Donald
was a Baby Boomer, born and raised in a suburb of New Orleans. And while no
suburb of New Orleans could ever be truly Americanized, this one was as close
it got. He grew up with children whose last names reflected the region’s
French, Spanish and Italian heritage (and accents), and children whose fathers
came from all over the country to work at the huge NASA assembly facility. His
friends had names like Hebert (pronounced A-bear), Melancon and Sardelli, and
also names like Clark, Pollock, Phelps and Miller.
His
own family reflected the same dichotomy. His mother was born and raised in New
Orleans, from a large family with French, Cajun-French and German ancestors
with both Catholic and Lutheran overtones. His father had been raised in
Shreveport, in a family that was hard-shell Southern Baptist and still fighting
the Civil War.
Both
of Donald’s parents had been married before, his father twice before. He had a
half-brother who was part of his family and a half-sister who both was and
wasn’t. He was the first child of this new marriage, and he eventually had a
younger brother. What both of his parents prized and extolled for all of their
children was the virtue of hard work. All four of the children would exhibit
and practice the same belief, although each would learn that hard work was no
guarantee of personal success, and that other factors could play a large role
as well.
His
father was something of a family black sheep, and often the despair of his
grandmother. His father struggled with authority issues his entire life – the
Baptist church, his parents, his employers, the Navy, the government, local New
Orleans police officers looking for protection money. That struggle translated
into a suspicion of all authority by the children, including Donald.
He
spent more time with his mother’s family than his father’s, but his father’s
family had the relative Donald loved the most – his grandmother. Every summer,
from the time he was 7 to the time he was 13, Donald spent a week with his
grandmother in Shreveport. He adored her, and she adored him. He was many
things his own father was not – studious, respectful, never getting into
trouble, among others. His grandmother often wondered how Donald could have
been produced by her son, and decided that while he looked like a carbon copy
of his father, he must have been more influenced by his mother. Donald loved
Shreveport; it evoked a sense of the almost magical because of his grandmother.
And
that was true. Donald’s father worked hard and worked long hours, six days a
week, trying to make a go of his small business. When a small child, sometimes
weeks would pass before Donald would see his father, getting up after his
father had left for work and going to bed before his father got home. And what
he learned from his mother included a strong sense of romanticism; he
substituted as his mother’s movie partner because his father just didn’t care
for them.
When
Donald began dating in high school, the girls were varied in background. Some
were natives of New Orleans; others had moved with their families to the city
and were from all over the United States. Most came from a similar middle class
background; a few came from wealthy families who lived on prestigious streets.
But there was no longstanding high school sweetheart.
For
college, he attended the state university, whose student body drew a majority
from Louisiana but had a significant number of foreign and out-of-state
students. His dating patterns, however, varied little from high school, and he
found himself dating girls mostly from the New Orleans area, until his senior
year, when he met and started dating a girl from the magical city of
Shreveport. And this would be the girl he married.
Over
at The High Calling, we’re reading The
Social Animal by New York Times
columnist David Brooks. Today we’re covering three chapters – on norms,
self-control and culture. These three chapters are about Erica, who comes from
a lower economic class family in New York that is Chinese-American on one side
and Mexican-American on the other,
The
Social Animal is a non-fiction book largely told by telling the stories of
fictional characters. My post today is an example of how Brooks has written the
book, illustrating his fictional stories with numerous psychological,
sociological and other scientific studies. The “Donald” is this post is based on
my own experience.
Sun penetrates a pane of glass
His
fourth novel, Not
in the Heart, is a departure, at least in setting. The place is
Florida, and mostly Tallahassee. Truman Wiley, a celebrated but currently unemployed
broadcast journalist, is facing a major family crisis. His 18-year-old son
Aidan is in the hospital, facing certain death without a heart transplant. A
donor exists, but he’s on Florida’s death row, awaiting execution for the
murder of a woman. The inmate, Terrelle Conley, has become a Christian in
prison, and he wants to donate his heart.
Kathy Richard, aka Katdish, aka she of the Katdishionary (not to mention all those Sky Mall posts) has posted a review of Dancing Priest at her blog. She says:
If there is a contemporary writer who has done much the same for the concept of “place” as William Faulkner, it is poet, novelist and essayist Wendell Berry, who has based the fictitious Port William on his particular region of Kentucky. Berry has gone far beyond Faulkner, however, is developing a body of literary, philosophical and economic work that is rooted in his concept of place. 
I
taught an adult Sunday School class once on material provided by the Salt and
Light Fellowship, then a ministry of the Francis
Schaeffer Institute at Covenant
Theological Seminary. The lessons focused on helping people understand that
wherever they were was their ministry, and that God saw their work – at home,
in offices, behind the wheel of a delivery truck, in a grocery store, wherever –
as just as important as any other kind of work. This is also the idea behind The High Calling, where I’m a
contributing editor.
Pastor Bill Grandi has posted his review of Dancing Priest at his blog, Cycleguy's Spin. Bill is a pastor -- and a cycling pastor, so the bicycle parts of the novel faced a kind of acid test. Here's a little of what he said:
