BookBindings, Religion, and Anne Rice

    For years now my favorite type of book binding has been the larger paperback, the paperbacks that are about the size of a hard back but with a soft, flexible cover. Several years back I was in a book club, the Quality Paperback Book Club (QPB), and although you could get other bindings from them the big paperback was their specialty. Whenever I go to Goodwill or Got Books, I look for books of this type of binding first, and only at other types if the story looks intriguing. Some time last year I found a cache of Anne Rice books at Goodwill and decided to read them (I had been a fan of her Vampire series years before), they are a combination of trade paperback sized books and hard backs, no big paperbacks. The last three books I've read were of the small paperback kind, my least favorite book binding, the writing's inevitably smaller and the covers tend to break and tear; I also read a lot on my Kindle which has it's own pluses and minuses but will never replace an actually book. Two nights ago I started the third book in Rice's Mayfair Witch chronicles, Taltos, and it's a big, grand, hard back book. I don't believe I've read a hard back of this size since the Harry Potter books and I've got to say it's physical properties has created in me a bit of a thrill. The font is easy on the eyes, the spacing is nice, the feel of the book, the artwork of the dust jacket, it's great. Couple that with the fact that I've enjoyed the first two books in the series and this one picks up right where Lasher left off, with this family and this legend of which I've already gotten embroiled; you can see why I'm more than a little excited by this book.

    Now religion, Anne Rice has had some famous/infamous connections with Christianity and Catholicism in particular. One of the vampire books (I believe it was Memoch the Devil) includes the crucifixion of Christ, she's written some books about Jesus (I have one of them though I haven't gotten around to reading it yet), and she publicly went back to and then left the Church in recent years. In Lasher she writes of how his character had once been considered a Saint and how he went to live and study with the Franciscan monks. I enjoy reading about the lives of the Saints already and then with this story it made me wish I could be Catholic or Pagan, the story talks about the intertwining of the two traditions. I don't believe I could be a Catholic for the same reasons I couldn't continue as a Southern Baptist, I barely pass the mustard as a Methodist. The book also talked about the bloody and awful ways the Catholics and Protestants treated each other, killings, burnings, all out wars on occasion. It seems to me that modern Christians (at least in my experience) are either completely ignorant or are choosing to be blind to our own history. Whenever I read or hear someone talk about how they believe the Bible the way Christians have always believed, or how there is no debating the meanings of scripture, I wonder if they've ever looked at Christian history. I know some have had too, surely you can't get a doctorate in theology without studying these things; and once you've seen them how can you say your way is the only right way? IDK? I once overheard a young associate pastor from an independent Baptist church tell someone he thought the KJV was the only version of the bible worth reading, then he said, "If it was good enough for Paul, it's good enough for me." I didn't know him, so maybe he had a dead pan sense of humor, I hope that was the case.

   Anyway, I'm off to read some more of Taltos, it's started out very strong and I can't wait to see where the story is going to go from here.

      

"The Casual Vacancy" a book review

J.K. Rowling's book "The Casual Vacancy" it a tough one for me to rate and review, in some ways it was a great and even an important book and in other ways I wish I'd never have read it. I posted a blog when I was about half way through the book saying it was about local politics, relationship politics and a lot of broken people, what I didn't realize at the time was that all these problems were really a set up to the real point of the story. For me the overall message of the book, and it is most definitely a message book, is that we get so caught up in the problems of our own lives, be they real or imagined, that we miss the bigger tragedies happening around us. It could also be viewed as a political statement about how people get caught in a cycle of poverty and abuse and how there are people who desperately need help to break that cycle. Good message, and very damning, I easily saw myself in the characters who turned a blind eye to the problems of others or who were to apathetic and self-centered to care. Rowling does a great job, as she did in the Harry Potter series, of drawing you into this world, introducing a large cast of characters and getting you to feel for them, by the time I got to the dramatic climax I could not put the book down, she is great at doing that. The characters themselves are all a bit stereotypical but even so Rowling doesn't let them become two dimensional, it's  like she took a stereotype skeleton and added flesh to it. The one character that really gets to come out of her stereotype, or at least that we get to see beyond it, is Krystal Weedon; it's her and her family that I believe are really the main characters in the book, everything comes back to them. Now here's where things get tough for me, good, important message, good storytelling, compelling but yet Rowling sets you up for a terrible heart break. I can imagine that the tragedy at the core of this novel was the first part she wrote and that all the rest was built up around it so that we could see characters quite literally so caught up in their own little worlds that they don't take the chance to avert calamity. I don't know if this book effects everyone the same, well of course it doesn't, but what I mean is I don't know if everyone gets as upset by it as I did. I cried, the last chapter was read with blurred vision and then afterward I sobbed and spent the next few days in a depressed emotional state. In a way that's another tribute to the writing that this fictional story could affect me so deeply but in another way it really sucks because I fight negative feelings enough already I don't need a work of fiction to bring me down. I've had a rough emotional week, due in large part to this story, so I'm torn on whether to say yes it's good you should read it, or to say avoid this at all costs. Either way I know I'm not likely to forget this book anytime soon, the Weedons will haunt me for years to come.

Stolen Glances

I see you staring at me every time I walk into the room, you know I'm with another right now but yet you keep catching my eye. I like your jacket, it's a little flashy but flashy can be okay as long as there's something good on the inside. I promise when I finish with the one I'm with I'll give you a chance, see if we're compatible, you wouldn't be here if I didn't think I'd liked you, I am the one that invited you into my home. I got you at the Goodwill, I like other things your author has written, your flashy dust jacket makes you sound practically irresistible.

 I assume this is how all people feel when looking at their bookshelves, am I right?

Broken People

I'm about a third of the way through J.K. Rowling's The Casual Vacancy it's a story of local politics, relationship politics, social injustice, and some thoroughly broken people. In one of the last chapters that I read a recovering drug addict has found out about a death in her family and it brings back memories of all the terrible things that have happened in her life, and Rowling made sure they were truly awful, all these memories come flooding over the character until it drowns all her resolve and we see her running down the street in tears looking for a fix, something to wipe away the hurt. Rowling is truly a masterful story teller, while there's not the magic of the Harry Potter world here, she still draws you in to this world she's created, you feel as though you know the layout of the town, you know the people; and when this character breaks you can't help but empathize with her.
   After reading this section of the book I had a talk with my wife, Araine, I told her that while I thankfully never went through the hell this character had, I still feel as though I'm broken inside as well. I know that there's really no such things as 'normal' and for the most part I've come to terms with my quirks of character and the things that make me different, but there are some things, some situations in which I see others behaving as complete adults that I just find myself quite unable to handle. I have half joked that the song What is This Feeling from Wicked is my introspective theme song. My childhood and my life to this point have had a few pretty bad times, nothing compared to the characters in this story, nor compared to the lives of quite a few people I know; yet when I think back on my life it is the bad times that seem to resonate more strongly. The vast majority of my life has been that of the abundantly blessed, I've always had love, safety, food, clothing, shelter, so why do the bad times stand out more, why does the broken feeling seems so strong at times? Araine said (I hope she doesn't mind me sharing this) that she too felt broken inside and that she too seemed to remember the bad things of life more starkly than the good things. So I began to wonder if that's true for all, or at least most of us; do all of you feel like you're broken people trying to make it in a world populated by "whole" people?
  To help combat this negativity I've started purposely calling to mind the good memories of my life, the times that I've felt happy and content, the times I'd never trade for anything. I have a strong affinity and interest in Zen and Taoism, although (obviously) I'm not always so good at putting these practices to good use, but as another weapon against negativity I've been trying hard to put into practice the idea of living fully in the moment, where the anxiety of the past and the future don't exist. To this end I've begun to wear my yin/yang necklace more often where I can rub the charm between my fingers like a worry stone to remember to let go of things, to pray for clarity. And while it's nothing new to me, I've come to a new realization of the power of singing to take you out of yourself, one of the reasons I love to sing so much.
    I can't wait to see how this books ends, it's building to what can only be a highly emotional climax. I'll let you know.

A Winter's Tale, read, finally.

 I can usually read through a play fairly quickly but this one seemed to take a long time to finish. Part of that is due to the play itself but I think an even bigger problem is the very bad habit I've fallen into of reading and watching t.v. at the same time, not really giving my full attention to either. This hasn't been much of a problem, generally which ever is more interesting I give my attention to while the other languishes; unfortunately A Winter's Tale just never really caught my interest. In The Complete Works of William Shakespeare; Abridged the writers lump all of Shakespeare's comedies into one scene because, as they say, it's all pretty much the same thing (mistaken identities, cross dressers, star crossed lovers and every one gets married in the end). I also kept forgetting who the characters were, I should have read the sparknotes synopsis first, it cleared things up a bit reading it afterward. It's interesting how our preconception of something flavors our expectations of it, for most of the time I was reading this play, I thought it was a tragedy (it certainly starts out that way) and when I realized my mistake I also realized I had been judging it through a lens of what I thought a tragedy should be. For instance I couldn't figure out the inclusion of the comedic characters of Autolycus and (the aptly named) Clown, but even within the parameters of a comedy they still don't seem to have much to do with the plot.  Now it's time to read and reread and reread Born Yesterday as I try to learn my lines, but when not doing that I'm reading Chuck Palahniuk's Doomed. Quite awhile back I decided to read one book off of each shelf of my bookshelf, 6 shelves total, with EmbassyTown I finished that mini-challenge and now I'm going to read the sequels and prequels I have on my shelf. Doomed is the sequel to Palahniuk's Dammed about a 13 yr. old girl who dies, goes to hell, and promptly starts to take over. In between books I try to read some of the ongoing titles I've got on my kindle, after finishing Embasytown I read one of John Wesley's sermons, one of H.P. Lovecraft's short stories, a Sherlock Holmes story, and, of course, one of Shakespeare's plays. Speaking of the complete works of Shakespeare on my kindle, I've now finished all the comedies, all the histories, and all but one of the tragedies, then it's on to the apocrypha and the poems (I've read about 40 of the 154 sonnets). I don't remember everything about all of them, nor can I randomly quote passages from most of them, maybe some day I'll start memorizing sections like Peter Hawkins in Ken Ludwig's Treasure Island.

Silver Linings Playbook

I finally got around to watching "Silver Linings Playbook" last night, I've been wanting to see it since it came out. It was a good movie, I even had a little tear in my eye at the end, (can you feel a but coming on here?) but (there it is) it could have been so much better.
                                       Spoiler Alert!
 At the beginning of the movie I actually felt a bit like I was experiencing a mental disorder of my own, they did a good job of getting you into the characters mind set. Like the part where he freaks out over the ending of "A Farewell to Arms" because it doesn't have a happy ending, foreshadowing there but not the way I anticipated. As the movie goes along you see that silver lining (wait a minute that's not his name) Pat, is not the only character in the film with a serious mental illness, just the only one that's had, court ordered, treatment for it. The film moves along nicely with ups and downs, with comedy and drama and then it takes a Hollywood turn. Pat's father risks everything he has on a double bet which includes Pat and Tiffany scoring at least a 5 in a dance contest (which is a long shot at best) and Pat finding out that Tiffany actually wrote the letter that he thought his ex had written. Now it looks like everything is set up for an impossible happy ending but Pat gets a look in his eye and you think, maybe he's going to show everyone how ridiculous they're being; at this point I thought if they play this right it's going to be sad but amazing. But alas the film makers seemed to forget they were making a drama about people dealing with mental illness and instead were making a romcom, complete with a don't-let-the-girl-get-away speech, chasing-her-down-the-street, Jerry Maguire-esque you-had-me-at you-wrote-it-last-week moment. Yes it was somewhat satisfying seeing a happy (silver lining) ending but it was so unrealistic as to take away from an otherwise amazing movie. Yes, everyone's happy, but for how long? How long before they get in a fight and she starts sleeping around, and if she does will he lose it again? How long before Pat's dad risks everything on another superstitious bet? Maybe we're just suppose to be happy that they're happy for a moment and not think about the incredibly thin line by which it all hangs.

