Category Archives: Uncategorized

Zarafa, A Curious Book for the Curious Reader

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The cover of Zarafa: A Giraffe’s True Story, from Deep in Africa to the Heart of Paris caught my eye and came home with me from the bookstore a few years back.  Last month while I was browsing my gold mine of books to read–wanting something different–this caught my imagination.

The book has a map that shows the starting and ending places of Zarafa’s journey from Khartoum to Paris.  The prologue (you can read it here) will delight the heart of any reader blessed with curiosity. The author provides the context of how he discovered the story of a giraffe given by an Egyptian ruler to the king of France in 1827.  A special ship was built to accommodate Zarafa who walked to Paris from Marseille .

If you are the curious type, you will enjoy reading this fascinating book.  If you are particularly interested in Egypt, Napoleon, Muhammad Ali (not the former Cassius Clay!), Muslim-Christian relations, the Rosetta Stone, giraffes, travel or the nineteenth century don’t delay in getting this title. Most of the charming illustrations are from nineteenth century artists. 

Fun facts I learned from reading this book:

The Nile is shaped like the letter S in Sudan.

Printing presses brought to Egypt by Napoleon were later used by Muhammad Ali to modernize Egypt.

Of all land animals, giraffes have the largest eyes…enabling them to communicate with one another visually from as far as a mile away.

Zarafa walked 550 miles from Marseille to Paris in 41 days.

This book will do for folks allergic to history what Longitude did for this science shy person.

A children’s book, The Giraffe That Walked to Paris, was written by Nancy Milton about Zarafa.

My NEW favorite Christmas CD

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My new favorite Christmas CD.
I don’t know how famous violinist Geoffrey Castle is.
He is well-known in the Seattle are.

Go here to hear the complete track of Ukrainian Bell Carol
and an excerpt of the Coventry Carol.
As far as I can tell, that site is the only place to buy the CD.

I’m obsessive with this one.
Which means my family gets to hear it..again…and again…
and again…and again…and again.

Think the synthesized sound of Mannheim Steamroller
(Castle isn’t synthesized, but he plays an electric violin),
the introspection of George Winston
with Joshua Bell thrown in.
That’s not quite the recipe, but I’m reaching for artists
you might be familiar with.

Perfect for a quiet evening.

Dear Joan

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Dear Joan,

Thank you.  Even though I had never met you before, and I don’t expect to see you again, you made my day today.

I am the woman in Costco Optical who was standing in front of cases of frames, forlorn, perplexed, indecisive…inadequate.  Still coming to grips with the transition from contacts to glasses.

And there you were: an older woman wearing black tights, an herringbone skirt and black turtleneck, your elegantly coiffed hair framing a face as beautiful today as it was fifty years ago.  Everything about you reflected exquisite taste.  Your deep-set eyes told me that kindness was spiraled into your DNA. 

“Would you mind giving me your opinion?” I appealed, looking as helpless as I felt.  You smiled your assent and we got straight to work.  Which ones have you tried?…Let’s see that one again…No, that’s too harsh….Oh, I really like those!…Yes, those are very nice.  You voiced your responses freely but not forcefully.

Here’s the thing: you attached yourself to my need, converting it to our project, fully invested in finding the best frames out of all available.  Halfway through the process I gave a wry grin and said, “Hi, I’m Carol.”  You said, “Hi Carol, I’m Joan.”  And we were comrades.  We chatted and laughed.  You didn’t act rushed, impatient or put upon.

When we had reduced the decision to two frames, you took your leave.  It occurred to me later that you really had no business in the optical department.  You were just there! And then you left. 

I hope that my new glasses remind me of you often, that I remember to be thankful for our ten-minute friendship.  I would love to be like you when I grow up.  I can’t aspire to your beauty, but I can be friendly and available.  Today you reminded me of how refreshing it is to be connected.  To be humans together in this fragmented world.

Thank you.

Yours fondly,

Carol

P.S. I ended up choosing the plainer frame.  I know you preferred the ones with pizazz, the sparkles on the corners that matched my coloring.  Someday I will be brave enough for sparkles, but all my life I’ve chosen safe over brave.

Lift Up Your Hearts

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Let our sons in their youth be as grown-up plants,

and our daughters as corner pillars fashioned as for a palace.

Let our garners be full, furnishing every kind of produce.

And our flocks bring forth thousands and ten-thousands in our fields.

Let our cattle bear, without mishap and without loss.

Let there be no outcry in our streets.

How blessed are the people who are so situated.

How blessed are the people whose God is the Lord!

Psalm 144:12-15

 

 

 

The holiday season is upon us.

And along with our many celebrations comes a higher concentration of human beings in limited spaces. Homes that usually house one family, will receive extra visitors.

Grandparents will join their children and grandchildren for meals and games. Uncles and aunts and cousins will arrive from far-away places.

Bedrooms will swell with overnight guests. Showers will require more hot water than is available.

Dishes will pile up.

Toilets will plug.

Diapers will stink.

Toddlers will make watching a good movie almost impossible.

Glasses will break.

Toys will become tug-of-war victims.

Along with all the laughter, memories, jokes, conversations, and good food, offenses will come.

