Category: Recommended Reading

3.5 Time Outs: Plague Journal

Thanks to our host at Acts of the Apostasy for giving me new mid-week writing ambitions.  The 1/2 was going to kill me, until I realized how good I am at  not finishing things.

1.

SuperHusband wants to buy a camera adapter for our microscope.  I used accounting stalling techniques to put him off.  And then I remembered that my resident photographers give me a treasure-trove of material for blog work.  Tempting.  Very tempting.  On the other hand, though he tried to lure me in with promises of breath-taking snowflake photography, mostly our microscope is used for insect post-mortems.  Half-smushed ants.  I think I might get fired from the Internet and made to sit in the back row at church, if I posted any of those.

2.

PSA #1: Best lip balm in the universe:

PSA#2: Don’t store it in your truck.  You want to.  But don’t.

3.

Dan Castell’s latest Marx Brother’s story is up:

I’ve been taking advantage of the plague to work through the manuscript of the magnum opus from which these are drawn.  On the one hand, the leisurely, relax-and-enjoy style of the genre is perfect for the convalescent.  On the other hand, if you aren’t supposed laugh because it makes you cough, hmnn.  The frail read at their own risk.

3 1/2

The boy just called me in excitedly, to show me the printing dots, as viewed under the microscope, of this book:

The book is great.  Super great.  Best treatment of the topic ever.  And under a low-power microscope, it looks like:

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Well, that’s all for this week.  And unlike our kind host, I won’t be able to finish my half until SuperHusband talks me into the next big gear purchase, so that could be later than Volume 3.  We figured out he could use his photography/consulting money to fund his gadget habit, so there’s hope for you.  I only hope he doesn’t decide we should manage my book budget the same way.  Shhh.

7 Quick Takes: Reading List

Sign of the Apocalypse: I’m organized enough to come up with 7 things to say on a Friday.

1.

A reader sends in a link to Diary of a Gold-Digger.  I liked the Morocco stories especially.  Look forward to reading more.

2.

I keep forgetting to pass on that Dan Castell’s second installment in the Marx Brothers series is out.  Excerpted from The Marx Brothers Meet the Doctors of Death:

“I do have this.” Groucho pulls up his shirt and exposes a fine swath of swarthy tummy.
“Und what is that supposed to be?”
“It’s a rub that itches when I scratches.”
“Ach,” says Dr. Mangler, “a rub that itches when you scratches is simple schtuff. You haff the acute dermatitis.”
“Acute dermatitis!” Groucho cries. “And me…so young…so much undone…so many dames still to fun. Acute dermatitis—and I thought it was just an itch.”
“Ja,” says Dr. Mangler, “that is what I haff said. Acute dermatitis—you haff an itch.” He pulls out a prescription pad, scribbles a scrawl, and hands it to Groucho. “Here, that should help.”
“My prescription!?”
“Nein, mein bill. Fifty dollars, please.”
“I thought you said this would help.”
“Of course fifty dollars helps. You don’t think scalpels grow on trees, do you?”

My boy loves this guy.  Also available at Barnes & Noble.

3.

Speaking of the boy, do you know why I have an inordinate fondness for the Young Chesterton series?  Because the other night I go check on the progress of homework.  Recall the child is supposed to be writing a review of Emperor of North America for his composition assignment, so he isn’t being a total slacker when I catch him with both novels open.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

“I’m looking something up.  I thought the ‘Oliver’ character might be the Oliver from Oliver Twist.  I had to check and see.”

That’s why.  Basically if it makes you think about Dickens, in a good way, I’m okay with that.

4.

Grammar Girl is my new favorite grammar book.

5.

I put new blogs into my feed reader all the time, and sometimes I forget where they came from.  I clicked on Servant of Truth, which had something or another about a history curriculum the author was putting together, or, oh, gosh, where did I hear about this blog from?  Who is this person?  I click through for a clue.

Oh yeah.  Kolbe.  Idiot.

Have I mentioned I would have been sunk this fall without their ready-made course plans?  You begin to see why.

6.

Okay I am not that organized.  No apocalypse.

7.

And anyway, my five counts as seven if you give Castell and McNichol each credit for two.

Bleg – Which Collegiate Dictionary?

Anybody have a collegiate dictionary you particularly like?  I’m thinking of getting the boy his own for Christmas.  I cringe every time he gets near mine.  (Though the packing-tape reinforced spine should hold up, I keep telling myself.)  Also he keeps complaining he wants to know the meaning of words less than 50 years old.

