The weekly “little of this, little of that” feature here at Like Mother, Like Daughter!
See, I did mow!
Now on to the weed whacking…
[Not an actual baby.]
Is there anyone interested in starting a St. Gregory Pocket in Berkeley or thereabouts? Our dear friend Phyllis is moving out there with her family; she would love to meet you and help you get things started! Email Suki at suzanneelizabeth [at] gmail [dot] com to get connected.
Last week I met several different ladies who had formed Pockets or were about to. The Pocket is completely compatible with your projected or existing book club, because of course friends share reading and conversation (and maybe a glass of wine!). It's so much more, so it's really worth making the effort. If you are feeling like you have a nice time with your reading group but aren't sure that it's actually a community (for instance, what about children and spouses? what about the future?), do think about making a Pocket. To see where there are already existing ones, go here. If you have questions, first read this! (E.g. Do I need to be Catholic? Does starting a Pocket make me the leader?)
On to our links!
- A Father's Day MUST READ (yes, all caps shouting!) from Deirdre — A doctor heeds his father's advice to forgo billions — yes, billions — of dollars of profit on a life-saving invention and goes on to provide care for the dying. This story (scroll down to page three) is inspiring, giving a vision for what end-of-life care could look like, and why we should turn away, definitively, from euthanasia.
How have you seen the success of this approach?
At Calvary we treat 6,000 patients a year, and no one, after they have been here for 24 hours, asks for assisted suicide. No one: no matter what’s wrong, and we’ve seen some terrible cases. Not when you reach out with arms of love. When I enter a patient’s room, I always stop on the saddle of the door, and I pray, “My dear Lord God, my love for You brings me here for Your greater glory.” Then it is no longer a patient’s a room; it’s now a sanctuary. When you ask God to
come, He comes. I know He’s there. I can feel it. And when someone is dying, you think that room is part of this earth? No! You are not in this world. You have entered the vestibule of heaven.
- One of the reasons I started blogging, long ago in the mists of time, is that I saw that a lot of parenting advice is either not based on good authority (just the whim or fantasy of the parent of all girls or in fact ill-behaved children of both sexes) or is based on bad authority (for instance, on the thinking of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, notorious bad philosopher who, despite verifiably abysmal parenting, continues to inspire experts everywhere). An antidote: St. John Chrysostom on how to raise children.
- Another St. Peter's List gem: Knowledge and Wisdom.
- This past week marked the anniversary of the death of G. K. Chesterton. In his honor, an inspiring essay about his poetry.
- A long read, but this interview with James Matthew Wilson may help you find new reserves of inspiration for this adventure we call educating our children. The title makes it sound like it's about politics, but really it's about so much more — the good life and how to keep it.
- More in educational inspiration: Hillsdale College's Top Ten Reading Picks. Everyone will have their own, but this one is quite good.
- I know I take some engineering feats, like a tunnel through a mountain, for granted.
- Speaking of books, do you know and love Dorothy Sayers like I do? Great summer reading, and just the thing to shake you out of any bad reading habits you might have. (If you haven't read her, I recommend starting with Strong Poison.) NB: After you've read the Lord Peter books, should you find that you have a sense you missed some of the literary allusions, go back and read Shakespeare, Dickens, and Wodehouse. Then re-read the Lord Peter books!
Today is the feast of another wonderful Gregory, St. Gregory Barbarigo. Tomorrow most regions celebrate Corpus Christi, the solemn and beautiful commemoration of the institution of the Eucharist. I hope you have a procession to join! If you take a picture, I'd love to see it (my Instagram account is linked below).
From the archives:
- We are in full wedding swing here — you too? Did you know that Deirdre wrote a whole series about how to have a beautiful wedding? Here are two that are specifically about the reception: The Wholesome, Good-Times Reception and How to Get the Wedding Reception You Really Want. Do read all the posts and pass them along to your favorite bride!
~We’d like to be clear that, when we direct you to a site via one of our links, we’re not necessarily endorsing the whole site, but rather just referring you to the individual post in question (unless we state otherwise).~
Bethanne says
We have “not an actual baby” babies sleeping all over our couch, too, in all kinds of if-this-were-an-actual-baby-this-might-be-precarious positions. Makes me happy to see future mama practice.
Leila says
They always cause a double-take, those not-real, realistic baby-dolls!
Katie says
Haha, I’m currently forbidden from getting the hamper out of the girls’ room because the baby dolls are tucked in for naps in various baskets and rocking chairs… the door is closed and the lullaby CD is even turned on so that is how I’m supposed to know!
In other news, remember the mercilessly mown-down day lilies? Well, the greens sprang right back, we’ve had maybe a dozen blooms this week alone, the landscape guy sought my husband out to acknowledge and apologize, and the new renters arrived today with children just the right ages to play with ours. Hooray! In our vegetable garden, the zucchini got GIANT during a few days of storms that made it too wet to go get them… I’m talking 3-4lb individual ones. So I think every meal this week will need to involve zucchini. =)
Leila says
Yay for daylilies coming back!
Wow for zukes!
sibyl says
Oh, for the love of all that is holy, take Auntie Leila’s advice and start with Strong Poison! Harriet Vane is too good a character (and the love story too beautiful) to meet first in Gaudy Night. In fact, Sayers might be best approached in those novels before you get to Harriet, because they make her introduction all the more sweet.
Leila says
I’m of two minds.
For instance, The Five Red Herrings might convince you never to go any further, what with her obsession with train schedules…
However, that IS how I started.
But I was younger and more patient.
Anyway, she’s so great!
KC says
The person who started me on Sayers sent me first to Murder Must Advertise (and then, incidentally, I read all the others, including the Lord Peter short stories, before Gaudy Night – I had been rigorously warned that I Must Read Gaudy Night before Busman’s Honeymoon).
