Saturday Good Reads - Nov. 30, 2024

George Bothamley at Art Every Day did something interesting with two painters whom, at first glance, you might not immediately connect to each other. He looked at Edward Hopper & Johannes Vermeer,  and he found some striking similarities. 

I think, therefore Iamb. Andrew Benson Brown at the Society of Classical Poets has a video on “How to Write Iambic Pentameter in 13 Minutes." You, too, can write sonnets like Shakespeare!

 

When life is going well, it’s easy to give thanks. But what do you do when life isn’t going so well, when life is, well, like life. We all experience illness, grief, loss, hurt, and tragedy. Should you, can you, give thanks in those times as well? Aaron Armstrong has some suggestions for giving thanks in the worst of times.

 

More Good Reads

 

British Stuff

 

The Forgotten Corners of Old London and The Streets of Old London – Spitalfields Life.

 

Writing and Literature

 

The Beat Goes On: Michael Connelly on Words, Writers & ‘The Waiting’ – John Valeri at CrimeReads.

 

The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper – John Miller and Bradley Birzer at National Review (podcast). 

 

Poetry

 

A Review of Memory's Abacus by Anna Lewis – Zina Gomez-Liss at New Verse Review.

 

“Rice Pudding,” poem by A.A. Milne and “The Chimney Sweeper,” poem by William Blake – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

A Poet’s Thanks – L.L. Barkat at Every Day Poems.

 

Art

 

Snug as a bug: conservation work reveals beetle in Gauguin cat painting – Martin Bailey at The Art Newspaper.

 

Life and Culture

 

Do-able Simplicities: On Letter Writing and Fountain Pens – Art Kusserow at Front Porch Republic.

 

Nonprofit nabobery: On the Ford Foundation’s philanthropy – The New Criterion.

 

Faith

 

The (Unimpressive) Ambassadors of Heaven – Seth Lewis

 

Low-Tide Evangelism – Glen Scrivener at The Gospel Coalition. 

 

Calling All Christians: The Everyday Mission of God – Seth Porch at Desiring God.

 

The Battle and the Blessing – City Alight

 Painting: Girl Reading, oil on canvas (1883) by Otto Scholderer (1834-1902). 

Only for a time

After I Peter 1:3-9 

It is only for a time,

only for a little while,

that we are grieved,

afflicted, and beset

by various trials, tests,

for a purpose: to show

our faith is genuine,

tested and refined

by trial, refined

to a purity finer

than pure gold, 

for a purpose: 

our faith results in praise,

our faith results in glory,

our faith results in honor,

at the precisely right time

of the revelation.

 

Photograph by Elyas Pasban via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Friday Readings

 

A Pastoral Prayer – Tim Challies.

 

The Desire – poem by Hester Pulter at Kingdom Poets (D.S. Martin).

 

2024: Ten Reasons I'm Thankful This Thanksgiving Day – Brian Miller at Notes from an East Tennessee Farmer.

Two Thanksgiving Day Proclamations

Three United States presidents have issued Thanksgiving Day proclamations. George Washington issued the first proclamation, as the new Republic was getting started in 1798. James Madison issued one in 1815. Abraham Lincoln issued two, one in 1862 and one in 1863. But it wasn't until the 1863 proclamation that Thanksgiving became an annual observance. 

The first proclamation by Washington and the second by Lincoln are posted at Dancing Priest today. 

Top photograph by Virginia Simionato via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Thursday Readings

 

Thankfulness is a Year-long Habit – Terry Whalin at The Writing Life.

 

“The New-England Boy’s Song about Thanksgiving Day ,” poem by Lydia Maria Child – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Thanksgiving Sonnet – Kelly Belmonte at Kelly’s Scribbles.

 

A Nation’s Gratitude: The First Presidential Thanksgiving – Jason Clark at This is the Day.

 

Thanksgiving: A Sonnet – Malcolm Guite.

 

The Year Washington (Almost) Canceled Thanksgiving – Michael Connolly at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

"The Last Days of the War" by Dr. Henry T. Bahnson

The half-century after the end of the Civil War saw an outpouring of memoirs by veterans on both sides. Some were written by war heroes, like Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman (and were bestsellers as well). For time, it must have seemed like every general and officer in the war was writing an account. A joke made the rounds that so many people had witnessed Robert E. Lee’s signing of the surrender to Grant at Appomattox that both armies had crowded into the room. 