That Writing Feeling

It's been over 7 months since I last posted a blog, I've written a few between that time and now but deleted them when they went places I wasn't comfortable going on the world wide web. It's hard both walking the fine line between honest and t.m.i, and finding time to commit to the writing down of thoughts. For instance, I hadn't even finished the first sentence here before I had to stop and pull a Doc McStuffins and tape and action figure's arm back together. I have, however, been wanting to write and two movies I've watched recently have fanned the flame of that particular desire. The first flick was the mostly forgettable but not horrible film "Mom's Night Out", this was one Araine had wanted to see and while we didn't make it to see it at the theater we did rent it a few weeks ago. Patricia Heaton, of t.v.'s "The Middle" and "Everybody Loves Raymond", produced and co-stared in this somewhat faith-based comedy about a harried mom who tries to take a night out with her friends. The mom in the movie is a budding professional blogger (a profession that seems to exist more in Hollywood than in real life) who never feels she measures up as a mom, thus dampening her 'mom' blog; but, of course, by the films end she's learned that she's good enough just as she is and she starts blogging away. This set me thinking, I need to blog again, if a harassed Hollywood heroine can do it then perhaps this easily overstressed dad can do it as well. The second movie, I watched just this morning, is the not-for-the-faint-of-heart "Kill Your Darlings". Daniel Radcliffe, in a big departure from "Harry Potter", stars as Allen Ginsberg in a film somewhat based upon actual events. The movie is nominally about a murder that the founding fathers of the beat movement were implicated in, but the real drive of the movie is seeing how this group came together and came to be who they were. Radcliffe's Ginsberg starts out as a wide-eyed freshman at Columbia who soon falls under the spell of the troubled, anti-establishmentarian Lucien, Lucien then introduces Ginsberg to (among others) Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs. Lucien is both the Pete Best and Yoko Ono of the 'beat' founders. The neat thing to me about this movie is that you can feel "Howl" being born within this tumultuous time, even though he doesn't say it in the film (the poem came later in his life) you can see that famous first line, "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness..." coming to life. While I don't support the use of mind altering drugs in general, perhaps it's a good thing for a few wild individuals to take the plunge and "expand their consciousness" for the benefit of us all. Worry not though, I'm no Raskolnikov thinking I'm a Napoleon, I need my consciousness intact; but the film did make me want to write. (Now before you rush out and watch this movie know that it is pretty graphic, perhaps you should read "Howl" before deciding if you want to watch the flick.
    Well, for better and worse, there's the blog. It was aggravating getting it written (you wouldn't believe how long it took) but it felt good to write and I hope to make it a more common thing, whether anyone reads them or not.

Some Thoughts on Love

Over the past week I've read and watched a few things talking about love, not romantic love (not necessarily) but the harder type, the unconditional type; but, being February (the month of celebrating love with expensive presents) I think I'll include a more romantic idea of love as well.
  I've started doing a couple of daily readings, all very short mind you, because I've got a lot to do; I mean Netflix isn't going to watch itself. There are two daily devotionals I follow on Facebook (see, it's not all cat pictures), I've got an intellectual devotional with daily facts (for instance did you know some experts believe the "Mona Lisa" may have been Da Vinci painting himself as a woman?), I read a chapter or so from the New Testament, a few paragraphs from Hermann Hesse's "Siddhartha", and a section (too small to be called a chapter) in this really great (really short) book by Tai Sheridan called "Buddha in Blue Jeans: An Extremely Short Guide to Sitting Quietly and Being Buddha" (one of my favorite quotes from it is, "Events are not your ideas about them. Meet the world without expectations"). I know it sounds like a lot but it doesn't take more than 10 or so minutes to read it all. There's a lot about love in these readings, the kind of love that doesn't always come easy, the kind I struggle with quite a bit actually. The bible tells us to love our neighbors as ourselves, to love our enemies, turn the other check and all that. When Siddhartha finds rebirth at the side of the river he's filled with a love for everything, with joy for being alive. In Buddha in Blue Jeans Sheridan writes, "The object of your love doesn't matter. You are love" and "There are no walls in the world of love." So what's so hard about all this? Well, I don't know about you but when someone gives me attitude, my first reaction isn't, I love you anyway; my first reaction usually involves a passive aggressive smile and an inwardly said curse word (okay, sometimes it's an audible curse, depending on the situation). So I have to remind myself that even if someone bugs me, I should love them, that even non-ideal situations should be handled with and approached with love. I have to try and remember that it is my responsibility to control my thoughts and reactions, that I can be negative or I can be positive. Now there are situations and people who deserve rebuke and reproach but it can be done from a place of love. The hardest part of this, for me, is to let go of anger, to not respond with anger and to let go expectations of how things 'ought to be'. I find myself being a Clark Griswold as times, building up unrealistic expectations of how things should be, families are seldom like the pictures on the back of board games, where everyone is happy and laughing and having fun at the same time; no life is generally a lot messier than that.
   We also watched the movie "Frozen" yesterday, and it's all about love. (I'm going to try and avoid specific spoilers here but I do want to talk about the movie some, so bear that in mind as you read.) It's neat in that while there is romantic love at play in the movie, that's not necessarily what they're talking about when they speak of true love. In the movie an act of true love saves the day and melts the frozen heart, it's also love that allows for the whole town to be saved. Love turns out to be the answer for the problem one of the characters has, she has lived her life in fear of herself and what she might do to others; fear, isolation, and regret have kept her from her family and from the world at large and it's only when she learns to love others despite all this pain that she's able to control her problem. I think this draws a great parallel to those dealing with addiction, hurt, anxiety, anger, and other problems that we think must be kept to ourselves. We think others won't understand, will judge us, will look down on us and so we hide away (physically or mentally) until the problem becomes out of our control. But if we would love ourselves and then love others as ourselves and open ourselves up to be loved by others then perhaps we could learn to control our 'problems' before they get away from us. In "Buddha in Blue Jeans" the author has a section about giving yourself to life, to others such as family, friends, and society at large and about giving yourself to immaterial things like creativity, and spirituality; the point being we need to open ourselves to the possibilities of life and love. As a somewhat introverted person at times this can be a struggle for me as well.
  Now to the more fun kind of love, romantic love. I've shared my thoughts on this before but I think they might bear repeating. There's a great feeling called love in which your whole being seems caught up in someone else, an emotion that makes you want to be with that person constantly, to stare into their eyes and make up silly love songs ("Some people want to fill the world with (them), I say what's wrong with that..."). That's a great feeling but it's also a fleeting feeling, it can come and go; sometimes Ariane or I will look to the other and say, I'm really IN LOVE with you right now, and it's this feeling of which we speak. But romantic love is also a commitment, it's saying that even when I'm not "in love" with you that I'm still going to love you. That is to say, I'm going to put your needs and desires first, I'm going to try and increase your happiness and do what I know is right for our relationship. It's funny because sometimes this can be hard to do, let's face it, selfishness is an inborn trait of humanity, but at other times it's the easiest thing in the world to do. I suppose it comes somewhat with maturity but also with that first kind of love, the one that says I'm going to love you even when I don't feel like it.
   So it might sound a little hippy-ish, or new age-ish, or even Christian-ish but I'm always trying to open myself up to love, to love life, to love family, to love work, to love all things up to and including you, whoever you are.

