I Bit My Tongue Or Something!

When Sarah was doing her Reading At Home with me yesterday she came out with the words forming today's title because she had bitten her tongue. I remarked that would make a great title for a children's book, and she said I ought to use it! (And because I said that, in three to six months you'll see a book out with that name -- but probably not a children's book, knowing how some marketers think.) But hey, while Martha and the kids -- this is what they do -- settled on the couches after church watching the auditions for the final season of American Idol I was catching up on some reading of mine as opposed to picking up more books TO read. I have plenty as it is!


Ted Rall's graphic novel presentation Snowden (ISBN 9781609806354) about Edward Snowden who worked for the National Security Agency and smuggled out news that the United States was and is routinely spying on its citizens via satellite and the Internet ... although any story for ME that starts with references or is compared to 1984 at least catches my attention (one of my top ten books, I do not know why, or I do, doublethinkingly) I don't believe what he's done qualifies as criminal. For if you truly think Big Brother is watching you then how is it a crime to prove it? Last I heard Snowden's in Russia and not looking to return to the USA any time soon. Can't say I blame him.


Well THAT I finished last week. I will likely finish Leon Uris' QB VII (the only one of his novels I have read, do you recommend another?) today, which I have read before. The crux of it is a British libel case where an author's written a passage implicating a doctor in willing collaboration with the Nazis, but the story begins with both men's -- the author's and the doctor's -- life stories leading up to that point. It sounds corny, but as the author (both Uris and the one within the book, I'm inclined to say) would you and I under similar pressures and circumstances do any differently? We say so now, but would we?


Sunday school started up again at church yesterday, but for this rotation (let me think, next week is Family Sunday School and the next three Sundays the kids have classes too) I don't have a class to teach. Some kids are really disappointed that Parable Playhouse isn't running -- again, so am I and I can't say I blame them -- for the next few weeks, but it was decided at "boardroom level" that Parable Playhouse is the least ... I don't know, interactive class for the kids, and we have few enough in our church now (two classes I know yesterday only had three kids in them) that the five or six I usually write the plays to accommodate don't work as well as we'd like. That's all I'll say about that.


After yesterday crashing at home, Martha, Sarah, Jeffrey, and I assembled at our dining room table and planned out our meals for the week and then went shopping for what we needed for them -- that is, what we didn't already have. Our second week of sticking to that; impressive, and our total for grocery shopping's in at fifty dollars and change for BOTH Menards (for milk and cereal, seriously cheaper) and Marketplace Foods (there are five here in Minot, so we'll probably go to a different one every week for meat). We keep from overextending ourselves more than we have been, and we will do quite well.


And keep on doing it,


David