Friday 11/30/18 Housekeeping Update

I didn't do any deep cleaning this week.  But I am feeling good about housekeeping anyway!

1)  I kept the kitchen fairly clean all week and managed to cook dinner every night!

2)  We had a horribly moldy shower curtain that I soaked in vinegar and then washed and ta da!  It's clean again!  So we hung it back up.  I'm ashamed to say before I got more environmentally conscientious I would have just chucked it and gotten a new one. 

3)  I am all ready for both Advent and Hanukkah which converge on the same day this year.

Are we ready?

Yes we are!

4)  This isn't really housekeeping per se, but it led to a feeling of order which is one of the blessings of housekeeping, so they are related, sorta!  I have instituted a 'study hour' for myself.  Every day I am going to devote an hour to studying Latin and/or reading my classics spin book, A History of the Ancient World.  Some days I might just devote to one or the other pursuit, or I'll combine them when necessary.  Wednesday though I was busy from the moment I awoke until late in the evening.  And then I was too tired to do anything.  So I'll shoot for as many days as possible to do my study hour, but I won't despair if on some days I simply can't fit it in.

5)  I managed to get recycling, trash and the compost bin out on time.  Hey!  This doesn't happen every week, so it's a small but important win, when it does happen!

6)  We are getting our rain barrels installed today!  Yippee! 

The Church Is Going to Hell in a Handbasket

The Church is in an awful state right now.  The DA just raided the office of the Archbishop of Houston-Galveston for records on child abuse.  That archbishop just happens to be head of the U.S. Conference of Bishops.  Cuz apparently they weren't handing over documents for the investigation so the DA had to get a search warrant.  Jesus would be proud!

And then you have Cardinal Zen sending a 7 page letter to Pope Francis telling him he has betrayed the underground Church in China by cutting a deal.  This cardinal, who by all accounts, has been a fierce supporter of persecuted Catholics in China is ready to retire to a monastery to spend the rest of his life in prayer once Pope Francis has implemented his plan with the Chinese government's approved Catholic Church.  The Cardinal feels absolutely betrayed.

Pope Francis, what went wrong?  I love your Laudato Si'!  It is such a beautiful and wise work.  And you have so many great and encouraging things to say about how to love each other, but you seem blind to such huge issues like the sexual abuse crisis and what the hell are you doing in China!!!

I'm taking a lesson from my parents.  Back in the day, popes weren't celebrities.  The main gist of a Catholic life was prayer, sacraments, living the faith out as a family and in the community of worshipers trying to do good in the world.  The pope was in background only occasionally making it into the papers.  Now we follow him on twitter.  He is a celebrity par excellence.  He gives interviews on airplanes as he flies hither and yon, like any other political leader.  I don't like this model of the papal office, I find.  St. John Paul II started this new era of how to be Pope.  And people loved it, but I think it skews things mightily.  I think it has filled in the vacuum of the lack of faith and the steady stream of people leaving the Church.  If you are loud and proud maybe it makes you feel better about yourself, but I think it also covers for lots of bad stuff going on under the surface.  It's like the office of Pope and all the bishops have replaced public relations with actual evangelization.  And they are really bad at the PR even.  Because I think there is so much corruption at the core of the hierarchy, they can't see beyond it.  Their perspective is so warped, they can not see the ramifications of their actions.  To evangelize means you have to truly believe.  I don't think many of our Church leaders actually believe what they preach.

In my despair I have turned to a wonderful book called The Light of Christ; An Introduction to Catholicism by Thomas Joseph White, OP.  It is feeding my soul!  I'm going back to the basics.  In the first chapter, entitled Revelation and Reason, the author talks about how the faith is based on revelation but we are called to use our reason to try to understand what that revelation means.  He talks about how even the regular Joe on the street needs a little theology to truly get the underpinnings of what the Church actually teaches.  Bishop Barron talks about this too, how since Vatican II there's been this retreat from challenging Catholics intellectually.  Catechesis is so poor, the kids do not learn the reasons behind why the Church teaches what it does.  We can't be afraid of addressing complex issues in a reasoned, nuanced, complex way.  Bishop Barron was talking about his own nephew who went to public schools and took religious education classes at his parish.  He (the nephew) can't even remember anything he was taught, it was so watered down and inconsequential, except for his 6th grade teacher, who had a masters in Theology.  The nephew remembered her, because she asked hard questions and expected the kids to think deeply.  I think the problem is that catechesis is left up to volunteer parents who don't know the faith themselves.  The Church has fallen down on the job of teaching her own.