Lessons of a Bookworm

  Books teach lots of lessons, sometime it's something the author intended and sometimes it's something that only you can take away from the book, a combination of the authors words and your unique experiences. This isn't to be an exhaustive list, just a random bit of things I've learned reading books.
   From Siddhartha I learned that a book doesn't have to be big to pack a big impact and from Hermann Hesse that loving one book by an author doesn't mean you'll love the rest of his work; but even if you don't love the story (Demian) it can still resonate with you for years to come. Also from Siddhartha and from some of Salinger's work I learned that we often have to forget what we know in order to learn what we need to know.
  Speaking of Salinger, Salinger taught me that, "If you had a million years to do it in, you couldn't rub out even half the "F you" signs in the world. It's impossible."While he probably didn't intend to Salinger also taught me that a certain amount of phoniness is not only normal but necessary for society to function, sorry Holden. Salinger, Vonnegut, and Hemingway also taught me that war is indeed hell; although Hemingway made it sound a bit like a romantic hell.
  Tolstoy taught me in Anna Karenina that really big books usually have lots of filler that has nothing to do with the stories being told. That sometimes regular romances seem much more desirable when compared with flashy, star struck ones and that the main story in a book isn't always the best one.
   Speaking of Russian's, Dostoevsky taught me many things and I've only read two of his books so far. He taught me that a man can reason anything, even murder can seem reasonable when dwelt on too long. He taught me that 'classics' could be interesting stories, and (with The Brothers Karamazov) that the parts of a book can be greater than it's sum. He taught me that people don't know what to do with freedom and would rather have laws and dogma, and that we are all responsible for the worst among us because we didn't reach them when we had a chance.
   Dai Sijie, Paulo Coelho and Laura Esquivel taught me that there are non-English writing authors out there definitely worth reading, Coelho gave me the only version of the story of Job I've ever really liked and also made me see how a writer can mess up his own story by inserting too much of himself into it. Sijie taught me about Chinese reeducation camps (in the 1960s) and how literature can free the mind. And Esquivel taught me that a book can be smoldering hot, fantastical, romantic and contain recipes all at the same time.
   Neil Gaiman showed me fairy tales are also for adults.
   Joyce Carol Oates showed me how a house can be a major character in a story.
   Christopher Moore and Tom Robbins showed me that a warped imagination can be a good thing, that profanity can be prose and that red heads can be real trouble. Moore also gave the world Pocket (a unique reworking of Shakespeare's fool from King Lear)and Abby Normal, which maybe isn't a lesson learned but a good thing all the same; remember when Abby was talking about Boo Radley?
   Which brings me to Harper Lee, who taught me it's not always easy to stand up for your principles but it's always worth it. Cyrano de Bergerac tempered that lesson by teaching me that standing up for those beliefs to the point of being obsessive about them can lead to loneliness and death. Cyrano also showed me you can love a character even if he's a dick and in a similar vain Lolita showed that you can sympathize with even a very base protagonist with the right writer at the helm.
   Stephen King showed me how important a good ending is, and Elizabeth Kostova showed me how a terrible ending can ruin an otherwise amazing book. The Notebook showed how you can love the ending of a book even though you're reading it through a torrent of tears.
   Speaking of endings brings me to the end of my blog, again not an exhaustive list by any means, but these are some of the lessons I've learned from my time spent between the pages of books. Some were about literature in general and some from more of a personal growth perspective. I hope I can be as good a man as Atticus without being quite a Cyrano, I hope to be as peaceful as Siddhartha but with a Fool-ish streak, to be as passionate as quail in rose petal sauce flavored by Tita's erotic thoughts and as devoted as Noah Calhoun.

