Saturday Good Reads

Some 20 years ago, we toured Middleton Plantation, an antebellum home neat Charleston. What I remember most is how insufferably hot it was (this was July) and how all of us tourists crowded into an air-conditioned room to hear the docent talk about the place. We didn't want to leave. I’ve visited a few other plantation homes – Shirley Plantation between Williamsburg and Richmond, Jefferson’s Monticello, and Nottoway and Destrehan plantations in Louisiana. It was only at Carter’s Grove, once part of Colonial Williamsburg, that I heard extensive information about plantation life for slaves. Robert May at Urban Faith says Christmas tours of plantations generally erase the harsh story of slavery. 

Two poets likely defined what American poetry was in the 19^th century – Walt Whitman and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Longfellow was known for his long narrative poems like Evangeline and The Song of Hiawatha, not to mention The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere. Longfellow also endured family tragedies, as Bill Grandi at Cycleguy’s Spin reminds us.

A few years ago, Kevin Belmonte published an acclaimed biography of William Wilberforce, the man who led the decades-long fight against the British slave trade. The movie Amazing Grace tells his story, too. At Literary Life, Belmonte provides an introduction to Wilberforce’s story. (In February, Literary Life will begin a month-long reading of Belmonte’s book, William Wilberforce: A Hero for Humanity.)

And Michael Kruger at Canon Fodder describes five common misconceptions about the Christmas story, such as nowhere in the Bible does it say there were three wise men or kings.

More Good Reads

Poetry

Poems from to Honor Reuben Woolley and I am not a silent poet – Paul Brookes via Jamie Dedes at The Poet by Day.

‘The Lonely Ghost Speaks’ and 'Winter's Evening' – Martin Rizley at Society of Classical Poets.

Four Poems – Ojo Taiye at IceFloe Press.

Hill Christmas – R.S. Thomas via D.S. Martin at Kingdom Poets.

Life and Culture

From Saving the Earth to Ruling the World: The transformation of the environmental movement – Christopher Caldwell at the Claremont Review of Books.

The Cost of America’s Cultural Revolution – Heather Macdonald at CityJournal.

Sad puzzle: Washington Post crime story mixes politics, religion, tolerance and personal pain – Terry Mattingly at Get Religion.

Blessed with Triple Ds: A Dispatch from Dumb-Ass Acres – Jason Peters at Front Porch Republic. 

British Stuff

The Albert Memorial - A 19th Century World View – at A London Inheritance.

Post boxes of the Lake District - in pictures – Emily Stevens at The Guardian (Hat Tip: J of India).

An Advent Carol: O Orient Light – Eleanor Parker at A Clerk of Oxford. 

American Stuff

Civil War Christmas is Coming and the Flag is Missing: Oh Dear! – Meg Groeling at Emerging Civil War.

Writing and Literature

Gollum and the Spirit of Christmas – Joseph Pearce at The Imaginative Conservative.

How Dr. Seuss Gave Us One of the Most Complex, Socially Important Heist Stories Ever – Olivia Rutigliano at CrimeReads.

Faith

The Wood's Umbrageous Calm – Barry York at Gentle Reformation.

Dad Died with Dirt on His Hands – Tim Challies.

Does Christmas have pagan origins? – Luke Wilson at That Ancient Faith.

News Media

The journalistic newsfeed: editorial values and algorithms – Nicholas Diakopoulos at Columbia Journalism Review. 

I Done Died: Chris Rodrigues and Abby the Spoon Lady

Painting: Woman Reading in Bed (1930), oil on linen by Morris Kantor (1896-1974); Smithsonian American Art Museum, Renwick Gallery.

Manacles, chafed

After Galatians 4:4-7

The manacles, chafed

and chafing, dirtied and

stained his wrists, flakes

of metal coloring his skin

like rings, tightening. 

The manacles, reminding

him of his status, his bounds,

his binding, his place

without future. The manacles,

too, bind his ankles, the metal

tattooing its presence,

a sign that he was a prisoner,

a slave, born without prospect

of redemption.

Someone, a voice, called him

a son, the voice heard first

in his ears before his heart;

he was called son. Manacles

snapped open, the stains

washed off. And then he heard,

first in his ears before his heart,

the voice calling him

with a new name:

heir.

Photograph by Stephen Hickman via Unsplash. Used with permission.

"The Diamond Murder" by Roy Lewis

You’re a newly married attorney. What would you do if your first wife wanted to hire you to find her missing husband? How would your new wife react?

That’s the dilemma Yorkshire attorney Eric Ward faces in The Diamond Murder, the fourth in the Eric Ward series by Roy Lewis. Whether it’s from guilt or old memories or something else, Ward accepts the request from his first wife. Then he enters a Twilight Zone kind of case whether nothing is what it seems to be, and a body found on a moor, a reporter being beaten up, a “retired” crook living in the south of France, and an old police investigation suddenly becoming new again all mix together,

The reader knows that Ward’s new wife Anne is right – he needs to stay away from the former wife. Does he listen to Anne? Of course not. And he may pay for his stubbornness with his life.

