us for being Christians, they're really blaming us for not being Christian enough. Christian principles seem like part of the order of nature, laws as immutable as gravity and magnetism. But that's only because the Church succeeded, against all odds, in replacing what everyone thought was an immutable law of nature with a strange Christian idea--such as the notion that children are people too.

Although author Mike Aquilina is Catholic, his claims have been echoed to me recently from an unexpected source. Helping out with RCIA (classes for those interested in converting to Catholicism), subjects arose which prompted me to speak apologetically of how the Church has handled things such as the sex scandal.

Each time, one potential convert has spoken up saying, "Historically speaking ..." and setting the record in a larger historical context which makes it clear that shortfalls very often are not so much due to the Catholic Church as they are due to lapses on individuals' parts or even those of particular institutions within the Church (yes, Torquemada, I'm lookin' at you).

This particular "defender of the faith" comes from no particular religious background. His conversion began after visiting many of the cathedrals throughout Europe which then led him to begin reading history and noting the Church's place in it. I have to admit it has been refreshing to hear someone with no particular agenda comment on various contentious matters from a purely historical or statistical standpoint. Inadvertently, this person's casual remarks back up what Mike Aquilina states in this book. There is a lot of credit to be given to the Catholic Church that the world has become blind to ... and we can be proud of being part of this rich faith.

Novena for an Ordered Life

I picked this up from the Darwins some time ago. As I have mentioned and am going to mention regularly for at least a month, I'm very busy. This is an excellent novena for such times.

I myself haven't prayed it specifically as a novena, but have read it over slowly during prayer times as a meditative aid. And it has proven to be a wonderful reminder of what is really important. Which is a nice calming measure on its own as well as a connection to God's priorities rather than mine.

For Ordering a Life Wisely
St. Thomas Aquinas

O merciful God, grant that I may
desire ardently,
search prudently,
recognize truly,
and bring to perfect completion
whatever is pleasing to You
for the praise and glory of Your name.

Put my life in good order, O my God
Grant that I may know
what You require me to do.

Bestow upon me
the power to accomplish your will,
as is necessary and fitting
for the salvation of my soul.

Grant to me, O Lord my God,
that I may not falter in times
of prosperity or adversity,
so that I may not be exalted in the former,
nor dejected in the latter.

May I not rejoice in anything
unless it leads me to You;
may I not be saddened by anything
unless it turns me from You.

May I desire to please no one,
nor fear to displease anyone,
but You.

May all transitory things, O Lord,
be worthless to me
and may all things eternal
be ever cherished by me.

May any joy without You
be burdensome for me
and may I not desire anything else
besides You.

May all work, O Lord
delight me when done for Your sake.
and may all repose not centered in You
be ever wearisome for me.

Grant unto me, my God,
that I may direct my heart to You
and that in my failures
I may ever feel remorse for my sins
and never lose the resolve to change.

O Lord my God, make me
submissive without protest,
poor without discouragement,
chaste without regret,
patient without complaint,
humble without posturing,
cheerful without frivolity,
mature without gloom,
and quick-witted without flippancy.

O Lord my God, let me
fear You without losing hope,
be truthful without guile,
do good works without presumption,
rebuke my neighbor without haughtiness,
and -- without hypocrisy --
strengthen him by word and example.

Give to me, O Lord God,
a watchful heart,
which no capricious thought
can lure away from You.

Give to me,
a noble heart,
which no unworthy desire can debase.

Give to me
a resolute heart,
which no evil intention can divert.

Give to me
a stalwart heart,
which no tribulation can overcome.

Give to me
a temperate heart,
which no violent passion can enslave.

Give to me, O Lord my God,
understanding of You,
diligence in seeking You,
wisdom in finding You,
discourse ever pleasing to You,
perseverance in waiting for You,
and confidence in finally embracing You.

Grant
that with Your hardships
I may be burdened in reparation here,
that Your benefits
I may use in gratitude upon the way,
that in Your joys
I may delight by glorifying You
in the Kingdom of Heaven.

You Who live and reign,
God, world without end.
Amen.

Blogging Around: The Too-Busy-To-Post Edition

Luckily, these folks ain't too busy ...

• Terrapin: A Mystery - Jeff Miller has the review of a book I'd like to read.
• Darkship Thieves - Will Duquette has the review of another book I'd like to read.
• Light, Lovely Meringue Cake - The Anchoress has a recipe (and scrumptious looking photo) of a cake I'd like to eat.
• Monster Hunter International - another review by Will of a book I'd like to read ... it looks about the speed of what I can handle right now.

Sorry I've been gone so much. I should have a few goodies for you next week, just in time for Halloween!

I'm ready to tell you my secret now ...

... Scott and Julie both see dead people. M. Night Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense is the topic of discussion at A Good Story is Hard to Find.

A super-busy day again, so this will be my only posting today. Sorry, but go listen to Scott and me discuss the movie! There's plenty of Catholic goodness within!

The Wind in the Willows

The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


So you've begun to get really busy at work and you're feeling stressed out.

