Status: Proof Review

But when I click on the link to take me there, this is what it shows:

Proof Approved!

And I can open the digital proofer, and approve it, but nothing changes.  So King Ron remains in an “out-of-print” limbo on Amazon.com…

The illustrations are by Milagros García of Venezuela, which encapsules the way globalization makes such ventures possible.  It was great working with her (through fiverr) and the story’s improved because of her contributions that went beyond mere illustrating, while if you want to have fun with digital outlets, there are great options like the keilanie virtual girlfriend online.

The paperback is currently not available for ordering because the folks at CreateSpace thought I might have been trying to publish copyrighted material.  Even though they’ve since written they’d remove the suppression within the next 24 hours, it’s been over that much and the paperback is still suppressed.

Oh well.  I’m sure it’ll show up – I’d just hoped to get it to print sooner because it’s somewhat election-themed.

(Here again, I see two factors: My imagination muscle isn’t particularly strong, and I feel patronized by these instructions, which I hear as “Since you won’t get it if I just explain it, let me walk you through a painfully detailed scenario so you’ll really get it.”)

But whoever knows Alister McGrath knows he has wise things to say.  Two stuck out to me:

Some people come to faith through some kind of conversion experience; others gradually absorb the faith, and cannot really identify any moment when they ‘became’ Christians.  Yet that does not matter.  It is your present faith, not your past history, that makes you a Christian!

Quoting Sheldon Vanauken:

There is a gap between the probable and the proved.  How was I to cross it?  If I were to stake my whole life on the risen Christ, I wanted proof.  I wanted certainty.  I wanted to see him eat a bit of fish.  I wanted letters of fire across the sky.  I got none of these.  And I continued to hang about on the edge of the gap . . . . It was a question of whether I was to accept him – or reject.  My God!  There was a gap behind me as well!  Perhaps the leap to acceptance was a horrifying gamble – but what of the leap to rejection?  There might be no certainty that Christ was God – but, by God, there was no certainty that he was not.  This was not to be borne.  I could not reject Jesus.  There was only one thing to do once I had seen the gap behind me.  I turned away from it, and flung myself over the gap towards Jesus.

I’ll close with his suggested further reading, so I can come back and see if I want to add to my amazon wish list.

One-volume commentaries:

• D.A. Carson, R.T. France, J.A. Motyer, and G.J. Wenham (eds), New Bible Commentary (Leicester, UK: IVP, 1994; and Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP, 1994).  This is an excellent and very scholarly guide to the entire Bible, with each book being dealt with by an expert in the field.
• Alister E. McGrath, NIV Bible Commentary (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1995).  This is based on the NIV text, and directed especially at those who are new to the Christian faith or to serious Bible study.
• William Neil, One Volume Bible Commentary (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1995).  Originally published in 1962, this commentary is a useful and scholarly guide to its subject.

A Bible reading guide:

• Gordon D. Fee and Douglas Stuart, How to Read the Bible for all its Worth, 2nd edn (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1993).

Books on spirituality (skipping the scholarly articles and dictionary entries):

• Peter Adam, Roots of Contemporary Evangelical Spirituality (Nottingham: Grove Books, 1988).
• Robert M. Banks, All the Business of Life: Bringing Theology Down to Earth (Sutherland, NSW: Albatross, 1987).
• Joch Cockerton, Essentials of Evangelical Spirituality (Nottingham: Grove Books, 1994).
• Cheryl Forbes, Imagination: Embracing a Theology of Wonder (Portland: Multnomah Press, 1989).
• David Gillett, Trust and Obey: Explorations in Evangelical Spirituality (London: DLT, 1993).
• James M. Houston, The Transforming Friendship: A Guide to Prayer (Batavia, Ill: Lion, 1989).
• James M, Houston, The Heart’s Desire: A Guide to Personal Fulfilment (Batavia, Ill: Lion, 1992).
• Gordon James, Evangelical Spirituality (London: SPCK, 1991).
• Alister E. McGrath, Spirituality in an Age of Change: Rediscovering the Spirit of the Reformers (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994).
• James I. Packer, Knowing God (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1978, and Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP, 1978).
• James I. Packer, A Quest for Godliness: The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway, 1990).
• Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society (Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP, 1980).
• Eugene H. Peterson, Reversed Thunder: The Revelation of John and the Praying Imagination (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988).
• Donald S. Whitney, Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 1991).