A Once Controversial Topic

  

   First of all let me begin with the obligatory I haven't blogged in awhile and had almost  forgotten I had a blog, and now on with the show. Once upon a time there was an issue that divided people, families, and communities; it even landed some people in jail. It was a hot topic issue that people held deeply seated opinions about and yet today it's pretty much a non-issue to most of us. The issue I'm discussing is, please don't be offended by this, baptism.
   To be honest it's never been much of an issue to me and still isn't one I'd get upset over but I find myself in a position of reevaluating my assumptions on the topic. I believe almost all Christian denominations practice baptism in one form or another, it and communion being the only sacraments recognized by most protestant denominations, but when and how you get wet has led to splits in churches and all the aforementioned hubbub. I was raised in the Baptist tradition and was indoctrinated in their belief of full-immersion, believers baptism (I'll explain this in a minute if your not sure what I mean) but I've almost certainly left the Baptist denomination and have been visiting other mainline Christian churches which will perform and accept the Baptist style of baptism but they also practice sprinkling or pouring of water and (the thing most foreign to the way I was taught) infant baptism.
    Now let's get into the mechanics of it all for a bit. There are some denominations that believe baptism is required to gain salvation and thereby getting your get into heaven card, others (including Baptist) believe that baptism is just an outward show of something you've already done internally (believers baptism), while others believe baptism is a rite, something that all Christians have been commanded to do and it symbolizes what Christ did for humanity, not anything that humans ourselves have done (hence the baptism of infants). Also the manner of ceremonial washing is a dividing point between Baptists and other mainline Christian groups, the sprinkling and pouring work fine for ceremonial purposes for most protestants but Baptist's (and others like them) believe you must get dunked; this belief comes both from the fact that Jesus was dunked in the Jordan River and it's representation of death and rebirth.
    Last Sunday in the liturgical calendar was the Sunday to celebrate Jesus' baptism and as we were visiting Central United Methodist Church (CUMC) in Uptown Shelby this issue was brought to mind, and (as is usually the case in my family) it brought about a humorous situation. At the end of the service the pastor poured water into a baptismal fount and invited the congregation to come forward dip their fingers in and touch it to their forehead to help them remember their baptism, their initiation into Christianity if you will. I started forward to do so, I was baptized around the age of 12 (the median age for Baptists I believe) at Ross Grove Baptist Church in Shelby, and my younger boys saw that there were kids their age going forward and they wanted to go participate as well. Now coming from a Baptist church neither of them has been baptized, but I didn't think it would hurt anything to let them come with me, I and my 7 yr. old son both dipped our fingers and touched them to our foreheads, then my 4 yr. old dipped his fingers in and proceeded to stick them in his mouth. He didn't understand. It was all I could do not to laugh during what was suppose to be a solemn time.
   As we contemplate joining the Methodist denomination we are faced with the decision of when or if to baptize our children. Our oldest has already been baptized, in the baptist tradition, and our other older children will have to decide for themselves but there remains the question of the younger ones. Now I'm looking across this bridge long before we're even close to crossing it, we've by no means committed ourselves anywhere as of yet and when we do I'm sure there will be pastors and others to help us make this type of decision. For me personally, baptism is a tradition and it doesn't bother me when it's done (I'm really more of a humanistic Unitarian with a Christian leaning than a hardline bible thumper) but I'm sure our (almost wholly Baptist) family would not be comfortable nor understand the baptizing of young children. My only other concern in the situation is that if a child doesn't choose for themselves to be, and is not old enough to remember being baptized will it mean anything to them? But then again, while I remember my baptism, I can't say that it holds much meaning for me.
    This so far has been the only big difference I've noticed between the Baptists (in general) and the Methodists. The more specific difference I've noticed (from the baptist church we were attending and CUMC), and the one that started this inquiry into other denominations, is the thankful lack of political posturing. Because I don't want politicians telling me what to believe and I don't want preachers telling me how to vote.
   So what use to be a big church splitting, family tearing issue has become more a matter of preference and inclination, an issue that we may have to come to terms with in the future, or not. I'm sure even within a non-Baptist mainline Church, we could wait and let the kids make that choice for themselves.

Playing Danforth

   I didn't read Arthur Miller's The Crucible in high school, don't ask me why, you'd have to take that up with my teachers and it's been so long ago now that I don't even remember their names. But when I heard that GSCT was staging it this season I grabbed a copy and read it, and loved it. After my initial reading I wanted to play John Proctor, I wanted to say, "I hear the boot of Lucifer, and I see his face and it is my face and your face..." and all those other angry, angst ridden lines that Proctor gets to say. But after playing Judd Fry in Oklahoma! I thought, I don't want to play another angry, emotionally charged character that dies in the end right now; I rethought the play and begin to think I'd rather play one of the priests (Hale and Parris) they each go through a change in the show that really appealed to me as an actor.
   When it came down to actually auditioning I didn't write down a character that I wanted to play, I just put any and so of course I didn't get one of the ones I had wanted because I didn't tell anyone about it. I was originally cast as Francis Nurse  an older farmer whose wife gets convicted of being a witch; Nurse is a fairly small role in the scheme of the show and I'll admit my pride was somewhat stung by the initial casting, but I did put any and it being GSCT I don't mind accepting a smaller role (I wouldn't want to drive to another city for a small role but here in town I don't mind). Portraying Nurse did have it's challenges, for the most part I tried to keep my back bent and my gait slow, trying to draw in and be as feeble as my large frame will allow, also Nurse doesn't come on until his wife is already arrested so he is full of agitation, strife and eventually sorrowful resignation. But when I got the call to step up and play Danforth, I was happy to have a more challenging role on my hands.
   The man originally cast to play Danforth dropped out after the read through, I never heard the actual reason for this though I assume it had something to do with the seven-days-a-week rehearsal schedule (which is highly unusual for community theater in these parts). There was some cast shuffling and another man was placed in the role, this fellow had the presence to play the role, he fit it but it proved to be too big a part for him; he just never could get the lines memorized and because of this, perhaps, he had trouble developing the role. So the director made what I'm sure was a very hard choice of asking him to step down and it was at this point that I was tasked with taking over as Danforth. I felt bad for the other guy, but the character of Danforth really drives much of the second half of the show and without a strong Danforth it just wouldn't work.
   Most times I can find a line or a phrase that really sums up a character to me and it becomes sort of the hallmark of how I view them. For Danforth it's when he looks to Reverend Hale and says, "Mister Hale, surely you do not doubt my justice?" It's phrased as a question, but it is most assuredly a threat; the subtext is, question me and you'll find yourself in jail or worse. Also the fact that he say's MY justice instead of the courts justice, in Danforth's mind he is the court, he is the law, he is Denzel in Training Day, "King Kong ain't got s@$& on me!" The reason we hate Danforth is because he believes himself infallible and when this notion is challenged by almost incontrovertible facts he fights against reason to go on believing himself that way. He actively searches for a way to avert justice so that he can continue to believe that he is just, because if he is not then not only are the people of Salem possibly innocent but so are the 72 others he has sentenced to hang and the, "... near 400 in the jails from Marblehead to Lynn...". His career, his reputation, his very conscious relies on these people being guilty and that's why he tries so hard to get them to confess.
   I really liked the way Fred (our director) blocked Danforth, he comes striding in, takes center stage and gives it up only reluctantly. He is large and in charge and every one knows it, one note that Fred gave me on a couple of occasions was that I didn't have to yell over others to have power, because Danforth already has the power. Fred told me to come in under them, when they get louder and higher I come in underneath, except when MY justice is questioned, then I can shout them down. This was most evident in my last scene with Proctor, he's ranting and raving and blubbering about his name and I stay composed until I realize I'm not going to get my way, then I get to get mad and pitch a little hissy fit and say, "Hang them high above the town..."
   Playing Nurse would have been fine too, I would have given it my best, but all in all I'm glad I got the chance to play Danforth.

