Reading rambles

After a slow reading month in May, I've been devouring books. Several are worth recommending - in fact, many of the books that I have read this summer have been worth recommending. 

First, I finished a couple of books that were written by people I know or know of. The first was written by a deacon from our former parish in Coronado, All Things New by Bobby Ehnow. Bobby is a great guy. You'd never guess that he spent 3 years in prison when you meet him, especially now that he's a deacon and works for the Archdiocese of San Diego. He served jail time for white collar crimes that he inadvertently got drawn into while working as a government contractor. This book is the story of his redemption, as well as an argument for restorative justice, which is the field in which he works now for the diocese, after getting a PhD in leadership studies. His book describes problems in the justice system, but it also explains how his prison experience was transformative.  While I particularly enjoyed this book because I recognized many familiar names and places, the book is worth reading as a reminder of the need for ministry to prisons and prisoners and for alternative ways to restore justice. 

The other local book I read also focused on a tragedy, but this time it was the story by a friend of a friend, Stephanie Meeker, called When the Unthinkable Happens. This book centers around the tragic death of the author's best friend, who was murdered by her angry ex-husband. The author takes in the four children of her friend, first as a temporary solution, then as a foster parent, and later as an adoptive parent. The book describes challenges in the court system, as well as difficulties at home with the kids, who struggle with their mother's death.  One of the children does not want to be adopted and runs away at one point. Because the case has to be tried in both criminal and civil court, the investigation and court appearances go on for years.  The father is in and out of jail during this time before his final sentencing. In the midst of all of these difficulties, the author describes how faith gave her and her husband strength to face both the big and small challenges. While the book is written in a way that sometimes simplifies or avoids revealing too many details because of the sensitive nature of sharing a story about children, the virtues displayed by the people in the story - the perseverance of the Stephanie and her husband, the support of the community, and the resilience of the children - inspire readers to do more for others. Nonetheless, it is clear how superhuman grace is needed to carry on and to love when exhausted.

Another book I finished recently also described acting with generosity and love towards others iout of a missionary spirit. For book club, I finished Christy by Catherine Marshall. This book is so familiar to me - I either read the book or watched the movie sometime in the past. Or maybe I just saw the cover at the book store or my grandparent's house. At any rate, I knew the premise  - a young, naive woman, Christy, leaves home in Asheville, NC, to be a missionary and teach school in the mountains of North Carolina. She devotes herself to helping the children learn and to befriending the women of the hills and teaching them as well. Christy seems preternaturally optimistic, but she faces challenges and learns from her mistakes as the story develops. Part of what I liked most about this book were the descriptions of the hills and mountains which seemed somewhat familiar from our recent trip to the Smokies. I also liked reading about Christy's teaching methods in the one room school and the solid advice from her mentor, Miss Alice Henderson, the Quaker missionary who was a single mother and teacher herself. She has some of the best lines of the book, and her unflappable and charitable demeanor are admirable in the face of hostility, illness, poverty, and physical exhaustion. 

While those three books are not necessary exemplars of literary artistry, Graham Greene's The Heart of the Matter and The End of the Affair do offer more in terms of style and content, although both are rather bleak tales that capture the darkness of the human heart and the need for redemption.  The End of the Affair was a Well Read Mom book club pick, but I missed the meeting for the discussion. When I read these books back in my late teens - I can't remember now if I was still in high school or early college, I was enamored by Greene's slow reveal of how a skeptical character's encounter with faith caused them to revisit their previous misconceptions. The End of the Affair has a much more hopeful and almost mystical ending, while The Heart of the Matter ends with a character's suicide because he believes he is beyond redemption.  The characters are all rather self-absorbed and pitiable, and reading them again later in life is not as stunning. I am less sympathetic to the characters. But I appreciate Greene's perspective on the seriousness of faith. It is something that should be taken as seriously as these characters treat it.  I was sorry to miss the discussion about Bendrix because at the end of the novel we learn a little more about acts of kindness he performs that aren't evident from his narration.  The novel leaves open whether he follows in the path to conversion that his lover Sarah began. 

