Category Archives: Journal

Library as Community

Within the comfort of my home, I can immediately download a book for my digital reader from my local library system.

Books are instantly available after the library closes and I find myself with nothing to read. Zip. I’ve got a book within seconds. (I’d rather go without chocolate than have nothing to read—and that’s saying a lot.) E-books also are useful when I travel.

But checking out a digital book skips the community experience. When I physically walk into my library, I nod to the librarian. She recognizes a steady customer and nods back.

We don’t talk as much as we used to, since we readers now check out our own books at a terminal. Still, the library remains a community. Sometimes I see people I know. I enjoy the children visiting with their parents over in the children’s section, maybe listening to a story.

Others use the Internet terminals, allowing online access to those without money to buy a computer or a smart phone, leveling the playing field a little. Of course, leveling the playing field in the book world is one reason libraries exist.

I browse the book shelves on my physical visits to the library. Infinitely more books are available in the digital library, but here I can take one down and flip through the pages to decide for myself if it suits me. I don’t have to depend on the review of somebody I don’t know.

My digital library is a useful tool, but I have a relationship with my physical library.

Sixty Mile an Hour Winds Crimp Digital Life

Growing up in Nashville, Tennessee, I remember only a few power outages, usually from snow storms. Schools and many businesses shut down. During one of those times, after sledding for hours, I relaxed with my parents on the living room rug, finding quiet contentment as flames danced in the fireplace. The whole world seemed to pause and recharge.

Now I live on an island in the Pacific Northwest where wind storms roar in more frequently than those snow storms. The most recent one saw sixty mile per hour winds after days of torrential rain, toppling trees, flooding roads, and shutting off power.

Islanders powered up generators and brought in more wood for stoves and fireplaces. Yet the pauses for outages are less relaxing now, as our digital world is threatened. I could not work on my computer. Cell phone service for some of us disappeared. No internet service. No emails. No checking the weather. I read the news from a print version (still delivered by our faithful carrier).

Finally my husband figured a way to connect our digital notebook to the generator system. I managed to put out my bi-weekly blog. Then we went back to Scrabble on our iPad, charged up before the storm.

Later we enjoyed the stove’s fire, and soft reading under the kerosene lamp. Glad I have yet to become smartphone-addicted.

A Young Man Was Murdered in Our Community, But You Won’t Hear About It on National News

Four young men in this area have been arrested and charged with the gun murder of another young man, seventeen years old. The accused range in age from sixteen to twenty. The motive allegedly involved a $400 impound fee which the dead youth supposedly owed to one of the accused and hadn’t paid.

Murder rarely happens here. In previous years, immature anger between young men might end in fist fights. While regrettable, the fights were less likely to be lethal. However, as more guns are available, they now appear as weapons of choice for the angry.

In contrast to individual murders, mass killings do grab media attention. They have spurred calls for more citizens to carry guns to prevent them. However, this is not the era of Wyatt Earp and the gunfight at the OK Corral. Even highly trained swat teams have difficulty not injuring the innocent while attempting to subdue shooters.

Mass killings, whether by those labeled terrorists or by others, result in headlines but are unlikely to be experienced by ordinary Americans. The numbers of those killed in mass attacks are dwarfed by other gun killings: suicides, accidents in which children find guns and accidentally kill themselves or their playmates, and, of course, immature young people who now use guns to settle scores and forever wreck lives.

Give Them Food or Teach Them to Farm?

“To be interested in food but not in food production is clearly absurd.”
–Wendell Berry

Sometimes simple answers to world hunger lie in small improvements on old methods of agriculture.

Michael McClellan, a retired diplomat who has served in South Sudan and Yemen, says our objective in working to end hunger should not be “to feed the world” but “to enable the world to feed itself.”

As an example, he suggests the use of cattle to work as draft animals on small farms in places like South Sudan instead of expensive farm machinery. These animals cost much less than machines but increase output over hand labor. Animals also provide manure for fertilization of fields.

Some modern methods of farming have stressed chemical fertilizers, expensive machinery, and ever larger farms. These practices can lead to depletion of soil and the loss of land by small farmers to pay off debts.

When small farms become productive and a source of adequate income to their owners, farm populations remain stable. They do not flood into cities, adding to the unemployed poor.

Good farming, McClellan says, improves the land and keeps people on the land.

How Many Peace Movies Have You Seen Lately?

“There are countless films about war, but so few about making peace.”
—David Holbrooke, speaking of his new film, The Diplomat, about his father, diplomat Richard Holbrooke (The Foreign Service Journal, “ A Love Letter to Diplomacy,” November 2015)

Perhaps war movies serve a purpose in forcing us to understand the horrors of war, but too many such movies, like all violent movies, anesthetize us to the violence they portray.

Study the young soldiers given medals for acts of heroism in war. We, most of us, have not known war. We choose to honor them as a way to show our appreciation. Yet, the honor frequently reminds them of friends they have lost. They survived and must deal with it, the lost years of their friends weighing on them.

Rather than being entertained by war movies, perhaps we should listen to those who have actually fought in war:

“I am sick and tired of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell.”
–From “On Killing” by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman

“Some of you young men think that war is all glamour and glory, but let me tell you, boys, it is all hell!”
–General William T. Sherman, speech, 1880

This holiday season, search for a peace movie—one portraying grace, courage, or forgiveness.

October Is the Perfect Month and the Best Month to Marry, Too

The poet Robert Browning liked the month of April: “Oh, to be in England now that April ’s there . . .” James Russell Lowell suggested June: “And what is so rare as a day in June? Then, if ever, come perfect days . . .”

Personally, I love the tawny colors and chilly nights of October. It’s the birthday month for three members of my family. It’s also, this year, our 23rd wedding anniversary.

We fell in love in Saudi Arabia. I worked at the U.S. consulate in Jeddah, and Ben was a flight training manager for Saudi Arabian Airlines, headquartered in Jeddah. We met at a square dance, held on one of the foreign worker compounds.

Our dates included square dances, hikes in the dessert, and shopping trips to the suq market. We sang Christmas carol in an expatriate home. Dating in a country which forbade an unmarried man and woman being together—anywhere— had its challenges. Some of those provided fodder for my novel, Singing in Babylon.

But when we decided to marry, no official Christian church existed in Saudi Arabia where we could plight our troth. (Contrary to popular myth, U.S. embassies and consulates are not authorized to perform marriages.)

So we flew to neighboring Bahrain, where Christian churches were allowed. The minister, an Egyptian Christian, performed our ceremony in the church, begun as a mission in the late 1800’s.

It seemed fitting for our international life.

Comfort for a Pessimist

When I was thirteen, my father died. He had suffered a coronary attack days earlier and was rushed to the hospital. He recovered, so it seemed. I last saw him in the hospital on a Wednesday, two days before he was due to return home.

On Friday, the day we looked forward to his return, a woman showed up in the back of my school classroom. I saw her talking to my teacher. Probably they looked my way. I knew why she was there. I knew my father had died. She came and gave me the news and took me home to my grieving mother and the many friends of my family.

That’s the day I realized how suddenly good can turn to bad. It’s the time I began accepting good times as always temporary. It’s why I wait for that knock on the door or that phone call or that visit by a policeman.

Nobody enjoys a pessimist, so I try to blunt my tendency to melancholy. After all, I have close friends. I have enjoyed more blessings than I have a right to expect. I take pleasure in friends and books and hiking and travel and a thousand other pursuits.

Still, I accept my tendency to pessimism. No reason to stress over it. We pessimists have our place.

The character of Puddleglum, from C.S. Lewis’ The Silver Chair offers solace. Puddleglum, as his name indicated, was a born pessimist. It certainly made him a less than ideal companion during good times. On the other hand, Puddleglum was an ideal companion when bad times came. Unsurprised, he offered stoical help.

