(re-post) Review of _Squanto’s Journey_

Rather than linking to the old site, putting the text of my review of Squanto’s Journey here.  Originally posted in November 2006.  Still a good book.  Part of my book round-up post coming in a few minutes.

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Squanto’s Journey: The Story of the First Thanksgiving
by Joseph Bruchac, illustrated by Greg Shed
Harcourt “Silver Whistle”, 2000.
ISBN 0-15-201817-4

In anticipation of Thanksgiving, I picked up a handful  of children’s books from the local library.  This is a good one.

The book tells the story of Squanto’s life from 1614 to 1621.  Each major element of the story is told on one page, with an accompanying painted illustration.  The perspective is firmly Native American, but in a positive way that is respectful of non-Indians.  Because the story ends at the time of the famous first Thanksgiving, it is up to the parents to fill in the ensuing history.

In its precision and thoroughness, the book includes Indian names that may be unfamiliar to those learning this history in detail for the first time.  There is a glossary in the back, but unfortunately it does not include a pronunciation guide.  So if you are reading aloud, be prepared to have to do some sounding-out as you go.  Also, because of the detailed nature of the account, it will be helpfu to summarize what is happening as you go along, to keep track of the story, especially for younger listeners.  As a result, though, this book would be quite helpful to an older student (junior high through college aged) that wanted an approachable summary of these events.  The Author’s Note at the end of the book gives some interesting background on how the story was researched.

In all, just a lovely book.  It would make a nice jumping-off point for students all of ages to study this part of American history.

Medieval Chess

Busy busy here, but luckily there is a whole world out there of other internet places.  Our topic for this weekend is was medieval chess — that is, I had meant to be playing some.  Looks like my plans are thwarted — I have *lost* our chess set, and will have to settle for awele.  Will take that as a sign.  All the same, three interesting links for your reading pleasure.

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If you secretly were hoping I’d have a short post this week, here’s a very short explanation of how medieval chess differs from the modern version:

http://chess.eusa.ed.ac.uk/Chess/History/medieval.html

For those who wanted much, much more, here’s a long explanation of the process of how it all happened, with illustrations.  I, being a person with no prior knowledge of this topic, can’t offer any critique.  But well worth a look:

http://www.island.net/~hamill/id24.htm

And if you wished this blog had more photos, here you are: A collection of medieval chess pieces, primarily from the middle east.  Click on a photo for more information:

http://www.crumiller.com/chess/chess_pages/chess_medieval_pieces.htm

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Have a good weekend!

Ridiculously tired today, and as I’m finally getting around to writing tonight, my head is about as foggy as I’ve ever known it. So rather than try to put together a good article for you (lost cause), I’ll just let loose on something funny I read during the last weeks of the presidential election campaigns.

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So the Wall Street Journal ran a series on the editorial page comparing the two major candidates’ stances on various topics. Shoehorned into the ‘education’ category was the topic of volunteering. Working from memory, here’s the executive summary:

McCain: Tells people they really ought to volunteer more.

Obama: Plans to expand the Peace Corps and launch a handful of similar government-run, tax-funded volunteer organizations to target other areas of need (education, local community service, etc.). Encourage mandatory ‘volunteering’ by tying certain federal education funding to community service requirements for students.

Not to jump all over our president-elect (really, if this were his only fault, I’d be a very happy person), but what?! It’s volunteering. I have never, ever, in all my long life, had difficulty finding an outlet for my freely-offered labor. Hard time finding a paying job? Yes. Yes indeed. Hard time finding people willing to hire me for no pay? Nope. Not once.

And here we are, a government in debt, with expensive wars and corporate bailouts going on, and we are going to spend more money on more programs . . . so people can work for no pay? Um, really, they can do that without a government program. If you have to pay people to do a given job, it is not actually volunteering. It is a federal program that pays a very low wage.

(–> Now if what you want is a low-wage jobs program, just come out and say so.)

I expect the origin of this particular plank of the campaign platform came from two bad habits we’ve gotten into. The first, is thinking that if our country has a problem, or a perceived problem in this case, the president ought to have a plan for how to fix it. When really, some of the time, the president ought to look us sternly in the face and say:

Well, get your act together.

But I suppose that is not very popular with voters, and we have thus trained our candidates to pretend they can fix us.

And then from there, it is only a matter of what kind of fix the candidate is used to tossing out. As a democrat, a shiny new program, or a beefed-up old program, is just the thing. If a republican felt the need to propose a fix, it would be a tax deduction, a tax credit, or maybe a special law allowing employers in certain altruistic industries to hire workers at lower-than-minimum wage.

[Republicans are at an advantage in this particular example, because we already have the tax deduction thing in place. Now they can just smile and tell their voter base to go start a 501(c)3 and be done with it. I agree. But don’t kid yourselves, if republican voters were still itching for more help in the ‘volunteering’ department, I am sure, just sure, there is a way to make a corporate subsidy for the purpose.]