Two other books that I finished were bestsellers. Theo of Golden by Allen Levi and The Correspondent by Virginia Evans have been making people's lists for their favorite books of the last two years. I think they both came out in 2025. My sister-in-law recommended them because her book club read them. I am sometimes skeptical of bestsellers because they can lack the literary merit of books that require more thought. Nonetheless, I enjoyed both of these, particularly The Correspondent.  You know when you feel like praying for a character in a book at Mass that the character is particularly vivid. I started this book at my in-laws' house and could barely put it down, even on the way to church. And then I sat there frustrated with the main character, Sybil, wishing *** spoiler alert **** she had gone where she said she was going to go and that she would make up with her daughter.  I think it took about 6 hours to read. Told through the letters of law clerk Sybil to her best friend, to the young son of a lawyer friend, to her children, and other characters with whom she has relationships, the novel conveys the develop of a character already aged, but still learning and forming new relationships and repairing old ones. I appreciated the subtle development of the story line - not a thrilling plot, but a slow development of character that proves satisfying, even if not surprising. 

Theo of Golden was also a bit predictable, although the final couple chapters tied some loose ends together in a way I didn't quite expect. I expected unexpected coincidences, though. The story follows a strange visitor to the small town of Golden who begins to make friends by buying portraits at the local coffee shop and giving them to the person in the picture. People open up to Theo and tell them about their hopes and struggles. He seems to see through their masks and to recognize their worth, which he shares with them. In return they grow in confidence and become attached to Theo.  While the story is a little saccharine, it touches a chord. The town of Golden seems charmed, and full of people who just need a friend to open up their hearts to, someone who will give them the love and encouragement they have been craving.  In the end the book won me over despite my skepticism. I see why everyone is recommending it. 

Two books I finished had theological themes: Bright Evening Star by Madeleine L'Engle is a memoir of her charmed childhood with her journalist/artistic parents who often went to the theater or parties, leaving her at home presumably with a nannie. Because she was frequently alone she developed an active imagination, but she also developed a love for Christ and faith in him. This is a short book, but an interesting and inspiring description of how and why she is a faithful Christian.  In Lore Wilbert's Understory, we also meet Christian theology combined with memoir and natural history text with an ecopoetic lyric added in. It was informative, descriptive and meditative. It made me want to head to the woods for a long time.

Part of the reason I didn't read much in May is because I spent a long time trying to finish The Way We Live Now a long Victorian novel by Anthony Trollope. Less caricature than Dickens, but more urban than Austen, Trollope's novels often feature both marriage plots and political maneuvering. This story features a newly rich family who come to London and soon feature prominently in the social scene despite everyone's snobbery. Meanwhile, the rich young lads seem to be dissipated and unreliable, and the marriageable young women want both reliability and romance and can't seem to find them both in the same young man. At nearly 800 pages, Trollope's book carries this on a long time. 

I've also read a few journals - a couple issues of Plough and Notre Magazine and the movie and film reviews of one of the CSC priests here, who shares his thoughts on the cultural offerings of the last six months. His public, spiral bound journals predate blogs. In between that, I've started reading up on film for my course and finishing the Life and Times of Wendall Berry. After that flurry of reading activity, I have to turn my mind to course planning. How to manage a 105 minute class of seniors? Time to get serious with planning my literature of redemption class. It will be a busy fall. 

Small Failures

I'm waiting this morning for the clock to turn to 9am so I can call the camp office where my daughter is supposed to spend next week, arriving on Sunday. Except I forgot to sign up for the bus, and the bus is full - and the camp is in Texas. She is flying there at the end of the week and staying with a friend - who will get on the bus and go to camp.  My options? Find someone else who didn't sign up in time for the bus and beg for a carpool or drive to Texas, an 18 hour trip.  Or fly in and rent a car to drive her to camp and head home. I'm feeling a bit like a failure this morning.

I also failed to sign her up for tennis camp on time. 

And I failed to notice she was watching Disney shows when she was supposed to be doing her math homework.

I failed my other daughter because I couldn't commit to the used car she wanted, and it sold the day before I decided it was a good deal. I hate shopping cars, especially used cars. We found a hybrid Kia she liked, but I wanted to do a little research before committing. It turns out it was a good deal, but someone else swooped in and got it. 

We had a minor tragedy last weekend because I failed to put the chickens back in the coop one evening when we had friends over for dessert. Unfortunately, I already felt awful because I failed to remember that my friend is gluten free when I made a cherry cobbler, which I overcooked anyway. At least I had fruit from breakfast and whipped cream, and she brought a lovely lemon meringue pie, which was gluten-free and delicious.

While we were visiting, I failed to notice that the chickens were raided by a night creature.  They had flown over the fence, and three of them were in the front yard when our friends left. The fourth we failed to find. But I did find feathers this morning in the neighbor's yard. The cycle of life in action. 

Despite those failures, I fell asleep quickly last night, but I woke up at 3 am and failed to go back to sleep. I finally went downstairs for a melatonin and read for awhile, but it was a book about Wendell Berry, which always makes me feel unrooted. I love his vision for community and caring for place, but it does stir up a longing for land and a reminder that I have failed to enact his ideas.

I also failed to submit an abstract for a paper about this book before the deadline for a conference that I really wanted to attend, but I simply forgot - May and June I was focused on other things. And I probably would have failed to finish it anyway because I failed to say no to some new commitments and have a busy fall.

I lay awake at 3 am, worrying about all the kids, about our parents, thinking about ways I have failed as a mother, a daughter, a wife, a teacher, and a friend - so many! I could go with this list of failures. I felt like Judith Viorst's Alexander on his no good, very bad day.  

It was only when I jerked myself back to thinking about the good things in our life that I could finally fall back to sleep. I may have many failures and shortcomings, but by grace, we do have many blessings. It is easy to get bogged down in the regrets and mistakes and forget how fortunate we are, how wonderful it is to be alive, despite these failings, which I write down here as an act of expiation in atonement for my self-pity. Sometimes it is easier to feel sorry for one's self than to feel grateful. This morning I am grateful for some rain, for the repairmen who fixed our a/c, for my garden, for the remaining chicks, for the new friends we have made, and the old friends who remain so dear, for our meaningful work, for the beauty around us, for our parish and community, and for the health and well being of my family and my loving husband and for the Giver of all these good things and more.  

Several friends and acquaintances have suffered some really tragic losses this week, which make my failures seem the petty things they are.  Life is a gift. 

(**PS: I started this the other morning. And today I found out LK got a seat on the bus after all. Amen.)

Travel South

I started this while sitting at the Montgomery airport, awaiting a slightly late flight, catching up on some reading on and off line. I've just been in Auburn, AL, with my husband for a conference on university architecture for university architects. It's his conference, but they have a guest program that was wonderful. It's a week long conference, but I am leaving two days early because I was anxious about being gone so long with a home improvement project just beginning (new windows, roof, and railing for the sunroom) and the kids at home, but part of me wishes I stayed until Saturday with my husband ... except they have a tropical storm rolling in from the Gulf, so weather delays could extend his trip. 

Auburn has a beautiful campus, which has grown exponentially in the last decade or two.  We have some friends who are Auburn alumni, and they drove a few hours south to join us for dinner last night. They pointed how much has changed since they were students in the 90's. Like everything built recently, it's bigger, shinier, sleeker. The new architecture blends well with the old, sometimes complementing, sometimes copying. There are some older structures from the 70s-90s that look dated and tired because they were built quickly to look new without reference to the historic references, but those are being renovated or torn down to make way for newer buildings that follow a master plan with more consistent design guidelines, as well as more requirements to support sustainability. 

Our trip included began with a rerouted flight to Atlanta because of bad weather (instead of the originally scheduled Montgomery). Since I had never really visited the city except for the airport, we decided to spend Sunday morning there instead of heading straight to Auburn. After a late night/early morning arrival, we slept in. We ended up going to Mass at Our Lady of Lourdes, which is the oldest church serving the Black Catholic Community in Atlanta.  Needless to say, the Gospel music was incredible, and the Mass was full of vitality. 

