How to Throw the Best Party Ever

In  Fight Back With Joy: Celebrate More. Regret Less. Stare Down Your Greatest Fears,  Margaret Feinberg discusses one way she dealt with the awful physical pain she experienced with chemotherapy for breast cancer.

She threw herself a party.

Actually, she threw herself several parties. She celebrated, by herself, with her husband, and with others. She partied, she ate good food, she grabbed on to savor everything good thing life had to offer.

The partying had a purpose. It was an act of defiance, defying a disease and a course of treatment that is devastating physically, emotionally and spiritually. But defy she did. She fought back with celebration.

All this partying and celebration brought to mind Mickey Easterling.

From the time I was 8 or 9 to my senior year in college, I spent a lot of time at my father’s printing business in downtown New Orleans. Most of that time was spent working – especially weekends and summers – and some of that time was spent partying, like at Mardi Gras.

During the work times, I learned how to do just about everything – operate the printing machines, the paper cutter (a small guillotine), the postage metering machine, the collating machine, the addressograph, and even a machine that tied packages in string. I made deliveries all over downtown New Orleans and the French Quarter. I took checks to the bank. After I turned 15 and got my driver’s license, I drove big bags of mail to the New Orleans Post Office.

And I met a lot of unusual people.

The office was often a veritable parade of politicians, candidates, socialites, businessmen, non-profits and others seeking printing and mailing services. Once (when I wasn’t there) a young man came into the office seeking to have pro-communist propaganda printed; my father showed him the door. The young man’s name was Lee Harvey Oswald. After the assassination of President Kennedy, the FBI was crawling all over the downtown business district, tracing Oswald’s footsteps and activities, and they interviewed my father because of that one short meeting.

The parade of customers included quite a few local “characters” and celebrities, and one of them was a socialite named Mickey Easterling. She was a small woman with a large (very large) presence, given to flamboyant clothes and a distinctive, loud voice recognized anywhere. I remember seeing her many times, in my father’s office as well as her own office and home. She was a gracious and friendly as she was loud. Everyone merited a “hello how ya doin’ dawlin” from her. And she meant it.

She was a “presence” in New Orleans, and knew how to get things done. As much as she mixed with the powers that ran the city, she tended to favor the poor and disenfranchised, never forgetting her own background and upbringing. She was known to African-Americans as a tireless champion of civil rights – not the easiest of things to be in 1960s and 1970s New Orleans and in the circles she ran with.

Mrs. Easterling died last year. Instead of a wake or visitation, she threw herself a party in the lobby of the Saenger Orleans Theater. You’d have to see the lobby to appreciate it. The ticket office is on Canal Street, and you have to walk a good marbled half block through the long lobby to reach the theater itself. Entering Mrs. Easterling’s last party from Canal Street, you’d walk up that marbled hallway to the area in front of the theater doors, where guests and mourners found the guest of honor waiting.

 I am not making this up. You can read the newspaper reports.

She was a character in a city famous for its characters. And while I still can’t decide whether that either the wackiest thing I’ve ever heard of, or the one in poorest taste, or both, it was vintage Mickey Easterling.

It was also an act of defiance. She couldn’t stop death, but she didn’t have to surrender to it. And she wouldn’t.

Margaret Feinberg defied illness and pain, and fought back with joy. And a lot of parties. She wouldn’t surrender to breast cancer, no matter what happened. And what she was learning was that the outcome was less important than the fight. She didn’t know how it would end, but she was determined not to be defeated. And she wasn’t.

Led by Jason Stasyszen and Sarah Salter, we’ve been reading Fight Back with Joy. To see more posts on this chapter, “How to Throw the Best Party Ever,” please visit Sarah at Living Between the Lines.

Photograph by Kevin Casper via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission. 

Poets and Poems: The Great Indian Poetry Collective

Quick question: what do you know about poetry and poets from India?

My own quick answer: Not much. My reading and understanding of poetry is generally limited to Western culture – poets writing in English, primarily, or translations of French, Italian, Russian, and Spanish writers – all still within the Western / Western European cultural context. My experience with Asian poets has been limited to a few Japanese and Chinese writers, mostly pre-20^th century.

I suspect I’m not alone. I suspect I’m the kind of reader that is one of the targets of The Great Indian Poetry Collective.

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

So Many Christians, So Few Lions: Deconstruction

I’ve been reading in So Many Christians, So Few Lions: Is There Christianophobia in the United States? by George Yancey and David Williamson, and I need to make a detour –a related detour, but a detour nonetheless. 

In the mid-1980s, I had my first direct experience with “deconstruction” – a theory of literary criticism that emerged in the late 1960s in Europe (lots of strange things emerged in the 1960s). I was in a masters program at Washington University in St. Louis, and I took a number of English and history seminars. I didn’t hear anyone say “deconstruction;” instead, what I heard was "post-modernism," “story” and “storytelling” in ways I had never heard before. And the idea was that “story” could define and redefine reality.  

In other words, everything was relative. There were no “texts” – there were only interpretations of texts and interpreters of texts. If this sounds bewildering (if not suspect), it’s because it is. What it does in practice is wipe away any idea of “truth” – there was no truth except for whatever the current power structures said truth was.  

This seemed to be mostly a preoccupation of the English department, which was then in the process of jettisoning the notion of a canon in literature. (“Canon? What canon? Charles Dickens and Jane Austen are no better and no worse than James Patterson and Nora Roberts. The canon was just a bunch of old dead white males anyway.”) 

The seminars I was in were comprised almost entirely of adults who had been out of college for a while (I was the one of the youngest people on the program), so professors had to be careful. You couldn’t talk deconstruction with gainfully employed (or retired) adults with considerable life experience in the same way you could talk with undergraduates.  

But I suspected enough to know something was different from my own undergraduate days. So I started looking into it. Names kept coming up – Jacques Derrida and Paul de Man, for example, were two of the leading lights of deconstruction. The more I looked into it, the more I understood that this wasn’t some little literary theory of interest only to a few English professors. This was having an impact on culture. 

One impact was in journalism and communication schools. It was in the 1980s that the idea of “story” and “narrative” began to displace “objectivity” in journalism schools. Deconstructionists argued there was no such thing as objectivity (a notion breathed into journalism by Walter Lippmann back in the 1910s and 1920s).  

Today we can watch, and experience, a event like Ferguson and not really know if we are seeing what is really happening or just following along with the “media narrative.” Media narratives begin with the idea of what the story is – and then come together to demonstrate and illustrate that point.  

Most journalists would likely object to this characterization. But the Justice Department report cited numerous examples of witnesses to the Michael Brown shooting last August who were afraid to contradict their neighbors or contradict the media reports. And these people turned out to be the most credible witnesses.  

This is one reason why most of believe in endemic media bias, which always seems to mystify reporters and editors (and especially editorial page editors). 

Open discussion of the problems and distortions of deconstruction is not common, especially in universities. I’ve seen a number of conservative commentators discuss it, but virtually none on the progressive or liberal side. And yet contemporary politics is shot through with this stuff.  

It was a surprise to hear that a novel had been published that used deconstruction and its problems as a central theme. Daniel Taylor’s Death Comes for the Decontructionist was published last year, and it is that novel. I’ll be posting my review on Friday, but I can I’ve been surprised in a number of ways – the open discussion, the clear explanation of what deconstruction is and isn’t, the artful way the theme is developed (a murder mystery, no less), and the full understanding of what deconstruction sets itself against.  

Indirectly, the novel also helps illustrate some of what’s behind the Christianophobia addressed by So Many Christians, So Few Lions. 

Ideas have consequences. Those media narratives have consequences. And we need to understand those ideas and those media narratives.