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What significance for the junior economist? Well, a couple summary points:

Our candidates can’t necessarily add, it isn’t your imagination. I think ‘economic platform’ ought to be read as a kind of form of poetry, one of those genres that you must not read literally. Luckily much of what they put on their economic platforms would never pass through congress anyhow, so in the off chance they really mean what they say (the policy-platform equivalent of discovering that someone really does have butterflies in their stomach, or that cats and dogs truly are falling from the sky), there is still hope that it won’t come to pass.

Really smart people can still come up with dumb ideas. (Just ask my children about their mother.) As I mentioned in my ‘why economics is so confusing’ post, sometimes when something doesn’t make any sense to you, it is because it doesn’t make any sense, period.

If we voters actually want ‘change’, we are some of the people who are going to have to change. We can’t be pushing for a federal program or a new law or some other government action every time we see a problem, and then be surprised that our politicians are always trying to come up with new programs and laws for us. Do you want a shorter tax form? Quit asking for so many tax credits.

–> And so long as we evaluate a candidate’s stance on a given issue based on whether they voted to fund this or that special program, or put into place this or that new law, we are going to keep getting the programs and laws. It is entirely possible to be, say, in favor of helping the poor, without necessarily voting in favor of every bill that is labeled ‘help for the poor’.

And this last bit is tricky. Because if your representative voted against this or that social justice bill, how do you know whether it was because of an anti-social-justice bias, or just a disagreement with that particular bill? It means you have to know the candidate much better, over a much longer term. Which is not easy.

speaking of languages . . .

In some breaking-my-own-rules goofing-off (hence my lateness in linking), came across this suggestion that seminarians study ASL.  Couldn’t agree more.  I’m mystified as to why ASL isn’t routinely taught in our public schools.

‘5th Friday’ – Playing Around with History and Languages

Okay, so it is no longer the 5th Friday, and won’t even be the 1st Saturday much longer, but I’ve finally got your new links for you.

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First a quick mention of a couple I put up on my other blog this week, just FYI:  In addition to my reputable vendors list, I’ve gone and sneaked on a small ‘prayer on the internet’ category of links over at the other blog.  Look if you like, but the one you should know about yesterday is:  NaPraMoGo 2008 – Pray 15 More Minutes a Day, led by the Ironic Catholic. Who observes, “The Ironic Catholic blog is silly and satire, but praying is not. This is for real.”

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And now for this site, putting up a few of what I think of as history links, though most of them aren’t going into the ‘history’ folder:

The Society for Creative Ananchronism – A bunch of goofy history buffs having too much fun — but also doing a little bit of historical research in the process. Oh come on, you know you want to dress up in funny clothes, adopt a medieval name, and bash someone on the helm with a wooden sword.  You know you do, don’t deny it.

The Web Gallery of Art – What it sounds like.  Searchable art gallery covering European Art from 1100 to 1850. Kind of like going to the Louvre, only instead of sore feet you can get carpal tunnel (and, if you live any distance from Paris, save a little time and money while you’re at it).

The Lexique d’Ancien Français is a searchable database of old French, but you need to know the new french in order to use it.  Stuck it into a new folder called, generically, ‘Foreign Languages’.  What with having so few links in the category yet, it didn’t seem right to specialize into “Languages People Only Spoke Very Briefly”, tempting though it was.  I would observe that these transitory languages can be quite fun, because if you know the before-and-after languages, you can quickly get a dose of the in-between language without a whole lot of work.

While I’m at it, here’s a handy Wikipedia article on the topic (again, you need to know new french to read about the old).

Chantez-Vous Français? Is more of the same.  If the subtitle, <<Remarques curieuses sur le français chanté du Moyen Age à la période baroque>> means anything to you, go check it out.

And at long last, if you desperately wanted to learn about Old French but had hoped to do so in English, Old French Online, courtesy of the Linguistics Research Center at UT – Austin has come to your rescue.

If you wish to test your Old-ish French reading skills, the project Gutenberg has a copy of Le Chevalier Deliberé posted.  Circa 1500, so beginning to be quite manageable for the junior linguist.

And to finish, something that isn’t history at all is the fun (but with a maddeningly busy intro page) Les langues de France en chanson, specializing in music of the various languages spoken in France today.  (If you were under the impression that “French” was the language of France, there’s something we need to tell you . . .)

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That will do it for today.  Happy All Souls Day, and thanks for your patience this round.

Catholic Writers’ Conference

The Catholic Writers’ Guild is putting on another on-line Catholic Writers’ Conference coming up at the beginning of February.  Registration is free, and you can participate as much or as little as you want.  If you enjoy writing I recommend you give it a try.