I can see the case for starting with Strong Poison, though. I’d probably, in that case, recommend Strong Poison and then going back for the earlier ones, then finishing up with the last two? What do you think? (I actually have someone I’m attempting to convince to read Sayers at the moment, so it’s of more immediate relevance than usual…)
Leila says
Murder Must Advertise is a good start — and actually, Harriet does make an appearance! I think actually it comes after Strong Poison, in their romance… or maybe after Have His Carcase? It’s been a long time since I obsessed over the details.
I don’t think it matters too, too much, other than as you say, GN before BH!
Anamaria says
Thanks for that first article about Dr. Brescia! Amazing. The whole thing was beautiful.
PS We are having a St. John’s Day Bonfire!
Monica Olsen says
Regarding “bad reading habits” – this is exactly how we were training our poor high school students to read when I worked as a public school teacher, executing common core. Annotate, find a claim, prove it in writing. On one had, I hated that the students had to get bogged down with “am I annotating it correctly” and not be able to enjoy the story. On the other hand, I enjoy annotation as a means of understanding or making connections. Sometimes I have even been known to say, “oh, just one moment!” in the middle of The Green Ember read-aloud to the kids because I want to highlight some special line.
Could you comment on the heart of the matter of “bad habits” – is it annotating in and of itself that is bad or is the problem that she was dissecting without relishing?
Dixie says
I think good annotation is spontaneous, akin to an exclamation in spoken word.
Kids may have to be introduced to it deliberately — because, of course, they are taught early not to write in books (which is appropriate at the time) — but once you think of it it becomes just what you’re talking about doing yourself, highlighting or dog-earing or writing a note next to something that really strikes you because of just how beautiful or meaningful or interesting (or wrong!) it is. It should not be a task in and of itself (“you must have five annotations on each page”).
So, “Am I annotating this right?” seems to show that the Common Core is asking them to do it wrong, as you say 🙁
Dixie says
(Not that note-taking in books can’t be systematic — when reading an academic book, for example, I usually will note the argument in the intro and each chapter, for example, because that is helpful to me — but you know what I mean.)
Leila says
Monica, I think the author here is saying that she wasn’t READING. She was skimming, mining, trolling… but not just spending time on the book. Gaudy Night taught her to receive the book as a gift!
For fiction like this, I say — enjoy it! If your urge is to annotate, then do so. Most students first must learn to enjoy — or rather, not UNlearn enjoyment. For instance, most teachers want us to approach Jane Austen with analysis in mind. But first we need to just read! The second reading we can start analyzing…
Monica Olsen says
Thank you for putting it so clearly – receive the book as a gift first! Annotate the second time around. If I were back in my public classroom, with students who hated to read first time and wouldn’t make it to second time, I think I’d do a good bit of read-aloud in class, with some assigned reading at home. After reading the whole story as a gift, then perhaps they could annotate just one passage for a specific literary device. I’ll have to think about this in the case that I ever return to a classroom. For now, we are enjoying ourselves our read-alouds at home 🙂 Thanks be to God! Just finished The Green Ember, which I totally recommend for your list of “Read This, Not That”
Leila says
Yes, Monica, reading out loud in class is excellent — so important! The most formative literature class I took was my senior year AP lit class. The teacher — a fantastic if idiosyncratic reader — spent at least half of the class reading out loud from classics that we were studying.
I think that the second portion of the class could definitely be spent annotating, digesting, and perhaps notating in the commonplace book/notebook. Characters, themes, language, quotes, symbols — just anything that seems interesting to them and merits at least another look. Later they can go back and re-notate, based on their idea of the whole work.
Thanks for the recommendation — I will look it up!
Amelia says
Perhaps this has been recommended elsewhere and someone can find the link for me, but the St. John Chrysostom advice makes me wonder: does anyone know some high-quality, timeless musical recordings of the Psalms? I’m thinking it’d be nice to play them at home sometimes.
Monica Olsen says
Although I can’t recommend a whole cd of psalms, this is nice chant of psalm 50: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v16TAzVqpuo
Gale says
Hi. This isn’t about this post, but another one for which comments are closed now. I loved your series on a reasonably clean home. I loved it so much that I linked to all the parts from my blog (since you didn’t have a central place all these were linked to and it took a long time to scroll down to the earlier posts). Wasn’t trying to steal content…mostly made this for me, but also sometimes to share with other messies who were having troubles.
A while back you changed blog URLS. I changed the beggining URL and that helped with some of the posts, but other of the posts it didn’t and I’m not finding some of these (The post I linked from is here…links are wrong but the titles you are probably familiar with… http://wacomom.blogspot.com/search?q=reasonably+clean). Do they still exist?
Honestly, if you made all these into a book I would buy it. Your cleaning/organizing advice has helped more than any other resources I’ve tried and done so without making me feel judges, hopeless and discouraged.
Gale says
Never mind…I found your master list! I’m getting rid of that page and just linking to it. Thanks so much! http://likemotherlikedaughter.org/reasonably-clean-house/
Leila says
Hi Gale — sorry I missed this but glad you figured it out!
I am trying to collect everything! Stand by!
Claire says
Oh Auntie Leila, that book would be a treasure!!! Like Home Comforts, without being obsessive. Invaluable, I tell you!!!
Pleeeeease??
Claire says
Although truthfully, I shouldn’t pick on Home Comforts. The book had a lot of good points, and her discussion of how her two grandmothers handled leftovers so differently had me laughing.
After that, sometimes when someone said they had liked last night’s supper, I replied: “You liked that? Oh good! I’ve got more.”
Which brings to mind your clever “Save a step” cooking . . . see, we need that book, Auntie Leila!