Perhaps there’s a place for us pessimists.

 

Stories as Community

For as long as we have had language, we have told stories. Stories inspired men and women and children at solemn events—coming of age ceremonies and funeral reminiscences. Sometimes stories were told merely to entertain around a fire on a cold winter’s night.

Stories gained new potential once we learned to write down our thoughts. We were not limited to present memory. We could write for future generations or for those outside our immediate group.

Much of our entertainment was still communal, however. Writers like the Greek playwrights and Shakespeare created plays for audiences to approve or disapprove.

Then the novel appeared. Reading a novel, unlike watching a play in a theater, often is a private affair. However, book clubs and book reviews abound. We like to discuss what we read. We gain pleasure from sharing our thoughts.

A form of the play, the movie, was created in the twentieth century. We can rent movies or watch them on Netflix, but we still enjoy our community movie houses. Sometimes we invite our friends and families to be with us when we watch movies at home.

Now we have smart phones. At the moment, checking and using our phones seems to favor private viewing. Yet, who knows? The urge for community may conquer even this solitary activity.

Notice the number of people checking their phones even when in a group. Perhaps we will begin using our smart phones as stepping stones for discussion, all reading a book or an article at the same time.

 

Your Obituary, The Only Certain Story

In between summers when I was in college, I worked as an intern on my hometown newspaper. My first job was calling funeral homes to find out who had died. Obituaries were an important section of the paper.

I would be sent down to the basement where the newspaper’s “morgue” was located to bring up past stories about a recently deceased citizen. This was before the days of digital storage. The morgue was a kind of library of past news articles.

At my young age, death seemed remote, but it dawned on me that the only certain story about anybody was their obituary. For the famous, it already was stored in the morgue because death, even more than taxes, was certain. Someday it would be used. As a person accrued honors or elective office, the facts became current news, but they also entered that person’s obituary file.

When a famous (or infamous) person dies, the story is already written, now waiting in an online file, except for the immediate circumstances of death.

My current hometown newspaper carries the obituaries of most who die in our area. If we haven’t known the deceased since childhood, the obituary surprises us with information we didn’t know about former marriages, former jobs, former honors, association with historic events.

Some may not wish to think of death’s inevitability. For others, it acts as a reminder to joy in the gift left to us.

“Each man’s death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.”
(John Donne)

 

You Must Be Willing To Be Rejected

“I was willing to be rejected. That’s what allows you to be a good salesperson. You have to be willing to be rejected.”

–Atul Gawande, Being Mortal

Gawande, in the above passage, is talking about a doctor who was able to sell his new ideas on caregiving to a nursing home, resulting in better quality of life for the patients.

But a willingness to be rejected is true of many successful pursuits in life. Most writers who eventually publish first undergo rejection from publishers.

One fights the temptation to quit too early. Success may require persistence. Top athletes do not begin at the top of their form. Politicians may lose races before they finally succeed.

We are unrealistic if we expect to succeed all the time. Accepting that one path is not the right one and choosing another is not necessarily failure. Sometimes it’s part of a journey.

But one has to start out. And starting out requires the understanding that failure will happen along the way. We must be willing to endure in order to enjoy a useful life.

 

Prisoners With a Purpose: Training Dogs to Find Bombs

Labrador retrievers are dogs known for sociability and physical resilience. Those qualities, according to an article in The New York Times by Ethan Hauser, make them ideal for training as dogs to detect bombs and drugs.

One program supervised by a canine performance group at Auburn University uses prisoners as handlers to begin the task of training the dogs as sniffers. The prisoners, living in a more structured environment, train the dogs better than families do, who tend to see them as pets rather than candidates for a challenging job.

Inmates chosen for the trainer jobs must have a high-school diploma or equivalent and be free of disciplinary problems for a year. They live in a dedicated living area, with the dogs in crates beside their bunks.

A former warden credits the program with improving the inmates’ morale and behavior. “A lot of these guys have never been given a lot of responsibility, and this is their chance not only to be a responsible adult but a responsible citizen.”