For a time, those who had been privates – enlisted and drafted – penned their remembrances as well. These accounts, and I’ve read a considerable number number for my soon-to-be-published historical novel Brookhaven, are not so much concerned with strategy and battle outcomes as they are with day-to-day survival, getting enough food, mud (lots of mud, especially when you have to walk through it), in short, what everyman experienced. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

King Arthur left an ancient trail across Britain. Experts say it offers clues about the truth behind the myth – Julia Buckley at CNN.

 

King Arthur: A Legacy of Chivalry – George Grant at Florilegium. 

 

O Pioneers! – Joseph Pearce at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Digging Deep, Staying with It: James Sallis on Writing, Reality, and the Danger of Creative Work – Nick Kolakowski at CrimeReads.

Poets and Poems: Wendy Wisner at "The New Life"

We see the statistics on infant and child mortality before the advent of antibiotics and other medical advances, and we nod in understanding. But when the statistic is your own family, and it affects both those who experience it and those who come after it happened, you know that it is something more than a statistic. 

In the 38 poems of her new collection The New Life, poet and writer Wendy Wisner speaks to that difference between statistic and family reality. She knows from her own family history that children can die; it happened to her grandmother’s sister on the boat when the family immigrated to America. It happened to her grandmother who lost a child during childbirth in the hospital. To a doctor or researcher, such events are statistics. To the people who experience it, it’s a tragedy that stays with them the rest of their lives.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Tuesday Readings

 

Body of Oceans – poem by David Whyte.

 

I heard a Fly buzz – poem by Emily Dickinson at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Thin Starlight: Interview with Emily Jean Patterson – Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

P.S. – poem by Franz Wright at Every Day Poems.

Some Monday Readings - Nov. 25, 2024

4 Mistakes I See Nonfiction Authors Make (and How to Fix Them) – Ann Kroeker, Writing Coach. 

The Old World is Not Coming Back – speech by Bari Weiss of The Free Press.

 

The Nights of Old London – Spitalfields Life.

 

The Sound and the Fury: William Faulkner’s Great-Grandfather – Brian Kowell at Emerging Civil War.

 

In 1177 BCE, Civilizations Fell Apart In A Mysterious Simultaneous Collapse – IFL Science.

 

Plainsong – poem by Donald Platt at New Criterion.

 

Tales from the Road: ‘Disappearing into Dill Branch Ravine – John Banks’ Civil War Blog.

 

Justice Inverted – guest post by Daniel Pomerantz at Clarity with Michael Oren.

 

Learning to love. How the poet Dana Gioia discovered his vocation through music – The Common Reader.

 

Photograph: William Clark Falkner, great-grandfather of William Faulkner and the inspiration for the Old Colonel.

The storm rages

After I Peter 1:3-5 

The storm rages around us,

a tempest, pounding

turbulence, threatening

destruction. It rages,

but we are safe, secure,

protected with a promise,

with an inheritance,

one that is permanent,

perfect, held in reserve,

a hope amid the storm,

a hope in spite of the storm,

a living hope, a refuge,

a rock, and we are

in its cleft, our safety

and salvation secure.

 

Photograph by Mac LaRochelle via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Sunday Readings

 

The Value of Work & Picking Blueberries – Russell Gehrlein at the Institute for Faith, Work, & Economics.

 

The News Media is Broken. What Now? – Mike Woodruff at The Gospel Coalition.

 

Narnia Remains – Samuel D. James at Digital Liturgies.

Christ the King - sonnet by Malcolm Guite.

Saturday Good Reads - Nov. 23, 2024

We’ve traveled to Britain several times since 2012, and our interest in the country (and my five novels) have kept us connected to British news. Since the last election there this summer, change is accelerating, and my American perspective doesn’t see it as good. People are being arrested, sentenced, and jailed for tweets that wouldn’t draw a second glance in the United States. You can be arrested for praying near an abortion clinic. Farmers are in an uproar, seeing the government as set on destroying British agriculture. Nottingham University has issued a trigger warning for a course on Chaucer – the warning is for Canterbury Tales containing “Christian expressions.” Judges are often allowing serious criminals to walk if they have some kind of immigrant status.  

But there is resistance. One of the most popular British commentators (on Instagram, anyway; you won’t find her on the BBC or even the conservative Daily Mail) is Katie Hopkins, whose reports are often shocking even by free speech standards. The actor Laurence Fox (Inspector Lewis series) was arrested last year for articulating what was normal, everyday speech as recently as 2012. Father Calvin Robinson is an Anglican priest (with Catholic sympathies) who has left Britain for the United States; he’s called the recently resigned Archbishop of Canterbury an apostate (he’s also friends with a certain recently elected U.S. President). 

