Worth a Thousand Words: Spin

Spin
by Belinda DelPesco

Well Said: After reading a new book ...

It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between. If that is too much for you, you should at least read one old one to every three new ones. Every age has its own outlook. It is especially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books ... Not, of course, that there is any magic about the past. People were no cleverer then than they are now; they made as many mistakes as we. But not the same mistakes. They will not flatter us in the errors we are already committing; and their own errors, being now open and palpable, will not endanger us.

C.S. Lewis, “On the reading of old books,” God in the Dock
via Semicolon

Reading the Bible in Chronological Order

How sweet are your words to my taste! Yes, sweeter than honey to my mouth!

Psalm 119:103

I've come across several people lately who have been doing one of those "read the Bible in a year" plans. I'm intrigued by a plan to read the entire Bible, though having a time limit leaves me cold. Why rush, after all? Also, what with one thing and another, I've read practically the entire Bible in fits and starts over the years, with the notable exception of Isaiah.

However, what I did begin thinking about was the idea of reading the Bible chronologically. I'd like to read salvation history as it unrolls through time — not in the order it was written, but in the order it happened. And it would definitely be interesting to read Isaiah, Jeremiah and the other prophets within the historical timeline.

There are a variety of plans out there, but the one that fit the bill for me was from the Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture. You may recall I love their commentaries and when I saw how their plan interspersed parts of Isaiah throughout the historical books, I could see we were on the same page.

They have a 3-column, 365-day Bible reading plan formatted in legal and letter sized pdfs. Perfect! Here's a bit of their thinking, but they lay out all their rationale at the reading plan link.

For the most part, the Old Testament narrative and prophecy readings present the biblical books in the order of the story they tell (not the same as the order in which they were written). This chronological order is particularly helpful in understanding where the prophets and various narrative works fit in the history of Israel. A significant exception to this chronological presentation is the placement of 1-2 Chronicles (which cover the same period as the books of Samuel and Kings) near to when they were written near the end of the OT period, in order to lessen the experience of repetition.

A similar approach is taken to the third column that contains the books of the NT. These readings begin with the Gospel of Luke and Acts to provide a narrative framework for the whole. The other three Gospels are interspersed among the remaining New Testament books to allow readers to return to reflect on the life of Christ throughout the year. Then come the letters of Paul arranged in approximate chronological order, Hebrews, the epistles of James, Peter, John, and Jude, concluding with the book of Revelation.

I'm going to read from beginning to end, as I said, placing the gospels in their chronological order for when they were written. (Hey it wouldn't be me if I didn't inject my own thinking, would it?)

I'm interested to read the New Testament, when I get to it, in the order that the first Christians did, as letters circulating through churches with gospels popping up later on. Anyway, I have the Church's daily Mass readings for a daily dose of gospel.

So I've begun with Genesis and the Psalms. A couple of chapters of Genesis start my day, while I'm feeding the dogs, and a psalm is the midday punctuation.

I like the idea of the wisdom books accompanying the historical books. In my particular case, Genesis is one of my all-time favorite books and I've always struggled with the Psalms, though wanting to read them has been a goal for a long time. So this is the perfect pairing to begin.

If the moon were replaced with some of our planets ...

Here's the thing I never thought about — rotation. How many science fiction movie directors have missed a big visual by having interesting moons hang in alien skies, but not having them rotate?

(via Cat Hodge's Facebook page)

Worth a Thousand Words: View from a Window

Arts Everyday Living

Poetry: Old Books

OLD BOOKS

by Margaret Widdemer

(via Semicolon)

The people up and down the world that talk and laugh and cry,
They’re pleasant when you’re young and gay, and life is all to try,
But when your heart is tired and dumb, your soul has need of ease,
There’s none like the quiet folk who wait in libraries–
The counselors who never change, the friends who never go,
The old books, the dear books that understand and know!

‘Why, this thing was over, child, and that deed was done,’
They say, ‘When Cleopatra died, two thousand years agone,
And this tale was spun for men and that jest was told
When Sappho was a singing-lass and Greece was very old,
And this thought you hide so close was sung along the wind
The day that young Orlando came a-courting Rosalind!’

The foolish thing that hurt you so your lips could never tell,
Your sister out of Babylon she knows its secret well,
The merriment you could not share with any on the earth
Your brother from King Francis’ court he leans to share your mirth,
For all the ways your feet must fare, the roads your heart must go,
The old books, the dear books, they understand and know!

You read your lover’s hid heart plain beneath some dead lad’s lace,
And in a glass from some Greek tomb you see your own wet face,
For they have stripped from out their souls the thing they could not speak
And strung it to a written song that you might come to seek,
And they have lifted out their hearts when they were beating new
And pinned them on a printed page and given them to you.

The people close behind you, all their hearts are dumb and young,
The kindest word they try to say it stumbles on the tongue,
Their hearts are only questing hearts, and though they strive and try,
Their softest touch may hurt you sore, their best word make you cry.
But still through all the years that come and all the dreams that go
The old books, the dear books, they understand and know!

