Strewsday Tuesday 8/14/12

I don't have much for today. I can't even believe that a whole week has gone by since the last Tuesday Strewsday. Time is just flying!

Hannah and Will came home from their European Adventure last Thursday afternoon. Hannah got busy putting together her travel memorabilia into framed artwork to hang in her apartment at college. Becky helped.

Hannah stenciling her Berlin map.

Becky placing the post cards just right.

Hannah's Madrid map.

We also decorated a wooden photo box for Granddad's 81st birthday.  Becky decorated the top as you can see below.

I am sticking in this bad picture of Will.  Here he is just getting up from the piano.  He was teaching Becky a song.  He strews music where ever he goes.  And it delights my heart to hear hear him on the piano and the guitar again.

Here's a shot of that jigsaw puzzle we started last Monday:

Ta da!

It was a family effort but I have to say Rick worked on it the most.  You can't see it from this photo but Rick always leaves the very last piece out and the first kid to wander by and notice gets to put it in and complete the puzzle.

A major thing going on this week is that Joshua is finally, finally doing his Behind the Wheel training.  He's getting an interesting education that way, as the driving teacher is quite a character.  He's a good driving instructor (we think) but he's also a very outspoken agnostic Muslim from Bangladesh.  So Josh (and Rick and I) are getting an earful of opinions from a decidedly different perspective.  That's one reason I love the area I live in.  Very multicultural in the best sense of the word.  A true melting pot where you can rub elbows with all kinds of God's children!  And besides learning to drive, Josh is busy filling out job applications and in fact today he goes for his first interview.  It just so happens Chick fil a is hiring!

So what's strewing in your place?

Jesus; A Biography from a Believer - Book 34

My book this week was Jesus; A Biography from a Believer by Paul Johnson. I found this book perusing the shelves of my local library. I recognized the author's name as Paul Johnson is a fairly well known historian. He's been recommended on the Well Trained Mind High School list. In fact I have his book on A History of the American People which I started to read a couple of years ago when I was teaching American History to my oldest two kids. I remember really enjoying it, but life got super busy and I got bogged down so it was one of those books that I have left unread much to my own shame and dismay! Anyway, that former encounter with Johnson was enough to make me take this book on Jesus home with me.

Johnson is a good historian but a little quirky, I think. He'll be going along telling you history in a surprisingly easy to read and very clear way and then suddenly he'll just introduce his own personal opinion about something. I don't always agree with him, but he's interesting and gives a lot of food for thought. Often he'll explain something in a way I had never thought of before. I might decide I reject that perspective but there is something refreshing and unstuffy about the way he does this. He's a pleasant read.

He also can turn a phrase quite nicely. One quote that stayed with me (there were more than this example) is this, when he is talking about Jesus's teaching style:

All the time he taught he was creating little pictures in the minds of the men and women who listened to him. He was the poet of virtue, the bard of righteousness, the minstrel of divine love.

The book is sprinkled through with those kinds of observations.

I also really liked the way Johnson organized his material. The Book is divided by chapters:

1) Birth, Childhood, Youth

2) Baptism, Temptation and the Apostles

3) The Danger of Miracles - What was so interesting to me about this chapter was Johnson's theory on why Jesus always tell people not to speak of his miracles.

4) What Jesus Taught and Why

5) Poetry and Parables, Questions and Silence

6) Encounters: Men, Women, Children, The Aged

7) Jesus's New Ten Commandments - This chapter was especially thought-provoking and introduced a lot of Johnson's own spin on the Gospels. Here's a quote:

The aim of Jesus was not to change the world. His aim was to fit its inhabitants for the Kingdom of God, which he insisted, "is not of this world."

8) Jesus's Trial and Crucifixion

9) The Resurrection and the Birth of Christianity

As I said before, I'm not sure I agree with Johnson's take on things all the time, but he is really insightful in some areas, and he often gave me food for thought, or presented well known information in a new light.

I thought this was a worthy read.

For more book reviews go to 52 Books.

{pretty, happy, funny, real} 8/9/12

{pretty}

Becky looked out the window Tuesday evening and gasped, then grabbed my camera and ran outside.  The sky was the most gorgeous, vivid coral-ish red.  Breathtaking!

{happy}

Somebody got her Felicity doll back from the American Girl hospital.  This was another birthday present.  Becky waited three long weeks for her doll to come back whole.  Actually, this doll is 15 years old and belonged to Becky's older sister before her.  Poor Felicity had lost an arm and one leg was very near to falling off.  Her face was pretty smudged up too.  But now she's back where she belongs.  All fixed up!

{funny}

Here's Seano being goofy.  This was taken on our last day in our hotel room in Madrid.  We were sooo tired and ready to go home.  Here's a funny story from this week.  See those glasses he's wearing?  He lost them this week. Second pair he's lost since January!  Argh!  So we went to Hour Eyes to have them replaced, but alas, they did not have his prescription in stock so we were told we had to wait 14 days for new glasses.  When I relayed this fact to Rick, he quipped:   "14 days!  That company should call themselves Two Week Eyes."    Get it?  Two weak eyes?  Hahahahahahaha.  I love my husband.