Just blocks away from the church is the Martin Luther King, Jr., National Park, which includes a visitor center with artifacts from his life and from other civil rights figures including his wife Coretta, whose influence is underappreciated. His birth place is just down the street, but it was closed to visitors, as was the Ebenezer Baptist Church where he was pastor.  We spent some time at the reflecting pool and tomb where he and his wife Coretta are interred. It was moving monument, but in need of some repair and full of potential to be something more educational and transformative. 

Burial monument for Coretta Scott King and Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

MLK's suits and tie tacks and cufflinks. A miraculous medal is among the accessories in the jewelry box 

 

MLK's birthplace. He was born at home here.

 

The Ebenezer Baptist Church

 

Scenes from the Auburn campus:

Samford Hall, one of the early buildings and most iconic on campus

 

This was at one time the university president's home

The stadium holds 87000 people. About 35K students attend Auburn.

Met this baby screech owl at the Auburn Raptor Center, a rehabilitation center as well as home to the war eagle.

 

Retired War Eagle #7 Nova

On our third day in Alabama, the guest program participants were treated to a tour of murals - but rain made this a bus tour instead of a walking tour, which would have been lovely. The tour ended up in the neighboring town of Opelika, where we also drove up and down some blocks of beautiful Southern homes representing various architectural styles. I'm sure this town has been featured in Southern Living Magazine.  The gardens were gorgeous, and many of the homes had deep front porches featured blue ceilings, comfortable furnishings, and big, flourishing baskets of ferns and other plants. 

We lunched at a place called Botanic that was a restaurant and a nursery and greenhouse. A dining and plant experience. 

A magnolia mural in Auburn

An original 1907 vintage Coca-cola mural in an old hardware store in Opelika

 

Scenes from Botanic

  

On Wednesday the guests at the conference visited the Equal Justice Initiative's Legacy museums in Montgomery Alabama. Our first stop was the National Memorial for Peace and Justice. This was a much larger and impactful experience than the MLK, Jr. National Park. The Legacy museum features three locations: the monument, a sculpture park, and a museum. I missed the museum because I had to head to the airport. At the Memorial, metal coffin-sized rectangular prisms recorded the names and dates of men and women who were lynched across the United States. Other areas included narratives describing the victims' stories. It was a somber reminder of the darkness and ignorance that can cloud the human heart and be perpetuated across time and place. Fortunately, goodness and justice can also be spread across time and place, as memorials such as this seek to do.

 

 

  

 

The second part of the tour to the Freedom Monument Sculpture Park is reached by river ferry down the Alabama river following part of the path that the slave trade followed to a small island. We got caught in a torrential downpour and the sculpture park does not allow photos except at the very end and very beginning, so I didn't take many photos of this part of our tour. The website includes a few, but many were exceptionally beautiful and moving. The island is dedicated to the story of slavery in the south. There were incredible statues and reproductions of slave train cars and relocated slave quarters.  Stone plinths included poetry and slave narratives. The experience was more moving than I can describe here. I wish I remembered some of the sculpture artists' names to share their work. 

The entry to the Freedom Monument 

This wall contains the family names of over 100000 freed slaves. Like the names of many who were lynched, many slave names remain undocumented. 

While this part of the trip was somber, it was also inspiring. Suffering causes deep and lasting wounds, but resilience and the beauty that comes from survival testify to the capacity of the heart to rise and to continue to love.  Many of the stories at the Freedom Monument recounted the strong familial bonds that persisted even when families were forcibly separated and sold apart. 

I am so grateful I decided to attend this conference. I was a bit reluctant to commit back in the spring, and now I partly wish I had continued with the experience. The kids - meaning my 22, 20 and 12 year old - were fine and kept busy at home working and attending Totus Tuus (the 12 year old helped with the younger kids in the morning and attended the middle school session in the afternoon, so she was worn out by the end of the day.) But life moves on, and we have a full summer ahead. 