In which we see how to fight like a space pirate.

And how a Talent gets you where you want to go — faster. Episode 300 of Forgotten Classics: Talents Incorporated, chapters 7-8

Lagniappe: Everyone She Didn't Trust

She started drawing up a mental list of everyone she didn't trust, and had to stop immediately. She didn't have all day.

Mick Herron, Dead Lions

Worth a Thousand Words: St. Christopher

St. Christopher by Daniel Mitsui

I've mentioned before how much I love Daniel Mitsui's art, especially when he does an Asian take on Catholic saints and topics. I especially appreciate his explanations of the creative process for the symbolism. You can see that care and thought that go into his art from this excerpt of the St. Christopher page, which I encourage you to read in its entirety at the link.

I wanted the image to convey this weight bearing down upon the saint, and this determined much of the surrounding imagery, which represents all of Creation, according to day.

I have for some time been fascinated by the account of the six days of Creation given in Genesis, especially the way that God on successive days distinguished and then populated different dimensions. On the first day, by separating day from night, He created a difference of time. On the second, by placing the sky between heaven and earth, He created a vertical order. On the third, by moving the land and the water apart, He created a horizontal order. Over the next three days, this succession (temporal, vertical, horizontal) was repeated, as each dimension was filled with moving things: first, the celestial bodies that mark the days and seasons and years; second, the animals that move vertically (by flying or diving); third, the animals that mover horizontally upon the earth, including Man.

I made sure to include in the picture both day and night, sky and earth, water and land. The sun, moon and stars appear in the sky. Three small birds in the background and three aquatic creatures in the foreground (two eels and one frog) represent the fifth-day animals. The sixth day is represented by Christopher himself, and the seventh (that of God’s rest) by the Christ Child resting on the saint’s shoulders.

Each piece of art is like a visual feast.

Well Said: Why Such Fury Against Religion?

Why is there such a fury against religion now? Because religion is the one reliable force that stands in the way of the power of the strong over the weak.

Peter Hitchins

Pope Francis on Love in the Family

[Cardinal Francis George] said that it is insufficient simply to drop the truth on people and then smugly walk away. Rather, he insisted, you must accompany those you have instructed, committing yourself to helping them integrate the truth that you have shared. I thought of this ... often as I was reading Pope Francis’s apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia. If I might make bold to summarize a complex 264-page document, I would say that Pope Francis wants the truths regarding marriage, sexuality, and family to be unambiguously declared, but that he also wants the Church’s ministers to reach out in mercy and compassion to those who struggle to incarnate those truths in their lives.

Bishop Robert Barron has a great overview of the Pope's exhortation "The Joy of Love" about love in the family ... which brings together the results of the two Synods on the family convoked by Pope Francis in 2014 and 2015.

Quicker summary, based on reading Bishop Barron's piece — the Pope is Catholic and the Truth, it ain't a-changin'. However, being Pope Francis, which is to say a good Catholic, he also counsels gentle methods to help people come to a knowledge of that truth in a disordered world or relationship.

Will I be reading this? Yes, indeed. Though it's long so it may be a bit before I do.

Here's where you can read or download the pdf.

If you don't want to wade through the pdf, Crux has the document chapter by chapter.

My Last Dickens' Novel: The Mystery of Edwin Drood

The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


In pursuing my goal of reading all of Dickens' novels, I saved his last book for the very end, mostly because I knew he died when it was half finished. I was afraid it would break my heart not to know what happens. I combined actual reading with listening to the fantastic David Timson narration.

It was interesting that Dickens was telling a single-strand tale. This was probably because he planned to make it half the length of his usual novels. So it was much more like A Christmas Carol than Bleak House.

It was also interesting that we can see who the murderer is but we are left uncertain as to whether the murder was really committed. Is Edwin missing because he's dead or because the murderer was suffering from an opium dream and incompletely carried out the crime? Perhaps Edwin was left unconscious and something else happened.

The one thing we could tell was that the engagement ring would be a key identifier whenever Edwin turned up, whether dead or alive.

Having read the book I then turned to Wikipedia where I found John Foster's account of what Dickens had told him in two letters. Foster was Dickens' lifelong friend and his biographer after he died. I won't spoil it for anyone wanting to read the book fresh but it did make sense and it also made me bitterly regret not having that second half of the book which was to be "a very curious and new idea for my new story. Not a communicable idea (or the interest of the book would be gone), but a very strong one, though difficult to work."

You can also read an account there of the mock trial that was put on to solve the mystery by G.K. Chesterton, George Bernard Shaw and similar literary luminaries. It sounds as if t'was all good fun.

The jury returned a verdict of manslaughter, Shaw stating that it was a compromise on the grounds that there was not enough evidence to convict Jasper but that they did not want to run the risk of being murdered in their beds. Both sides protested and demanded that the jury be discharged. Shaw claimed that the jury would be only too pleased to be discharged. Chesterton ruled that the mystery of Edwin Drood was insoluble and fined everyone, except himself, for contempt of court.