{real}

This is really real.  This is my new deodorant!

It works better than any other deodorant I've ever used!  I use to take a shower in the a.m. and dutifully apply deodorant before getting dressed.  By the time I climbed into bed at night, I have to admit, I smelled a little gamey!  I came across the suggestion to use baking soda when I was perusing this site, which is trying to rid our lives of plastic (which is both ecologically disastrous as well as chemically bad for our health. I read a really good book on this subject). Then I read about a study done on breast cancer which said that in a huge number of breast cancer cases they found that the cancer cells had parabens in them, something we absorb through our deodorant. (The article I read was scary. This link is more objective in its presentation of the facts.)

My oldest sister had breast cancer, so I guess I get the willies about it pretty easily. I decided what's the harm in trying the baking soda alternative? No plastic containers to throw into a landfill for thousands of years and no possibly dangerous chemicals.

I dug out of my cupboard the only remaining ramekin from a set I inherited many years ago. I dumped some baking soda into it, got some cotton pads and powdered it on under my arms. It worked! Wonderfully! So now I'm telling everybody!

Becky thinks I'm dumb for making this the {real} section, but I told her the other ladies would understand and appreciate my sharing this little tip. Right?

For more {pretty, happy, funny, real} posts go to Like Mother, Like Daughter.

Strewsday Tuesday - 8/7/12

I tried to strew a few things yesterday.

I got out a Beatles Monopoly game that has been gathering dust for a while. No one has taken me up on it though. Maybe later this week.

We went to Michaels and got a wooden box that we've decided to sand and paint and decorate. The box has little slots on each side to put photos. Sean said he'd find and edit photos for it (he likes editing a lot). This will be our gift to grandad on Sunday. He turns 81 years young!

The most successful strewing yesterday was this:

The summers we go to the beach for vacation, we often wind up doing a jigsaw puzzle found somewhere on a shelf of the rental.  And often, we work a jigsaw puzzle between Christmas and New Years.  This was my family tradition growing up.  For some reason it was important to get ii finished by New Years Day.   I remember my grandmother and father working away with great focus.  We kids liked to help too.  My mother only ever got frustrated by them and really couldn't see why we found it so engrossing.  Anyway, it was gratifying to see the kids wander by and then sit down for a few minutes and work until they got a piece or two in.  This one is going to be hard.  There's lots of white and lots of look alike shells.  But in the end maybe we can learn to identify shells better.  Perhaps we'll cap our completion of the puzzle with a trip to the beach!  That sounds nice!

What's strewing at your house?

Meditations with John Henry Newman

(I'm not including this book in with my 52 Books in 52 Weeks Challenge because it really is not a narrative kind of read.)

Take Five; Meditations with John Henry Newman by Mike Aquilina and Fr. Juan R. Velez is one of a new series of the Take Five books designed to provide the reader with a quote from a well known Catholic saint or scholar, along with a Scripture verse and pointed questions to help provoke thought and prayers.

The set up goes like this: first, an introduction to the whole book, which informs the reader of how the authors envisioned the book being used and why they set it up the way they did. Then there is a solid summary of the life of John Henry Newman. After this there are 75 readings to meditate on. Each reading has a title which encapsulates the theme, a short line or two that summarizes and puts into the context the quote presented, the actual quote which is no longer than a paragraph or two, next the authors present three points to think about. Under the caption "just Imagine" there is a piece of Scripture that ties into what Newman was saying in his quote and then lastly a little section called Remember which summarized the major point behind this particular passage.

This little book was my companion as I waited for my kettle to boil each morning. My little ritual was to fill the kettle, turn on the flame, make the sign of the cross and begin reading. I had until the kettle whistled to meditate. It really did just 'take five' as the title of the series implies and it was a great way to jump start the morning.

In the Afterward the authors recommend two books for further reading, both by Newman and neither of which I'd heard of before. I have read parts of The Idea of a University by Newman and I've heard of Apologia Pro Vita Sua which I have not read but want to. But now I am really inspired to learn more about this wonderfully brilliant and holy man. I discovered in some books I inherited two biographies about Newman, one by Maisie Ward (those familiar with Catholic publishing will recognize her name)entitled Young Mr. Newman and another book, by Meriol Trevor, another well known author, named Newman; The Pillar of the Cloud.


I'm wondering if I should read one of these biographies first before attempting more straight Newman? Should I reread The Idea of the University but this time from cover to cover, instead of just dipping into it here and there as I did before? Or should I begin with Apologia Pro Vita Sua?

Decisions, decisions.

And now I have to find the other Take Five book I bought way back last fall; this one on St. Ignatius.