Patience will run short.

Fatigue will settle in.

Someone will most likely get sick. Loud crying will echo throughout the house.

There will be spankings and rumors of spankings.

And then the end will come.

We tend to anticipate the joys of Thanksgiving and Christmas, without remembering the tensions that accompany sinners wherever we go.

Our celebrations always bring with them difficulties, because we by nature are difficult to get along with.

So, how shall we then live, given our own weaknesses and failures?

 
 

By faith.

By faith we must trust that our mixed-bag celebrations are the context God is using to grow strong sons and grandsons.

By faith we must trust that these sorts of tensions are fashioning our daughters and granddaughters into beautiful palatial pillars.

By faith we must believe God is re-making us into his own image through our flawed efforts to please him.

And that is exactly what we are endeavoring to do here this morning.

We are trusting he will change us as we seek to please him.

How blessed are the people whose God is the Lord.

Let us therefore worship the Triune God.

guest post from my husband,  Curt Bakker

Finding Friends in Unlikely Places

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One of the best stories I heard this year was from my girlfriend reunion in September.  It’s not my story to tell in specifics. The gist of it is that my girlfriend’s mom was talking to a tour guide in England, challenging the English interpretation of events between England and Scotland.  Pleased to engage with someone knowledgeable and articulate in British history, the guide allowed their conversation to develop, extending the time one would usually take with a tourist. At some point my friend’s mom realized she was speaking with a member of the royal family.

A similar frisson of recognition delights me when I come across a literary reference that connects.  I am oblivious to so many references, hopscotching right over them.  But when I am familiar with a work, or writer or quote the author mentions, the thrill of discovery goes right through me. 

Here are two recent catches:

As one who must always be acting a part, he had dressed up very carefully as a river-man; ‘the Jerome K. Jerome touch’, he had explained, ‘is what impresses the lock-keepers.’   ~ the quote is from The Footsteps at the Lock by Ronald Knox. The reference is to Jerome K. Jerome’s book Three Men In A Boat (To Say Nothing Of The Dog…) which is a very funny (in the dry British sense) book

Here was one of Miss Barbara Pym’s excellent women, a dying breed no doubt, even in country parishes, but once as much a part of the Church of England as sung evensong…; Sunday School superintendent, arranger of flowers, polisher of brass, scourge of choirboys and comforter of favorite curates.  ~ the quote is from P.D. James’ A Certain Justice (Adam Dalgliesh Mystery Series). The reference is to Barbara Pym’s Excellent Women, a comic novel about unmarried women that is at times too close to the truth to be funny (says a single friend of mine).  I didn’t know until this minute that it has been issued in a Penguin classics.  I collect Penguins. 

This happens in minor ways all the time. One learns a new word, a new work, a new author…and suddenly that new thing jumps out from the shadows. In January I wrote about the same thrill. 

~ happy sigh ~  People imagine that we readers are dull and boring, but really, the reading life is a thrilling life!

Why PD James is my favorite mystery writer

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I just finished another Adam Dalgliesh book, A Certain Justice.  Adam Dalgliesh is the main character of fourteen mystery novels. I like mysteries more than science fiction, westerns, horror and thrillers—but less than memoirs, travel, histories and humor.  I prefer spacing mysteries out, inserting them between heavier reading.  And my “go to” mystery writer is P.D. James. 

The mystery part of the book is always secondary for me.  I love the culture, the commentary, the specificity behind James’ writing. One of her characters doesn’t turn on classical music while he drives; he listens to Elgar’s Serenade for Strings. 

James is conversant in the Bible and The Book of Common Prayer.  If you know your Books, you will recognize phrases and allusions.  Adam Dalgliesh is the son of an Anglican rector, who embraces the trappings of his childhood but does not hold to the faith of his father.  Theological and philosophical questions are naturally raised. Death is present in every book (she is, after all, a murder mystery writer); reckoning with mortality tends to get one beyond the mundane.  

And she is British.  (happy sigh)   

Here is a sampler from A Certain Justice.

Do you want a cup of tea?  A cup of tea.  That English remedy for grief, shock and human mortality.

The affair now was beginning to have some of the longueurs of marriage, but with none of marriage’s reassuring safety and comfort.

But there was in his bearing the innate dignity of a man who is at ease with his work, does it well and knows that he is valued.

What I wrote when I first discovered P.D. James

Everyone Needs Help Sometime

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“It’s okay…I’ve been there before…Everyone needs help sometime…”

Deana was calling our store’s adopted “Christmas family” to get specific items they needed.  The person on the other line was overwhelmed.

Hearing Deana’s side of the phone conversation took me back to a time when one of my husband’s colleagues showed up on our doorstep with four or five bags of groceries.  It was 1983 or 1984.  My husband was teaching high school, I was home with a baby. We didn’t have two dimes to jingle in our pocket; it was a paycheck to paycheck life. 

Then the flu flattened us. The fridge had free space on every shelf. It was all we could do to make a fire, wrap a blanket around our shoulders, and stare at the wall. Dave Steen, a legendary high school baseball coach, called to check on our Thanksgiving plans. He listened to Curt’s explanation and heard the unspoken pathos between his words. 