 

Photograph by Petr Kratochvil via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Just ain’t

After 1 Peter 4:12-19 

Ain't no warm electric blanket

the writer said

it's the cross 

ain't no life on easy street

the theologian said

it's the life of white knuckles 

ain't no sunny beach

the saint said

his words and body

upside down

it's the wilderness 

ain't no life of peace

the missionary said

it's life at the point of the spear 

ain't no warm electric blanket

ain't no life on easy street

ain't no sunny beach

ain't no life of peace 

ain't

just ain't 

Photograph by George Hodan via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Saturday Good Reads

A seminarian writes on why younger men need older men. An answer to the question of “following your passion.” Insight on what is really wrong with the church. Do you have an inner artist, and does it matter? A woman tells the story of cancer. We’re beginning to figure out the cost of relativism, and Rod Dreher (aka Crunchy Con) thinks Ferguson may be lost.

Interesting, important things. Vital things.

Poetry

Father John Julian’s ‘Eyes Have I That See’ – review by Mary H. Sayler.

                                     

Receiving “What Is” – Richard Chess at Image Journal.

Writing

How to Write About Characters Who Are Smarter Than You Are - Graham Moore. (I reviewed his mystery novel The Sherlockian yesterday.) (Hat tip to Jared Gilbert.)

Faith and Work

Why Heart Matters More than Passion – Jon Mertz at Thin Difference.

Listening to God Talking – Doug Spurling at Spurling Silver.

Faith

Shame is Something We Learn – Jeff Goins.

The Art of Honoring – Jason Stasyszen at Connecting to Impact.

Kara Tippetts Documentary at Mundane Faithfulness (hat tip to Monica Sharman).

Older Men, Younger Men Need You – Paul Maxwell at Desiring God.

What Happened to Your Ache for the Holy Spirit? – Margaret Feinberg.

I Finally Figured Out What Is Really, Really Wrong With the Church - Matt Appling at The Church of No People.

A Season of Waiting – Martha Orlando at Meditations of My Heart.

Pain Management – Ryan Dueck at Rumblings.

Photography, Painting and Art

A Painting is Done – Melissa Carter

The Art of Understanding the Artist in All of Us – Brock Henning.

Plant Design – Tim Good at Photography by Tiwago.

Through Winter – Jack Baumgartner at The School of the Transfer of Energy.

The Grotesque and Horrific in Religious Art – Mike Duran at deCompose.

First photos of a brand-new island in the South Pacific -- NBC News.

Culture

The Cost of Relativism – David Brooks at The New York Times.

The Death of Ferguson – Rod Dreher at The American Conservative.

Fun

Trashwalk Dancing – Amanda Hill at Hill + Pen.

Photograph of the Church of St. Nicholas in Prague by Rostislav Kralik via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Graham Moore’s “The Sherlockian”

Before writer Graham Moore wrote the screenplay for The Imitation Game, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley, and won the Oscar last month for best adapted screenplay, he wrote a novel, The Sherlockian. It’s a story about Arthur Conan Doyle at the beginning of the 20^th century and a group of investigators trying to track down a lost diary of Doyle’s more than 100 years later. 

And what a great story it is. Actually, it’s two stories in one, and could almost be two complete (if shorter) books. 

Harold White is attending his first annual meeting and dinner of the Baker Street Irregulars, the enthusiasts of Sherlock Holmes (some might call it a cult) that has existed since 1934 when it was founded by Doubleday editor Christopher Morley. White has published an article on Holmes in the Irregulars’ irregularly published journal and at 29 become one of the youngest members of the organization. 

This meeting is especially noteworthy, for Holmes scholar Alex Cale will be speaking on his discovery of the lost diary of Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes. The diary covering the period from October to December of 1900 has been most for more than a century; Cale says he has found it and will be lecturing on the discovery.  

Arthur Conan Doyle

The night before the lecture, Cale is found dead in his hotel room. Harold is among the group making the discovery. The lost diary is nowhere to be found. Also in the group finding the body is Sarah Lindsay, a freelance journalist. And she and Harold find themselves hired by Conan Doyle’s great-grandson Sebastian to find the diary. Sebastian had quarreled with Cale over the rightful ownership of the diary, insisting it belonged to his family. And he wants it. 