Maybe we need to consider how many of our incarcerated citizens crave meaningful activity—and whose experiences might prove advantageous for certain jobs.

 

James Bond Wasn’t a Foreign Service Officer

A blog for those interested in taking the tests for entry into the U.S. State Department’s Foreign Service (my former employer) caught my attention. I quote from her blog:

You: I’m trying to get a job with the Department of State.

Other: Which state?

or

You: I’m taking the Foreign Service exam this weekend.

Other: Really? I didn’t know the foreign legion even still existed.

Then the blogger recounts a home leave to family.

My mother-in-law mentioned that she just started reading a book and the main character is a State Department employee who works in an elite unit who has to uncover some conspiracy or other while infiltrating a mental institution. Granted, I haven’t worked for State too long, but I’ve yet to see this job appear on the bid list. It sounds awesome though.

Why is it that foreigners appear to better understand what the Foreign Service does than our fellow countrymen?

Good question. Her blog supplies some answers.

 

Nine Candles Burning

In our recent Sunday church service, we lighted nine candles for each person murdered in the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston last week.

Perhaps we should have lighted a tenth candle for the person who shot them, in hopes that he will realize what he’s done and ask forgiveness.

Perhaps we should light a candle for the rest of us, too, that we all may turn our backs on the hatred that tempts us. We may not physically kill, but we in this country often murder by words. We spread lies, exaggerations, and distortions, which is a type of killing.

During the service, I thought of times when I’m uncivil in my thinking toward those with whom I disagree, especially, these days, on political issues. It’s my prayer that God lead us all toward more kindness.

Jesus said no one gets credit for loving those who love us. We are called to love those who hate us. The members of the church who lost family and friends have modeled that way for us in beginning to walk the path of forgiveness.

We are all in need of walking that path.

 

Farm Robots Who Toil Far From the Madding Crowd

The movie Far From the Madding Crowd is one created for my own heart. Character-driven, the movie portrays love, rejection, unwise choices, hardships, and redemption for some.

I could have sat all day devouring the movie’s soft visions of the English countryside: a farm community bringing in the harvest, gamboling lambs, galloping rides on horseback through woods and pastures.

Raised in the city, I must avoid too idyllic a view of rural life. I have never chopped cotton, worked until exhaustion as a farm peasant, or slopped the hogs. Watching those close-to-the-land scenes, however, I sensed loss in the evolution to our office-based, smartphone-in-hand culture.

On the same day I saw Far From the Madding Crowd, I read an article on the possible coming use of robots to perform the back-breaking work of farm tasks.

We could say good riddance to a peon type of farm laborer, vulnerable, with little power. Yet, what work will they do then? Will they join their working class brothers and sisters in unemployment?

I hope we reform our employment system to give all our citizens a chance at meaningful work, adequately rewarded. What about shorter work weeks, spreading the work around? Is a forty-hour work week necessary now that so much of our work is performed by digital and mechanical means? Some of us might use the extra time for family, friends, gardens, and rural hikes.

 

On the Passing of a Son

“ . . . Beau Biden was, quite simply, the finest man any of us have ever known.” So said Vice-President Joe Biden after the recent death of his oldest son from brain cancer.

Once in a while, even in the power-mad world of politics, genuine goodness breaks through. It appears the Bidens managed to be a family in the best sense of the word—loving each other, putting family before politics, seeing their careers as a way of serving. According to news reports, both the Vice-President and his son graduated from the same Catholic high school. One of Beau Biden’s main concerns in his job as Delaware’s attorney general was going after child sex crime perpetrators.

Some might ask why a seemingly religious family who emphasized commitment and service has seen so much tragedy. Parents of children whose lives are blighted by drugs or other unwise choices might count the Bidens as fortunate.

We are reminded anew that our families and our friends weigh far more than power, money, or careers on the scale of life.