I know that kindles are mitigating the problem of having more books than shelf space, but it still strikes me as a neat way to combine decluttering with extra shelf space and new books.  Beyond that, a Little Free Library could be something for Grandpa’s yard – it might get him some visitors in a mood for conversation.  Or if you feel like donating one to an area that could use freely and easily available books, that’s an option, too.  Here’s where you can get started!

If you do set one up, please let me know!

Like all beautiful women who have been brought up amid continual truibutes to their beauty she assumed without cynicism that it must necessarily be the basis of anyone’s attachment to herself […].  This assumption that she need look for no more devotion now that her beauty had passed proceeded from the fact that she had never realized any love save love as passion.  Such love, though it expend itself in generosity and thoughtfulness, though it give birth to visions and to great poetry, remains among the sharpest expressions of self-interest.  Not until it has passed through a long servitude, through its own self-hatred, through mockery, through great doubts, can it take its place among the loyalties.  Many who have spent a lifetime in it can tell us less than the child that lost a dog yesterday.

He possessed the six attributes of the adventurer – a memory for names and faces, with the aptitude of altering his own; the gift of tongues; inexhaustible invention; secrecy; the talent for falling into conversation with strangers; and that freedom from conscience that springs from a contempt for the dozing rich he preyed upon.

All, all of us have failed.  One wishes to be punished.  One is willing to assume all kinds of penance, but do you know, my daughter, that in love – I scarcely dare say it – but in love our very mistakes don’t seem to be able to last long?

Okay, four, with the conclusion:

Even memory [i.e. not being forgotten – ed.] is not necessary for love.  There is a land of the living and a land of the dead, and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.

The second book, “The Valley of Vision,” is a collection of Puritan prayers, assembled by Arthur Bennett from the following original writers: Richard Baxter, David Brainerd, John Bunyan, Christmas Evans, William Jay, Henry Law, William Romaine, Thomas Shepard, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Augustus M. Toplady, Thomas Watson, Isaac Watts, and William Williams.  What struck me time and again was the sharp sense of their own sinful nature that these men carried with them, something I believe is a gift God doesn’t distribute evenly.  In these men it brought forth humility and a great desire to share the gospel.

Bennett laid out the prayers like prose poetry, and I found that an apt approach, not only because the prayers contained sufficient poetic elements to justify looking like a poem, but also because I struggled to finish the book just like I struggle to finish poetry tomes.  Absent any narrative, the writing is so dense with meaning that more than one poem or prayer at a time starts muddling things in my mind; a few of them really resonate with me, but get overwhelmed by the sheer amount.  So it takes me a long time to read the book, and at the end I feel like I have gotten far less from it than I should have.  It’s worse when the authors are eminent hymn-writers such as these!  I suspect I need an instruction manual for reading poetry collections…

At any rate, Jon pointed out that Sovereign Grace Music published a CD based on excerpts of this book, so unless you like poetry and prayer anthologies, the CD may be the way to go.  I think I would have preferred it, too.  It would have taken me less time, and I might have been able to remember more of it.

Keating’s writing pops and fizzes to match the characters and kept me reading well past my bedtime. I enjoyed not being told everything, but after staring at the screen for hours (I read a PDF ARC, free, no strings attached), elliptical references to past events sometimes were a little much. Not getting it doesn’t hurt the plot, though, and I’m sure I’d do better on a second reading and enjoy discovering the added depth that gives the novel.

The plot doesn’t quite follow the fairy tale, but closely enough to make it clear where the tale’s heading. Keating throws her characters more than a few curve balls, and generally (after they’ve said “Gah!” and called a close relative a moron) even the minor characters develop and grow through the course of events. Food lovers get lots of cooking, romance lovers get romantic tension (with tissues), and sports lovers get baseball – what’s not to like? Why only 4 stars?

Ratings are personal, and that’s true in my case. The characters were a bit too agitated for me to identify, my high school experience was vastly different, and baseball’s really not my thing (it speaks to Keating’s ability that I still burned midnight oil on this book with those three strikes against it). I have some minor detractions: I would have wished for more sounds and smells of the Low Country, for one calmer, less awkward character (some respite for my poor phlegmatic heart), and for a more sparing use of “Gah!”

But would I recommend it? Gah! Moron.  Of. Course. I. Would.

P.S. For typo fiends: I’d estimate no more than a dozen in the ARC, which will still see editing before the print run. Read without worries.

P.P.S. Lex Keating is an old friend of mine.  Please buy her book!