Then you watched The Sixth Sense (by yourself, after dark) so you can discuss it on a podcast.

And finally, you just know you're going to have nightmares and possibly be afraid of the dark if you wake up having to make that trip out of bed ... based on the last time you watched that darned movie.

What do you do?

What DO you do?

You pull out your trusty copy of The Wind in the Willows, that's what.

This gentle, imaginative tale of small animals who straddle both animal and human behavior in the most charming way will pull you in and have you thinking of Rat's splendid picnic basket, Badger's den beneath the Wild Woods, or Toad's way of being infuriating while his friends love him anyway. It pulled me into that fantasy world as a child and does so again when I read it as an adult.

Highly recommended (after all Teddy Roosevelt can't be wrong ... and this book has his letter to the author in the introduction).

The Knox Bible (updated)

I am beginning that giant annual project today which leaves me a bit discombobulated and somewhat ... ok, a lot ... freaked out. All will be well and all shall be well and I know this is so. But the beginning is still a monumental task and so I am updating my review of The Knox Bible. See the update below.

The Knox Bible by Msgr Ronald A. Knox

It is unquestioned that for the past 300 years the Authorized Version has been the greatest single formative influence in English prose style. But that time is over …. When the Bible ceases, as it is ceasing, to be accepted as a sacred text, it will not long survive for its fine writing. It seems to me probable that in a hundred years' time the only Englishmen who know their Bibles will be Catholics. And they will know it in Msgr. Knox's version.-- Evelyn Waugh

I have been trying to get my hands on a Knox Bible for some time, ever since I learned of the existence of such a thing. An English translation done between 1936-1945 that strove to keep beauty while making all clear to the average Englishman ... translated directly from Latin Vulgate of St. Jerome, but while consulting the texts in Greek and Hebrew where needed. It sounded fascinating and possibly too good to be true.

Alas, Knox Bibles were nowhere to be found. Until now when Baronius Press has reprinted it in a nice serviceable edition ... sturdy-seeming but with lovely touches like ribbons, gilt-edging, marble end papers and more.

I have just begun to read but already have seen a couple of instances where the translation brought tears to my eyes when I read it aloud ... it struck a chord within.

UPDATE
As I sit daily and open this Bible up, I am struck by how readable it is.

Some of that is the format. Instead of having subheads telling us what we'll read, verse numbers at the beginning of sentences, and the formats we're used to ... it is in chapters and paragraphs. Just like a real book.

The verses are in tiny numbers on the outside margin. This sounds difficult, but as I've been checking this translation against others, I have found it is very workable.

Best of all, it leaves the reader free to just sit and ... read. As one would a regular book. I feel as if I can let the text hit me however it happens to for that moment, which surely is a good thing when we are trying to hear the Word in the words.

My biggest comparison with other translations was when I received it and sat down to look over the first couple of chapters of Genesis ... verse by verse ... compared with the New American Bible, the Revised Standard Version, the Douay-Rheims, and Robert Alter's superb translation. I didn't realize I had so many translations in the house until that moment. Which made me laugh. Bible geek - book geek ... it's pretty much the same thing at that point.

Reading them aloud, I read Knox's chapter 1, verse 2:

Earth was still an empty waste, and darkness hung over the deep; but already, over its waters, stirred the breath of God.

What is there in that to make me cry? I don't know but it touched my soul and I did. Something about that "stirred by the breath of God" was just so lovely and evocative.

You can imagine how I laughed, then, when reading my New American Bible:

and the earth was without form or shape, with darkness over the abyss and a mighty wind was sweeping over the waters

A mighty wind? Hmmm ...

Of all the Bibles, Robert Alter's "won" the Genesis if I can call it winning. But the Knox Bible was a close second and it was often more beautifully put.

It also made me smile, when I read Genesis, chapter 2, verse 1:

Thus heaven and earth and all the furniture of them were completed.

There was something both amusing and also "right" about thinking of the animals, fish, plants, and people as "furnishing" the earth. It settled in my mind in a way that the other translations failed to do (array, hosts, etc.).

I read Knox's "The Englishing of the Bible" which is a collection of essays he wrote explaining his translation choices. He wanted language that would be accessible, beautiful, and timeless. He kept "thee" and "thou" because, as he put it, there were times when the "thou" would mean God and times when that same "thou" might mean man ... he didn't want his choices between "thou" and "you" to influence the reader. He wanted to leave that for the moment and the Spirit to decide. I do find "thou" awkward sometimes, but it always makes me think about Knox's choice and I think that is a good reason for the older language in it.

This morning I looked at Psalm 19 (18 in Knox's numbering):

SEE how the skies proclaim God's glory, how the vault of heaven betrays his craftsmanship! Each day echoes its secret to the next, each night passes on to the next its revelation of knowledge; no word, no accent of theirs that does not make itself heard, till their utterance fills every land, till their message reaches the ends of the world.

There is a dynamic quality in the day echoing to the night, to the night passing on its revelation, that makes me think of nature itself as crying aloud, "Cannot you see God? We are showing Him to you." (So much less eloquent than the psalmist or Knox, of course.) But I can feel it in the birds singing outside my window, in the wind blowing the puffy cloud along.