 

While much of American law and rights can be traced to British common law and the Magna Carta, we have rights and freedoms the British don’t have, like freedom of speech and freedom of the press. For which I am thankful, even with the misinformation that comes out of both social media and the legacy news media.

 

More Good Reads

 

Life and Culture

 

It’s Time to Redefine “Fringe” – Matt Taibbi at Racket News.

 

A Boy Went for a Walk. His Mom Was Charged with ‘Reckless Conduct’ – Leighton Woodhouse at The Free Press.

 

Faith

 

The Moses Option – Paul Kingsnorth at The Abbey of Misrule.

 

Wanting What I Already Have – Seth Lewis.

 

What Is My Spiritual Gift? Maybe You’re Asking the Wrong Question – Jonathan Threlfall.

 

American Stuff

 

Why the Gettysburg Address is One of the Most Famous Speeches in History – Christopher Klein at History.

 

Ode to Gettysburg at 161 – Grace Phan Bellafiore at Front Porch Republic.

 

Immigration is a Mess. Here’s How to Fix It – Reihan Salam at The Free Press.

 

Absolutely Tailor-Make for a Ska Remake – Greg Sullivan at Sippican Cottage.

 

The Abolitionist Titan You’ve Never Heard Of – Isaac Willour at Law & Liberty.

 

Israel

 

The Altneu Antisemitism, Part 1 and Part II – Michael Oren at Clarity.

 

News Media

 

The Guardian’s Retreat from the Battlefield of Ideas – Andrew Doyle at The Free Press.

 

Poetry

 

Nomad: The bus to anywhere – Kelly Belmonte at Kelly’s Scribbles.

 

“Silence,” poem by Babette Deutsch – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Anthony Hecht’s Hard Hours and Hard Lessons – Steve Knepper at New Verse Review.

 

CS Lewis: A Sonnet – Malcolm Guite.

 

Art

 

Discover Claude Monet’s London – The Courtauld Gallery, London.

 

A Van Gogh painting, newly authenticated in an unexpected Polish museum, has gone on display in a church dome – Martin Bailey at The Art Newspaper.

 

Writing and Literature

 

Coriolanus’ Sea of Bloody Fists – Henry Oliver at Liberties.

 

Finlandia by Jean Sibelius – SWR Vokalensemble

Painting: The Philosopher Reading, oil on canvas by Jean Siméon Chardin (1699-1779).

Elected exiles

After I Peter 1:1-2 

Chosen, called out,

exiled, far from home,

we are the elected exiles,

living each day is dispersion,

by the waters of Babylon,

strangers in strange lands,

yet strangers called out,

selected, chosen. It begs

the questions: elected

to what? Chosen for what?

Alien and dispersed, why?

Whats and whys may not

be clear, but we know

the elector, the chooser,

the architect. We are

chosen in foreknowledge 

by the spirit, Father, sanctified

by the Spirit, baptized 

with the blood of the Son.

We are the elect. We are

the dispersion, living †he new,

living in the old.

 

Photograph by Francois Hoang via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Friday Readings

 

A Review of Thin Places & Sacred Spaces: Poems, edited by Sarah Law – Steve Knepper at New Verse Review.

 

In the Letting Go – poem by Martha Orlando at Meditations of My Heart.

 

Squirrels, Love Poems, and Jesus – Megan Willome.

Poets and Poems: Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer and "The Unfolding"

In August of 2021, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer was in Georgia with her husband, daughter, and son, helping her parents move into a retirement home. Two nights later, her 19-year-old son committed suicide. Later that year, her father died of kidney failure. Two close family deaths, close together. One inexplicable. One understandable, but still a loss. 

Trommer’s The Unfolding isn’t about the stages of grief. I don’t think that kind of loss can have stages, which imply gradually getting over it, coming to terms, and acceptance. Suicide doesn’t work like that.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Thursday Readings

 

Belonging to the Garden – Matt Miller at Front Porch Republic.

 

At St Botolph Without Aldgate – A London Inheritance via Spitalfields Life.

 

Little Christmas Carol – James Witmer at Story Warren.

 

A Single Word – Laura Lynn Brown at Every Day Poems.

 

Hybrid Publishing is a Viable Option – Vin Zandri at The New Daily Journal.

"The Grey Wolf" by Louise Penny

It starts as a series of seemingly unrelated events. Two unrelated people are killed, hundreds of kilometers apart, in the exact same execution style. An elderly visitor leaves a bottle of terrible-tasting liqueur at the bistro in Three Pines. An old coat belonging to Armand Gamache, head of Homicide for Quebec’s Surete, is stolen from his Montreal apartment, and then returned. In a pocket is a list of spices, and a single word – water. Then a young man, an activist for an environmental group, meets with Gamache – and run over in a car inches away from Gamache himself. The driver is later founded murdered. 