 Again I am reminded that every region has natural beauty, historical significance, and wonderful people. One of the many pleasures of travel. 

Another is the peace that settles in your bones when you return home, ready to rest and reconnect.

Riding the train

Hello, June. 

The month of May was typically full. I meant to document more of this busy season, but somehow here it is June 9th, and so much has happened that I'm not quite sure where to begin. 

Perhaps I'll work backwards:

On the first of June, my husband and I celebrated 30 years of marriage.  How can we have been married so long, when our wedding seems like last year, our children's babyhood feels only months ago, teenagers ruled the house just last week, and it still feels like we are learning to love? Time is so relative! 

June 1, 1996

Although we marked this milestone with good cheer, including a Veuve Clicquot toast (my fave because of Babette's Feast, although usually we toast with Cook's, which is what we had at our wedding), it was an understated celebration, like many of our anniversaries. We have a busy summer ahead - see prior post. We'll be celebrating many times over. My gift to my husband was saying yes to spending more money than we should have on a piece of original art offered at our daughter's school auction - so it served a good cause. My husband surprised me with a gift of a necklace with seven pearls, one for each of the kids.  Although we had said the art work was our anniversary gift, I actually love this necklace - and it was on sale! Even better!  My husband has not always had the best of luck predicting what I like in the way of jewelry - not that I don't like what he buys; I just don't always fit the style he choses... This time his choice was spot on.

We were also going to go out to eat to a restaurant we haven't tried, but our college daughter returned home from college that afternoon. Her return was delayed because she qualified for the NCAA regional meet in the 800. Because of that we spent a couple days on the road driving down to Lexington, Kentucky, and back to watch her run. A 5.5 hour drive one way for a 2 minute race.  She had a stellar season, dropping 6 seconds from her PR last year, but she didn't quite hit her PR in this race, and competition was tough to move on to the finals. Fortunately, she has the potential to get stronger next year. Although she raced a lot in high school, her training mileage was low, and she hasn't burnt out like so many athletes who compete at elite levels at young ages.  

Needless to say, we stayed more than 2 minutes at the meet and watched some of the other races, including her teammate's mile run, but we did not spend time exploring UK or Lexington. I love track meets, and this one was large with elite runners running at their peak. I love watching the strength and speed of these athletes, all women on this day.  Other people can have their football and basketball games, but I'll take a track and field meet any day!

We also added a little extra driving to our travel time to stop in to visit our granddaughter, who keeps getting cuter than ever, and we spent the night and morning with my parents before making the return trip in time to get back for school/work. A full couple of days.

I do love a road trip. Just days before our jaunt down south, I returned from a Memorial Day road trip to Montreal with some fellow faculty members on a pilgrimage to see the St. Joseph Oratory and shrine to St. Andre Bessette, and the burial place/shrine to Kateri Tekakwitha.

This was a 14 hour driving journey northeast. Since it was made with friends and coworkers, the time flew by. This particular group was a very easy going crowd, so our stops weren't long, but neither were they rushed. It helps to travel with low maintenance companions. We met once a month during the school year to read and discuss and learn about St. Andre Bessette and his life and miracles in Montreal. 

The oratory itself is stunning, the largest church in Canada. 

The school door where St. Andre was the doorman

View of the oratory from the gardens where there are life size stations of the cross

The original small oratory built by St. Andre and friends. He lived in the loft.

view of the oratory from the side

Sculpture of Angels Unaware

Candles for St. Joseph

St Andre's tomb

In contrast, the shrine to St. Kateri is small and humble. 

 

The weekend prior to that our fourth son/fifth kid graduated from college. We hosted a big party at our house, and I helped plan a big party at a reception place with a couple other moms. It was a bit bigger and more elaborate than I initially planned, but everyone had a fabulous time. The graduation was lovely. The valedictorian gave a very moving speech, and Timothy Shriver, the Laetare medal winner, had everyone in tears with his story of a Special Olympics athlete at the world games in Ireland. The commencement address was given by Sr. Raffaella Petrini, a Franciscan Sister of the Eucharist who is the president of the Pontifical Commission and Governorate of Vatican City State. She is the highest ranking woman at the Vatican, and one of the highest Vatican officials - basically the governor of the Vatican state. The baccalaureate was also moving - everyone loves the singing of the Alma Mater. And the Arts and Letters grad ceremony included some thoughtful remarks from the dean and a sighting of a Supreme Court Justice. It was a celebratory weekend. 