I continue to compare the translations and there is no perfect one. I love the RSV. Sometimes Knox's old fashioned verbs slow me down or the meaning is not as clear as another Bible. But that is not often so far.

It speaks to me. As does much of this splendid translation. I will be reading it every day.

Other readers' reactions:
The Anchoress: The Knox Bible is a Treasure ... who has some great excerpts.
The Hermeneutic of Continuity ... sharing memories of taking Knox's translation to class.

The Holy Family, Zombies, and Midrash: Unholy Night by Seth Grahame-Smith

“Joseph? Mary? My name is Balthazar. This is Gaspar . . . this is Melchyor. We don’t want to hurt you . . . we’re just looking for a place to rest. But, Joseph? if you don’t put that pitchfork down, I’m going to take it from you and stab you to death in front of your wife and child. Do you understand?”

Wanted thieves Balthazar, Melchyor, and Gaspar, disguised as wise men, show up at a little manger in Bethlehem with a huge star blazing overhead, looking for a hideout from the law. But when Herod's soldiers begin slaughtering the babies in Bethlehem, Balthazar (a.k.a. The Antioch Ghost) takes the safety of the Holy Family into his own hands. As fugitives on the run to Egypt, they must escape not only Roman soldiers but creatures of mythology and the occult. Everyone's either gunning for the Antioch Ghost with a price on his head or the innocent newborn who has such an unearthly effect on those around him.

Seth Grahame-Smith (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter) finally stops inserting his words into other people's writing and writes a book in his own words. And a fine job he does of it too. For a violent, gore-filled, action-thriller there are a surprising number of very human characters, many of whom we are meant to recognize.

Pontius Pilate appears as an ambitious young officer ambivalent about truth. Mary and Joseph struggle with how to reconcile the truth of Jesus as God with the reality of a baby who must be fed, loved, and parented. Above all, this is Balthazar's story, who has a complex story-line driving his actions and attitudes. We learn how he became the cynical Antioch Ghost and we wonder if he will find a more worthy goal than vengeance.

Above all, I was surprised to find myself eventually thinking of Unholy Night as modern midrash. Midrash is a traditional Jewish way of trying to understand the underlying spirit of scripture, sometimes connecting it to modern life, by creating parables. This allows for some imaginative storytelling as rabbis look for interpretations that are not immediately obvious but are nevertheless held within the original text.

Grahame-Smith lives up to the midrash ideal by both being respectful to his source material and also using his vivid imagination on a Biblical event that is wide-open to interpretation: Mary and Joseph's flight to Egypt with the Christ child. Among other things, the author is very good at opening new views on familiar subjects, such as just how horrible King Herod was. It brings to life the terrible things he did very much as I have read them in history books. One also gets a deeper understanding of the locals' simmering, resentful hatred of the Roman empire.

Narrator Peter Berkrot is a reader I haven't come across before but will be seeking out in the future. He conveys just the right amount of cynicism as Balthazar, menace and insanity as Herod, and innocence as Mary. I am not sure how this book comes across in print but I'd listen to it again in a heartbeat thanks to Berkrot's narration.

Grahame-Smith has delivered a story of Biblical proportions in Unholy Night: zombies, swarms of locusts, epic sword fights, outlaws, obsessed rulers, vengeance, redemption, and more are in this entertaining action tale. That he did it all while staying true to original material that can be unpopular reading these days makes him a writer I am going to seek out in the future. Highly recommended.

This review first appeared at SFFaudio.

The Ladies of Grace Adieu by Susanna Clarke

This is a collection of eight short stories that return readers to the world of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. As I enjoyed Simon Prebble's narration of Strange & Norrell, I returned to that format to hear these stories. Prebble shares narration duty with Davina Porter whose undeniable skill I enjoyed even more than Mr. Prebble's and that is saying quite a lot.

Since all but one of these stories were previously published elsewhere, they vary from mere fragments (The Duke of Wellington Misplaces His Horse) to retold fairy tales (Lickerish Hill). These are almost like some of the longer footnotes from Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, which often meander away to tell fully imagined stories before returning to the main narrative.

The one constant is Clarke's skill at conveying readers to a magical England in the style of well known 19th-century writers such as Jane Austen and Charles Dickens. Clarke has a dry wit which enlivens many of the tales and a good imagination for weaving attention holding yarns. I enjoyed all these stories quite a lot. If you are wondering whether to take the plunge into Strange & Norrell, these stories might be a good test of the waters.

Originally reviewed for SFFaudio.

Troy and Abed Airing Someday ...

I believe in October 19 ... I believe, I believe ...

In One God: Professing the Creed for the Year of Faith

The Wine Dark Sea's series continues considering the creed phrase-by-phrase with "In one God" ... which is my contribution to the series as it turns out. Check it out at Wine Dark Sea.

In Which Virgilia's prevision comes in handy ... or does it?

More of The Unforeseen at Forgotten Classics.