Queen Victoria

Queen Victoria (1843). Franz Xaver Winterhalter (German, 1805-1873).
via Books and Art

I always heard that Queen Victoria was a pretty girl but I'd only seen images of her from her old age. Now in this, ‘the secret picture’, for her husband's 24th birthday, I see it is true.

Turning into stones

"Wisely said, Mark," cried Martin. "We must look forward."

"In all the story-books as I ever read, sir, the people as looked backward was turned into stones," replied Mark; "and my opinion always was, that they brought it on themselves, and it served 'em right. I wish you good night, sir, and pleasant dreams."

Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit

Mark is Sam Weller's true heir (Pickwick Papers) and I always brighten up when he appears in the pages. His notion of "jollity" resonates with Catholic sensibilities, maintaining that "jollity" isn't worth anything unless you maintain it under trying circumstances.

Things I Know Because My Washing Machine Broke

I was looking through old posts and came across this from 2013 which I found delightful as it reminded me of a long forgotten incident which brought a great deal of pleasure. (Also I've been meaning to reread Middlemarch, if I can ever finish slogging through War and Peace, so it just added to my determination.) 

Now 10 years later my laundry-doing daughter is married with her own little one who is now three! And my LA daughter has been living in Dallas with us for many years (which tells you how well we all get along - it is wonderful).

At any rate, perhaps you will enjoy this as much as I did.

========

When your washing machine breaks ...
... and you are lucky enough to have a grown daughter in the area ... she will not only let you use her machine ... she will very kindly take the laundry and wash it for you. What a sweetie!

When your washing machine breaks ...
... and you went to your grown daughter's to have cocktails (oh, fine, and also pick up the laundry) ... you will also video Skype with your other daughter in L.A.

It is almost as good as a family party, what with the drinks and the talking and these two people chatting in the background while those two people talk about how amazing Middlemarch is (never mind which two people, that isn't important).

You might have a second cocktail while you're at it. But the important thing is the family party.

When your washing machine breaks ...
... your daughter will ask you to stay for dinner and to watch a British TV show she just knows you will love. She will order a pepperoni pizza from Piggie Pies and ask them to put garlic on it. They press the garlic so it just adds a certain soupcon of depth. Who knew? We didn't but I plan to do it for every pizza I order in the future.

When your washing machine breaks ...
... and you have the new one installed, with a trial load of towels washing, which you keep checking because it is so much fun to watch it swish through the glass lid (what will they think of next?) ... it will sweetly let you know it is finished by singing a little song.  (I guess that is what they thought of next.)

It's got to do that, you know, because it is so quiet that you can't tell it is even running.

When your washing machine breaks ...
... you look at all the good things that came from it and you realize how small all your problems are and how great are your blessings.

Inside a tense huddle in Baltimore: U.S. Catholic bishops wrestle with Vatican criticism

 Here's an excellent piece on the tension between U.S. bishops and Pope Francis. It's from Get Religion which reports on how religion is covered in the media.

Lady in Yellow Dress

Max Kurzwell, Lady in Yellow Dress, 1899

The look on this lady's face is interesting. Is she disgusted? Tired? Sad? Bored? Self satisfied?

I liked this for that gorgeous yellow dress. But the look on her face is what I keep pondering.

UPDATED: Covenant and Conversation series — a new look at the Pentateuch

Updated to include Numbers: The Wilderness Years.

Each week, synagogues around the world read a section from the Torah (the five books of Moses). The cycle begins with Genesis and ends with the last verses of Deuteronomy 12 months later. The Covenant & Conversation series has essays commenting on each of the weekly readings.

These essays are by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks who was the Chief Rabbi of the U.K. for some 20 years. I'd read his editorials occasionally in the Wall Street Journal and always found them insightful, inspirational, and down to earth. When I discovered he'd done this series I began at the beginning with Genesis. What I found was a work of genius.

These essays have the same easy style I remembered while giving in-depth, brilliant, compassionate commentary that often surprised me and sometimes changed my whole perspective on a Biblical person or their actions. Sacks is good at comparing ancient and modern world views. This not only clarifies Biblical context but often shows just how different our current ideas are. These are stories about people and Sacks never forgets that. He looks at what Torah is showing us that is the same not only in those ancient times, but in our own lives. After all, the word of God is eternal, applying to all time and all people.

There is much here that resonates with the Catholic soul, simply because the Jews are our elder brothers in the faith. However, a Christian reading these essays will be sharply reminded that there is a Jewish way of thinking about the first five books of the Bible, and, indeed, about God and worship, which is particular to the Jewish people. That is a real cultural wake up call and one that I found sometimes jerking me to the realization that this is different. The thinking, the response to God and His call, the way of dealing with other people — it can be very different, while still being anchored in our common knowledge of the one, personal God. 

