Well Said: A Student

A student is not a container you have to fill but a torch you have to light up.

Albert Einstein, Ideas and Opinions

Worth a Thousand Words: Golden Leaves

Golden Leaves, Remo Savisaar

Interview on Catholic Mom

Nancy Ward interviewed me after Seeking Jesus in Everyday Life came out. It is now featured on Catholic Mom! It was great fun talking with Nancy and I really appreciate the publicity for the book — which makes great Advent reading or a Christmas gift!

Well Said: Say It Again

Say what you have just said, but in a different tone, without anger, and your argument will gain in strength and, above all, you won't offend God.

St. Josemaria Escriva

Well Said: Peter the rock and Peter the denier

We have grown accustomed to make a clear distinction between Peter the rock and Peter the denier of Christ — the denier of Christ: that is the Peter as he was before Easter; the rock: that is the Peter as he was after the Pentecost, the Peter of whom we have constructed a singularly idealistic image. But, in reality, he was a both times both of these... Has it not been thus throughout the history of the Church that the Pope, the successor of Peter has been at once Petra and Skandalon — both the rock of God and a stumbling-block? In fact the faithful will always have to reckon with this paradox of the divine dispensation that shames their pride again and again.

Pope Benedict XVI

Worth a Thousand Words: Red Squirrel

Red Squirrel, Remo Savisaar

Well Said: Judas

Judas is neither a master of evil nor the figure of a demoniacal power of darkness but rather a sycophant who bows down before the anonymous power of changing moods and current fashion. But it is precisely this anonymous power that crucified Jesus, for it was the anonymous voices that cried, "Away with him! Crucify him!"

Pope Benedict XVI

Artemis by Andy Weir

Jazz Bashara is a criminal.

Well, sort of. Life on Artemis, the first and only city on the moon, is tough if you're not a rich tourist or an eccentric billionaire. So smuggling in the occasional harmless bit of contraband barely counts, right? Not when you've got debts to pay and your job as a porter barely covers the rent.

Everything changes when Jazz sees the chance to commit the perfect crime, with a reward too lucrative to turn down. But pulling off the impossible is just the start of her problems, as she learns that she's stepped square into a conspiracy for control of Artemis itself—and that now, her only chance at survival lies in a gambit even riskier than the first.

This was a huge disappointment as Andy Weir's first book, The Martian, was a real favorite of mine and I was really looking forward to seeing how he did with a different sort of story. Unfortunately, for me the new book is something of a cross between a YA book and an engineering manual featuring aluminum manufacturing. If this sounds like an awkward mixture, it is because it is.

Weir obviously loves engineering and how our lives depend on it, often in ways we don't think about. In the The Martian the story drove our need to know about engineering so the hero could survive. In the case of Artemis, our need to know is not obvious as the heroine engages in a shady deal to score 1 million slugs (lunar currency). However, the story often pauses to point out how aluminum provides more than enough oxygen to keep humans supplied and so forth. By the end, we do indeed need to know details about aluminum manufacturing, however I am fairly sure I needed to know less than half the information which we stopped so often to absorb.

Enough of the engineering side. But what of the story itself? It is a heist tale with tendrils that sink into the seamy underbelly of the lunar economy. Unfortunately it is told to us by Jazz, a young woman who has the virtue of being a genius and very stubborn but who otherwise has almost no personality. She has a secret — why does she need a million slugs? But we are told so little about it that I soon forgot she had a secret at all. And I never cared about it or her. I don't mind YA, or as they used to call them in Robert Heinlein's day, juvenile stories but this had little of Heinlein's skill which always told the story about engaging characters first and filled in details/science only as necessary to keep things rolling along.

In fact, by the time the final big plan was being laid out for the assembled gang, I had become so bored that it was only by a sheer effort of will that I finished the book at all.

That isn't to say that the book doesn't have good points. I thoroughly enjoyed the worldbuilding. Artemis and the way citizens lived was really interesting. The letters between Jazz and her penpal were wonderful at giving us information briefly but evocatively. If more of the book had been like that, it would have been much more interesting. There was one sequence which grabbed me when Jazz was doing a job for a local mob-boss on the lunar surface. Obviously one of Weir's authorial skills is creating high tension moments and making readers care about their outcome. Unfortunately this book only pulled that off once for me.

I appreciate that Weir is trying something different and it has to be insanely difficult to follow up a first novel that was also made into a big movie. More than anything this book makes me interested to see how his next book turns out.

Worth a Thousand Words: Doggy!

Doggy!, Karin Jurick

Well Said: Trouble

Trouble is so hard to bear, is it not?—How can we live and think that any one has trouble—piercing trouble—and we could help them, and never try?