Google-Share Drama, Episode 2

Here’s a link to the very helpful info Entropy recommended at Melissa Wiley’s site.  Some good ideas (in addition to what Julie & Sarah mentioned bleg combox.)  Hey and wow, another great blog to read while I’m at it.  Yay.

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What’s the big deal about the Google change?  Here’s what I wrote in Melissa’s combox when I thanked her for the info:

Thank you for posting this!  I’m feeling the pain of not being able to share posts anymore.  I don’t like to do my topic-sharing on the social networks, because most of what I read and write about on the internet is politics and religion, two topics that don’t mesh well with my very diverse real-life set of friends. So I keep FB and the like purely cocktail-party talk, and if people want to know more about what I think, they can click on my website link.

I don’t have a double life on the internet anymore than I do in real life.  But I do try (no seriously, I do try) not to be a jerk and a bore.  My real-life friends are very kind, considerate people who make a point of not ramming some topic down my throat that I don’t care to debate.  I try to return the favor.  My friends on Facebook are real people I know in real life, people I respect and whose company I enjoy.   The link to this blog is on my facebook profile — if anyone wants to know what I think about death or taxes, they can click.  But they don’t have to.  I like it that way.

I debated whether maybe Google+ should be more like this blog and less like Facebook, and therefore, hey, yeah, fill it with links about politics and religion, why not?  But I don’t like that solution, for the same reason I don’t like (and therefore don’t do) flooding FB with Fr. L and Darwin and all the team.

And don’t tell me that Google+ promises to keep all my circles separate blah blah blah. I’ll believe it when I see it.  The general rule on the internet is that even when I try not to bore people by linking stuff in places it doesn’t belong, some clever inventor decides to combine it all anyway.  Also, I’m not looking for a new hobby.  So building up a thousand separate “circles” isn’t on my list.  If I do Google+ (and I suppose I probably will), you’ll all be in one very large circle.  Feels like a giant Girl Scout Camp ice-breaker activity.

Kindle for les francophiles . . .

A little franglais for you, hehe.

H/T to David Gaughran for pointing out Amazon now has a Kindle store in France, *and* french language titles available in the US.  (A couple weeks old now, but maybe you missed it too.)   A quick search at the US store for kindle books “en francais”, and wow, piles of interesting stuff.  Lot of classics in the public domain available for free.

This one totally has my name on it: Le Docteur Omega (Aventures fantastiques de trois Français dans la Planète Mars)  Circa 1906, it’s like a source document for Dr. Boli & the Young Chesterton Series both.

I like paper.  Strongly prefer it.  But between the cost of print books and the space constraints for storing them, plus Gibert Joseph has yet to open an outlet in my corner of the backwoods, getting what I want to read is not so easy.  I might have to take this up with Mr. Claus.

3 Quick Takes: Rosary, College, Good things to read.

I could never be coordinated enough produce seven on a Friday.  But here’s three:

1) If you ever wondered how someone like me ended up in the Legion of Mary, yeah, it’s about how you’d think.  Don’t be fooled by that lovely little picture Sarah R. stuck up, I pray nothing but plastic these days.  Unblessed at that, which horrifies the gallant rosary-maker I thanked the other week, but I tell you right now there is a rosary permanently stuck in the track of the seat of my truck.  Yes.  With the cheerios crumbs and the hardened mass you secretly hope is just gum, but maybe it isn’t.  It’s all I can do to pray the thing; keeping it from falling out of my pocket and into the netherworld where no blessed objects belong is beyond my  ability.

2) I don’t care what the nice guy at the Newman Society says, $20,000 a year for college tuition is not “affordable”.  Put me firmly in the camp with Msgr. Pope, on the question of “Are We Unjust to Require College Degrees As Often As We Do?” Yes.  We are unjust.  It is a mockery to post “degree required” positions for jobs that don’t pay enough to cover the cost of student loans.

3) I am having massive fun today hitting the “share” button in Google reader.  I made a little sidebar here on the blog that shows my favorite google-read posts.  If you are like me and never, ever, actually visit your favorite blogs (because you read everything in RSS), but weirdly you want to know what things other people wrote that I think are worth reading, I think the link to my Google Reader Shared Posts page is here. Which in theory you could subscribe to.  I have to test and see if that works.  (Update: Yes!  It works!)

Theology of the Body For Teens: Middle School Edition

The Catholic Company very kindly sent me a review set of the Theology of the Body for Teens: Middle School Edition bundle. Okay, so I begged for it.  They sent an e-mail out to all the reviewers (they are still accepting new reviewers) asking who wanted it, and I gave it my best me-me-me-meeeeee! and made the cut!  Yay!  And then I told my DRE, who explained how she was busy trying to finagle a copy on loan from another parish.  Because yes, it is that good.

