It’s rare day in my life that I’m only reading one book at a time. In fact, I’m more likely to be reading a few too many at once. One advantage to this practice, however, is that sometimes books shine a light on each other that wouldn’t be as obvious if I had to remember all the details for months or years. But when the audiobook I’m listening to in the car mirrors a scene or an idea from the novel I’ve got on my nightstand, both take on a greater relevance and depth. Like wine and cheese or coffee and dessert, some books just bring out the best in each other.

Because of how interesting these relationships can be, I thought it would be fun to start a list of some the pairs I’ve stumbled across. I’d love for you to add your own epiphanic parings in the comments, and I hope this is a list that will keep growing in the future. Here are a few complementary titles to start with:

IN THIS HOUSE OF BREDE (Rumer Godden) & MARIETTE IN ECSTASY (Ron Hansen) — Two very different novels whose main characters are women entering convents. BREDE is one of my favorite novels; MARIETTE is not, but I felt the ending was so satisfying that it made it worth the read.

EGG AND SPOON (Gregory Maguire) & A GENTLEMAN IN MOSCOW (Amor Towles) — It’s the whimsy and the Russian setting that tie these two together. You might think there would be little room whimsy for a former noble under house arrest in his hotel (GENTLEMAN). You’d be wrong. But don’t let the light-hearted moments fool you – both these novels pack an emotional punch.

KRISTIN LAVRANSDATTER (Sigrid Undset) & TILL WE HAVE FACES (C.S. Lewis) & “The Sentimentality of William Tavener” (Willa Cather) — The stories in KRISTIN and FACES are very different on the surface, but the deeper themes of our fallen, broken experiences of love tie these two together. “Sentimentality” (a short story) has interesting things to say about long-lived marriages, especially next to KRISTIN.

JACK (Marilynne Robinson) & BORN A CRIME (Trevor Noah) — It’s been a while since I read Trevor Noah’s autobiography, but JACK feels like it could be written in his parents’ perspective. Though they’re set half a world apart, the books feel like two sides of the same coin. (On a side note, Marilynne Robinson’s whole GILEAD series deserves to be read as a group, I think. I still need to read LILA, but reading GILEAD and HOME back-to-back made both books feel richer than they did alone.

Last week, I spent some time exploring the situation our local libraries are in and how we got here. This week, I’d like to continue the discussion by looking at some of the benefits a strong library system brings to our community — in other words, what we risk losing if the millage ultimately fails and the library loses the 38% of its budget those tax dollars represent.

I’ll put a nice long list of amenities the Lafayette Public Library provides towards the end of the post, but I’d like to start with something more personal. 

We’ve been homeschooling for roughly eight years now, and I can say with conviction that our homeschool could not function as it does — almost could not exist — without the public library. 

Last week when I took stock, we had over $1,000 worth of library materials (books and audiobooks) in our home. A good portion of those are “for fun” reading (which some of us call “building fluency”) but a good portion are also dedicated to learning new information. I recently returned a stack of books on Egypt. This year our assigned (library sourced) reading has also included a children’s version of Gilgamesh, Old Yeller, The Cricket in Times Square, books on ancient Mesopotamia and how energy works…the list goes on, and it’s barely November.

The point is, my husband is a school teacher, with a school teacher’s salary. I don’t really get paid to write. There is no way we could give our children the education they currently enjoy without our libraries, and we are grateful. We could be paying hundreds of dollars for the use of these “curriculum materials,” and it would still be a great deal. For the upcoming millage, we pay roughly $11. I couldn’t purchase any one of the books about Egypt for that price.