A quick example is that I was surprised by the Jewish custom of reading Torah every year. Just like us! No, I realized. We're just like them. The first Christians were Jewish and I am well used to finding parts of Catholic liturgy that reflect they were patterned after those Christians' original faith. That was an easy mental adjustment, one that left me happy at another proof of our family ties.

Here are the books I've read so far. I'll add to this as I go along continue, which I will, with the last two books in the series.

Genesis: The Book of Beginnings by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks

I learned new ways of looking deeper at familiar stories such as when Isaac is tricked into giving his blessing to Jacob instead of Esau. I found deeper sympathy and new insights into lesser characters. Who knew she was not only crafty but also tactful? Or that Judah's encounter with Tamar led to a life-changing realization that helped him pass Joseph's test when the brothers all go to Egypt seeking grain? I already loved Tamar but now I have more sympathy and admiration for Judah's growth.

Here are a few of the themes emphasized as being core parts of Judaism, which surprised me.

•  Love of words and language, both as forms of worship and of what make us human.
• Treasuring children. "Ours is a supremely child-centered faith" says Sacks.
• God making space so that people can exercise free will and make mistakes.
• The importance of the land God gave them, of Israel.
• The Torah is meant to be heard, not read silently. "Judaism is supremely a religion of the ear, unlike all other ancient civilizations..." says Sacks.
• The necessity of the struggle to do God's will and of going one step more than we are asked.
  

These might seem like no brainers, reading this list. It's not that Catholicism doesn't have these elements but they don't define us the way that Sacks made clear they define the Jewish people. I found myself understanding a little better their pride at their indestructibility, the ancientness of their faith, and their role as God's chosen people.

There is a fair amount of midrash considered throughout. Midrash is textual study and interpretation of scripture that uses questions, examines what is left unsaid, and fills in with their own stories to form a running commentary. I'm not crazy about midrash as it can range far afield sometimes. I'm not Jewish so perhaps that is understandable. Sacks sometimes includes midrash in order to keep following the logical train of thought and sometimes so that he can introduce a different interpretation.

Quibbles about midrash aside, this is a work of genius. Highly recommended.

Note: A few excerpts are shared here.

Exodus: The Book of Redemption

This second in the series, focusing on the book of Exodus, is simply wonderful and just as good as his first in the series about Genesis. This book in particular shows Sacks' skill at not only examining the stories of the Bible but in giving us context for the rituals that are so lovingly detailed. Regardless of how dense and uninteresting they appear to the modern reader, Sacks' context gives us a way to see how they still apply to us and our relationship to God in modern times.

As before, a certain amount of midrash is considered, but it is often used to take the reader forward to consider how Exodus affects us today.

 

 

Leviticus: The Book of Holiness 

 

This is the third in Sacks' series, focusing on Leviticus, and I approached it with a bit of trepidation. As he notes, there are only two stories in the whole book and those are quite brief. Therefore, he spends a lot of time setting up the book itself. The introduction is 50 pages long but it is pure gold. First, we are told that:

Leviticus is the central book of the Pentateuch, the Torah. This makes it the most important of the five. Biblical literature often works on the principle of mirror-image symmetry (chiasmus), structured in the form of ABCBA. In any work so patterned, the climax is not at the beginning or the end but in the middle. At the centre of the five Mosaic books. Leviticus is the axis on which they turn.

So, boring it may be but it is also key to the Pentateuch, the heart of the Old Testament, and we should pay attention. 

He also points out that this book is the purest expression of the priestly voice. The rest of the introduction explores that voice and what the priest means to Judaism, especially in contrast to those of king and prophet. This sounds dry but is actually fascinating, which is the case with the essays which make up the body of the book.

If you ever wanted to see what's the deal with Leviticus, this is the spot to start. 

Numbers: The Wilderness Years 

This fourth in the series, focusing on the book of Numbers, is equally as wonderful as the previous three books. I should have remembered that if Sacks could make Leviticus riveting and relatable then he should be able to do the same for the Book of Numbers. After all, Numbers does have a lot of stories that continue the Book of Exodus in finally getting the people to the promised land. 

However, as Sacks' duly points out, it is also a bit of a mishmash. All mixed together we find census lists, laws, camp set up details, itineraries which just list one location after another — it's challenging to a modern reader. Sacks shows us how the entire book comes together as a narrative of the hard work to achieve freedom which is the ongoing task not only of the nation of Israel but of each one of us. 

It makes compelling reading.

Landscape Alphabet

Early 20th century, L.E.M. Jones.

I love alphabets and the creative ways that artists find to display letters. When I first saw these I fell in love. It was really hard to choose which to include here to try to lure you into looking at all of them.

I love the C for the creative use of the ocean. I love the Y for the cows. I love the cottage and cottager hidden mid-Z, as well as the little pond at the bottom of the hill.