What’s in the packet:

  • A student book.  Eight chapters of substantial, readable lessons.  Upbeat format.  Rock solid teaching.  You will need one of these for each student.
  • A teacher’s guide.  It’s the student book page-by-page, with helpful teaching notes.  Includes some lesson-planning ideas, answer keys of course, additional information about the Theology of the Body, and supplemental material on difficult topics.  If you are teaching this as a class, you need this book.
  • The parent’s guide.  This is a small book (75 pages, pocket-size) that explains what students are learning.  It is more elevated, adult-level content, focused on how to parent middle-schoolers — it is not a re-hash of the student guide at all.
  • The DVD collection.  There is a set of videos for each chapter of lesson, plus additional material on difficult topics, and a show-this-to-the-parents chapter that explains what the course is about.  The videos are fun, held the interest of my small test-audience of adults (me) and kids (mine), and add significantly to the content of the course.  You would want these if you were teaching this as a class.

What does the course cover?

Well, the focus is John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, but it comes down to: How do I live?  What will make me happy?  And what do I do with this body I’m growing into?

Most of this is not about sex.  It’s mostly about virtue, identity, and love.  How do I love and respect myself and others?  How do I build good relationships?  How do I know what God wants me to do?  It’s a serious, useful, substantial set of lessons that really teach how to be the kind of person God wants you to be.

–>I read the student workbook first.  I found it helpful for me, personally.  To the point that in my opinion, parishes would do well to offer the course to both teens and their parents.  As in: I myself, a grown-up, NFP-using, CCD-teaching, cave-dwelling bona fide catholic dweeb lady, found this to be a course that pushed me to grow in my Christian life.

What Age Student?

The books are targeted towards middle-schoolers — grades 6th to 8th.  I may be under-estimating his maturity, but I felt that my own 6th grade boy, who lives a fairly sheltered catholic-homeschool life, and is not one bit interested in girls, he was not ready to fully benefit from the program.  I held onto a copy of the student book for us to use at home, and when my parish offers it next year (please God), I will send him then.  But for girls (who mature earlier), and for boys and girls who are more fully immersed in our sex-saturated culture, this is about on target for as young as 6th grade.

Sex-related topics are taught in a wider context.  First students learn how we use our bodies to communicate, how we must make an effort to grow in virtue and purity, and how we should not use others for our own gratification, within the wider context of regular life.  It is only after these essentials are thoroughly explored, many weeks into the course, that students are shown how they apply specifically to sex.

Sexual topics are dealt with directly but modestly.  If you don’t know what porn is, all you’ll find out is that it is “the display of images for the purpose of arousing lust”.  (Lust is “a vice that causes people to view others as objects for sexual use”).   So this is a step more mature than earlier-grades catechesis, where the details of “impurity” are left entirely to the reader’s imagination.  If your student is not yet ready to learn about the existence of pornography, sexting, and fornication, hold off on this course for now.

Difficult topics are not presented directly to teens.  There are some video segments the instructor can choose to present depending on the maturity of the group, as well as supplemental teaching material in the teacher’s manual.  One teaching technique I found very helpful was a script where a teacher reads a scenario (young people gathering in the alley behind a movie theater), but the actual misbehavior is not specified.  The teacher then asks: What do you think was happening there?  It’s an opening for students to share the kinds of things they know are going on in their community, which the instructor can then address as appropriate.

I’m cheap.  Or poor.  Do I need to buy the whole nine yards?

The materials are made to be used together.  For a knowledgeable parent wanting to teach at home for the minimal investment, purchasing just the student book would provide a substantial lesson for the least cash outlay.  Note however: The other items do add to the overall content of the course. This isn’t a case of the videos just repeating what the book says, or the parent book being a miniature version of the student book.  Each element contributes new and useful material.  If I were teaching this in the classroom, I would want the whole collection, no question about it.  As a parent, I would want my children to view the videos.

Is it Protestant-friendly?

It’s a very Catholic program.  (Don’t let the “Pope John Paul II” thing fool you.)  You’ll hear references to saints, to the sacraments, the Catholic faith.  BUT, keep in mind, this is all just normal healthy human life.  Love, virtue, modesty, chastity — these are for the whole human race.  The message is right on target with what any Christian youth program would want to teach.  So if you are comfortable with Catholic-trappings,  you could work with the whole course as-is, and just explain to your audience that it was made by Catholics.  If not, you may want to get the materials for yourself, and use them to train yourself how to teach these topics to your teens.