A Sense of the World - Book 33

This book was so gripping to me! I thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed learning about James Holman, the blind traveler. I listend to it on audio in my car. I had a couple of weeks of driving my daughter back and forth to music camp. It takes about 30 or 40 minutes each way so I knew I needed a good book to listen to in the car to avoid going crazy. I also had lots of other driving around to do as well. I found this audio recording at my local library.

James Holman was an apothecary's son, born in 1786, whose father connived to get him into the Royal Navy at age 12. This was very common at that time. Holman spent his time in the Northern waters of the Atlantic off the coast of Canada for the most part. The terrible cold and damp he was exposed to seemed to have caused rheumatoid arthritis. Over the years, he suffered terrible bouts that put him into the hospital. Finally he was sent to Bath, to the mineral waters there, that hopefully would relieve him of his suffering. It did, but while there he suddenly became blind. He was 25 years old. He had worked his way up to Lieutenant by that time. He was on half-pay but he knew that with his blindness that pay could be stopped at any time. He didn't want to burden his family, so he applied to become a Naval Knight, which was an organization set up in a rich man's will, that would provide room and board for an infirmed and impoverished naval officer on the condition that they remain unmarried and pray twice a day at the services of the church at Windsor. Holman managed to snag one of these positions. But he discovered it was not as ideal as he thought. He was bored out of his skull! He wound up talking the board that managed the will, into letting him study medicine at the University of Edinburgh! After he completed his studies there, he was sent to the Mediterranean area to help improve his health. And it worked! Holman discovered he loved to travel and that the thrill of traveling as a blind man was just the ticket for good health. He wound up traveling all over the world. The story of his adventures are fascinating. And so much history is uncovered as you follow him around the globe.

Jason Roberts, the author, writes an absolutely fabulous account. I was sad when the book ended. I felt like I'd lost a friend, he made the wonderful character of the intrepid James Holman so real.

The reader of the book has a great British accent, but I do think he garbled some of his words. And it wasn't just that he was pronouncing them the British way; he just sometimes pronounced words funny! However, it wasn't enough to be irksome, rather it just made him a bit idiosyncratic which was kind of fitting to the story!

This book gets a very hearty two thumbs up from me! For more book reviews, please go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.

The Spanish Match - Book 32

The Spanish Match by Brennan Pursell reminded me of a good Georgette Heyer historical novel, only a little cruder; I guess this makes it more in line with contemporary sensibilities. I found it quite riveting, though it could have been a bit shorter and still have told a good story.

The story centers on what happened when Charles, the Prince of Wales (he became Charles I), is sent by his father James I to try to woo the sister of Philip IV, the Infanta, Maria. Basically, James and Charles want to ally themselves with the Hapsburgs in order to maintain a kind of peace in Europe to avoid the catastrophe that became the Thirty Years War. Charles and his aide, the Duke of Buckingham, rode secretly across France and into Spain and surprised the Spanish court there. He stayed for several months trying to win a match, but in the end, his mission failed. He later married Maria Henrietta, the sister of the King of France of the Bourbon dynasty, and the Thirty Years war continued unabated, one of the most horrific wars ever.

Pursell included some known facts about the incident, for instance Charles surprised the Infanta in a garden one day and quoted lines from a famous romantic Spanish play, but apparently we don't know much of what happened except that the engagement failed, probably due to a dispensation the Pope issued with an untenable codicil attached to it. Spain was Catholic and had been the sworn enemy of England, who had broken away from the Church under Henry VIII. Catholics had been openly persecuted; fined, oppressed, hunted down, tortured and killed in England. The Pope would only allow the marriage if the English stopped persecuting Catholics. Alas, in the end, that was too much to ask! The situation was actually a bit more complicated than that, but that is the gist of it.

Pursell writes very well. The story is told from the point of view of Charles I. He's young (only 22 at the time), insecure and overpowered by the personality and manipulative genius of the Duke of Buckingham (who later in life gets assassinated back in England - he is very evil so no sympathy there!). Charles has decent impulses and he wants to be noble and wise, but he falls short rather pathetically. He simply isn't as smart or evil as the Duke! (You know what happens later in life to poor Charles, don't you? He is the only king to be beheaded in all of English history. The Puritans took over, with Oliver Cromwell at the helm. He died in 1658. Two years later, on the 12th anniversary of Charles I execution, they dug up old Oliver and beheaded him and hung his head up for all to see! Tired of the Puritan's cruelty, they got rid of Richard Cromwell after a year and restored the kingship. That's a very simplified version of the story, but Georgette Heyer did write a really good historical novel set in that period about Charles II (Bonnie Prince Charlie) called Royal Escape.

The Spanish Match is very well researched and replete with accurate historical and cultural details. Pursell is a historian by trade. This is his first attempt at a novel. He does really well! It's also a romance and a murder mystery! So it's got everything you want!

Two thumbs up if you are in the mood for a nice thick novel that will transport you back to the days of European royalty.

For more reviews go to 52 Books.