Rodin

I'm taking an art appreciation course for a degree I'm no longer interested in pursuing, so I'm just struggling through to the end of it. We watched a video on Rodin's The Gates of Hell and had to type a paper based on the video. I thought I'd share it here. One thing I learned from the video that didn't fit into the report that I found interesting was about Rodin's sculpture The Kiss. The two lovers in the kiss were based upon a couple from Dante's The Divine Comedy, they were engaged in an extramarital affair and were caught kissing by the women's jealous husband who quickly sent the pair to hell. Rodin decided the Kiss was to tender of a moment and instead depicted the couple on the door as falling into hell, however he displayed his original concept (the one we all know) as a stand alone piece. I find all this amusing because we have a copy of The Kiss on the dresser in our bedroom, not knowing the historic/literary meaning of the piece it looks like a couple in love and sharing a very tender moment. I wonder if Rodin would enjoy knowing that people today still love his work or if he'd be spinning over in his grave knowing that his work has become bedroom decor.

Sculpture/Rodin

            Rodin’s The Thinker is arguably one of the most recognizable sculptures of our time. The sculpture and the pose have been copied and used so often in pop culture that, personally, I was aware of The Thinker long before I knew of Rodin, Dante, or The Gates of Hell. As the video showed The Gates of Hell is not only a monumental work of art it’s also the story of Rodin’s career and the evolution of sculpture itself.

            Rodin was originally asked to design a work for a museum in Paris, a museum that never saw completion, and so Rodin spent a good part of his life working and reworking the figures that would go upon the door and the door itself. Rodin was inspired by Lorenzo Ghiberti’s bronze door on Florence’s Baptistery of San Giovanni, which Michelangelo had dubbed the Gates of Paradise. He was also inspired by much of Michelangelo’s work, especially his work The Last Judgment. The Gates of Hell is, at least in part, a depiction of Dante’s great work The Divine Comedy, with a number of prominent characters from that work depicted on the door. Dante himself is represented in the pensive figure sitting on the lentil of the door, later known as The Thinker; Rodin depicts Dante nude and in great concentration, intent on the creative process, which was a departure from how Dante was typically depicted in art. Depicting Dante in a not readily identifiable way allowed Rodin to make him a symbol for all creators, his entire body gripped with the desire to create; in fact with the in-the-round molding of the figure and it’s placement on the door it’s easy to read a god-like, or Christ-like, meaning in his character. As the museum the doors were meant for never came to be Rodin began exhibiting individual pieces from the door, worked in wax and then cast in bronze, both in the size they had originally been made and in larger versions. It’s the larger version of The Thinker that most of us are familiar with these days.

            The doors themselves are a marvel as Rodin combines low-relief, high-relief, and in-the-round figures to give the doors a sense of feeling and movement. He has highly detailed pieces combined with almost abstract shapes that seem to melt into, or rise out of, the doors themselves; this was a departure from the mostly representational works of sculpture in Rodin’s day. Some of his figures lacked hands, or heads, or other body parts that were not needed for what Rodin wanted them to depict. When Rodin exhibited his door in 1900, at this point still in wax, he intentionally removed most of the in-the-round sculptures from it, leaving an abstract door with reliefs and shapes that allowed for greater play of light and shadows upon it. This abstract, seemingly unfinished, piece became known as one of the first abstract works of sculpture.

            It’s interesting to me that many of Rodin’s most famous works and his foray into abstract sculpture came about because of the failure of the museum for which his Gates of Hell were originally intended. I wonder had the museum opened as scheduled, would The Thinker be the famous, easily recognizable work of art that it is today.

Sources- http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/gatesofparadise-200711.html

http://www.nga.gov/collection/sculpture/noflash/zone2-2.htm

http://www.youtube.com/user/canaleducatif?feature=watch (BlackBoard video)