(There is a greater good here, as well — libraries are key to a strong democracy. Because they give everyone, regardless of their ability to pay, access to information, they lay the groundwork for an educated and involved public. This isn’t my idea — it was Ben Franklin’s. But to get back to our story…)

When we first moved to Acadiana, we lived in the wild Cajun prairie between Grand Coteau and Arnaudville. We soon learned that, despite our St. Landry Parish address, we could get a Lafayette Public Library card. The Sunset Community Library (St. Landry) was closer, but North Regional Library in Carencro was on the way to most of the places we went…and it had story time. Mrs. Anna, the children’s librarian, was pretty much my kids’ first friend in Acadiana. Every week I got four small children out of the trailer and into the magic of books, songs, sidewalk chalk, bubbles, and exploring the library. We didn’t have internet at home, so it was also my only computer time, and my only access to a printer. It’s hard to express what the library meant to us that year, but one word might sum it up: connection.

Again, once the library re-opened for drive-thru services after quarantine, it was one of the few options for entertainment at that time. I’d order books online (we did have internet by then, thankfully) and pick them up at the window, along with take-home crafts for the kids. We also, appropriately, borrowed the board game “Pandemic.” The librarians provided online story times and events to help parents cope and our community stay connected.

Which brings me to the promised long list of library services we risk losing if we don’t care for our libraries. There are the obvious things that can be checked out: books, music, movies, video games, board games, air quality monitors, musical instruments. Plus all the digital resources — magazines, books, newspapers, genealogy information, and research databases. And if our library doesn’t have a book, they will go out of their way to get it. Need an obscure book on life in Roman-occupied Israel? That’s what interlibrary loan is for.

There are the spaces open to all: meeting and study rooms available for reservation, a quiet place in a world that is noisy, a warm place in winter and a cool place in summer, a place where one is allowed to loiter in a world where people are often only welcome if they plan to spend money. Our churches are usually locked these days, but the library still provides a seat and a little rest for those with no where else to go.

There are the services: tax and legal and resume assistance programs, nutrition and exercise programs (some day I will make it to the Zumba class), literacy programs for children and adults, craft time and story time and speakers on all sorts of topics. My oldest two girls and I heard Ernest Gaines speak at our library a couple of years ago. When Lucy read A Lesson Before Dying in English this fall, she already had a connection to the author. That is priceless.

There is the equipment: access to computers, internet, and printers. In the Maker Spaces patrons can use sewing machines, sergers, 3-D printers, dye-cut machines, typewriters, and more.

And there is the community a library creates. Moms meet at story time and then schedule their own play dates. People meet at craft events and become friends; people meet at book clubs and learn from each other. 

If all this isn’t enough, libraries also mean good jobs and higher property values. Even if you never set foot in the library, you still benefit.

Some people in our community argue that these resources aren’t worth our tax dollars. I disagree. I think we should be hesitant to undervalue community, literacy, and an educated populace. As Catholics, we believe we have an obligation to develop the whole person towards holiness; our public libraries (rightly used, of course, but that is another very long post!) make the space and the resources available for people to do just that. If our goal is human flourishing, libraries are a step in the right direction.

All that said, the discussion circles around and ends where it began for me. For our family, the library, more than anything else, means books. Books mean stories. Stories are where we meet people like us, people unlike us, and ourselves. I believe in stories because I believe in the Word, and I believe one place in which we can encounter Him is in stories. So join me at the polls this coming Saturday, November 13, please, and support our community’s access to these stories.

Our oldest daughter left our homeschool this year and started “real” high school. She’s been treking from class to class for about a month now, and this week her great secret was exposed: she doesn’t have a cell phone.

It came up in her debate class, while the teacher was apparently trying to draw the students’ attention to the seeming contradiction between considering “large corporations” “evil” and carrying iphones in their pockets. After a little while of this, Lucy raised her hand and ratted herself out. She didn’t even blame her parents for this ridiculous circumstance. Apparently the teacher was at a bit of a loss – who was this strange child who had been sitting quietly in his classroom all these weeks without a phone?

Her teacher did ask her why she didn’t have a cell phone – every other child in the class does, and presumably nearly every other child in the school. She didn’t have a well-thought-out answer ready, but by the time she made it to the car line, she had some thoughts. Among them, that she doesn’t want to waste so much of her time on screens.