 

Writing for People Who Think God is Dead When You Don’t

The writer Bret Lott confesses the Christian faith but writes a different kind of literature from what is usually styled “Christian.” Lott quotes Flannery O’Conner, writing in 1955: “One of the awful things about writing when you are a Christian is that for you the ultimate reality is the Incarnation, and nobody believes in the Incarnation; that is nobody in your audience. My audience are the people who think God is dead.”

My own novels are more mainstream than “inspirational.” The characters live in a world where faith shares little space with the chaotic times they live in, one their parents could never imagine. This world is more likely to associate God and religion with hatred and brutal wars.

In the Old Testament book of Esther, one character asks Esther as she struggles with a difficult decision: “Who knows but you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” Esther is the only book in the Protestant Bible that doesn’t mention the name of God. Different times call for different narratives.

 

How Books Hook Us: It’s Not Always the Plot

Recently I read The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown. It’s the nonfiction narrative of nine young American men on the University of Washington rowing team. It follows their quest for the gold medal in the 1936 Olympics.

I already knew that the UW team had won, but the story of its characters still hooked me. The author traced the bonding that developed between these unlikely sons of depression era loggers and farmers and laborers.

The desire to know HOW the triumph happened and WHY the young men developed as they did kept me reading. I wanted to follow the dynamics binding this group together.

The suspense of character can be every bit as suspenseful as plot, in fiction and nonfiction.

I’m told that a few readers even look at the last few pages of a book before they begin the book. They wish to enjoy how the story and the characters develop, more important to them than the way it ends.

Why not? Good writing mirrors life, and the whole of life is important, not just the ending.

 

Five Reasons Not to Spend More Time at the Office

A nurse in palliative care, Bronnie Ware, has recorded the five top regrets of dying patients as listed in an article in the British newspaper, The Guardian. They are:

1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

2. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.

3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.

4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

Apparently, we must intentionally direct our lives toward the more important values. Otherwise, the necessary but less important tasks will overwhelm us.

 

Why THE SILVER CHAIR by C.S. Lewis Is My Favorite of the Narnia Series

The Silver Chair by C. S. Lewis tells of two children helping a prince escape a dark witch’s underground kingdom. It includes my favorite Lewis character, Puddleglum, a gloomy marsh creature.

Despite Puddleglum’s ongoing pessimism, he’s the one who stays the course, an encourager. He rallies the children when they are caught, forever it seems, in the underground kingdom, wondering if an outside world really does exist.

The witch taunts the children. She says this outside world is only make believe.

Puddleglum answers: “Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things—trees and grass and sun . . . Suppose the black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. … four babies playing a game can make a play-world that licks your real world hollow. That’s why I’m going to stand by the play world.”

I don’t think the scene is telling us to forgo our reason. It does mean, to me, that faith—in the superiority of goodness over badness, of love over hatred, of mercy over revenge—is worth holding on to. We still grieve over horrible tragedies, and doubts are a part of any pilgrim’s life. But we hold on to and practice the good things, out of season as well as in.

We get no credit for faith in goodness when times are going well. We demonstrate our real character when we hang on to the good things when the times are out of kilter.

 

Becoming Our Enemy

 

Strange how we sometimes become what we fight against. Some Protestants, freed by grace from what they perceived as a legalistic church of works, developed their own legalistic ways to salvation.

As a child, listening to a preacher click off the “steps” to become a Christian, I wondered whether I had repented enough. Was I sorry enough for my sins? My simple realization of finding Jesus wasn’t enough. It didn’t fit someone else’s way of finding Jesus.

Revolutionaries can become the governments they replace. I lived for a while in the North African country of Algeria. Algeria continues to suffer from the aftermath of its revolution against France half a century ago. After gaining freedom, Algerian freedom fighters became more despotic than the colonial power they supplanted.

The early Puritans sailed to the New World to free themselves from the established church. Yet they soon developed a theocracy to rival the one they left.

Today’s freedom is threatened by tomorrow’s tyranny the minute we think we have arrived.