Just Add Water

Nine years ago today ...

Isaiah 30:8-17                                                                                                            October 20
Shirley's [Martha's aunt's] 56th birthday; God's desire for 'ships                              10510.20

For thus saith the Lord GOD, the Holy One of Israel; In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength: and ye would not. 15

2 Thessalonians 2; Isaiah 56-58

[I don't remember my Bible reading program right then, but my current one where I read a chapter a day -- or try to -- I started in the following year.]

Martha's not teaching today because a state educator's conference is going on. [In fact, this is Sarah and Jeffrey's first day back after this year's conference!] I can let her sleep; how much of what I think makes a great love life is influenced by what I see on TV, anyway?

[There's also a post here about one of USA Today's Outstanding Teachers of the Year, a Miami High TV production, moviemaking, and entertainment law teacher named Joseph Underwood, and my review of David Skinner's book Thundershine, a collection of several stories about super-powered teenagers. So I haven't read it in nine years but I know I still have it.]

Over this weekend ...

I have read several other books -- and don't worry, I'm not going to bog this down with reviewing them, but I'm quite proud of myself for my reading rate has been R-E-A-L-L-Y S-L-O-W over the last few months -- that I and the kids (yes, they came with me of their own free will) bought at Minot Public Library's fall book sale starting Thursday night. You know me, you know I get a little crazy at book sales and libraries.

Aged pest
   Buttonholes
Wedding guest,
   Rigmaroles
How bird
   Hexed boat;
Prayer kept
   Him afloat.
"Love conquers all"
   Unquote.

("The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge)

Re-read Nothing But The Truth by Avi (ISBN 038071907X) some weeks ago and Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers (ISBN 0441783589) actually over this weekend. Let's see, what else is on my "been there, read that" list for just the last few days ... ah, here we go, Jean Marzollo and Irene Trivas' My First Book of Biographies (ISBN 059045014X), Nina Jaffe and Elivia Savadier's The Mysterious Visitor: Stories of the Prophet Elijah (ISBN 0590484222),

Charles M. Schulz's How Long, Great Pumpkin, How Long? (ISBN 080850651X, collecting 1973-74 Peanuts strips), Peyo and Yvan Delporte's graphic novel Smurf vs. Smurf (ISBN 9781597073202), the junior novelization of Disney's Wreck-It Ralph (ISBN 9780736429603), and -- I've been forgetting to mention this one -- America according to Connor Gifford (with Victoria Harris, ISBN 9780981719504) snippets of American history written by a gentleman with Down Syndrome.

Town made
   Rat free!
Unpaid
   Piper, he
Pipes kids
   Into hills.
Weird fate!
   Moral: Pay
Your bills,
   Cheapskate.

("The Pied Pier of Hamelin" by Robert Browning)

THEN I come to ShrinkLits. Like Willy Wonka at the Square Candies That Look Round room, I want us to take a peek at this one. (And if you've been reading between the paragraphs, that is exactly what you've been doing.) Maurice Segoff and Roslyn Schwartz's collection of "seventy of the world's towering classics cut down to size" (ISBN 0894800795) I half expected to be a Cliffs Notes for Cliffs Notes but with a touch of humor -- but it's less so than I expected. Still worth reading though.

I was the one who got to sing at Sunday school yesterday, the opening day of Parable Playhouse with nine third and fourth graders! I posted the script here last week, but for those of you who haven't read it, imagine Satan singing his temptation of Jesus with all the world in return for His worship to Aladdin's "A Whole New World" ... granted, I may not have the next generation of master thespians  in Sunday school, but what matters is the message sticks with them. Sometimes in a corny way.

Lonely codger
   Gets a peppy
Little lodger,
   Foundling Eppie.
"Eppie in de
   Toal hole" bugs him;
She's a rascal
   But she hugs him,
Thaws his spirit,
   He stops brooding.
Makes new friendships
   (Not including
Twenty million
   High school students
Who by choice
   Or through imprudence
Had to make a
   Book report of
Silas Marner) --

That's fame . . .
   Sort of.

Corny is easy to get with puppets, I assure you. And after I got home Sunday with the kids -- Martha stayed to sing with choir for second service and there was a luncheon afterward with one of their former members who'd provided the funds for the handbell cabinet now sitting in front of our church. That, and Sarah needed to get over a cold and I was so tired that I couldn't keep my eyes open most of the afternoon. Jeffrey and I played Sorry! (the board game) and he was this close to beating me.

I need more fun memories than fun books, David