Well Said: Crushing Someone

If you do not understand a man you cannot crush him. And if you do understand him, very probably you will not.

G.K. Chesterton

Worth a Thousand Words: Alexandra and Elena Pavlovna

Alexandra and Elena Pavlovna, painted by Louise Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun.

I love these two sweet sisters, painted by one of my favorite artists. It makes me think of when Hannah and Rose were little. They were such loving sisters.

On behalf of the former sinners of the future ...

... Julie and Scott are going to keep right on running this podcast, even though they have been running it since they were juvenile delinquents ... and they are tired from weariness! Brando. Sinatra. Guys and Dolls. Get Episode 130 at A Good Story is Hard to Find.

Worth a Thousand Words: Leaping

Leaping
taken by the incomparable Remo Savisaar

In which we discover how a victory can be a catastrophe.

Can Captain Bors turn it back into a victory again? Forgotten Classics, Episode 299, featuring chapters 5-6 of Talents Incorporated by Murray Leinster.

What We've Been Watching: Hits and Misses

HITS

Steve Jobs

Set backstage at three iconic product launches and ending in 1998 with the unveiling of the iMac, Steve Jobs takes us behind the scenes of the digital revolution to paint an intimate portrait of the brilliant man at its epicenter.

Wow. Brilliant.

All the performances were wonderful, especially those of Michael Fassbender and Kate Winslet. I saw some critics complaining because they felt there was too much talking, though I'm not sure how you have a movie about ideas without, you know, talking. Kudos to both director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin for making the movie feel dynamic and exciting despite the fact that it is set backstage before three different product launches. The most fascinating thing, though, was that the revelation of Steve Jobs' personality and growth was so wonderfully revealed as we watched the progress of his products.

Tom and I knew so much about Steve Jobs already (for reasons I won't go into here - suffice it to say that we were amused when Jobs began being treated like a rock star by friends who "discovered" Apple because of iPods and iPhones) ... and about those launches in particular that it was fascinating to see how they were used as springboards for a character study.

It's also interesting thinking about how the stories of Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs are told, considering Aaron Sorkin wrote both but David Fincher directed one and Danny Boyle the other.

My Italian Secret (doc.)

A heroic story that was all but lost to history, until now. The film recounts how WWII bicycling idol Gino Bartali, physician Giovanni Borromeo and other Italians worked with Jewish leaders and high-ranking officials of the Catholic Church, risking their lives by defying the Nazis to save thousands of Italy’s Jews.

It never occurred to me before that the Italian Jewish experience during WWII would have been so different from what we've heard about so much of Germany or France. Fascinating.

MISSES

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night

In the Iranian ghost-town Bad City, a place that reeks of death and loneliness, the townspeople are unaware they are being stalked by a lonesome vampire.

If Fellini made a vampire movie, this would be the movie he made.

So much atmosphere, so little story.

The Verdict

Frank Galvin is a down-on-his luck lawyer, reduced to drinking and ambulance chasing. Former associate Mickey Morrissey reminds him of his obligations in a medical malpractice suit that he himself served to Galvin on a silver platter: all parties willing to settle out of court. Blundering his way through the preliminaries, he suddenly realizes that perhaps after all the case should go to court; to punish the guilty, to get a decent settlement for his clients, and to restore his standing as a lawyer.

And to restore his self respect. Let's not forget his self respect.

I was looking for legal thrillers for my movie discussion groups and The Verdict kept popping up on every "law film" or "legal thriller" list I found.

Paul Newman is, needless to say, terrific. The rest of the movie felt more like a slow character study than either a legal or thriller story. It was a good character study but not good enough to carry the entire film.

The Intern

70-year-old widower Ben Whittaker has discovered that retirement isn't all it's cracked up to be. Seizing an opportunity to get back in the game, he becomes a senior intern at an online fashion site, founded and run by Jules Ostin.

Another movie I tried to see if it would be good for movie discussion groups. Short answer: no.

There is much to like in this movie but the slow pacing removes any punch, whether for humor or angst. If they'd have cut 20-30 minutes out (and there were plenty of places to do it) it would have been a much improved film.

That wasn't the only problem. For example, there were a couple of speeches by Robert DeNiro's character which sounded as if they should've been coming from a best girlfriend instead of a 70 year old man who'd been married 42 years.

However, as I said most of it works adequately enough, or would if the editing had been tighter.

Too Late for an Autopsy - I talk about books with Jenny at Reading Envy

I haven't talked books with Jenny at her Reading Envy podcast since episode 3. This week I was again her guest, on episode 55! Yes, it has been several years since the last time.

Maybe that's why the list of extra books mentioned is so long. Or it could simply be that I can't help peppering people with lots and lots of book ideas.

Join us to see what we've both been reading lately. Reading Envy, episode 55.

Tom Hiddleston and Stephen Colbert See the Light

I was already interested in seeing I Saw the Light, the Hank Williams biopic, though I did wonder how Tom Hiddleston could possibly pull off the role. I liked both the insights and the brief music sample from this clip.