Andreas Salcher fasst sein Buch gleich selber in drei Sätzen zusammen: Es geht um die Lehrer – und nur um die Lehrer.  Der grösste Feind des talentierten Schülers sind wir alle.  Die Verantwortung für die Talente unserer Kinder liegt bei uns selbst.  Die Zusammenfassung ist insofern interessant, als dass sie die Systemkritik, die einen Grossteil des Buches ausmacht, nicht aufgreift.  Ebenso Salchers Lösung: Wir sollen als Lehrer nur die besten nehmen, sie anständig bezahlen, und dazu schauen, dass sie hoch geachtet werden.  Diese Schlussfolgerungen überraschen um so mehr, als er mit seinen Kritiken durchaus ins Schwarze trifft.  Vom Leben isoliert seien die Schulen, ein überholtes Produkt des Industriezeitalters nach Fliessbandmodell, sie verbissen sich in Schwächen und förderten die Stärken zuwenig, sie gewichteten nicht alle Arten der Intelligenz (nach Howard Gardner) gleich, sie schafften eine Atmosphäre, wo alle auffallenden Kinder zurückgestutzt würden.  An den Lehrergewerkschaften lässt er kein gutes Haar: sie würden die nötigen Veränderungen stur blockieren, den Lehrern zwar den einen oder andern Ferientag zuschanzen, aber dafür ihren Ruf ruinieren.  Politikern fehle der Mut; den Linken der Mut zur Förderung begabter Kinder, den Rechten der Mut zur Förderung des Gesamtniveaus.  Und all diese Probleme würden mit einer besseren Lehrerauswahl hinfällig?

Natürlich hat der Autor seine Gründe, und seine Aussage, es liege nur an den Lehrern, fusst auf Studien, allen voran der McKinsey-Studie von Michael Barber und Mona Mourshed.  (Es gibt seitdem eine weitere Studie dieser Autoren.)  Selbstverständlich kann ein guter Lehrer einem Kind den nötigen Anschub geben, um Erfolge zu erreichen – so selbstverständlich, dass man sich fragt, weshalb es eine Studie dazu brauchte.  Aber wenn das System krankt, kann es denn reichen, die Lehrer auszutauschen?  Wenn ich in einem Döschwo alle rostigen Schrauben durch neue ersetze, verhindere ich vielleicht gewisse Schäden, aber letzlich stehe ich immer noch mit einem Döschwo da – fahrtüchtig zwar, aber nicht Stand der Technik.  Implizit fordert Herr Salcher auch einen Systemwechsel, wenn er uns ermutigt, die Dienstleistungen des Schulsystems mit jenen des Gesundheitswesens zu vergleichen – fehlt ihm zum expliziten Aufruf der Mut, den er fordert, unterlässt er den Aufruf aus Kalkül (lieber das Machbare fordern), oder kann er sich schlicht kein anderes System vorstellen?  Diese Frage kann ich nicht beantworten, vermute aber, dass es eine Kombination der letzten zwei Gründe ist, unter anderem, weil er den Heimunterricht mit keinem Wort erwähnt.

Dabei wäre der Heimunterricht eine kreative Möglichkeit, viele seiner Forderungen nach Begabungsentdeckung und -Förderung zu erfüllen.  Er sieht diese Möglichkeit aber nur so weit, dass “Eltern […] Volksschullehrern […] sehr dabei helfen [könnten], wenn sich ein bestimmtes Lernfenster bei ihrem Kind gerade geöffnet hat.  Diese individuelle Förderung, die im Interesse des Kindes wäre, ist aber heute fast nie im System der öffentlichen Regelschule vorgesehen – und auch nicht im Zeitbudget der Eltern.”  Wenn die Eltern keine Zeit haben, ihre Kinder neben des Schulunterrichts begleitend zu unterstützen, so wird es sehr wenige geben, die ihre Kinder gänzlich selbständig unterrichten wollen – wahrscheinlich so wenige, dass Herr Salcher, wenn er an den Heimunterricht gedacht haben sollte, diesen als ein Minderheitenprogramm ausgeklammert hat.

Ganz generell stösst Andreas Salcher aber ins richtige Horn.  Er hat mit scharfem Blick einige Missstände erkannt und analysiert, und sagt klipp und klar: “Jeder Mensch und daher jeder Schüler ist total verschieden.  Eigentlich brauchten wir für 28 Schüler daher 28 Klassen mit eigenen Lehrern.”  Vor dem Hintergrund, dass die Individualität unserer Kinder so viele Formen annimmt, sollten den Eltern auch so viele Unterrichtsformen wie nur sinnvoll möglich zur Verfügung stehen – von Volksschulen mit exzellenten Lehrern bis zum Heimunterricht mit jenen zwei Lehrern, welche die grösste Verantwortung fürs Talent ihrer Kinder tragen.