Gamache and his team, Jean-Guy Beauvoir and Isabelle Lacoste, will soon learn that they are dealing with a planned terrorist act, designed to destabilize the government, institute a dictatorship, and involving officials at almost the very top of Canada’s political leadership. They will travel to remote monasteries, the Vatican, Washington, D.C., and a remote fishing village in Labrador, desperately trying to determine what’s planned and when.

 

Louise Penny

The Grey Wolf is the 19^th novel in the Armand Gamache series by Canadian author Louise Penny. It’s a gripping, creative fast-paced story, with an ending that keeps the reader on the edge of his seat to the very end. And while it does its predecessor novels proud, very little of the story involves Gamache’s home village of Three Pines and its collection of unusual residents. On the plus side, it avoids the trap its predecessor novel, A World of Curiosities, fell into, when we were given a bit too much of the author’s personal politics.

 

What it does have, however, is the promise of the next installment in the series. Because with a grey wolf, there is a black wolf.

 

Penny’s Chief Inspector Gamache novels have been bestsellers in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, and other countries. She’s received numerous awards, including a Crime Writers Association Dagger Award and the Agatha Award, and she’s been a finalist for the Edgar Award. In 2017, she received the Order of Canada for her contributions to Canadian culture. She lives near Montreal. 

 

Related:

 

My review of Kingdom of the Blind.

 

My review of Glass Houses.

 

My review of A Great Reckoning.

 

My review of The Long Way Home.

 

My review of How the Light Gets In.

 

My review of The Beautiful Mystery.

 

My review of The Hangman.

 

My review of Penny’s A Trick of the Light.

 

My review of Penny’s A Fatal Grace.

 

My review of Penny’s Still Life.

 

My review of Penny’s The Cruelest Month.

 

My review of Penny’s A Rule Against Murder.

 

My review of The Brutal Telling.

 

My review of Penny’s Bury Your Dead.

 

My review of A Better Man.

 

My review of All the Devils Are Here.

 

My review of The Madness of Crowds.

 

My review of A World of Curiosities.

 

Some Wednesday Readings

 

The Patron Subjects: Who were the Wertheimers, the family that sat for a dozen of John Singer Sargent’s paintings? – Jean Strouse at The American Scholar.

 

Fading Light – Brian Miller at A South Roane Agrarian.

 

Monumental painting in SLAM’s collection only known survivor of its kind – St. Louis Art Museum. 

 

Bah Humbug: The Crime of Loneliness in Holiday Stories – Lindy Ryan at CrimeReads.

 

The Outsized Impact of George Cukor’s “Gaslight” – Bonnie Kistler at CrimeReads.

Poets and Poems: Catherine Abbey Hodges and “Empty Me Full”

From the first poem in Empty Me Full, I had the distinct impression I had entered of series of successive dreams. I was about 10 poems in when I realized what it was – Catherine Abbey Hodges powerfully uses images to pull the reader to ask fundamental questions. Or is it questioning the fundamentals? 

A few images from the first poem of her new collections: a rising river, a time lapse of the night sky, the torso of heaven, mice nesting in a piano, the arch of a dying oak, a worm in the oak dreaming as it chews. The images come so fast that you’re moving through a metaphorical mist, knowing all the time you’re nearing something important.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Tuesday Readings

 

Two people – poem and artwork by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

The Red Chair – poem by Maurice Manning at Kingdom Poets (D.S. Martin).

 

Daily, Under My Breath – poem by Katherine Whitcomb at Every Day Poems.

 

“The moon looked into my window,” poem by e.e. cummings – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Ekphrastic Poem Prompt: In the Lost House – Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

Remembrance Day Parade in Gettysburg – Patrick Young at The Reconstruction Era.

When Fiction Seems to Predict Fact

The Dancing Priest novels seem to be back in the fiction-becomes-fact business. 

Last week, after saying he would not resign, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby did, in fact, resign. This followed the release of the Makin Report, which documented the failings of the Church of England (COE) in a cover-up of an abuse scandal. The scandal went back to the 1980s when a barrister named John Smyth abused young teens at COE church camps, slipped out of England when it appeared the law was onto him, and went on to victimize more boys in Zimbabwe and South Africa.

 

Welby’s sin: he learned about the abuse in 2013 but failed to report it to authorities. Smyth could have been brought to justice at that time; he died in 2018.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Photograph by Ruth Gledhill via Unsplash. Used with permission.