Roy Lewis

The author draws a complex web of personalities that are a delight to watch. Even Ward knows he’s being used – by the crook, by his former wife, and by the reporter. But the story becomes a kind of chess game, with plenty of surprise moves, including an old, organized crime ring for smuggling industrial diamonds.

Lewis is the author of some 60 other mysteries, novels, and short story collections. His Inspector Crow series includes A Lover Too Many, Murder in the Mine, The Woods Murder, Error of Judgment, and Murder for Money, among others. The Eric Ward series, of which The Sedleigh Hall Murder is the first (and originally published as A Certain Blindness in 1981), includes 17 novels. The Arnold Landon series is comprised of 22 novels. Lewis lives in northern England.  

The previous three Eric Ward mysteries set a high bar, and the fourth one meets that bar and even exceeds it. The Diamond Murder is an eminently satisfying mystery, with well-drawn characters and more-than-credible plot twists.

Related:

The Sedleigh Hall Murder by Roy Lewis.

The Farming Murder by Roy Lewis.

The Quayside Murder by Roy Lewis.

A Cotswolds Murder by Roy Lewis.

Romance in Scotland: A Novel, 4 Novellas, and One More Novella

Last week we had romance in Ireland; this week, we head to Scotland – contemporary, recent historical, and ancient historical Scotland, as well as few places where Scottish immigrants ended up.

First up: A contemporary romance novel that’s also a time-travel story.

In Tavish by Jane Stain, Kelsey Ferguson, Ph.D., is an expert on Celtic history and culture. She’s conducting an investigation at a site on Scotland’s western coast, a 15^th century castle built atop a much older structure. One of the construction workers is Tavish MacGregor, an old boyfriend who abruptly walked out on Kelsey seven years before. And he seems to know as much as her subject field as she does, and he doesn’t have a college degree.

She soon understands why. Tavish has been tasked, as his family before him, with finding a specific artifact in the 13^thcentury – and he has the ability to travel back to that time. He takes Kelsey with him, and she learns why he knows so much. She also learns that there’s danger in that 13^th century world. 

I’m not a big fan of time travel stories, but if you are, Tavish will teach you a lot about Celtic history – while rekindling Kelsey’s romance with Tavish. 

The Highlanders is a Smitten Historical Romance Collection of four fast-reading novellas by four different authors. And all four tell interesting, engaging stories.

In Night Fox by J’Nell Ciesielski, a bandit is plaguing 1717 Scotland. Deven McLendon, home from the wars with England, finds himself a victim, robbed of some precious family heirlooms. At the same time, he finds himself increasingly taken by the beautiful Rooney Corsen, impoverished with her younger sisters by her father’s gambling debts. WE know immediately, but it will be some time before Deven learns that Rooney is also the Night Fox.

In A Tender Siege by Naomi Musch, Lachlan McRae is a British solder fighting in the French & Indian War (1756-1763) near Fort Pittsburg. He’s seriously wounded, with a musket ball embedded in his leg. In his fevered delirium, he keeps seeing his wife, who died in childbirth back in Scotland. And then he sees, and is seen by, an Indian woman, Wenonah, who’s English husband has been murdered by raiders and who’s very close to the time for childbirth. 

The Year Without Summer by Janet Grunst tells the story of the famines and enclosures that afflicted Scotland and Ireland in 1816. Highlander Grant Cummings has the care of his younger brother, and the two are forced by circumstances to seek out an aunt in Ireland. Conditions there are little better, and landowners are enclosing the lands for sheep and evicting tenants. Molly MacGrgor, who lives in Ireland with her own young brother, reluctantly takes in the Cummings brothers as tenants, and gradually sees her prejudice against Highlanders whittled down by Grant’s hard work and manners. Then she receives her eviction notice.

The fourth novella is another Scottish romance set in America, this time in 1915. In The Violinist by Jennifer Lamont Leo, Callan MacTavish works as a logger, and he’s injured when a tree falls the wrong way. He’s already lost two fingers in a previous accident, and he’s fortunate to survive this one. As he recovers in his room, he hears someone playing beautiful violin music, and he gradually learns the violinist is Rose Marchmont, a young woman staying with her sister and brother-in-law.  Despite her sister’s misgivings, Rose is attracted to the injured logger, and the two work out a plan for him to pay her for violin lessons while he simply listens to her play. But Rose will learn that Callan has a secret.

Liz Curtis Higgs, author of A Wreath of Snow, calls her story a novella, but it’s closer to a short novel. Set at Christmas in 1894 Stirling, Scotland, Meg Campbell upends her he plans to spend Christmas with her family to return to Edinburgh, where she teaches school. She changes her plans after yet another run-in with her brother, who’s been an invalid since his spine was damaged in an accident when he was 10. The cause of the accident was Gordon Shaw, who had had too much to drink and threw a curling stone when his and his teammates were in a curling competition. The stone hit Meg’s brother. Gordon, now a newspaper reporter, has lived with the guilt ever since; the family refused to see him or accept his apologies.