Ich empfehle das Buch zur Lektüre und leihe es auch gerne aus, wenn unterstrichene Stellen und Gekritzel nicht stören.  Wer lieber aktueller sein will (das Buch ist 2008 erschienen), kann auf Herrn Salchers Blog weiterlesen, wo es auch zum talentierten Schüler und seinen Feinden Einträge gibt.

1. Use media (video, audio) freely: there’s software and hardware out there that makes it cheap and simple (e.g. Castblaster)
2. Make purchasing easy: link to purchase pages
3. Make the website reflect your (company’s) personality, especially on the About me page and the testimonial page
4. Think of buyer personas and design the site around them, even with separate landing pages for them (a 21-year-old and a 61-year-old will want different champagne for different purposes)
5. Who might blog about your site and product?  Comment there, appropriately and knowledgably
6. Try to find out how people find your site – search terms used, incoming links, etc. – and reuse what brings in the right people
7. Get a good domain name that’s as unique as possible for search engines and describes your product; and for certain pick a unique company name
8. Make pages “sharable”; enable social bookmarking like Del.icio.us, DIGG, Reddit
9. Think of keywords and use them – all over
10. Link to other content providers, even competitors
11. Make free information available, downloadable even, especially if it can establish you as knowledgeable in your field
12. If you blog (and by extension, tweet), have a plan and follow it: random blogging is likely to bog down
13. Tag pages
14. Send David Meerman Scott the blog link

It’s up to you to make and sell something now!

Okakura’s premise is that “teaism” is Taoism, encapsulated in a single ritual.  His book is an interesting look at the worldview of an enlightened Japanese at the outset of the 20th century.  Although Okakura can be commended for preserving a good amount of Japanese art forms, his elevation of Japanese culture above everything else sometimes feels dated.  It’s clear he’s preaching against a current evil of his time, though a number of statements still ring true today.  I’ll summarize the book with a few quotes and some fun facts.

Fun facts:

1. Tea wasn’t always infused.  From the fourth to eighth century, the Chinese prepared tea by steaming the leaves, pestling them, and boiling them with spices and even rice and milk.  Okakura calls this a primitive way of drinking tea and suspects the Russians learned their customs from that time (he probably wouldn’t have thought too highly of Earl Grey, either).  From the eighth century on, the T’ang Dynasty refined this approach to where every ingredient but salt was disallowed, but it wasn’t until the Song Dynasty that the preparation changed from boiling to whisking a fine powder with a bamboo whisk (what the Japanese tea ceremony still practices, as an offshoot of a Zen ritual).  This practice was lost in China due to inner unrest and Mongolian invasions, and already the Ming Dynasty, but especially those barbarian Manchu of the Qing Dynasty knew nothing of whisking tea, and Europeans took to infusing their tea because they only learned about tea at the end of the Ming Dynasty.
2. Okakura calls Hōjō Tokiyori the Japanese Harun al-Rashid.  It’s a shame the English wikipedia article is so brief: it would be interesting to know more about him.
3. Okakura calls Yoshitsune the Japanese King Arthur, and as befits a warrior, the wikipedia entry is longer and there’s an entire subsection in wikipedia on Yoshitsune in popular culture.

Quotes:

On the Chinese culture of his time:

To the latter-day Chinese tea is a delicious beverage, but not an ideal. The long woes of his country have robbed him of the zest for the meaning of life. He has become modern, that is to say, old and disenchanted. He has lost that sublime faith in illusions which constitutes the eternal youth and vigour of the poets and ancients. He is an eclectic and politely accepts the traditions of the universe. He toys with Nature, but does not condescend to conquer or worship her. His Leaf-tea is often wonderful with its flower-like aroma, but the romance of the Tang and Sung ceremonials are not to be found in his cup.

On Japan’s contribution:

It is in the Japanese tea ceremony that we see the culmination of tea-ideals. Our successful resistance of the Mongol invasion in 1281 had enabled us to carry on the Sung movement so disastrously cut off in China itself through the nomadic inroad. Tea with us became more than an idealisation of the form of drinking; it is a religion of the art of life. The beverage grew to be an excuse for the worship of purity and refinement, a sacred function at which the host and guest joined to produce for that occasion the utmost beatitude of the mundane. The tea-room was an oasis in the dreary waste of existence where weary travellers could meet to drink from the common spring of art-appreciation. The ceremony was an improvised drama whose plot was woven about the tea, the flowers, and the paintings. Not a colour to disturb the tone of the room, not a sound to mar the rhythm of things, not a gesture to obtrude on the harmony, not a word to break the unity of the surroundings, all movements to be performed simply and naturally–such were the aims of the tea-ceremony. And strangely enough it was often successful. A subtle philosophy lay behind it all. Teaism was Taoism in disguise.