Anyway, here is one of my favorite passages from Chapter 1, page 45.  I underlined what jumped out at me:

Prayer and asceticism, then, are part of the Catholic intellectual life.  Disciplines of soul and disciplines of the mind go together.  One of the most attractive things about the Catholic intellectual vocation is that it calls us to be people of a holistic integrity.  Every facet of our life needs to come progressively into the light of Christ, not so that it may perish but so that we may live in a more truly human and divine way.  When human beings are integrated morally, intellectually, and spiritually, their intellectual concerns and their moral pattern of life cohere. . . .Their relationships of human love are deeply related to their aspirations of divine love.
This kind of integrity is rare in the world today, where we are constantly confronted with stories about morally divided lives, not only of people in positions of ecclesial responsibility but also among secular academics, political leaders, and increasingly so in the lives of ordinary people, especially in the tragic erosion of marriage in our society. . .

Many of those in the hierarchy of the Church are lukewarm Christians.  They do not live lives of holistic integrity.  They live morally divided lives and their misuse of power has made them tools of Satan.

When I returned to the Church, it was like falling in love.  I was floating on air.  I loved being Catholic.  But now it's like I realize the person I'm in love with, my spouse to whom I have committed my life, is a drug addict, bent on self-destruction.  I am not happy being Catholic, but I can't abandon it either, because I know the core of what the Church is.  Just like you can see the person who once was, who is hidden under the outer shell of addictive behaviors.  Loyalty to who that person was and could be keeps you there, desperately trying to help them as best you can, and in the meantime being often wounded yourself by their destructiveness and selfishness brought on by the addiction.

So I'm in it for the long haul, no matter what the pain or betrayal.  This is where God put me and I will trust in Him to see me through.  The end goal is holiness which I am completely incapable of, so I need to rely on God's grace.  I will hunker down and work on my own soul through prayer, the sacraments and trying to do good in the world as best I can.  Jesus, I trust in you!

Jesus, I trust in you!

Classics Club Spin

I want to join in on the Classics Club Spin challenge, however, I've already started a reading challenge with my husband to reread all the Jane Austen novels.  He's ahead of me.  He's finished Sense and Sensibility and is now on to Northanger Abbey.  I'm just halfway through S&S.  I'm also reading The Light of Christ by Thomas White O.P. which is a wonderfully written but slow going basic course in theology.  And I'm listening on CD to The Small House at Allington.

Here are my 20 classics that I will draw the spin read from.  I am pulling from my 50 Classics list, but I'm also letting myself add in other books that I've wanted to read too.

History
1)  The History of the Ancient World by Susan Wise Bauer
2)  Anabasis by Xenophon
3)  The History of the Peloponnesian Wars by Thucydides
4)  History of Philosophy, Volume 1 by Copleston
5)  The Story of Art by E. H. Gombrich

Religion
6)  The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius
7)  Interior Castle by St. Teresa of Avila
8)  The Intellectual Life by A. G. Sertillanges
9)  The Life of Christ by Fulton Sheen
10)  Life of Moses by St. Gregory of Nyssa

Fiction
11)  The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte
12)  The Betrothed by Manzoni
13)  Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
14)  Silence by Endo
15)  Wise Blood by Flannery O'Conner
16)  The Moviegoer by Walker Percy
17)  Mariette in Ecstasy by Ron Hansen
18)  Helena by Evelyn Waugh
19)  Monseigneur Quixote by Graham Greene
20)  A Canticle for Leibowtiz by Walter Miller

UPDATE!  I got my entry in just under the wire.  The deadline was 11:59 p.m. last night.  They did the spin and the lucky number that came up was #1!  So I have to read Susan Wise Bauer's, The History of the Ancient World by January 31st, 2019.  The truth is I've read parts of it when we were studying Ancient History in our high school courses, but I shall return to it and read it with vigor from cover to cover by 1/31/19!