Summary:  I give it a ‘buy’ recommend, if you are responsible for teaching a young person how to act like a human being.  Thanks again to our sponsor The Catholic Company, who in no way requires that I like the review items they send, but would like me to remind you that they are a fine source for a Catechism of the Catholic Church or a Catholic Bible.

Audio books; not-audio books.

Few quick links this morning before I attempt to resume school after the Spring Break That Would Not End.

My Audio School .com Recommended by a friend of mine, who uses it for her daughter who struggles with reading.   It’s a well-organized compilation of audio books of particular use to homeschoolers and other educators.  The free resources are useful, and my friend tells me that if you have a need for lots and lots of audio resources, it is worth paying for the subscription.

On the topic of audio books, Christian Audio’s free download this month looks sorta interesting.  It’s free, you know?  I downloaded The Hiding Place last month, and I guess I signed up for notifications?  Which is handy, because they reminded me today there was a new book up.  For free.  Otherwise have not been receiving much spam from them (none that I recall, but I have a fast-acting delete key, so I might have supressed the memory).  Reputable source, seems to me.

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On the topic of non-audio books: The Catholic Writers’ Guild blog is pretty much put together now.   This morning Walt Staples is up for his monthly humor column, and the topic is writing and cats.  So you know where that’s going.  The blog address, by the way, is this:

http://blog.catholicwritersguild.com/

And you have to type that exactly, no “www”, or something weird happens.  Just so you know.

FYI my affiliation with the blog is that the important people at the guild saw me saying it would be nice to have a blog, and they pounced.  So my job is to line up writers.  If you are a (dues paid) member who has something 500 words or less and in some way related to catholic writing and publishing, you know where to find me.   Current schedule is:

  • Sunday pm/Monday am: Prayer with Mike Hays – post your requests in the combox.
  • Mondays: Monthly columns by guild members on the topics they love.  Current line-up is:  Humor; Gardening; Teens & the Faith; Self-publishing & e-books.  Need someone to fill that 5th Monday that pops up every quarter or so.
  • Tuesdays: Beginning Writers.  Or Karina Fabian says something friendly and encouraging, Or I write about editing.  If you have seen the pen of death in action, you already know what I’m going to write.  [Hint: It’s not about grammar.  You knew that.]
  • Wednesdays: Sarah Reinhard has been writing a column on blogging and related topics.  I’d like to find some other volunteers to join the Wednesday rotation, and I’d like the focus to be on everything related to writing and the internet.  In case that interests you.
  • Thursdays & Fridays: CWG Officers write about officer-y things. –>  I’m looking for someone to do a regular member news column.  If you’ve always wanted to be a gossip columnist and you are a member of the guild (easy to do), there’s a gig waiting for you.  Your name in lights.  Meanwhile, members with news just have to e-mail me and then I post it.  So you see why we need someone better than that.
  • Saturdays: John Desjarlais on writing catholic fiction.  So far I think this one is my favorite column.  Don’t let the other writers know. (Despite Blogger’s evil attempts to thwart him.  I don’t love blogger either.  But it’ll do.)

So that’s what there.  Because you needed more blogs to read, I’m sure.  Happy Monday.

More language stuff – Audio Bibles

Free audio bibles, in about a zillion languages.  Download as an MPS, or scroll down to the bottom and listen online.   Mighty mighty handy if you are studying a foreign language.  Or just wish to amuse yourself.

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Funny story, and I can’t be the only one:  So I found that link via Gwenn Mangine, the very down-to-earth evangelical missionary in Haiti.  I go take a look at the bible site, click a selection to listen to, and then flip back to Google Reader to see what else she has to say.  Click on the next unread post, and read this:

I once read a comment by Lady Abbess Benedict Duss, OSB to the effect that the chant in Latin was the most effective and most complete and transcendent prayer of praise outside of the mass. I don’t doubt it.

And I thought: Really?  I had no idea she was such a fan of Latin Chant!  What do you know?!

What you know, though, is that it was the Anchoress who said that.  I had two different windows with Reader open, and I’d unwittingly clicked on the other one.

–> Happens all the time.  I think I’m reading one blog, but I’ve actually clicked on a different one.  They all look the same in Reader.  And I’m thinking, “Wow, what an interesting thing for that writer to say . . .”

Really tests your ideas, when you don’t have the context of who is saying it, and you have to judge the ideas on their own merit.  Google Reader needs a ‘shuffle’ button.  Would help the brain, I feel sure.