Perhaps NOW I'll Get The Strains Of "Braveheart" Out Of My Head!

The second day in Lent, when I have let people know that for this season I'm giving up buying books (I get a lot cheap at various bookstores around town and they pile up quick), I so hope that after having finished Winston Churchill's The Birth of Britain (ISBN 0553144138) yesterday I will finally get the theme music for the 1995 movie Braveheart out of my head! Has it really been twenty years since that came out? Anyway, reading the real-life story of Edward I (known as Edward Longshanks in the film and history due to his height -- think the Lyndon Johnson of his day -- and there being no one known as Edward II at the time the film's set in, the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries) and his actions as "Hammer of the Scots" against William Wallace, Robert the Bruce, and Scotland assembled brought that to mind and a great many other real-life characters and situations over -- this book covers fifteen centuries. Churchill's the writer and leader many should aspire to be.

As king, you must learn to see the good in ANY situation!

Another thing about Edward I -- at least the guy who plays him in the movie, Patrick McGoohan who's perhaps better known as Number Six in The Prisoner -- he never smiles. Looks smug, yes. Self-satisfied, yes. Angry, a lot. BUT being a king is a tough job, especially when you're dealing with hostile neighbors all around you. (England and France weren't the best of friends at this time either.) One fun story with this; Saturday I was eating lunch at work and the person sitting across from me saw me reading this and we started a conversation and it turns out that years ago he'd taught history for two years in one of North Dakota's many Many MANY small towns, and Daren (that's his name) is also a Churchill fan. If you've read for any length of time, it is hard not to be. Yes, there are parts you'll -- and I did -- skim, but the parts that get you are the ones that, just when you think you know something, you'll start to look at it a different way.

Wallace has killed the local magistrate and taken control of the town.

Check out his account of King Arthur based on then available (1930s) historical evidence in chapter four. Can you tell I could go on about this? But what's happening with my family; okay, Sarah and Jeffrey are off our home electronics for a week because they keep fighting over the iPad and the Mini that we have -- and in that time as of today they've gotten more reading done and I think better sleep despite their waking up to see Martha off to work at about six thirty am (when I still want to be in bed, on days I don't deliver the Minot Daily News) weekdays. Last night, as you'll note from the beginning  of this post, after my main job I headed to Bethany Lutheran for its packed Ash Wednesday service and with the rest of my family headed up for communion and ... the formal term is "imposition of the ashes" where the pastor drew the cross on my forehead and recites a form of Genesis 3:19.

For dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return.

Sobering. But after the service, Martha's parents Robert and Sharon treated all of us -- this would be Martha, Sarah, Jeffrey, and me, sister Margaret and her boyfriend Milton, and our nieces Breanna and Josceline, along with themselves of course! -- to dinner at Pizza Ranch. So the groceries Martha and the kids had picked up Wednesday before church will contribute to dinner tonight, and we were able to talk Martha into joining us instead of staying for choir practice. I wish my wife could see how happy Jeffrey was that she was coming with us ... please understand, it's not that she and I should not have any interests and involvements that our kids can't be or we don't let them stay to be part of (I'd welcome some more date nights of just us, but I digress) but it would do better for both of us to cut back on our extraneous ... stuff. Hey, I'd happily do that if I felt that there was some give from my wife's direction too!

Something we can also give during Lent, David