Through alternating chapters, we follow Arthur Conan Doyle and Bram Stoker (he of Dracula fame) as they investigate a series of murder of young women, who turn out to be suffragettes, and Harold and Sarah as they attempt to track down the diary. What we are read in the Conan Doyle chapters is what is recorded in the missing diary. 

Graham Moore

Harold and Sarah are followed and chased; they do some rather unorthodox investigating. Conan Doyle and Stoker, on the other hand, do some unorthodox sleuthing of their own – kicking down doors, shooting guns, donning disguises and dodging letter bombs. 

The character who never appears, but the one whose shadow overhangs and shape both stories is, of course, Sherlock Holmes himself.  

The story is partially based on real events. After Conan Doyle died in 1930, it was discovered that there were missing papers, and these papers became a legend in Sherlockian circles (they were actually discovered in 2004). The discoverer of the papers was later found strangled in his London flat. And Conan Doyle and Stoker were indeed good friends. And several of the other characters mentioned were real as well. 

The Sherlockian is a gem of a story, whether you a fan of the great detective or not. After a while you forget about catching all the Holmesian allusions and settle down to a terrific read. 

Related:

For information on all things Sherlock Holmes, one great source is the web portal Sherlockian.net. 

Graham Moore describes how he convinced the producers of The Imitation Game to let him tackle the movie script -- by giving them a copy of The Sherlockian. (Hat tip to my friend Jared Gilbert, who posted the link in the comments.)

Top photograph: Undershaw, the home of Arthur Conan Doyle in Surrey.

D.M. Pulley’s “The Dead Key”

It is 1998. Irish Latch has an engineering job with a well known engineering firm in Cleveland, but she’s the employee with the least seniority and likely the biggest itch to get ahead. So when her boss offers her an unusual assignment (an abandoned building where she will have to work weekends, essentially for free), she jumps at it. 

The building is the First Bank of Cleveland, which closed in a financial scandal 20 years earlier, a scandal wrapped up in the city of Cleveland defaulting on debt payments. One of the first things Iris discovers is that the bank is almost like a ghost town, with virtually everything left intact, down to family photographs on former employees’ desks. 

She also discovers the vault for the safety deposit boxes, with many of the boxes still locked. And it is these boxes around which the story of D.M. Pulley’s The Dead Key turns. 

Simultaneously, the story of Iris investigating and mapping the building is told with one from 20 years before, the story that contributed to the financial scandal that brought the bank down. This is the story of Beatrice Baker, a 16-year-old whose aunt helps her fake her birth certificate and personal papers to get a job at the First Bank of Cleveland. Twenty years before Iris, Beatrice finds herself on a similar path, gradually moving closer to the mystery that is the bank’s safety deposit boxes. 

The chapters move back and froth between 1998 and 1978, telling two stories that eventually converge into one. The story of the safety deposit boxes is actually one story, containing equal parts mystery, suspense, danger, and death.  

The novel is in part based on real events; the city of Cleveland did default on its debt when it was called due by a local major bank; U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich was mayor at the time and is mentioned in the novel. And Pulley, a civil engineer, did actual work in an abandoned bank building with safety deposit boxes in the vault. 

D.M. Pulley

While Beatrice and iris are the main characters, the major character in the novel is the bank itself, with its 15 floors of offices, sub-floors, and connections to the old steam tunnels beneath downtown. The building is hiding something, and both Iris and Beatrice are determined to discover what it is. The question is whether they will succeed before they’re killed. 

Pulley tells a great story. And it’s no surprise that the book won the 2014 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award – both in Mystery / Thriller category and the overall Grand Prize. (Note to readers: the book contains some strong language and sexual situations.) 

Photograph of the old Ameritrust bank building in downtown Cleveland, Ohio, by Erik Drost via Flickr under Creative Commons license.