One thing we learned quickly when she started “real” school was that while we had prepared her reasonably well for the academic work, she was not up to speed on the technology the modern student is expected to use. She had sent emails, but never had to deal with her own email account. Now there are Google Classrooms to be navigated. Powerpoints are an option for projects. And then she had to do an animation of mitosis for biology. After trying out three of four different programs, and spending hours trying to get all the pieces together, the project was still late. (So were several of her classmates’ projects, so apparently technology was not the only difficulty with that particular assignment.) She’s picking it all up quickly, but she’s also spending way more time on screens than ever before. And as much as she’s enjoying the school experience, she doesn’t love the screens.

We have our own reasons for not offering our kids cell phones, of course. My husband and I both taught in one-to-one high schools (where the school gives every student a laptop and expects every teacher to use it in their classroom) and we saw what unfettered access does. At best, it’s a distraction. At worst, it is a gateway to sin and self-loathing. (See any of the recent news reports on Facebook, Instagram, and teen body image, or this article from the Atlantic for a start.) Being a teen is hard enough – who needs constant reminders of how beautiful and perfect other people are (or seem to be) for constant comparison?

We don’t need the science to tell us how addictive screens and particularly social media are – we see it every day. My suspicion is that the reason Lucy’s school allows cell phone use by students during lunch and breaks is that they simply can’t stop it. To keep a semblance of order on a campus crawling with 2,000 teenagers, you can’t go out looking for trouble. Think about what happens to an addict when the drug is removed; now imagine students with that itch in the back (or front) of their minds trying to focus on Algebra. Good luck.

It’s too bad, really, because one of the first experiences Lucy reported to us when she started school was how strange lunch was. Not because the cafeteria hadn’t quite worked out getting all the students through the lunch line before the lunch period was over. Not because they eat in their fifth-period class because of Covid contract tracing guidelines. It was strange because everyone else in her class, except the teacher, spent the whole of their lunch period staring at their phones.

This is a world we haven’t prepared our children for.

I don’t regret this choice, or intend to do anything differently. I’m stubbornly convinced that it’s better for our kids (not to mention myself) to interact with an admittedly limited number of people and objects in the real world than with a larger number through a screen. My hope is that our kids will learn to use the technology as tools, because we aren’t on a Luddite farming commune with next to no need to contact the outside world. To some extent our kids will have to live with the technology that now infuses our society. But that doesn’t mean the technology has to infuse every moment of their lives, as well.

It’s a difficult line to walk. I’m on social media (you may have gotten to this blog that way, in fact) because it does have the power to connect. If I had to write out and mimeograph a newsletter every week instead of blogging…I probably wouldn’t. I’ve done numerous Zoom meetings and classes, and learned a lot that I wouldn’t have had an opportunity to otherwise. On the other hand, the amount of will-power it takes not to tumble into the social media time vortex is sometimes more than I possess. And if I can’t do it, why should I expect my children’s teenage brains, which are biologically less able to think long-term and correctly gauge risk, to be able to make better decisions than I can?

Our kids won’t be getting phones any time soon, at least not smart phones. Will it make their social lives harder? Absolutely, at least in how “connected” they will be able to be to their friends. On the other hand, maybe it will be easier to be able to walk away from a bully and not see their messages on the last thing most teens see before they go to bed at night.

There is a selfish motive behind all this, too. We happen to really, really like our kids. We like to see their faces. We like to talk to them. We don’t want them to have the blue zombie glow going on all the time. And while I understand the importance of peers to the teenager’s emotional development, I also think there can be too much of a good thing.

Especially now that our oldest spends so much of the day away from the family, those hours in the evenings and weekends that we have together are precious, and I intend to guard them jealously. Not just because Lucy is still my child and it is still my responsibility (and joy!) to form her into an adult, but because I want her to have that down time that allows for meandering thoughts, reading for pleasure, practicing calligraphy or drawing or baking. I know that she values these things, and I want to do what I can to help her have the time for them. Keeping her technology use to a minimum goes a long way towards that goal.