Getting to know Judd Fry

   In less than two weeks the curtain will rise on KMLT's production of Oklahoma!, and I have the honor of portraying Judd Fry. I've spent weeks now in rehearsals learning the songs, the blocking, my lines and what is one of my favorite parts of acting, getting to know my character. The playwright gives you the what your character does and says and with that, and the help of your director, you develop the why. Judd is a very interesting role, he's a sociopathic villain right smack dab in the middle of a romantic comedy, but you also feel kinda sorry for him. I believe Judd grew up without much love or affection, the only schooling he got was of the hard knock variety and while he's not very smart, he's also not an idiot. The fact that he hasn't had much affection in his life is evidenced in the way he's so easily led into talking about his own death when Curly mentions the fact that people will weep and wail for him, and that women folk who secretly loved him might even faint at his funeral; also Laurie's act of checking his forehead for a temperature, that touch of kindness, is, I believe, the spark that starts his fatalistic infatuation with her. This lack of affection at a young age may also explain his sociopathic tendencies, these are evident is his seeing no difference in the act of killing a hog and killing Curly and in seeing the burning to death of a family as a smarter way of getting even than shooting them, your more likely to get caught shooting someone. He also takes umbrage with the fact that the man who told him about the burning, and supposedly the perpetrator, lied about where it took place but it didn't bother him at all what the man may have done. As for him not being the sharpest tool in the shed, or smokehouse as the case may be, this is shown in the way he talks and moves and his overall lack of social graces. But he's not without some brains, as he on a couple of occasions asks leading questions to which he already knows the answers.  Not only has Judd not had the affection of women that he so craves but he's also been put down by just about everyone in his life. Curly in just one of many that's called him names, Judd doesn't believe himself to be less than everyone else on a conscious level but he probably spends a good deal of time defending that belief in his mind. I think this really comes out after he's rejected by Laurie and he says, "I'm not good enough for ya am I? Just a hired hand, dirt on my hands, pig slop." He's referred to in a number of insulting ways in the play but he's the only one that calls himself pig-slop, I suspect this was a name he may have been called growing up and when he faces this ultimate rejection he reverts back to it. I feel a bit like Orson Scott Card's Speaker for the Dead here, not rationalizing away Judd's crimes but looking into why he was the way he was. Okay, I suppose that's more than anyone wanted to know about poor Judd or my process but it's my blog and I can share if I want. If you'd like to come see Judd, and the amazing cast of Oklahoma! go to KMLT's website for all the info., word of warning though, you may want to reserve a seat before you come because I got a feeling we're going to sell this mother out.

Christmas at Grandma's House

    Christmas always makes me remember being a child; the carefree times of no school, no homework, no presents to buy, no worrying about the commercialization of the holiday, just the glorious, no-holds-barred selfishness of getting presents and having fun. Remembering Christmases past also always makes me remember my maternal grandmother and the Christmases spent with her. My mother comes from a very large family, I believe she had 10 brothers and sisters (I hope I didn't miss anyone when I counted) and a Christmas gathering was a big deal. Over the years we celebrated some times at the old fellowship building adjacent to the cemetery over at Ross Grove Baptist Church, which housed many fun and fond memories of it's own, and sometimes at grandma's house and to me those times were the most memorable and magical of all.
     Grandma lived in an old, green farmhouse on what was once the edge of town, the town has now grown all around where it use to stand; it was big and rambling by today's standards but not fancy or for show, a very utilitarian house, built to make a puritan farmer proud. There was a wide front porch that ran the length of the main rooms, there was a porch swing, rocking chairs, gliders and folding chairs enough to sit many a aunt and uncle on nice Sunday afternoons while all us kids ran about the yard. It was a Norman Rockwell front porch if ever one existed. The front door opened into a shotgun hall that, when all the doors in between were open, allowed you to walk in the front and see clear out the back; doors opened to all rooms off this hall to allow for cool evening breezes to blow through on warm summer days. That long hall was divided in two, with the door between usually closed making more of a sitting room than an entry hall, it housed a couch and later on a piano and a bookshelf with old Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys books that my aunts and uncles and maybe even my mom read as kids. The first door to the left led to grandma's bedroom,(it was grandpa's to as well, I suppose, but he passed away when I was young and I'm afraid I don't have many memories of him, the main one being him sitting in a chair on the front porch drinking water from a mason jar and giving me a penny any time I gave him a hug) you had to pass through her room to get to the living room; there were heaters in those two rooms, I suppose that's why they were laid out the way they were. As you entered the living room you passed a foot powered sewing machine on the left and the door to the back hall on the right. There was a very uncomfortable foldout couch that my cousins and I tried to sleep on from time to time (that now resides in my mother's den) a recliner, the furnace, an small t.v. where we'd watch Ma and Pa Kettle reruns after Sunday lunch, and a shelf with a telephone and a tape deck. The only tapes I ever remember seeing there were of Jimmy Swaggart preaching, stacks of them. From the living room you went into the kitchen, small for such a big house and family, but man-o-man the food that was made there was food to fit a king. It was an eat in kitchen with not an once of room to spare. (Not to blame my grandmother for anything but I can't help but wonder if her constant supply of homemade fried apple pies, snacks, and you'll hurt my feelings if you don't clean your plate looks haven't led to my overeating habits of today.) There was also a medicine cabinet in the kitchen beside the fridge where grandma like to hide her candy, not that she'd ever refuse to give it to you if you asked. Off the kitchen was a back porch that had been built in, you could tell by the window that looked into the bedroom that faced it. Out on the back porch was the bathroom, a latter edition to the house, and a small room where some of my uncles old toys and things were, it was a room in which we'd like to, and grandma would tell us not to, 'ramble' (her word). Coming off the back porch was the back hallway, always dark and dim, lit with a single bulb hanging form a cord. There were shelves stacked high with home canned fruits and vegetables from the garden out back, one door leading to the living room and one leading to another, very large bedroom and a set of stairs going to the attic. The bedroom, I don't remember much about, I never spent much time there, I do remember there was a door that was never used that led to a veranda of sorts that connected it to the front bedroom. The stairs in the hall led to a bewildering and sometimes scary place, to me anyway, the unused and only partially finished attic. There were alcove windows and a chimney that was opened to the sky and, worst of all, a gaping opening that led to open attic space that was always, even in the brightness of a noon day sun in the summer, pitch black as the pits of hell, where a young boy with an overactive imagination could just about see the devil standing just out of view. Not that the devil would ever show his face at grandma's, she walked so close with Jesus why she'd have the devil by the ear making him sing Just a Closer Walk with Thee in no time at all. Not everyone saw her as a saint I'm told but to my young eyes she was everything that was good and holy in the world wrapped up in a short spit fire of a woman, a cross between Aunt Bee and Mother Teresa. If we were Catholic I'm sure she'd been canonized by now. As we leave the darkness of the back hall back into the light of the front we come to the last door, it would have been to the right when we first walked in, and for all my life it was know as the front room. Even today when I talk to my cousins we call it the front room and it was there that Christmas would happen.
     The front room was as big as the back bedroom that it shared an unused veranda with and it was split into by the layout of the furniture. Half was a sitting area and half was a guest bedroom with a dresser where Christmas presents were hid behind, don't know if I was suppose to know that, but I did. The sitting area featured some couches, a coffee table with a nut shaped bowl of nuts and a nutcracker (not the toy soldier kind but the good silver handled kind), a coal burning stove, and (wait for it)... a Christmas tree. I'm told that at one time the tree would make a yearly journey from the attic to the front room but as far back as I can recollect it lived there all year long, just waiting for Christmas to have it's lights lit so it's magic it could work. Since we were only allowed in the front room on special occasions we never saw it too much during the year. On Thanksgiving we'd go in there and draw names for who you were going to buy a present for (there were way to many of us to buy something for everyone) and then on Christmas we'd all crowd in to see who got what from who. After the Christmas meal we'd wind our way to the front room where us kids would fight over who got to be 'Santa Claus' handing out the gifts to everyone and then we'd rip into em, merciless we were, caring not how long it took someone to wrap the present. Then it was time to play, thankfully in those days you didn't need a tool kit to open a toy package, we kids would play, fight, make up and cry, you know, normal kid behavior until our parents dragged us back to our respective homes. Of course Santa was coming so I'm sure we didn't put up to big a fight. One toy I got  in particular I can remember from those days, it was an Evil Kenevil play set (yes, I was a child of the '70s). It came in a plastic container with a handle and the container would open up to reveal a grandstand of cheering fans and a track for Mr. Kenevil to ride his bike across, his cape whipping in the wind.
    I'm glad Rainey got to know my grandmother and got to spend at least a few Christmases at grandma's house. The two of them are a lot alike in some ways, not the least is how important they have both been in my life. Time, as they say, waits for no one and marches right along; we grow up, get married, and start having families of our own. Grandma passed over the great divide in 1991 (I think that's right) and even though mom's family still gets together every year (good luck figuring out who all those kids are running around), it seems each year the gathering is a bit smaller. Now we meet at someone in the families church, the old fellowship hall at Ross Grove is no longer in use, and grandma's great old house has passed on as well, it was just going to be to expensive for the new tenants to update everything.
    Now my kids get to spend Christmas at their grandma's house (and grandpa's still here alive and kicking too, thank God) making memories that will linger with them when there old and bringing their children here to visit us for Christmas. They play with their cousins and fight over who's going to play 'Santa Claus' and give out the presents and all the other things that kids have long loved to do on Christmas. Until eventually we drag them home, because, after all, Santa Claus is own his way.
     Looking back it seems like that house was just as much a character in my life as the family that lent it their life and love. You know there are lots of stories told of what awaits us beyond the grave, even among Christians the ideas vary depending on who you ask, some say that when we get there will get to meet and see our loved ones once again. If that's the case, then I hope some day will gather in an old green house on a street of gold, over looking the crystal sea and spend Christmas with grandma once again.
    