Diary of an Early American Boy 1805 - Book 44

I bought Diary of an Early American Boy years ago when I thought we'd do a loose unit study on American history.  I do remember reading lots of books on American history before we went up to Boston for a vacation, when Will was first up there at school, but this book never got touched.  It had remained untouched on my bookshelf for years.  Since I've become interested in how people did things in the past without benefit of electricity, I found myself picking it up.  This book is really aimed for middle school aged kids.  It has exquisite pencil drawings explaining all the different technical topics the author touches on. The book is a hardback of 108 pages.  It's absolutely captivating.  The author, Eric Sloane is a wonderful historian and artist.  He collects colonial era tools.  He found an old diary kept by a Noah Blake, a 15 year old son of a farmer and builder.  The diary chronicles how the two built a bridge and a mill, as well as all the different farming practices throughout the seasons.

One of the many technical but charming illustrations.

The book is a wealth of knowledge.  It's funny that I am interested in this topic since I have very little engineering capabilities.  But starting with the Secrets of the Castle BBC series that explained how castles were built, then listening to Brunelleschi's Dome on how the great dome of the cathedral of Florence, an architectural masterpiece, was constructed, has got me really intrigued about how man accomplished so much before the advent of electricity and technology.  Diary of an Early American Boy is a perfect follow up.  Everything from how mills worked, how covered bridges got started, what different axes were used for, the development of levels for carpentry, how wheelbarrows and rockers evolved, it's just chock full of interesting tidbits of information.

I highly recommend this charming, informative history book.  I wish we had used it in our unit study!

For more book reviews, go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.

Friday 11/23/18 Housekeeping Update

Not much to report.  I've been under the weather for the last two weeks so parts of the house are in pretty bad shape, but some things did get done.

1)  I cleared off the dining room table which was covered in books, papers, random dishes and other things we don't know quite where to put.  I also bought new placemats and a table runner for the big table.  The tablecloth I bought a couple years ago had gotten so stained, and then when I realized we needed a cover for our family room couch because of Skipper, the new puppy, the tablecloth officially transitioned into that.  I feel kind of put together now that I have these placemats.  I plan to have different table runners for different holiday occasions.

2)  I did tidy up the porch again and finally dog proofed it so the dog can not go out there and get into gardening stuff and spread dirt and chewed up plastic pots all over the place.

3)  I bought a new rug for the entrance area.  Something I'd been meaning to do for months. 

4)  There were not one but two lights out in our family room which R changed before Thanksgiving.  That was nice. 

5)  Another thing R did was to order this new kind of air filter for me.  I wake up every day with a bit of a sinus headache.  I really think I'm a little allergic to dust.  With this air filter and my new dust allergy pillow cover, guess who has been waking up headache free????    We also got some super duper charcoal filters to go into B's air filter in her room.  To help with the black mold.  For all I know, I too react to black mold and that's what has been giving me headaches.  Though honestly, I have suffered in many houses that I've lived in.  So it might just be dust.

6)  H made most of the Thanksgiving dinner.  She roasted a turkey, made mashed potatoes, stuffing, sweet potatoes (which we forgot to eat.  We were warming them in the oven and forgot to get them out).  R made a rotisserie turkey on the grill outside.  Unfortunately, the dog had gotten into his wood chips that smoke the turkey meat so well.  I had swept them out and thrown them out and never thought to replace them.  On Wed. I dashed out trying to see if any stores carried wood chips but alas, I could find none.  The turkey was still quite good but not the amazingness it is when smoked.  We'll remember for next year! 

7)  I made gluten free rolls using the Pamela's flour.  They were delicious.  I also made cow dairy free mashed potatoes which were scrumptious.  I put in ghee and garlic goat cheese and mashed them up well.  Came out really good!  I also made a big cheese and veggie platter for everyone but especially for Will since he is a vegetarian and doesn't eat turkey.  The veggies were:  bell peppers, carrots, broccoli, sugar snap peas and cucumbers  I bought 3 different types of cheese to go with it, including some goat brie cheese, which is really good and tastes a lot more like regular cheese than those logs of goat cheese which taste like goat cheese! 