And the next day there he was on our front porch.  Cheerful, matter of fact, generous.  Paper bags spilling over with groceries.

I felt embarrassed, relieved, exhausted, awkward, thankful, humbled, uneasy, shy. Reluctant to admit that we needed help and yet incapable of arguing otherwise.  
How grateful I am for that Thanksgiving. That pitiful, miserable, rotten Thanksgiving that turned a corner when our front door opened.  Admittedly, it’s easier to be thankful for hard times when they are in the rear view mirror.

Any of you been there?

Everyone needs help sometime.

Quotes from Island of the World

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I couldn’t put enough quotes in my review of Island of the World.  So here, with space to stretch and relax, are some I marked. I omitted longer sections and any spoilers.  All are from the pen of Michael O’Brien.

~  I’m giving away a copy of this book to one of my readers.  ~
Enter a comment here.

Language should be, he says, as fluid as love and as stable as marriage.

There are times when it is hard to resist the world that is so rapidly changing all around him.  It takes energy to resist, even if only within the privacy of his thoughts.

Life is strange. But God has the final word.

Life itself is the great surprise, and all that is within it is an unpacking of subsidiary wonders.

Europeans understand that flavor is not about sensory stimulation, it is about evocation. It is art and memory. It is reunion with exalted moments, and such moments are never solitary ones. In short, life without coffee is not really life.

The killers murder not only their immediate victims; they spread death into the souls of survivors.

Can you really see the future if you have not seen the past for what it was?

Can a dwelling place without books every truly be a home?

They like a bit of verse as emotional prompts on greeting cards or as page-filler in periodicals, but they do not dive deep. Perhaps they do not know the deep is there. The pace of modern life, television, subways, fast food–these all work against the sublime illuminating moment when the distance between utterance and reception is closed in an embrace.

They are enjoying the rather unusual experience of it all–the sensation of a time-tested and comfortable friendship that is only hours old.

It may be that he cannot always distinguish between his losses and blessings, and the release of tears reduces the pressure.

Truth is always embedded in beauty.

On Christmas morning, they awake to the sound of bells ringing throughout the city. This, doubtless, is illegal, but the government probably does not have the stamina to destroy Christmas utterly.

Is he alone? Yes, he is alone, and yet, not alone. Beyond all sorrows, he has the fire of Holy Communion with Christ, as well as friends and fishing and the central grace in his life–his mission to forgive.

We are born, we eat, and learn, and die.  We leave a tracery of messages in the lives of others, a little shifting of the soil, a stone moved from here to there, a word uttered, a song, a poem left behind. I was here, each of these declare. I was here.

The Best Book of 2010

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In July I began reading Michael O’Brien’s Island of the World. Thirty pages in I knew this book was extraordinary. At one point in the middle of the night I got up and Googled Josip Lasta, the protagonist’s name, convinced he was a real person.

When I finished reading it, I couldn’t stop discussing it.  I gave copies to friends. But I shrank from writing about Island.  It is a big book in every sense of the word. How can I express its power in a short review? A friend read it and said, “It changed my life.”  Island of the World has 18 reviews on Amazon; all are 5 stars.  Laura, whose review began with these words “Best book ever.”, bought every book written by O’Brien after reading this.

So what is it about?  Light and darkness, loss and blessing, deep interior wounds, survival, sanity after trauma, crucifixion, resurrection.  Grief mingled with inexplicable joy.  All condensed in the life of a single Croatian man named Josip Lasta. 

Yet there is a difference between insightful commentary
about culture and the actual creation of culture.

I am intrigued by the cultures portrayed in O’Brien’s book: the rustic mountain village northwest of Sarajevo with an interdependent community and a faithful priest; the heady high culture of academia discussing philosophy and experiencing art; the tight grip on the edge of sanity, clinging to a vestige of humanity in a labor camp; the incremental rebuilding of a life in an Italian hospital; the life of a solitary janitor in New York City. 

If he had been given a choice, would he have chosen to be
a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief? Never.
It was given. It is gift and cost–and in time the cost may
become entirely gift. It is hard to know if that will be the
end of all this striving, impossible to guess when the next
blessing or blow will fall.

I had read a third of the book when I saw a young man, a friend and former student who shares my love of reading thick, chunky, excellent books.  I stopped him as he walked by my office and told him about Island. Scott listened with interest and thanked me.  I made him wait while I printed out the synopsis from Amazon.  Two days later he was killed in a car accident.  The printout was on his nightstand.  Reading this book in the throes of grief impressed its words on my soul. This book is unforgettable.

I can’t be sure, but I suspect that Michael O’Brien is my new Wendell Berry.  That is the highest compliment I can offer. 

Get this book.  Burrow into it.  It will change you.

Friends’ reviews:  Laura, Janie  Another review: Rabbit Room

I added a post of quotes from this book here.

I love this book so much, I want one of you to win a free copy. 
Enter a comment and I will have a drawing.  Let’s say December 4th. 
Post a link, tweet about it, email a friend (and let me know you did)
and I’ll enter your name twice!
You can have choose between paperback or Kindle version.
International entries are welcome.