Twenty Days To Christmas, You Don't Understand Me!

Okay, first the context of today's title … yes, I get sick of my kids' whining too, but just as they were about to go in school for the (half-)day with their cousin Josceline who spent the night last night due to her mother and extended family needing new accommodations very quickly, Jeffrey wanted to go to class by himself while Sarah wanted Martha and I to go with her into Longfellow Elementary. He was trying to say that he wanted to go by himself – guess we're cramping his five-year-old style now – and all we did was follow him because we were walking with Sarah and then he turns on the school outside steps and says, after repeated attempts to get us to understand HIM, “You don't understand me!” That's something I expect in ten years' time, not now, and Martha and I caught ourselves laughing for a few seconds.

“This is what you were talking about when you said that the existence of terrorists would make you more palatable, isn't it?” Orion Pax sighed.

“Yes, brother. And it's working.”

There was no denying that, Orion Pax thought. “Well,” he said. “That will console all of the dead in Altihex and Six Lasers.” (Transformers: Exodus, p. 92)

Is this why North Korea exists? Take a focus for a minute from the Middle East where it seems we expect the end of the world to erupt any minute to the Korean peninsula nestled between China and Japan. This morning I finished reading the book encapsulating Blaine Harden's several interviews with Shin Dong-hyuk, now in his thirties and born into a North Korean prison camp that the government denies even exists. When I set down Escape From Camp 14 (ISBN 9780670023325) I called in a “dark book”, for indeed I found it so. To even talk about escaping means death there, and if you end up in any prison camp your children and your children's children are there as well to atone for your “sins”. Totally cut off from the outside world, anyone who happens to escape (and Shin had to crawl over the body of his fellow inmate to do it) like all refugees finds themselves in a different world, if they don't die first. It's almost impossible for me to imagine, and it's real. He's the only one escaped to tell of it.

“Tibetans have the Dalai Lama and Richard Gere, Burmese have Aung San Suu Kyi, Darfurians have Mia Farrow and George Clooney,” Suzanne Scholte, a long-time activist who brought camp survivors to Washington, told me. “North Koreans have no one like that.” (Escape From Camp 14, p.13)

I'm a sucker for a good Theodore Roosevelt story. And when I found this one accompanied by a painting reproduction where he plays a peripheral, if somewhat jerky, role in the lives of one of my favorite authors, I had to check the “children's” book out. In 1917 the former President was at a ceremony in Springfield, Massachusetts presenting medals to ten Boy Scouts who had set records in their home town selling Liberty Bonds. Roosevelt had only nine medals to hand out, and after an awkward moment, the tenth Boy Scout was guided offstage. But I suspect you still know who he is, for when he grew up he wrote the likes of The Cat In The Hat, Green Eggs And Ham, The Butter Battle Book (ok, that is not as well known but it's my favorite). Kathleen Krull's The Boy On Fairfield Street (ISBN 0375822984) is fun and quick to read and, ironically, another Ted story. Dr. Seuss' birth name was Ted Geisel.

Now Ted was supposed to be doing serious work, studying early Anglo-Saxon poetry and the plays of William Shakespeare. Instead, he was off doodling and scrawling little poems, as usual.

The one day a classmate he had a crush on looked over his shoulder. She whispered for his ears along, “That's a very good flying cow.” (The Boy On Fairfield Street, p.30)

If Charles Dickens had written a Batman story, he might have come up with Batman: Noël. Lee Bermejo and Barbara Ciardo render this tale (ISBN 9781401232139) set in modern day Gotham City along the lines of “A Christmas Carol” where Batman's cast in the role of Scrooge, the Catwoman as Christmas Past, Superman as Christmas Present, Joker as Christmas Yet To Come – really, you have got to read this to get it – over the course of one night. These main characters are rendered (well, minus Superman) in their appearances from the most recent Batman movie trilogy and the dialogue until the end is pretty much minimal and haunting at the same time. Gee, there's a phrase I never thought I would use. I liked it, no matter how I was afraid – got afraid – get afraid that those same three spirits would or will visit me sometime and I won't get the message. Really, can I ever celebrate Christmas and keep the Spirit in my heart enough? Every year I face this challenge in myself.

I believe a man can change. But change is such a powerful thing, such a BIG idea that I gotta believe there's more to it than just makin' a CHOICE.

See, outside forces have to come into play … something ELEMENTAL. (Batman: Noël)

Mount Pleasant Funeral Home in Harlan, Kentucky. That's where my mom's public funeral service will be at 7 pm Friday night. I regret I cannot go there myself (really I do) but I asked a good friend to go in my … correction, my family's place. Martha has been after me before for not saying “we love you” when I talked to Mamaw – Martha's mom is “Grandma” – as opposed to “I love you” when I talked to her. And I DO know the last thing I heard from her is “I love you”, about a month ago. After that, she wouldn't talk at all when I called, not because she was mad at me but because so much of her was focused on staying alive before she finally let go. Praise God that she was not afraid to die; she had placed her trust in Jesus as her Lord and Savior when she was sixty – she's seventy-six so that was in 1996 – and she knew that she wouldn't make it this time. Been in and out of hospitals and nursing homes for about four years now, and her health … just … gave out.

But her spirit is wonderful and I understand that, David