Gordon is in Stirling for a story, and he’s leaving on the same train for Edinburgh as Meg. He immediately recognizes her, but she doesn’t appear to know him. But she is definitely attracted to him, although, as a proper lady, she keeps her feelings to herself. They’re in the same train car, and some three miles out of Stirling, when a growing snowstorm stops the train on the tracks. The passengers are forced to walk back to the station, and Meg watches as Gordon helps shovel and then assists an injured woman by carrying her child. 

And then Gordon tells Meg who he is.

A Wreath of Snow is an engrossing story, with more than one person carrying a secret and Meg finding herself falling madly in love with the man who injured her brother. But it’s Christmas in Scotland, and anything can happen.

Top photograph: Isle of Sky in Scotland by K. Brembo via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Poets and Poems: Juliette van der Molen and “Anatomy of a Dress”

Fashion can be a statement, a trend, a business, an object of fascination, a multi-billion enterprise, and likely any number of other things. Poet Juliette van der Molen wants to tell what it isn’t, or what it shouldn’t be – the wrapping that turns a woman into an object. The 16 poems of her newly published Anatomy of a Dress are a kind of declaration of independence; in her author’s note, she says that the collection “explores messages sent and interpreted regarding how women have historically been encouraged to dress, mainly for the pleasure and subjugation of the patriarchy.” 

When I read that, I took a deep breath, and asked Tweetspeak Poetry’s editor if she was sure she wanted a man, one who is mostly conservative, to review this collection. She said yes, so I took another deep breath, and then took the plunge. So let it be noted at the outset that I’m generally suspicious of any poetry that falls into the category of “message poetry,” whether it’s from the right, center, or left. I’ve read message poetry many times and often enjoyed it or been challenged by it. But I approach it initially with a healthy dose of skepticism, because I don’t know what’s more important here – the message or creating a poem. 

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

"Beyond Tenebrae" by Bradley Birzer

It’s a rare thing, but every so often you find a book that can be defined outside its pre-supposed genre. Beyond Tenebrae: Christian Humanism in the Twilight of the West by Bradley Birzer is such a book.

It’s partially a discussion of Christian humanism – what it is, where it comes from, and what it is about it that conservatives believe they need to “conserve.” It’s partially a memoir – about the people, writers, and thinkers who influenced Birzer. It’s an introduction to some of the well-known and not-so-well-known lights of Christian humanism. It’s a list of suggested reading, with so many books listed and cited that it might take most of us a year to get through. 

It’s a book whose parts are greater than the whole, and a book whose whole is greater than the parts. 

It begins, appropriately enough, with the idea of Tenebrae, the period of worship that begins on the afternoon of Good Friday. I’ve been to one Tenebrae service at my church, and it ends with lit candles extinguished one by one until the church is left in darkness and the congregation departs in silence. It is a reminder of what happened after the crucifixion of Christ, after the earthquake, the darkened sky, and the tearing of the temple curtain, that period of darkness and mourning before the light of the resurrection. 

Birzer suggests that Tenebrae is what Western culture is currently experiencing, a twilight time when what is good, true, and beautiful is being jettisoned for what is trendy and politically correct in government, the media, and academia. He doesn’t offer a step-by-step prescription to counter this; instead, he tells the story of Christian humanism and some of its more contemporary practitioners.

Bradley Birzer

Initial chapters focus on key elements of Christian humanism, the conservative mind, Edmund Burke and Alexis de Toqueville, and many of Birzer’s favorite writers, including J.R.R. Tolkien. Part II of the book provides shorter vignettes of the people who might called “the lights” of 20^th and 21^st century Christian humanism to counter the growing darkness.

Some of these lights are well-known: Willa Cather, Tolkien and the Inklings, Flannery O’Connor, Shirley Jackson, Russell Kirk, Ray Bradbury, Ronald Reagan, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Some deserve to be better known: Clyde Kilby, Sister Madeleva Wolff, Paul Elmer More, Chsristipher Dawson, Eric Voegelin, and Ralph McInerny. One that was a personal surprise and delight was author Walter Miller; I read his A Canticle for Leibowitz in high school and loved it.

Birzer is a professor of history and the Russell Kirk Chair of American Studies at Hillsdale College. He received his B.A. degree from Notre Dame University in 1990 and his Ph.D. degree from Indiana University in 1998. He was a co-founder of The Imaginative Conservative site and publication in 2010. He is the author of numerous works in history and literature, including J.R.R. Tolkien’s Sanctifying Myth (2003), Sanctifying the World: The Augustinian Life and Mind of Christopher Dawson (2007), American Cicero: Charles Carroll of Carrollton (2010), Russell Kirk: American, Conservative (2015), and Neil Peart: Cultural (Re)Percussions (2015).

Beyond Tenebrae is a solid introduction to Christian humanism and its writers, adherents, and proponents. It’s also a book about hope, that no matter how dark the culture may become, there will always be a light.

Key words

After Philippians 4:4-9

A few key words for you,

my friends, just a few.

Consider them search terms:

Rejoice.

Be reasonable.

Chill; stay calm.

Pray.

Be thankful.

Focus on the good.

Focus on the beautiful.

Focus on the true.

Focus on the just.

Practice these things.

And wait.

It will not be long,

now.

Photograph by Camilo Jiminez via Unsplash. Used with permission.