Deception: her

After Acts 5: 7-11

What was she thinking,

that her husband was

clever in his deception,

her deception, keeping

a part of funds received

but claiming credit 

for all? She followed

the script, planned and

possibly rehearsed:

“The full price was given.”

She, too, fell down,

breathing her last.

She, too, was carried out.

She, too, was buried with

her partner in deception.

And what do you profit,

to gain the whole world,

or even a tiny fraction,

and lose your soul?

Photograph by Toa Heftiba via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Saturday Good Reads

As the coronavirus pandemic loomed, New Orleans carried on with Mardi Gras as usual, and likely made its own virus situation worse. This year, all parades are cancelled. It isn’t the first time that the city had to shut down the Mardi Gras season – wars, epidemics, and even a threatened police strike did it before. But for 2021, enterprising New Orleanians have devised a new way to celebrate the city’s favorite season – Mardi Gras house floats. 

Large corporations have been embracing what critics call the “culture of woke” – adopting values and programs more associated with the progressive left than the executive suite. It seems that may also embracing something else – Science Switch recently reported that companies listed in the Fortune 500 are more likely to commit financial fraud. 

 

A man watches his beloved wife slowly, then more rapidly, become gripped by Alzheimers disease. Joseph Mussomeli at The Imaginative Conservative describes the journey of his wife, himself, and his family. This one brings tears.

 

More Good Reads

 

News Media

 

The media has to do better than this – Damon Linker at The Week.

 

Democracy dies in the media – James Bowman at New Criterion.

“‘Tis folly to say the people must have news”: Sherman, the Press, and Our Own Culpability – Chris Mackowski at Emerging Civil War Blog.

 

Life and Culture

 

The Technological Society Can’t Save Itself – L.M. Sacasas at Fare Forward.

 

Robinhood Destroyed Its Brand in Less than a Day – Jason Aten at INC. 

 

The Fear of “Phobic” – Alan Shlemon at Stand to Reason.

 

Democracy Betrayed: Lasch’s 'Revolt of the Elites' at 25 – Rod Dreher at Law & Liberty.

 

British Stuff

 

Priory Church of the Order of St. John – A London Inheritance.

 

Why this famed Anglo-Saxon ship burial was likely the last of its kind – Erin Blakemore at National Geographic.

 

A Pastoral Inheritance: James Rebanks and a Tribute to Our Late Cathedral Sacristan – Mark Clavier at Front Porch Republic.

 

Faith

 

A Christian Sherlock Holmes: Rebuilding an Empirical Christian Culture – Thomas Kidd at The Gospel Coalition. 

 

What Rosa Parks’ Legacy Means for Love at Work – Caroline Cross at the Institute for Faith, Work, & Economics.

 

History

 

Reading Ruins: The rhetorical ruins of Tenochtitlan, Rome and Baghdad – Paul Cooper at History Today.

 

Poetry

 

The Perils of Fame: Sylvia Plath and Seamus Heaney – David Mason at The Hudson Review.

 

I Love You – Riopy

Painting: Young Woman Reading an Illustrated Journal, oil on canvas by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1880).

Deception: him

After Acts 5:1-6

What was he thinking,

to sell a piece of land,

call attention to his gift,

and hold back a part

for himself? Was it

a simple case of having

your cake and eating it,

too, getting full credit

when only partial was

deserved? Did he not

think that those

performing signs and

wonders would not see

what he had done, see

through the deception?

Did he think himself

clever and others

foolish, willing to be

deceived? Deception

was seen immediately,

as if anticipated. Hearing

the condemnation,

he fell down, breathing

his last.

Photograph by Karim Manjra via Unsplash. Used with permission.

"A Shadowed Livery" by Charlie Garratt

It appears and open-and-shut case. The son of Sir Arthur Barleigh, crippled after an automobile accident, is shot and killed while in wheelchair. His mother then apparently turned the gun on herself. A short time later, the young man’s fiancée shoots herself in the son’s bedroom. It appears to be murder-suicide-suicide. An inquest is hurried and a verdict rendered just as quickly. 

The problem, Inspector James Givens of the Warwickshire Constabulary realizes almost immediately, is motive. He’s reviewing the case because the newspapers are pressuring his boss to take a more thorough investigation. Lady Barleigh wasn’t happy about the impending marriage, but was that sufficient to kill her son? Aided by the local constable, Givens sifts through the case, but he doesn’t have much time. His boss wants a quick review.

 

It’s 1938: Neville Chamberlain has just returned from his meeting with Adolph Hitler in Munich and is proclaiming “peace in our time.” Pro-Nazi Sir Walter Mosley has his thugs beating up Jewish merchants in England; James just attended a hanging where one such thug was hanged by the neck for murder. And it’s all becoming more personal, because “James Givens” is his English name; he’s actually the son of a Russian Jewish immigrant who’s a tailor in Birmingham.

 

Charlie Garratt

A Shadowed Livery by Charlie Garratt is the first in the Inspector James Givens series. Garratt has created a police detective hero who is conflicted by his Jewish heritage, in love with a woman who is involved in the case, chased by two Italian goons seeking revenge, dogged by a crooked colleague – and who is relentless at getting at the truth.