Go ahead and register now at http://www.catholicwritersconference.com/index.php.

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BTW: I happen to know that several of my readers here are qualified to lead workshops at this conference.   So you might, ahem, go volunteer to lend your expertise.  Good for business.

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I attended last year, and found the conference to be very enjoyable and informative.* The conference included workshops on all genres, and is relevant whether you tend to write for the ‘catholic’ market or for the wider public.  Workshops covered both writing skills and getting-yourself-published skills.  Definitely a bias towards helping you become A Person Who Gets Paid to Write — good focus, I suppose, since being a volunteer writer doesn’t require much training.

You will benefit most if you are able to participate, and to be able to participate, you will need to clear your schedule a bit.   At the very least, plan to substitute participation in the conference for your other goofing-off activities that week.  I lucked out last year — the conference fell on a week when my schedule was wide open, complete with borrowed children to keep my own occupied.  This allowed me to participate in one workshop intensively, dabble in a few others, and browse the rest; in order to do that, I probably spent 2-4 hours a day either at the conference or on my own doing homework.   (I could have spent less time on the homework, but I got more out of the conference by putting more into it.)

Format was a combination of discussion-forum workshops and live chatroom discussions on various topics, led by catholic authors and editors with expertise in the subject at hand.  There were also pitching sessions with catholic publishers and agents, which of course were not of any direct use to me since I had (and still have) no manuscripts for sale, but I learned quite a bit about that part of the industry from the related workshops.

[Are you thinking of leading a workshop? Know that last year many of the leaders of one workshop participated as a student in other workshops.  You can do both. ]

I found all the workshop leaders (agents, authors, publishers, editors) to be polite, encouraging, and no-nonsense.  Their goal is to bring more catholic writers to the reading public, and they will not pamper you in the process.  If you are looking for someone to tell you how wonderful you are and how whatever you want to do is just fine, call your mother; if you are looking for someone to help you with your writing, try the conference.

*Same danger, of course, as reading a book on how to improve your writing: You may end up like myself, not a better writer, just a guiltier one.  Nothing quite like a new improved awareness of all your faults.

give me a day

5th Friday, and I’ve got a few interesting sites to add to the sidebar.  But I’m making you wait until tommorrow.

tweaking the schedule

FYI I made some minor adjustments to the schedule.  I have an idea of where I want to go with the two blogs, but still working out the details.  One of these years it will all make sense.  Will stick this up top for a little bit, until everyone who worries about these things has had a chance to go see what changed.

Don’t Make Me Take You To Nebraska

Like something out The Onion, The Wall Street Journal is reporting today that parents — even those from out of state — are taking advantage of a loophole in Nebraska’s new Safe Haven law in order to drop off their teenagers. Apparently the legislature wants to close the loophole.

I’m a bit mystified. On the one hand, I understand that when you set up a law intending to protect newborns from abuse and infanticide, it is disconcerting to discover that all the ‘wrong’ people are taking advantage of your law. On the other hand, if you’ve just uncovered a serious societal problem, covering it back over hardly seems like the solution.

–> And frankly, this shouldn’t come as a surprise. The abuse, abandonment, and even murder by parents of older children is not exactly news. What is new, is that instead of waiting for the authorities to discover the abuse and take action after the fact, parents in Nebraska now have an option for coming forward for help before the problem reaches the danger point. I can see arguments for why the Safe Haven law is not the best mechanism for abuse-prevention of older children, but I don’t see why it is such a terrible thing. It seems to me that it is doing a valuable service.

The Journal reports that 19 children have been dropped off since the law went into place in July. Not an insignificant number [though nearly half of them apparently came from a single family – the father was feeling overwhelmed after the death of his wife – so take the total figure as not quite representative of the number of families involved], but given that the Nebraska foster care system is currently serving some 6,000 children, and the state is not reporting that the system is overloaded, this is hardly a dire emergency. It seems to me that rather calling a special session of the legislature to quick close the loophole, better to take the time to understand the situation and figure out how to best address the whole problem.

Book Review: The Fathers

The Fathers

Pope Benedict XVI

Our Sunday Visitor Publishing Division, 2008

ISBN: 978-1-59276-440-2

Summary: Wow. This is a good book. You should go buy it.

The details:

I was very daunted, as you may recall, at the prospect of having to actually read this book. Although I very much wanted to read it, or specifically, I wanted to have read it, I was afraid that it would be much too hard for myself, a junior intellectual. Fear not. The most difficult chapter is the first, and even in that one, there was only one sentence that I could not understand. And which, on a second reading, I do understand. So here it is, the very hardest sentence in the whole book, found at the bottom of page 8, emphasis in the original:

Clement’s letter touches on topics that were dear to St. Paul, who had written two important letters to the Corinthians, in particular the theological dialectic, perennially curent, between the indicative of salvation and the imperative of moral commitment.