These can be found at the British Museum. Just click on a letter to see it up close. Their description is brief: "Series of 26 landscape scenes shaped as letters of the alphabet; rebound in a 20th-century binding."

I tend to read everything as SF.

Samuel R. Delaney has talked about the importance of reading protocols, and reading SF as SF. I tend to read everything as SF. ...

People talk about SF as a literature of ideas, as if you can't find ideas in Middlemarch or The Hunt for Red October. I don't think it's so much the literature of ideas as the literature of worldbuilding.

In a science fiction novel, the world is a character, and often the most important character.

In a mainstream novel, the world is implicitly our world, and the characters are the world.

In a mainstream novel trying to be SF, this gets peculiar and can make the reading experience uneven.

Jo Walton, What Makes This Book So Great

What Walton means by saying she reads everything as SF is that she is always aware of contextual clues that give her hints as to what the world in the book is like.

I, too, read everything as SF in that same way. Which makes Dickens and Eliot and all sorts of other authors much easier to dive into, let me tell you.

And Walton puts her finger on why I have never really cottoned to mainstream authors' "science fiction" books. I'm expecting science fiction and they're just donning the costume in order to deliver a different sort of book altogether.

I first posted the above in 2014. It is the same now as ever. Perhaps even moreso now that I've read books like Station Eleven.

"... and yet she was a happy woman."

Miss Bates…had never boasted either beauty or cleverness. Her youth had passed without distinction, and her middle of life was devoted to the care of a failing mother, and the endeavour to make a small income go as far as possible. And yet she was a happy woman, and a woman whom no one named without good-will. It was her own universal goodwill and contented temper which worked such wonders. She loved every body, was interested in every body’s happiness and quick-sighted to every body’s merits; thought herself a most fortunate creature, and surrounded with blessings in such an excellent mother and so many good neighbours and friends, and a home that wanted for nothing. The simplicity and cheerfulness of her nature, her contented and grateful spirit, were a recommendation to every body and a mine of felicity to herself.

Jane Austen, Emma

Would that I could do as well as Miss Bates under similar circumstances. She would have driven me just as crazy as she drove Emma with her non-stop twittering. But it helped keep everyone around her both kind in return and generous against her poverty and need. And gave them an excellent example for their own lives.

Why I am Now a Christian — from Muslim to Atheist to Christian

The lesson I learned from my years with the Muslim Brotherhood was the power of a unifying story, embedded in the foundational texts of Islam, to attract, engage and mobilise the Muslim masses. Unless we offer something as meaningful, I fear the erosion of our civilisation will continue. And fortunately, there is no need to look for some new-age concoction of medication and mindfulness. Christianity has it all.

That is why I no longer consider myself a Muslim apostate, but a lapsed atheist. Of course, I still have a great deal to learn about Christianity. I discover a little more at church each Sunday. But I have recognised, in my own long journey through a wilderness of fear and self-doubt, that there is a better way to manage the challenges of existence than either Islam or unbelief had to offer.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali tells her story from faith to atheism and back to faith again, albeit a different one. It is a story worth considering for the times in which we live. Definitely read the whole thing.

This is via Brandywine Books who prefaces it with a reflection on how people are persuaded. He includes this key quote from Pascal's Pensees.

When we wish to correct with advantage, and to show another that he errs, we must notice from what side he views the matter, for on that side it is usually true, and admit that truth to him, but reveal to him the side on which it is false. He is satisfied with that, for he sees that he was not mistaken, and that he only failed to see all sides. Now, no one is offended at not seeing everything; but one does not like to be mistaken, and that perhaps arises from the fact that man naturally cannot see everything, and that naturally he cannot err in the side he looks at, since the perceptions of our senses are always true.

People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come into the mind of others.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali's piece is a splendid example of the journey from believing what you are told to examining both sides for yourself and living based on those conclusions.

Still Life with Lemons

Paul Coventry-Brown, Still Life with Lemons

It's hard to find modern still lifes that I like, but Paul Coventry-Brown hits the spot.

Uncle Tom's Cabin and Achieving Your Goal

There’s no happy ending ... Nevertheless, we might well say that is exactly Harriet Beecher Stowe’s point. In 1852 slavery had not been abolished. Slaves were still on the plantations and many of them were in the hands of people like Legree. Her book was written to shame the collective conscience of America into action against an atrocity which was still continuing. So a happy ending would have been, frankly, a lie and a betrayal. ...

Most of the charges are basically true. Stowe did stereotype. She did sentimentalize. She offered a role model which later offended African American pride. On the other hand, what she did worked. She wasn’t trying to provide a role model for African Americans. She was trying to make white Americans ashamed of themselves. ...

Perhaps the short answer to her critics is to ask, “Do you want glory, approval, all those good things? Or do you want to achieve your goal?”

