Saturday, September 25, 2010

Sore

I am so sore from moving rocks around yesterday and day before that I might need to stay inside and actually work on some manuscripts.

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Tired

Tired today after piling a lot of rocks along the base of the fence facing the park to help protect the garden from the weed spray the park people use. More piling and pulling and shoveling and brush moving tomorrow. Talked with a neighbor rolling by on her scooter. Had some more sweet potato fries at Burgerville. How I love sweet potato fries month.
Am reading The Time of the Comet? by H.G. Wells. Last month read Confessions Of An Eco-Redneck. Enjoyed but I think a hunter would like it better. It would be good of people knew how much hunters contributed to conservation. So easy to think of the yahoo hunters shooting up everything.  Also read a book by a guy with Plant With Purpose about the Christian's responsibility for creation care.

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

More books:
Elisha's Bones: a good, fun read even if I can't suspend my disbelief to go along with a story that posits that a group of caretakers had a mural painted in Lalibela hundreds of years ago to give clues to the rich families that take turns keeping Elisha's bones. Maybe it's in case the group forgets the names of the families over a few hundred years. But they'll be sure to remember there are clues in the mural. I learned that St. George's lance had a name: Ascalon.
And Ascalon is the name of the Guild Wars book my oldest son lent me. A fun plot book with nothing of great substance. Or maybe it does, if I deconstruct it properly. It does show us that disparate peoples with disparate goals still can work together to accomplish some great thing.
Rooms: a book that is an extended metaphor for the places we need to face our sins with Christ. And the house, with a two-story tall stone fireplace and huge windows facing Haystack Rock at Cannon Beach, I want that house!
The Vanishing Sculpture by Donita K. Paul. I liked it enough to give to my niece.
I read a short book about the Swazi, and then one about the Bunyoro, except the one about the Bunyoro was really about how the anthropologist went about his work and writing the book about the Bunyoro which is what I have to get next if I want to learn abut them. Well, that is irritating.
The Secret Life of Lobsters: Who could know that lobsters could be so interesting?
A whole batch of Dean Koontz including State of Fear (hilarious) and Taking, which I did not figure out was about the Rapture until the last ten pages. Ooooh. An interesting version. Full of nonsense visual effects (maybe this is a movie script?) and nonsense blood and gore such that I just skimmed the last half of the book to see what he was getting at. I am trying to remember why American Protestant Christians call it the Rapture. A Greek transliteration like baptism?
A lot of SF, that apparently did not impress me much because I cannot recall any of the books right now. Oh wait,     ILL WIND: what if somebody develops a bacterium that eats oil voraciously and everything made of oil?   Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks:  Well written with an ending I did not at all expect. He must be British rather than American. Anathem by Neal Stephenson: What a lot of fun Figuring out the etymology of the words was fun too. The word speely defeated me until this morning. This one is going to my nephew Zach who has a PhD in Philosophy and teaches in a Catholic university.
Strength In What Remains by Tracy Kidder about Burundi. Everything he writes if fascinating. Burundi has the same problem as Rwanda, except the hutus and tutsis were more even in their killing of each other.
Born on a Blue Day by Daniel Tammet: memoir of an autistic man. Except for the math and synesthesia, nothing struck me as exceptional. I could have written parts of it.
The Spiral Staircase by Karen Armstrong. A thoroughly depressing book by someone who did things I can't imagine doing for more than two minutes. Her Christianity was so far away from mine, I could have been reading about a Muslim mystic.
Koyal Dark, Mango Sweet: a marvelous coming-of-age story set in Mumbai. Fascinating.
Whiteman by Tony D'souza: I thought the writer was someone else. I only remember it was unpleasant and I only read a few pages.
Discomfort Zone: a comedy, but I can't seem to remember it. It may be another I did not finish. 

Thursday, September 16, 2010

Hard times

It's been over a month now that my sister-in-law died in Rwanda on a mission trip from a car accident. I think I can finally post about a few things. Or not.
She was such an accomplished person, an immigrant from Korea, PhD, professor of computer science or some such at San Francisco University, loving Pastor's Wife. Organizer. Columnist. In Rwanda she taught the teachers at the National University of Rwanda in Butare how to use computers in the classroom. She also taught the diggers at the daily morning worship at 6am. She was always kind to me.
My husband is now president of Come And See Africa.  His brother is going to build the Kim Foreman Bible Institute outside one of the gates to the NUR.
I have been sleeping a lot, for that is how I grieve.

Two days before attending her funeral I went to the funeral of my 98 yr old uncle-in-law. The military did a salute for him. I had forgotten he had served in the military. While in Morocco, he sent my mother a leather purse of many colors. My father did not go because he was afraid of falling while walking over the uneven sod of the cemetery.  He did hear the salute. When I visited him right after, he seemed confused.

Some time before that my sister and I attended our sister-in-law's wedding held in the nursing home in which she worked so the groom's mother could attend despite her Alzheimer's. I was surprised that I wept through the whole ceremony. She should still be making my brother happy, not this other man! Absolutely not fair since she can't help it that my brother died. And he died the way we should all like to go. They were cuddled in bed, he said "I love you." and then he died instantly of a heart infarct or something. Oh how we wish he could have waited another twenty years. We scattered his ashes around Mt. St. Helen. I may have mentioned all this in another post. I got ahold of myself, and in the reception line I was genuinely able to wish her well. It's good that she is able to grace another man's life.

Sometime in all this, my dad actually asked me to stay longer when I offered to leave after my weekly visit. How odd.
When I went to go see him yesterday, he told me to get out of the driveway because he had to go to a doctor's appt. So I moved and he drove off. I'm deaf, he's deaf, and it's hard to coordinate these things. I still managed to leave my purse at his house, so I had to drive up this morning and get it. I filled his bird feeders and we sat and talked a while. His feet are looking better. 

Our 86 yr old house guest is looking and feeling better too.
Our youngest son is in Afghanistan, and apparently enjoying himself. We celebrate his son's birthday on Saturday. Our oldest son emailed that the middle son may have gotten a job. I grouched back that I don't care about "looks like". I want to know when the papers are signed! I inordinately fret about the son with ankylosing spondylitis. I wish I could take some of his pain upon me.

I've been struck by something I've never noticed before or forgot in Deuteronomy. Moses, speaking for God, is telling the Israelites that He is not giving them the land because of their righteousness, because they don't have any. I suddenly realized I was reading about grace.  Praise God for His grace toward us sinners.