 

Some Monday Readings

 

The Ed Tech Revolution Has Failed – Jared Cooney Horvath at After Babel.

 

The Books You Come Back To – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review.

 

The Last Words of Alexei Navalny – Douglas Murray at The Free Press.

 

“An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” short story by Ambrose Bierce – The Imaginative Conservative.

Why covet?

After Exodus 20:17 and Philippians 4:10-13 

Why covet anything

not yours? Why covet

what you don’t have?

Do you believe that

having what you don’t

will solve your problems,

promote your reputation,

make you happy, make

you fulfilled? Here’s

the secret: even getting

what you don’t have 

or want doesn’t work,

because it’s never

enough.

 

Secret, Part 2: In lack

and plenty, abundance

and need, be content,

because you can do

all things in hm who

strengthens you.

In all things,

be content.

 

“Coveting, at its heart, is character assassination of God.” – Clay Smith, sermon March 17, 2024.

 

Photograph by Fikry Anshor via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Sunday Readings

 

A small change to help the Word really do its work – Stephen Kneale at Building Jerusalem.

 

Ten Correctable Mistakes We Make When Preaching and Teaching – Steve Burchett at Christian Communicators Worldwide.

 

Good Night, My Son: A Father’s Tribute Through Tragic Loss – Conrad Mbewe at Desiring God.

 

Saturday Good Reads - Nov. 16, 2024

In September, British author and journalist Douglas Murray spoke at The New Criterion’s sixth annual Circle Lecture. His subject was the phrase “banality of evil,” first used by political scientist and historian Hannah Arendt. Murray, who is known for saying exactly what he’s thinking and saying it with razor-sharp clarity, said the phrase has a problem: it is both a piece of lazy thinking and “built on a foundation that is fundamentally rotten.” It’s not the banality of evil we should consider, he says, but its profundity. 

At Front Porch Republic, Jesse Russell reviews James Matthew Wilson’s new poetry collection, St. Thomas and the Forbidden Birds. He has high praise indeed, saying Wilson “crafts a moving vision of everyday life in twenty-first century America.” 

It turns out that the most accurate political poll was the Real Clear Politics National Average, which was not a poll but an aggregator of polls. It's consistently done better than any individual poll, and it was trending toward the Republicans the week before the election. The New York Times had a Halloween surprise, attacking the poll aggregator as biased because it didn't "weight" the results. Wikipedia followed suit and actually removed the aggregator's listing. And guess what turned out to be the most accurate of the polls and aggregators? Yep, Real Clear Politics. Since the election, Wikipedia, that bastion of freedom of information, has quietly restored the deleted site. The Free Press has the story.

 

As long as I’ve been attending church, I’ve heard a lot about spiritual gifts – how to discern them, how to know which kind of gift you have, which ones applied in early church times and which ones still apply today. Tim Challies has an entirely different take on the subject, and describes the spiritual gift inventory he believes in.

 

More Good Reads

 

Life and Culture

 

Children deserve Shakespeare, not teachers who promote ignorance – Henry Oliver at The Common Reader.

 

Empty Words: Against Artificial Language – Matthew Miller at Mere Orthodoxy.

 

Israel

 

Contextualized and Decontextualized: Israel’s Fight for Truth – Michael Oren at Clarity.

 

Faith

 

Christ versus Christianity: A Paradox There from the Beginning – Andrew Klavan at The New Jerusalem.

 

The Harvest is Plentiful, and the Workers Won’ Stay – A Life Overseas.

 

British Stuff

 

The Church of England has to rebuild trust – Marcus Walker at The Critic Magazine.

 

Crowland Abbey – Annie Whitehead at Casting Light upon the Shadow.

 

Poetry

 

A Review of O in the Air: Poems by Maryann Corbett – Steve Knepper at New Verse Review.

 

Have you forgotten yet? – poem by Siegfried Sassoon at Rabbit Room Poetry.

 

“Poetry,” poem by Marianne Moore – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

American Stuff

 

Tales from the road: A visit to boyhood home of KIA soldier – John Banks at Civil War Blog.

 

How Helene Gave Way to ‘Hurricane Snafu’ in the Carolinas – James Varney, Real Clear Investigations.

 

News Media

 

How Podcasts Swayed the 2024 Election – Aiden McLaughlin at The Spectator.

 

History

 

Joan of Arc’s Grief – David Bannon at Front Porch Republic.

 

Scarlet Thread – Keith and Kristyn Getty and Zach Williams

Painting: Twilight: Interior (Reading by Lamplight), oil on canvas (1909) by George Clausen.