 

Garratt is the author of three other Inspector Given mysteries, including A Pretty Folly, A Patient Man, and Where Every Man. He also published several community participation guides, until he retired and began writing short stories. One of those stories led to his first novel, A Shadowed Livery. He lives in Shropshire in England.

The story is an effective and realistic interplay between the murder case at hand, deteriorating conditions in Europe, and the situation at home marred by Nazi sympathizers. A Shadowed Livery is an engrossing and entertaining read.

 

Related:

 

Where Every Man by Charlie Garratt.

“All That Stands Between Us” by Annette Larsen

There are the Capulets and the Montagues, and there are the Hanes and the Millers.  

The Hanes and the Millers are next-door neighbors. They used to be the best of friends. The fathers were even partners in a business venture, until a disgruntled customer made trouble in an unrelated business to Mr. Miller. A fraud investigation followed, involving the FBI. Because the business venture, the Hanes were investigated as well. Both families ended up losing pretty much everything. And the Hanes blamed the Millers for the financial losses as well as their children’s plans for college and beyond. 

 

They don’t talk. Mrs. Hanes planted a hedge to shield the view from the Millers. They sit on separate sides of church. 

 

Julie Hanes, a senior in college, is home for Thanksgiving. Drew Miller, some four years older, is home for the holiday as well. They meet in a park, neither recognizing the other. Even when they discover they’re on different sides of the feud, circumstances keep throwing them together. And the inevitable happens: A Hanes and a Miller fall in love.

 

Annette Larsen

With a nod to William Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet, author Annette Larsen has penned All That Stands Between Us, a contemporary version of the story that leaves out the deaths and suicides and provides an often-comic tale. It’s a story of how friends can nurse grudges, and how grudges can carry over to and afflict the next generation. 

Larsen is the author of nine romance novels. A native of Utah, she has also lived in Arizona, Virginia, and Missouri before settling in Idaho with her family. She also blogs about romance and fiction at her blog.

 

Just when you think the story has gone too far with the grudge business, you stop and think about how families can often behave. And you realize All That Stands Between Us is entirely plausible and a surprisingly fun read.

Poets and Poems: James Matthew Wilson and “The Strangeness of the Good”

Reading the poems of James Matthew Wilson leads one to consider the things that matter in life.  It’s an exercise in calming the emotions and quieting the soul. Wilson celebrates the permanent as opposed to the transitory; one learns more about our common humanity by reading “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” from The Canterbury Tales or a play by Shakespeare than any tweet on Twitter, photograph on Instagram, and post on Facebook. The exception may be TikTok, where we can demonstrate our common humanity by illustrating just how ridiculous we’re willing to look. 

What matters to Wilson, as explored in his poetry? Family. Children. Tradition. Heritage. A good name. Faith. Work. Responsibility. The wonder of creation. Even something as mundane as the routines which structure our lives. 

 

All of these ideas and themes are found in his latest poetry collection, The Strangeness of the Good.

 

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

“The Tragedy of the Republic” by Pierre Manent

Wiseblood Books has been publishing a series of lengthy essays about contemporary culture. These include Duty, the Soul of Beauty: Henry James on the Beautiful Life by R.R. Reno; How to Think Like a Poet by Ryan Wilson; Poetry as Enchantment and The Catholic Writer Today by Dana Gioia; The Fortunes of Poetry in an Age of Unmaking by James Matthew Wilson; and several others. 

A recent publication is The Tragedy of the Republic by Pierre Manent, with an introduction by Patrick Deneen. The essay, originally a lecture at the Paris Institute of Political Studies, considers a question about republics. Do the constituents of republics elect leaders to represent their interests, or do they elect leaders to represent the common good.?

 

Manent answers the question by examining two plays of Shakespeare, Coriolanus and Julius Caesar, with a special focus on the speeches and actions of three characters – Coriolanus, Brutus, and Cassius. 

 

Shakespeare borrowed the story of Coriolanus from Plutarch’s Lives, as he did for several of plays. Plutarch described him as a Roman general who was successful in quashing several rebellions against the Roman government, sought political office, was believed to be overreaching, and was exiled. He joins with one of Rome’s enemies and is eventually killed. Many historians doubt his existence. 

 

Pierre Manent

In Julius Caesar, (and in historical fact), Brutus and Cassius were key players in the successful assassination of Caesar. They were allies in the conspiracy, but their motivations were entirely different, as presented by Plutarch and Shakespeare. Brutus sought to remove what he saw as a dire threat to the republic; Cassius was a bit more self-interested but needed the cover of Brutus’s noble reputation.

 

Manent is professor emeritus of political philosophy at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes Sciences Sociales. His nurmous published works include Toqueville and the Nature of Democracy, The City of Man, and A World Beyond Politics?, among many others. He is known for being a classic liberal and a Euroskeptic. 

 

The Tragedy of the Republic seems an especially apt discussion in the current American political environment. But Manent, perhaps unintentionally, also demonstrates something else, and that is the value of the traditional Western canon of literature in creating an understanding of vital contemporary events.