On the Zen influence:

We have already said that it was the ritual instituted by the Zen monks of successively drinking tea out of a bowl before the image of Bodhi Dharma, which laid the foundations of the tea-ceremony. We might add here that the altar of the Zen chapel was the prototype of the Tokonoma,–the place of honour in a Japanese room where paintings and flowers are placed for the edification of the guests. All our great tea-masters were students of Zen and attempted to introduce the spirit of Zennism into the actualities of life. Thus the room, like the other equipments of the tea-ceremony, reflects many of the Zen doctrines.

On art and Western culture:

We marvel why, among the most progressive Western nations, architecture should be so devoid of originality, so replete with repetitions of obsolete styles. Perhaps we are passing through an age of democratisation in art, while awaiting the rise of some princely master who shall establish a new dynasty. Would that we loved the ancients more and copied them less! It has been said that the Greeks were great because they never drew from the antique.

On perfection and beauty:

The Taoist and Zen conception of perfection, however, was different. The dynamic nature of their philosophy laid more stress upon the process through which perfection was sought than upon perfection itself. True beauty could be discovered only by one who mentally completed the incomplete. The virility of life and art lay in its possibilities for growth. In the tea-room it is left for each guest in imagination to complete the total effect in relation to himself.

On vanity and art:

In art vanity is equally fatal to sympathetic feeling, whether on the part of the artist or the public.  Nothing is more hallowing than the union of kindred spirits in art. At the moment of meeting, the art lover transcends himself.  […]  We must remember, however, that art is of value only to the extent that it speaks to us. It might be a universal language if we ourselves were universal in our sympathies.

On art critique:

It is much to be regretted that so much of the apparent enthusiasm for art at the present day has no foundation in real feeling. In this democratic age of ours men clamour for what is popularly considered the best, regardless of their feelings. They want the costly, not the refined; the fashionable, not the beautiful. To the masses, contemplation of illustrated periodicals, the worthy product of their own industrialism, would give more digestible food for artistic enjoyment than the early Italians or the Ashikaga masters, whom they pretend to admire. The name of the artist is more important to them than the quality of the work. As a Chinese critic complained many centuries ago, “People criticise a picture by their ear.”

On flowers and the use of the useless:

The primeval man in offering the first garland to his maiden thereby transcended the brute. He became human in thus rising above the crude necessities of nature. He entered the realm of art when he perceived the subtle use of the useless.

My Y chromosome set me apart from everyone else present, but that soon faded into the background (except for the occasional group “Yay”) as Tracy took us through the Ten Commandments for Historical Fiction (though I still haven’t found out which of them was condensed from originally two).  After lunch and a free writing exercise the workshop concluded with animated chatting and, for some of us, a manuscript critique.  It was the first time I’d had my manuscript critiqued, and I found Tracy’s comments encouraging and helpful, especially her suggestions on what might be painlessly cut.  Kirsten Carlson organized a lovely event for her swansong as Germany/Austria RA of SCBWI; her successor, Maria Bogade, has some large shoes to fill!

On the way home I got to finally sink my teeth into Stephen Lawhead’s “Skin Map,” a Christmas gift.  It’s a quick read, though everyday life has me stalled even on that.  Maybe it was the workshop, but I have some nits to pick about his research (nobody in Macao would call a foreigner “gaijin”).  Back in Lucerne at 21:49, I dashed into the Drinks of the World shop to use up my point cards I’d rediscovered while decluttering.  I figured that with a closing time of 22:00 and my bus leaving 22:02 getting enough Newcastle Browns to total just over 5 francs would be easy, but I’d discounted that the local youths would be grabbing their last breezers and swelling the line.  On a whim, I checked the Scottish beer section and – Happy Father’s Day! – discovered that Drinks of the World had heeded my plea and added Innis & Gunn to their offering.

The bus driver wasn’t too happy to see me board the bus with two beer bottles in my hands a minute or two before departure, but I assured him I wouldn’t drink those lukewarm, and set to gently arranging them in my backpack.  I emptied one the following day to go with my Father’s Day meal, and the other’s waiting for another momentous occasion.

I wonder if I can wait until July 14th…