If you can read that, you can read the whole book. And if you can’t read that, you can probably still read all the other sentences, which aren’t nearly so bad. I read the entire rest of the book not knowing what that sentence meant, and never really suffered for my want of knowledge.

What is in the book?

The Fathers is a series of twenty-six biographies of church fathers, starting with St. Clement of Rome and finishing with St. Augustine of Hippo, one person per chapter. The text is taken from the Holy Father’s weekly general audiences from March 7, 2007 to February 27, 2008; depending on the person, the chapter might have been covered in a single talk, divided into two separate talks (usually “life” first and “teachings” second), or in the case of St. Augustine, three talks. So, almost blog-like in format. If, say, you had a blog written by the pope.

As a result each biography can stand alone, although they form a continuous whole if you have the time and interest for reading the book cover to cover. I recommend doing that, by the way, if you can. But if you can’t, don’t panic. You could also put the book out in a convenient space and just pick it up periodically to read a chapter at random, and you will still benefit significantly.

Each entry gives a history of the life of the church Father (all but three are saints), including the context in which they lived. It will help if you have some knowledge of the history and geography of ancient Rome. If not, this is as good a place as any to get your introduction. I had only one place-name that left me completely stumped: Aquilea. Never heard of it before. Usually the text gives some clue – the modern name of a city, for example, but for this one all we were told was that it was in the Decima Regione. I, sadly, did not know my Regione – though I do now. At least that particular one. The rest of the biographies, though, gave me no geography trouble at all.

Following the history is a section on the father’s teachings. Here again, a junior scholar’s serving of theology is helpful. I would say that if you are comfortable with the Catechism of the Catholic Church – that is to say, you can pick it up and read it and make good sense of whatever it is you are reading – then you can probably work through this book with similar confidence.

Is it a boring book?

No!

Here are the three things I found most interesting:

1. You get a real sense of the depth of the catholicness of the early church. You cannot come away from this book persuaded that early church history is just a bunch of myths shrouded in the mists of time, nor that our (catholic) understanding of it is based on a few scraps of paper interpreted how we want to read them. You really get a sense for the weight and substance of our catholic heritage.

[One possible pitfall: After reading this, if someone pulls one of those anti-catholic ‘just a medieval invention lines’, you’ll probably just stare at them dumbly and wonder where they came up with that nonsense. You’ll be thinking some piece of apologetic brilliance along the lines of ‘Are you one of those people who has twenty cats and tin foil on your windows?’ So be warned. Knowledge of history really is knowledge of the catholic church. They aren’t making that up.]

2. The biographies find a beautiful balance between breadth and depth. Each entry is substantial enough to give you something to chew on, but not overwhelming. You will feel like you’ve ‘met’ the church father – if it is your first meeting, you come away with a good idea of who he is and what he thinks, and will want to get to know him better; if he is an old friend, you’ll enjoy the chance to say hello again, and be reminded of the reasons for your friendship. Even more, if you read the whole book front to back, you will get a sense of who the fathers are as a group – how they fit together, how they fit into church history, and how their theology fits into the history of catholic doctrine.

3. There is Pope Benedict XVI’s ever fresh and practical spirituality. There is just nothing dry in any of these biographies. Every one of these church fathers could be your parish priest, speaking to you, today, about the spiritual challenges you face. The holy father isn’t trying to ‘make’ the ancient fathers of church ‘relevant for today’ – he shows you that they what they teach, both by their lives and their writings, really is as inspiring and applicable to us in the 21^st century as it was so many centuries earlier.

Conclusion: This is a book to keep around the house. I definitely give it a ‘buy’ recommendation. If not for All Saints (really, you should), then put it on your Christmas wish list. Good for reading, and good as a reference for your all your quick-look-up-a-church-father needs. It isn’t an easy book, but it isn’t a hard one either. If you are a basic model catholic blog reader, it should be about your speed, challenging but not overwhelming. If you’re more advanced, it will be light and refreshing. If you are a junior junior catholic, you’ll have to work through it, but the format is such that you can bite off just a little at a time and still benefit, without having to feel like you have to read the whole thing right away.

Good book. Get yourself a copy.

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And now a word from our sponsor . . .

This review was written as part of the Catholic book Reviewer program from The Catholic Company. Visit The Catholic Company to find more information on The Fathers.

. . . The opinions, of course, are entirely my own. When I say it’s a good book, it’s because it’s a good book. That said, it’s not like I’m going to sign up to review anything that looks like it’s a bad book, heh.

The Catholic Company is still accepting new reviewers, by the way. Here’s the link: http://www.catholiccompany.com/content/Catholic-Product-Reviewer-Program.cfm Free books, but of course you have to actually read them, and then tell people what you think. Not that you don’t do that with your books anyway.