     Merry Christmas Everyone.

Why I'm in School

I had to write a personal narrative about why I decided to go to school for an English class I'm taking; I thought it'd make a pretty good blog, so here it is. (For you grammarians that may read this, I've already turned it in, so you can leave the correcting to my prof.)

Why I’m in School

            There’s an old folk-tale about a man named John Henry; John Henry was a steel driving man. The story goes that John Henry would swing his hammer from dusk till dawn, and never slow down. Then one day, in a Herculean effort, John Henry beat a steel driving machine. Some versions of the tale say Henry died the next morning, others say he died right there with the hammer in his hand. Now I’m not a steel driver, but I am a carton slinger and I don’t want to die with a carton in my hand. So I’d say the main reason I’m in school is to gain the skills that will allow me to move on to a better, hopefully, less labor intensive job.

            As I contemplated this assignment I came up with many an idea to use. Some I thought of for their elegance. Some I thought would sound good in a narrative. But there were three reasons that, like common denominators, all the others reduced to. The three reasons are: money, acquiring skills, and, as stated above, a physically easier job.

            I believe I’m very skilled at the job that I do, but it’s still classified as an unskilled position. Most people could come in off the street and learn to do it in a few days time. While there are a handful of higher paying jobs I qualify for, they are few and far between; you have to have a good bit of seniority built up to acquire them. So I realized that I’ve got to be satisfied with where I am or I need to learn the skills that will help me get a higher paying, skilled job.

            While looking through the course catalog, trying to find what skill set I’d be interested in learning, I came across the Facility Maintenance Diploma Program. This program touches on a number of different skills: electrical, HVAC, plumbing, welding, carpentry, and machining. I thought not only will this provide me marketable skills but it will allow me to see where my interests lie; I can see if I’d like to specialize in one of the fields. Also, as a home owner, these could be very valuable skills in themselves, even if they never lead to a better paying job.

            The above reasons I’ve thought of for a couple of years now; they are very good reasons yet neither of them actually catapulted me up that long flight of steps to sign up for classes. I said I was a carton slinger, and while that’s not my actual job title, it’s more to the point. I throw cartons onto a conveyor belt eight hours a day, 40 hours a week and it’s beginning to take its toll. I’m a 40 year old man doing a job better suited for 20 year olds; the old joints don’t bounce back the way they use to. I had received the flyers, “It’s not too late to go back to school,” for years but this year they hit their mark. After a few, extra, rough days I signed for financial aid and as soon as it was approved I was here at CCC, signing up for classes. I may never get rich, or be the next Bob Villa but hopefully I can avoid dying with a carton in my hand.