The lot falls

After Jonah 1 

Lots are cast;

the lot falls

on him, guilt

designated and

justified.

The sea rages,

threatening all

because of his,

one man’s,

disobedience.

And he tells

them. He tells

them to quiet

the storm 

by tossing him

into the sea.

First refusing,

they ultimately

obey, throwing

him into the waves,

sacrifice as act

of obedience.

 

Photograph by Li Yang via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Friday Readings

 

Invited into a Rich Community: An Interview with Matt Wheeler – Matt Connor at The Rabbit Room. 

 

“Ghost in This House” and “From a Sinner Who Didn’t Make It All the Way Through Baptist Summer Camp” – poems by C.B. Anderson at Society of Classical Poets. 

 

White – poem and artwork by Sonja Benskin Mesher. 

Research Can Teach You a Hard (if Useful) Lesson

I learned a very hard lesson while writing a historical novel. I learned how hard it can be, and it’s hard for both the research you do and for the research you have to ignore. 

I’m writing a novel that takes place in two historical periods – the Civil War and its immediate aftermath, and 50 years later, during the run-up to World War I. The story was loosely based on a story handed down in the family about what had happened to my great-grandfather. The emphasis is on the word “loosely,” because the more I researched, the more I discovered that what was passed down as a family story had very little basis in fact.

 

Because I discovered this about 40,000 words into the manuscript, it stopped me cold. For weeks. I kept hoping I was wrong, but I learned my extended family had two oral traditions about my great-grandfather. And the version passed down to me was the wrong one, or perhaps I should say “more embellished.” It made a great story, but it was flat-out wrong.

To continue reading, please see my post today at the American Christian Fiction Writers blog.

Photograph: Some of the 1,700 Union cavalry troops who rode through Mississippi in 1863 during Grierson's Raid.

Some Thursday Readings

 

1863: “Even the birds are seldom heard with their cheerful voices”: A Confederate Reflects Post-Chancellorsville – Ryan Quint at Emerging Civil War. 

 

Taste and See: A Review of The Liberating Arts – Alex Sosler at Front Porch Republic.

 

1863: What a Difference a Year Makes – Patrick Kelly-Fischer at Emerging Civil War. 

Rosebery Topping, a Dark Teesside short story by Glenn McGoldrick, is free to download today on Amazon.

Murders for August – Jeremy Black at The Critic Magazine.

 

The more a character puts in a bucket, the more there is to spill – Nathan Bransford.

 

At Walthan Abbey – Spitalfields Life.

 

What book blurbs really mean – The Secret Author at The Critic Magazine.

Poets and Poems: Charles Reznikoff and "Poems"

Charles Reznikoff (1894-1976) is best known for a multi-volume collection entitled Testimony: The United States 1885-1915. With William Carlos Williams and Ezra Pound, he was part of a group of poets known as the Objectivists, who treated the poem as an object used to explain a clear view of the world. Reznikoff continued as an Objectivist poet through his lifetime, focusing on immigrants, Black Americans, and the poor. For his last collection, Holocaust (1975), he used court testimony from the war crimes trials and Nazi death camps as his research material. 

Before he was labeled and associated with a group, Reznikoff was publishing poetry. He had his first two collections, Rhythms (1918) and Rhythms II (1919), privately printed for friends. Both were very short, more like short chapbooks, but already he was showing the writing style that would come to characterize his works of the 1930s and afterward.

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

Some Tuesday Readings

 

Leaving the Island – poem by A.E. Stallings at The Times Literary Supplement.

 

Sing a New Song to the Lord: The Hundredfold by Anthony Esolen – Jeremiah Tobin at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

My Boy – a Little League Baseball Poem by Gregory Ross at Society of Classical Poets. 

 

Things Worth Remembering: Contemplating the Ruins – Douglas Murray at The Free Press. 

“Andy Catlett: Early Travels” by Wendell Berry

When I was almost nine years old, I did something that very few people in my extended family had done. I flew in an airplane. It was a Delta Airlines flight from New Orleans to Shreveport, and I would be spending a week with my grandmother. 