8)  Today I am going to do a big project of cleaning out our front hall closet.  I also will try to get the others to offer at least one garment for the clothing drive. 

9)  I am excited that Organic Edible Gardens is finally going to get started on Monday here.  I can't believe they say it's ok to plant at the end of November, especially since we are having a below freezing cold snap.  Actually some planting will have to wait until spring.  I just want as many fruit bearing things that can be planted now to be planted.  And I really want my raised vegetable beds to be built so I can load them up with good soil.  I've been doing research on how to protect gardens from pets.  Apparently I just need some wire fencing to place over the top.  I am most worried the new plantings won't survive Skipper.  So I am inordinately focused on how to protect them. 

That's it for now. 

A Damsel in Distress - Book 43

A Damsel in Distress by P. G. Wodehouse was published in 1919 (The year my dad was born.  That year always jumps out at me!).  I got it for 0 cents on my Kindle.  I had had the most miserable day, being struck down by a painful stomach ailment that had me bedridden most of the day.  Occasionally I would stagger down to the kitchen for some hot water with lemon or chicken broth.  I slept on and off in between writhing and wincing with pain.  I felt like I was in labor.  I started to think that I was having appendicitis or something that required urgent care, but then during the evening it got much better.  Still, I didn't have any appetite, so by the time 9:30 p.m. or so rolled around I started to get a headache.  I took some Tylenol and hoped it would help but it got worse and worse. Around 11 p.m. I realized that I hadn't really had any caffeine all day.  In addition to that, the day had started out with a pretty snowfall but it had turned into a steady, heavy, wet, dismal rain.  I think both things were triggering a migraine.  So at 11:00 at night I had a cup of coffee.  Within a half hour my head was better.  But, I thought, oh dear, I am going to be up all night.  I decided I needed to find a book on the Kindle to read, something light and amusing.  However, I am punishing myself right now by not letting myself purchase books on the Kindle because I impulse buy too much and wind up not finishing them.  But then I remembered you can get some books for free!   I searched through a long list of classics which I've already read or have no intention of ever reading until I stumbled on a Wodehouse I hadn't read before.

It was delightful.  I only read for a couple of hours before I fell into a wonderful, pain-free slumber that lasted unbroken until the morning light!  It was quite refreshing.

But the next day, I decided I was going to take it really easy since I am tired of being sick for so long and feel very worn down.  I still have my stupid hacking cough. So I spent most of the day reading and finished the book by the evening.  It was a really fun read and the perfect book to read while convalescing.  What a gift Wodehouse was!  There's a lot going on in the madcap plot.  It has many laugh out loud moments. The main lady interest is named Maud and Wodehouse makes many references to Tennyson's poem throughout.  Note to self:  read the poem Maud.  

An illustration of Tennyson's poem Maud.  It looks pretty sinister to me!

I also discovered that they made a 1937 musical comedy starring Fred Astaire, very, very loosely based on the plot.  It was the last musical George Gershwin worked on.  He died during the filming.  So my little midnight find turned out to be quite a gem!

Two big thumbs up!  For more book reviews go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.

The Black Moth - Book 42

The Black Moth was Georgette Heyer's first novel and the one that put her on the map, so to speak.  She went on to write 50 novels and this one is the prototype for her romances.  It has all of the familiar elements in it.  She wrote the book at age 17 which is really remarkable.  Apparently, she had an ill younger brother who was enamored of the swashbuckling era of England's bygone years.  The plot came from stories she would tell him to cheer him in his illness.  It was published in 1921.

The two sons of the Earl of Wyncham are both in love with the same lady, Lavinia.  The younger son is the more in love and he has gotten himself so in debt he is ruining his chances to wed.  The atmosphere is Georgian England, where the rich nobility spend their time dressing extravagantly, living lavish lifestyles of partying, drinking and gambling.   Even though the brothers are competing for the same girl, they are extraordinarily close to one another.  Under the pressure of the moment, Richard, the younger brother, cheats at cards and his older brother, Jack, takes the fall for him in an act of supreme loyalty.  But cheating at cards means a complete loss of honor in his circle of society, and he is ostracized.  He flees and spends six long years in disguise scraping out a living, first as a fencing master and then, when homesickness forces him to return to England, as a masked highwayman.