George Eliot, Middlemarch

Listen Up — Wolf 359, Gone with the Wind

As I mentioned, I've been working on a big project lately. Luckily, it's the sort that lets me listen to podcasts and audiobooks while I work. Here are one of each that have been the backbone of my listening.

Wolf 359 is a radio drama in the tradition of Golden Age of Radio shows. Set on board the U.S.S. Hephaestus space station, the misfit crew deals with daily life-or-death emergencies, while searching for signs of alien life and discovering there might be more to their mission than they thought.

Early episodes begin as Communication Officer Matt Eiffel's audio diary, broadcast into space at large to break up his boredom. He's a slacker, but an entertaining one and we learn about the crew and life aboard an out-dated space station. Day-to-day activities are more wide ranging than you'd expect and the growing sense that something sinister is intended from the employers on Earth keeps things jumpy — especially as star Wolf 359 begins acting unpredictably.

I'm hooked on this and have been binge listening, only slowing down in the last week or two as the suspense began to get to me. I've been especially impressed with the way that the show can take you from loathing to liking ... and sometimes back to loathing ... particular characters with each new revelation of backstory.

Gone with the Wind was on my parents' bookshelves when I was growing up and, as happened with so many classics, at some point I picked it up and devoured the whole thing. I've probably read it three times during my lifetime, enjoying it more each time.

Having been written in 1930 by a Southerner, some of the characters have attitudes that were unpopular when I was growing up, much less during these cracklingly divisive times. And that includes the author who will break out in little asides occasionally for commentary about the South. That's when it turns into a look into the mind of those who lost the war. At least, that's what I remember. It must have been 20 years since I've read this.

No matter what, it remains a wonderful story. I had just finished listening to the audiobook of Kim and it immersed me me in an exotic place and mindset. I missed being in such a different world. Since I'd heard several people recently mention they were listening to Gone with the Wind, it somehow seemed like it might fill that gap. And it did. I'd forgotten how many details Mitchell put into her novel and every time I felt as if I couldn't stand Scarlett for one more second something would happen which would pull me back into the story.

I'm about halfway through since I'm taking it slowly but if you've never tried this book I encourage you to pick it up. If you have read it, you'll discover, as an acquaintance said recently, "Every time you read it you find something new there."

Worth a Thousand Words: Lion Resting

Lion Resting, Rembrandt
via Lines and Colors

Apologies for my absence!

So sorry I haven't been around much lately. It's my annual crazy time doing layout for the Worthington Direct catalog. 162 pages this year, my part takes about a month and a half with intensity increasing as we go. It will go to the printer the week after Thanksgiving so lately I've been working nights and weekends to make sure I'm keeping up my end.

I really enjoy the work but it does take its toll on available time and also memory! I meant to post this apology last weekend!

I'll be back to normal soon, hopefully getting us back to normal around here next week.

Thanks for your patience!

Well Said: Sun, Rain, and the Holy Spirit

Just as the sun shines and the day brings light, the stream irrigates the soil and rain waters the earth, so the heavenly Spirit pours himself into us.

St. Cyprian of Carthage

Worth a Thousand Words: Forest Wilderness

Forest Wilderness, J. E. H. MacDonald

Well Said: What do you want me to do for you?

Jesus said to him in reply, "What do you want me to do for you?"

The blind man said to him, "Master, I want to see."

Mark 10:51

We all relate to the blind man. It's the common condition. Where am I blind? I want to see.

But take a second and look at Jesus' question. That is considerate and gracious. It is the question God asks us, even though we don't stop to think of it. He met us more than halfway by becoming human and dying for us. And here he is, "What do you want me to do for you?"

It's a question I ponder when I begin my morning prayer. Considering the asker makes me both shed the small stuff and yet also bring the small stuff to him. He's asking. He wants to know. What will we say?

Worth a Thousand Words: Outside the Embassy

Outside the kitchen entrance of the Russian Embassy in Berlin…
Edward B. Gordon

Lagniappe: The mention of ourselves being naturally affecting

"But you can't take your own time to die in, Brother," began Mrs. Waule, with her usual wooly tone. "And when you life speechless you may be tired of having strangers about you, and you may think of me and my children —" but here her voice broke under the touching thought which she was attributing to her speechless brother; the mention of ourselves being naturally affecting.

George Eliot, Middlemarch

Roasted cougar anyone? It's food-on-the-go for anyone stranded on a snowy mountain.

Unless you forget to take it along with you.

I watched The Mountain Between Us with Hannah and Rose and can attest they are telling the absolute truth about this bad movie in their More is More discussion.

Well Said: The speck of self

Instead of wondering at this result of misery in Mr. Casaubon, I think it quite ordinary. Will not a speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the blot? I know no specks so troublesome as self.

George Eliot, Middlemarch