It was a big deal, most of all for me. I’d never gone anywhere before without one or both of my parents. And here I was, on an airplane! The stewardess (that’s what they called flight attendants back then), sat with me for a time, looking at my penny collection (I brought it with me), chatting nicely, likely worried about an unaccompanied minor on his first flight. She figured out I thought this was one of the most exciting things that had ever happened to me, and she soon returned to her regular duties.

 

I was reminded of that trip when I read Andy Catlett: Early Travels by Wendell Berry. Andy is nine years old, it’s the week between Christmas 1942 and New Years 1943. And for the first time ever, he will be riding a bus to visit both sets of grandparents in Port William, Kentucky. It’s not a long trip, but it’s an exciting one for a boy to take by himself.

 

He stays first with his father’s parents at their farm. It has none of the modern conveniences, including an indoor bathroom. But that doesn’t matter to a young boy, who’s with people and a place he loves. A few days later, his maternal grandfather comes to pick him up, and he stays with his mother’s family in the town of Port William itself. They do have indoor plumbing.

 

The younger Wendell Berry

Andy is telling the story of both sets of grandparents when he himself is a grandfather, and “the only one left” of his own family. In retrospect, he sees the great divide bought by the war, the time before and the time after. He knows who will die in the war, and how that will change the families. His father’s family represents the fast-disappearing old ways, and his mother’s family the new, although they, too, belong to the old era. And he understands what links him to the old era, what he learned from that time, and the values he continues to carry because of it. Andy Catlett: Early Travels is a story about many things, but the one that keeps ever-present is gratitude.

 

Berry is a poet, novelist, essayist, environmentalist, and social critic. His fiction, both novels and stories, are centered in the area he calls Port William, Kentucky, on the Ohio River. He’s won a rather astounding number of awards, prizes, fellowships, and recognitions. He lives on a farm in Kentucky.

 

Before I read this short novel, I first read a related short story, “Andy Catlett: Early Education.” I was not the mischievous boy trying to push adults to find their breaking line, but I had an older brother who did, as did my own oldest child. The story is a lough-out-loud story of a boy who finally meets his match in his mother.

 

The Andy Catlett short story and short novel evoke a time long past. And yet, as the older Andy would know, the past is never really past. I can still hear my grandmother re-fighting the Civil War. I remember sitting in companiable silence with a beloved uncle on the back step of his house, rifle at his side, waiting for one of the many cats living next door to jump the fence. I can still hear my aunt talking, as we rode the bus from her home in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans to the French Quarter to do research in the Louisiana Historical Library – and her non-stop conversation.

 

That’s what Wendell Berry is writing about in Andy Catlett: Early Travels, and it is something I will always treasure.

 

Related:

 

My review of Berry’s That Distant Land.

 

Wendell Berry and the Land.

 

My review of Berry’s Jayber Crow.

 

Wendell Berry and This Day: Poems at Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

Wendell Berry and Terrapin: Poems at Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

Wendell Berry’s Our Only World.

 

The Art of the Commonplace by Wendell Berry.

 

Nathan Coulter by Wendell Berry.

Some Monday Readings

 

Amazon Reverses Course on ‘Garbage Books’ After Public Uproar – Jason Nelson at Decrypt.

 

When scientific research is in crisis – Matt Ridley at The Spectator.

Poetry Prompt: Into the Cave -- L.L. Barkat at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Rejecting the call

After Jonah 1 

It is clear, the call,

that is. The call is

clear, nothing opaque

or ambiguous or

confusing about it.

And it is simple:

go.

The destination is

mentioned in such

an offhand manner

that obedience is

assumed.

 

He pales and shakes.

He flees, far away

from where he’s

told to go. But is it

fear of where he’s

told to go or that

he knows it’s

a command of grace

and salvation. And

those people deserved

none of it. 

 

It’s like being sent 

to Beijing or Nigeria

or Pyongyang or

Moscow or Caracas.

Not because the people

don’t need it but

because they don’t

deserve it.