 

 

The weekend before that I took my parents to North Carolina and Smoky Mountain National Park to see our daughter run and to spend some time in the mountains (hills for people who are used to Sierras and Rockies).  This trip was a bit spur of the moment, but planned after our spring break trip didn't pan out.  My dad has Parkinson's and is moving slower these days, but this area has a lot of accessible trails that are paved or are well-groomed. For instance, we visited a few waterfalls. The most stunning was a 120 ft fall on Cherokee land. It has a stair climb that has a hand rail and benches just below the falls, so people can admire their beauty. This is not my favorite kind of hike, as I am more drawn to quieter, more remote hikes, but we were there on a weekday before the summer crowds, and its beauty was well worth the climb.  I also had thought an AirBnB would be more scenic, but hotels are easier and more predictable for my dad, so we stayed at a Best Western that was right on a river.  Our rooms had balconies over the water, and the free coffee and breakfast was a perk. It worked out well for visiting the cute little town of Sylva, NC, and the track meet at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee.  After our drive through Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg on the north side of the Smoky Mtn NP, I highly recommend the south side! It was grown exponentially since my trips as a kid. 

view from Clingman's Dome, the highest point in SMNP

 

 

 

 

A little black bear farewelled us on our exit from the park

In between those trips I took the train up to Chicago for the American Literature Association Conference. I love riding the train, which gave me an extra two hours to work on my paper on Wendell Berry's representation of economic forces in Marce Catlett, The Force of a Story, his newest, and perhaps last, novel.  I should not have needed the extra two hours. If I had planned better, my paper would have been done weeks ago, and I'd have enjoyed the train ride even more, but maybe I enjoyed it just as much or more because I was plugged into the wifi typing away.  I didn't have to drive or find parking or pay attention to traffic. The train corridor is moderately scenic - I saw a few deer, was lulled by the sway and rumble of the cars, listened to other people talking and peeked at what other people were reading. I loved not having to drive home tired and exhausted from a long day of brain work. And I love these lit conferences, although I didn't stay at this one long enough to talk much with other attendees. I missed the evening dinner and social because I needed to get home and pack and leave the next day for the trip to Montreal. 

My classes at the college wrapped up well. I think my students improved in their speaking skills and their writing a little, and the rapport between students was good in class, which meant better discussions and more performative speaking.  A highlight was a guest speaker, Jimmy Dunne, who talked about the importance of business and communication, but mostly answered questions and shared life lessons.

My Laudato Si class at the middle school also wrapped up well. I have ideas to make it better, but I am going to step away next fall to teach at class at the high school - Redemption in Literature, which I'm inheriting from another teacher who taught it as a film class.  I'll miss my middle schoolers, and I love the topic of my Laudato Si class, but I also love the idea of looking for redemption in literature/film. I have four chicks in my garage from the class - we hatched chicks again at the end of the year, and while I'm not sure my middle schoolers even remember what Laudato Si means, they will remember the wonder and joy of hatching chicks. I hope they'll also remember our field trips - one to see maple syrup, and one to the ecosystem lab at a county park run by ND where they got to observe the nesting bald eagles and find some amphibians and snakes in the semi-controlled wetland observation area.  I thought it was a cool field trip, if I do say so myself.

So that was May - a full, beautiful month. I also celebrated my birthday while we were in Montreal.  I am grateful for the spring blooms and the opportunities to gather and celebrate.  At times we lead a charmed life. Although the planning and going and returning filled the days, the month didn't feel as chaotic or overwhelming as it has some years.  Instead, while it was full, it felt like one long celebration of life.  I am grateful. 

Peony Season!