It's his life as highwayman that gets the ball rolling in terms of his eventual reconciliation with his brother.  Along the way we follow the entwined tales of Jack's friends and family, including Lavinia's elder brother the Duke of Andover, nicknamed Devil, bent on ravishing the lovely Diana.  Diana's comical aunt Bessy, Also, we meet Jack's oldest friend Sir Miles O'Hara and his new wife Molly.  And we can't forget, Jim, Jack's valet who takes care of his master, and on whom the master relies for some semblance of human friendship.  Jack's temperament is one that needs friends.

There's lots of humor and exciting plot twists.   The characters are not perhaps quite as developed as in her later books.  I found Lavinia to be a tiresome bore, too annoying to be worthy of all the grief she causes.  The story line ties up neatly in a satisfying way.

All in all, I am glad I read it.  For more book reviews go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd - Book 41

I've gotten my husband reading Agatha Christie mysteries!  He is so smart he can figure out who did it so quickly.  I never can!  But this one had him stumped.  I think Christie was a bit unfair in her telling so that the reader really can't guess the murderer.  Too much information is withheld until the very end.

I really thought I had already read this book, but I hadn't.  Mysteries all blend together in my head.

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is considered a classic, known for its surprise ending.  Poirot has retired to a little English village (of course) after his friend and cohort, Inspector Hastings, has moved to 'The Argentine.'  However, he gets pulled into solving the murder of the local squire by his niece who finds out about Poirot's reputation.  Dr. Sheppard, the village doctor, takes Hastings' place, playing Watson to Poirot's Holmes.  There are lots of suspects:  Ackroyd's butler, housekeeper, two maids, his secretary, his friend Major Blunt, his nephew Ralph, Ralph's fiance, Flora, and even a mysterious stranger who happens to show up the night of the murder.

A really entertaining, intelligent, well written mystery.  I still think it's a bit unfair though. I found  Poirot less annoying here.  He only mentions his 'grey cells' 5 or 6 times, I think.

For more book reviews, go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.

Dracula - Book 40

It took me two weeks to read this Victorian novel.  It's 400 pages long.  And for some reason we had two really hectic weeks crammed with appointments and deadlines and a hyper puppy that needed lots of attention.  So when I did go to read it at night, I'd wind up only reading a couple of pages before my eyelids got too heavy.   Also I had a lot of insomnia, but since I was reading a real book and not something on the Kindle, I was reluctant to turn on the bedside light to read in the middle of the night.  Not that reading Dracula is the best book to read when in the grips of insomnia! So it was a vicious circle of two weeks, broken by having a lovely weekend away for our anniversary.  I'll post about that in another post.  Anyway, I tried gallantly to finish Dracula before going away but that didn't work so I wound up finishing on Sunday morning.

Anyhoo!  Dracula is a great book!  I had always avoided it or anything to do with vampires, but this is actually a really charming Victorian novel, full of good character development, humor, erudition and some good old fashion Gothic horror.  It is a basic good vs. evil story where you know good will eventually win.  The author is quite good at building tension and keeping the reader on the edge of his/her seat.  The book is written in a series of diary entries and letters.  It tells the tale of how this intrepid group of British (and one Texan) friends become involved in Dracula's plot to move from Transylvania, where he's been terrorizing the locals for centuries, to England so he can expand his legions of the un-dead.  The group is headed by the virtuous, quaint and fearless, Dr. Van Helsing of Amsterdam.  He gets called in by his friend and colleague, Dr. Seward.  Dr. Seward is one of three suitors for the hand of the fair Lucy.  The other two suitors are Lord Arthur Godalming and the rich Texan cowboy, Quincey Morris.  Lucy is best friends with Mina whose fiance and then husband is Jonathan Harker, the young solicitor who is sent to Transylvania to work the real estate deal and transportation of Dracula to England.  Of course Harker doesn't realize Dracula is a vampire til he gets there and he's trapped in the spooky castle.

This group has to figure out first that Dracula really is a vampire and then how to fight and conquer him.  It is a dangerous, often despairing, fight to the death. 

Two thumbs up!  I now know why it is considered a classic.  For more book reviews go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.