It feels a little ridiculous to be writing this alone in my room, the blue light from my laptop shining on my face. I spend more hours than I’d like on screens myself. But my hope is that it can stay in its proper place: a tool, useful for some things, but not a good in itself.

Obedience is a word that feels a little outdated in our culture today. When “living your best life” so often means “going your own way” and trying to just “be you,” to whom could we possibly owe obedience?

Most people would still agree that we should follow the laws, sure, and maybe we should “be nice.” But that seems to cover the extent of our obligations in many people’s minds. And being nice includes to yourself, of course, which sometimes precludes being nice to someone else. So even that leaves a good bit of wiggle room.

This is on my mind in particular at the moment because as a parent, I would like a certain amount of obedience from my children. I don’t even expect to be obeyed blindly–in fact, I hope to raise kids who question rules, especially if they seem to go counter to the Good. But I would also like their starting place to be obedience, not rebellion. First get out of the road, then ask me why you should, assuming you didn’t already see the speeding car pass by.

This is a constant balancing act in our home, but certain recent events in the public square have made it seem a very relevant topic. Because if our obedience is only (or even first and foremost) to ourselves, the result is the situation we have right now in Louisiana: thousands of people in hospitals with the Delta variant, and thousands of others still refusing to get the vaccine or even wear a face covering in public.

And here is where the obedience issue really hits home for me: we all know that the best way to teach children is by example. “Do what I say, not what I do” simply doesn’t work. So when our (Democratic) governor institutes a mask mandate (and I don’t even need to discuss the necessity of this, because every nightly news program has that covered), and the (Republican) Attorney General promptly issues statements endorsing all the loopholes he can think of, what kind of obedience are we teaching our children? That we only owe obedience to those of the same political party?

When our bishop “strongly urges” that everyone wear masks at Mass, and our priests go out of their way to point out (in parish communications and on social media) that no one is required to wear a mask and no one without a mask will be turned away, what kind of obedience is that? Obedience to those in the congregation who don’t like masks?

Coming back to the governor, if a school administration tells its high school students that mask wearing to protect others is their personal choice, while wearing a seatbelt to protect themselves is obedience to the law…what is a sixteen-year-old supposed to take away from that?

And here’s my favorite. This is part of what the Catholic Church has to say about Covid vaccines and masking.

At the same time, practical reason makes evident that vaccination is not, as a rule, a moral obligation and that, therefore, it must be voluntary. In any case, from the ethical point of view, the morality of vaccination depends not only on the duty to protect one’s own health, but also on the duty to pursue the common good. In the absence of other means to stop or even prevent the epidemic, the common good may recommend vaccination, especially to protect the weakest and most exposed. Those who, however, for reasons of conscience, refuse vaccines produced with cell lines from aborted fetuses, must do their utmost to avoid, by other prophylactic means and appropriate behavior, becoming vehicles for the transmission of the infectious agent. In particular, they must avoid any risk to the health of those who cannot be vaccinated for medical or other reasons, and who are the most vulnerable. (emphasis in the original)

Note on the morality of using
some anti-Covid-19 vaccines
https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20201221_nota-vaccini-anticovid_en.html

Sadly, often when this is quoted (at least in south Louisiana), the quote only goes though the first sentence, which I think you’ll agree misses the point of the paragraph. Now I don’t blame anyone who is nervous about putting this fairly new vaccine in their body, or who doesn’t want to participate, even with “remote passive material cooperation” (bullet point 3 in the above document) in anything connected to abortion. But the Church then requires those refusing the vaccine to “do their utmost to avoid, by prophylactic means and appropriate behavior, becoming vehicles for the transmission of the infectious agent.”

Translation: Wear a mask. Social distance. Don’t go near those who are especially vulnerable.