 

Photograph by Jakayla Toney via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Sunday Readings

 

St. Clare: A Sonnet – Malcolm Guite.

 

Believers in an Unbelieving World: How the Early Church Engaged Society – Stephen Presley at Desiring God.

 

There’s No Point in Keeping Receipts Unless We’re Balancing Them (and We’re probably Not Balancing Them) – Samuel D. James. 

Saturday Good Reads - Aug. 12, 2023

In 1978, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn did the impossible – he gave a commencement address that was remembered for years afterward. Entitled “A World Split Apart,” the speech took both the Soviets and the West to task for what was happening in world culture. No surprise, but the American news media hated it – he pointed the finger at them as well as other Western institutions. Jeremy Kee at The Imaginative Conservative says there is still much we can learn from that speech. 

John Klar at Front Porch Republic provides an updated version of the old story, “The City Mouse and the Country Mouse.” Unfortunately, it’s more than a just a story.

 

For years, Ryan Burge has been doing in-depth surveys and research into the state of religion in America. At his column on Substack, he provides a summary of four of the most dramatic shifts in the past 50 years. The most significant: the collapse of the Protestant mainline denominations.

 

There’s a story unfolding in New Orleans that most of the news media knows about but is looking the other way. It’s Missouri v. Biden, in which several states sued the federal government over claims of censorship of social media – with social media’s assistance. Matt Taibbi at Racket News has two stories: “In Landmark Censorship Case, Judges Grill the Feds” and “’F-Bomb This’: The Biden Administration’s Brutal Censorship Faceplant.” You would think that this kind of censorship case, which began with Missouri’s Solicitor General, might be covered by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. And you would be wrong.

 

More Good Reads

 

American Stuff

 

CSS Alabama Opens 1863 with a Bang: Part 1  and Part 2 – Dwight Hughes at Emerging Civil War. 

 

Disney used to hate gambling. Now it’s doing a $2 billion sports betting deal – Peter Kafka at Vox. 

 

A Contemporary Reaction to the Massacre at Fort William Henry, August 10, 1757 – Emerging Revolutionary War Era. 

 

Writing and Literature

 

How Scientific and Technological Breakthroughs Created a New Kind of Fiction – Joshua Glenn at Literary Hub. 

 

The Faith of Men of Letters – George Panichas at The Imaginative Conservative. 

 

A Scrappy Defense of the Novel – John Wilson at Prifrock.

 

COVID-19

 

Anthony Fauci’s Deceptions – David Zweig at The Free Press.

 

Poetry

 

Four Love Poems – James Tweedie at Society of Classical Poets.

 

 Sun and moon – Kathleen at The Course of Our Seasons.

 

News Media

 

Jen Psaki’s MSNBC propaganda hour – The American Spectator.

 

Faith

 

My Coldest Night and Warmest Truth – Michaela Challies.

 

The World’s Easiest Theological Question – Michael Kruger at Canon Fodder. 

 

Where Have All the Theologians Gone? – Mark Jones at Reformation 21.

 

British Stuff

 

George Cruikshank’s London Summer – Spitalfields Life. 

 

Simple Gifts – Gloriae Dei Cantores

Painting: Seated Boy, or Poor Student – Victor Manzano (1831-1865). 

One, then seven

After Hebrews 11:29-31 

Strangest battle instruction

ever: march around the city

once each day for six days;

not a word to be spoken

during each day’s march.

Not a word. Silence rules.

Then march around the city

seven times on the seventh day.

When you hear the trumpets,

shout with a great noise.

 

In truth, this has less to do

with the physical effects

of a march and more to do

with obedience, even if it’s

obedience to strange commands.

And the people, having been

tested and refined for 40 years

of wilderness, obeyed.

The walls fell.

The battle was won.

The battle was won

before the walls fell.

 

Photograph by Hasan Almasi via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Friday Readings

 

Where Does Mission Happen? – Seth Porch at Desiring God.

 

The Wombwell Rainbow Interviews: Poet Julie Stevens – Paul Brookes.

 

The Weeds – poem by Seth Lewis.