Thomas A. Shippey, Heroes and Legends

Shippey only had a half hour discussion of Uncle Tom as a hero and so he glossed over some of the things with which one could take issue in his statement. For example, I'd say that Stowe was trying to provide a role model for all of us, often in the slaves she wrote about, but you have to look at it with a Christian focus to see that clearly.

That aside, I love his defense because I love the book so much. Without context it is easy to cast stones at anyone. And we're all in that glass house where we don't want the stones cast back at us. Our lives and viewpoints have context which we'd like understood also before we are judged.

Dusk on Fraser's Hill

Dusk on Fraser's Hill
Source: EatingAsia, published under a Creative Commons 2.0 license

The greatest sin of the Christian

The greatest sin of the Christian is to be joyless.

Dorothy Sayers

That's so true, isn't it? I have often read and heard how different people have become interested in Christ because they wonder how a Christian they know manages to stay joyful and peaceful even under the hardest circumstances. Or even just in everyday life, because, let's face it, that can be hard enough.

Clara The Rhinoceros

Clara the Rhinoceros, Jean-Baptiste Oudry, 1749
via WikiPaintings

Clara was very famous and I thought this painting was fascinating.

The Aeronaut's Windlass by Jim Butcher

 I have very fond memories of this book from 2015, always tinged with regret that Jim Butcher postponed the sequel. Now I see that the sequel will soon be released and that's the perfect reason to relisten to this book which I enjoyed all over again. I'm rerunning my review just in case this idea grabs you too.

This is the beginning of a new Jim Butcher series. People live in city-state spires well above a hostile world, using crystals for energy. A likable group of heroes come together when their spire is attacked by a rival. It's got a steampunk feel and a bit of naval emphasis that is intriguing since I'm about halfway through Master and Commander. Oh, and talking cats. Actually with some people who can "speak" cat. It's a different thing altogether and, at this point, pulled off fairly well.

Although there are goggles and airships and everyone is very polite, this is really space opera rather than steampunk. Butcher is using standard space opera-esque characterizations and motivations but the tale that is unfolding is anything but predictable. This is helped along by a superb narrator who would entice me to listen to just about anything he read.

I like the people, especially the aetherialists (spelling is variable here since I listened and haven't seen the print version). Their likable zaniness makes a weird kind of sense. I especially like the subtle flashes of humor throughout, such as Bridget always calling Gwen's attention to the fact that her actions weren't so much heroic as rashly putting them all in danger. And thus Butcher undoes the standard space opera trope at that point by making us realize we were all agreed with Gwen originally because it was just what we expected.

I've been trying to think how to describe the feel of this book and this reviewer's comment struck me as right:

This book is what might happen if Joss Whedon handed Jim Butcher the reins and said, "Dude. The people want more. Pretend Firefly had a half-sibling. Now author a new book series and blow them away."

Overall, recommended as a rollicking good adventure in an interesting new world.

Ball in the Concert Hall of the Winter Palace

Ball in the Concert Hall of the Winter Palace during the Official Visit of Nasir al-Din Shah,
in May 1873 (1874). Mihály Zichy.
Via Books and Art

Before I even knew the name of this piece, I flashed on Russian Ark, a most unusual film which I didn't know enough Russian history to fully understand. I still found it fascinating and obviously they did a good enough job to make me instantly connect it with this art from that time period.

Crossing the Bar

Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.

Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;

For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar.

Alfred Tennyson

This was Anthony Esolen's poem for last week. Find out why Tennyson insisted that it be last in any collection of poetry printed, even if he had written other poems after it chronologically.

Still Life with Apples

Still Life - Study of Apples, William Rickarby Miller - 1862

Doesn't this look remarkably fresh and modern? I feel as if I could reach in and get a delicious piece of fruit.

I'm really lucky that the Central Market has about 20 varieties of apples right now. You walk into that section and the apple smell just fills the air. This painting makes me want to head right over there!

A Movie You Might Have Missed #92 — Broadway Danny Rose

This is part of our mini-festival showing my mother our favorite Woody Allen movies. As with most of this list, hardly anyone has ever seen it so I'm giving you a heads up!

Danny Rose (Woody Allen), a hopeless New York talent agent, is a tireless workhorse for his eccentric, unimpressive acts. When Rose signs has-been lounge singer Lou Canova (Nick Apollo Forte), he knows he has to go to great lengths to keep his new client, which means escorting Canova's mistress, Tina (Mia Farrow), to the singer's shows. The only problem is that her ex-boyfriend is a jealous gangster who thinks Rose is her new man and wants revenge.

We saw this screwball comedy when it came out and upon rewatching I had only the vaguest memory of the stereotypical characters. What I forgot, or hadn't noticed the first time around, was the sheer humanity exhibited by Woody Allen and Mia Farrow at the end as their characters reach crisis and must deal with it. That raised it up a star in my estimation.