When our congressmen and attorneys general aren’t obedient to their superiors, we cringe and call it bad behavior or plain old politics. But when our priests and Catholic school administrations ignore not only civil law, but also the clear directives of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and their own bishop, what on earth are we supposed to tell our children?

It appears that our individual freedoms, our personal preferences, while good in themselves, have become our idols. When we can honestly say, as Catholics, that we would rather risk sending someone to the hospital than wear a mask or stay home from a social gathering…I don’t know what to say anymore. We (including many anti-maskers) spend a great deal of time railing against our culture’s individualism, and yet what is this if not choosing our own comfort over the good of our brothers and sisters in Christ?

I didn’t think I would have to write a post like this. I thought we were moving on, that this kind of rhetoric was so 2020. Clearly I was wrong. Early on, there were predictions that the pandemic would teach us to appreciate each day, appreciate each other, care for our neighbors, and the like. If it’s taught us anything, it seems to have taught us to double down on fulfilling our own desires and to entrench ourselves in whichever ideology is most amenable to those desires.

I don’t think the story has to end there, however. I think there is still plenty of room for us to grow as a country and as a church, to learn from our mistakes, and to reconcile those relationships into which politics has driven a wedge. But all of this takes humility. It takes an openness to hearing what the “other” is saying, and to imagining what the “other” is feeling. When I put myself in the place of someone with a chronic illness, and hear that my parish won’t be accommodating me, but I’m welcome to watch on Facebook, my heart breaks. At the risk of stepping on toes and sounding divisive, that is the person I choose to stand beside. And I ask, humbly–because I don’t have all the answers, but I do read the hospital numbers–be obedient to your leaders, at least about this. Listen to your doctors and nurses. Listen to those whose health is vulnerable.

Please, please, just wear a mask.

There is a chick living under my husband’s desk.

How it got there is a long story.

Two things happened a few of months ago: my brother-in-law asked if we wanted his friend’s silkie chickens (which turned out not to be the COVID pets she had been hoping for) and Samantha started collecting abandoned duck eggs from the pond, hoping she could get some of them to hatch. (Yes, they were truly abandoned. No nest raiding involved, I promise!)

We took the cute-in-a-scraggly-way teen-age silkies and added them to our flock. Urban homesteading at its best! Samantha started trying to engineer an incubator for the duck eggs.

When our neighbor heard about Samantha’s interest in ducks, she sent her husband up into the attic and then over to our house to deliver their old incubator. Weeks of anticipation followed.

We didn’t quite have the incubator figured out, so the duck experiment, sadly, ended up being nothing but a smelly mess and a lesson in partially-developed duckling anatomy. Samantha took it well and was very good about cleaning it all up. We considered where to store the incubator.

Meanwhile, we began to realize that two of the three silkie chickens were a little different. Bigger combs. A tendency to jump (like goombas, I kid you not) and fight. And finally, they crowed.

Our lovely hens were roosters.

This is an age-old tale, and we probably should have been more savvy. But just you wait, Henry Higgins, just you wait. It gets better.

I started looking for someone who would actually want silkie roosters, and was shocked to have quick success…but my friend wasn’t ready to take them just yet. So we waited, and hoped the neighbors didn’t mind the crowing too much.

Meanwhile, the roosters and hens did what roosters and hens will do: provided live Life Cycle lessons for anyone wandering through our backyard. So Samantha did some more research, and started absconding with our would-be breakfasts and starting them in the incubator.

The incubator is under my husband’s desk because, well, we have a small house. The footspace under the desk was (usually) unoccupied.

We ordered a new thermometer so the eggs would have a fighting chance. More weeks of anticipation. And Wednesday night, we started hearing peeping. Which, I now know, is what chicks do before they hatch.

Then we watched one of the eggs wiggle around for a while (it is really strange to watch). And right before breakfast today, while no one was looking, out the soggy little darling popped, to be rhapsodized by one and all. A black-and-gold Ameraucana/Silkie mix. I suggested naming him (Joseph) Pieper. I had to explain the joke to Samantha. (Given his coloring, maybe Drew Brees would be better…)

Samantha and her dad made a quick run for chick food and bedding, and she has spent the last two days fashioning a brooder out of detritus from the shed.

City dwellers that we are, we’re already at our legal limit for chickens, so the next project is finding someone interested in silkies, or Ameraucana/silkies, or Black Australorpe/silkies…you get the idea. This was not an organized breeding experiment. We’re holding out hope that the Ameraucana mix will lay tiny green eggs, but who knows!

(At this point in the writing, I had to take a break to watch chick #2 hatch.)

But as I was saying, none of this was planned. One little serendipity followed another, until we had a peeping, wriggling bunch of mutt chickens under my husband’s desk. I thought I had avoided this fate when we chose to live within the city limits…but Samantha has farming in her blood and she had other plans. We sat back and watched as she nurtured her little brood to life.

I’m sure Pieper and his new friend are grateful.

Update: In the time it took me to finish this post, two more chicks hatched. Craig’s desk is getting to be quite noisy.

 

“The family is the hospital closest to us: when someone is sick, they are cared for there, where possible.  The family is the first school for children, it is the unwavering reference point for the young, it is the best home for the elderly.  It is the first school of mercy, because it is there that we have been loved and learned to love, have been forgiven and learned to forgive.”

-Pope Francis, The Name of God is Mercy

Lucy and her friend were practicing multiplication tables this morning (not my idea – I love having extra kids around sometimes!) and they decided it would be fun to make it into a Go Fish! game.  So they did.  And spent half an hour or so playing 6 Times Table Go Fish.

Just caught Clare explaining to another friend about how difficult it was for Michelangelo to carve David (“and if he made a tiny mistake, just this big, the whole thing would be ruined!”) and retelling the story of The Library Mouse.  Narration?  Done.

And as I type, Isaac is trying to put an apple slice in my pocket.  Earlier he was working on building train tracks.

In other news, I should be putting my first children’s book manuscript in the mail in the next couple of days.  Pray hard!  Asking St. Therese of Lisieux for special help, since it is about her, after all.  (And if you want a preview, let me know and I’ll send the text along.)

🙂 You should read The Courage of Sarah Noble.  You should read it because it is about a little girl named Sarah Noble and she goes into the woods with her father to build a house near Indians.  She had to leave the rest of her family behind because there wasn’t enough room to bring everybody.  The Indians turned out to be nice.  So when her father left to bring the rest of their family home, Sarah stayed with the Indians.  Their closest friend was Tall John so she stayed at Tall John’s house.  The Indians of the North were the other Indians’ enemies.  The most interesting part was that the Indians at the North passed by the Indians at night and did not disturb the Indians.  Sarah Noble taught the Indian children many things, and they taught her new Indian games.
the end
Love,
Lucy
PS
this is one of the best books ever! 🙂

This book is about three little children.  There names were Amanda, Jemmy, and Meg.  They sailed on a ship to go to America and to find their father in Jamestown.  Their father had a door knocker that people thought was made of gold.  Dr. Crider is a doctor that helped them get to the boats and he fell overboard on the ship.  Their ship got shipwrecked at an island and they  built a tiny village.  They built two ships and sailed to Jamestown.  They found their father at Jamestown.  My favorite part was them getting to find their father. 
Love, Lucy.
P.S.
This book was the best book in my life!

I liked

Trumpet of the Swan.  You should read it.  It is about a swan who doesn’t have a voice, but gets a trumpet and learns how to play it.

The swan’s name is Louis.

Louis’ dad robbed a music store to get a trumpet.

It is also about a little boy named Sam.  Sam saves Louis’ mother from a fox by hitting him on the nose with a stick.  Louis works so he can pay back the trumpet that his father stole.  It was very exciting.  My most favorite part was when Louis got a trumpet, because he did not have a voice.  The book has pictures in black and white.