SIMCHA FISHER

I didn’t get to see Minor Revisions last night!  Jen Fulwiler gave us ten extremely persuasive reasons why, despite the grievous lack of any husbands wearing banana suits, we would want to watch her reality show miniseries.  Did you see it?  How was it?  It’s a three-part series, and the next episodes will air Dec. 20 and Jan. 10.  You can also watch it live online (IF all five internet-enabled devices don’t crap out on you simultaneously, like ours did; in which case you can have some taquitos and fall asleep on your husband while watching a JeanClaude Van Damme movie, and it will actually be the nicest evening you’ve had in weeks.   IF.)

Argh.  I feel like the kid who missed trick-or-treating because I was home with chicken pox.  How was it, how was it???

UPDATE:  Because the servers crashed from so many people trying to watch last night, the producers have put the entire first episode on YouTube, and you can watch it here.  (That is a link to Brandon Vogt, who posted the video.  My computer will not do anything I want it to do today.)

Remember Kate Essenberg, the immensely talented baker who sent my family a large and gorgeous selection of edible art?  It turns out that this sweet woman’s generosity and talent extend even further:  she’s just come out with a CD of Christmas music, and it is lovely.

You can check out some samples of the music on this album here.  Kate is the lucid and heartfelt soprano voice you will hear, accompanied by piano, harp, and violin.  There are fourteen songs in all, and my kids and I enjoyed the whole album.

Here’s the kicker:  She is donating 100% of the proceeds to the Savannah Care Center, a crisis pregnancy across the street from an abortion clinic in downtown Savannah. 

CDs are $15 each, plus $4 for shipping.  Kate would be happy to gift wrap a CD and mail it to someone on your list, too.  To order, just email Kate at

kavingate@hailmail.net

Lovely Christmas music to support a pro-life cause — couldn’t be better!

First, some bloggy business.  If you are an email subscriber to this blog, you may have stopped getting notifications (and I’m just hoping that you missed them so much that you came over here on your own to find out what happened!).  I think this is because my dear brother figured out how to import the subscriber list to my new blog, which obviously isn’t live yet; but I guess that means that those people are no longer subscribed to this, the old, current blog.  So, sorry about that, if you got dropped!  Please re-subscribe via the sidebar, and I hope to have the new blog up soon!

And now on to our book pick, which I kind of forgot about for a couple of days.

The other day, Melanie Bettinelli was bemoaning the terrible selection of books in the dentist’s waiting room — specifically, the “retellings” of Winnie the Pooh that turn these nutty, hilarious, clever stories into sentimental mush only a literary half-step above the Care Bears.   Our dentist,  happily, has one of those fun-house mirrors, plus a huge collection of germy Legos; so I don’t usually have to read more than one or two hideous books.  But every time we go, I resolve that I’m going to present our dentist with this book:

Doctor De Soto written and illustrated by William Steig

One of the very few books, to my knowledge, that presents a dentist as a clever and courageous hero.  He’s also a mouse who has to decide what to do when a fox comes to him in pain.  I love how his wife tries to talk him out of finishing the job, because they both know that the fox intends to eat them; but Dr. De Soto says firmly, “Once I start a job, I finish it.  My father was the same way.”  I don’t know, that line slays me every time.  Same with his little glasses and his stodgy dentist’s smock.  Our family has also adopted the defeated fox’s exit line, “Frank oo berry mush” for use in many occasions.

I really like William Steig, but this one especially dodges some of his less appealing traits:  the way he uses super fancy words for no good reason, and, I forget what the other thing is.  I guess he can be a little brutal in his plot twists sometimes, which could be  hard on sensitive kids.  But this story is short, tidy, and satisfying, and highly original, and only has a little bit of blood.  The illustrations are funny and full of neat little details (some puppies playing jump rope in the city street below the office; the special double stairs, one for large animals and a miniaturized version for the De Sotos.  Steig uses delicate touches, both in his illustrations and in his words, to create solid characters and specific worlds for them to live in.

I also like Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, Shrek (we also say, “Pheasant, peasant?  What a pleasant present!”) (this is the original book on which the movie is VERY loosely based.  In the book, Shrek is not charming, not one little bit; and neither is his bride), The Amazing Bone, Caleb and Kate — oh, and of course Yellow and Pink,which appears to be selling at exorbitant prices, for some reason.  Could it be out of print?   What a shame.

From the Weekly Standard:

President Obama declares Hanukkah “an opportunity for people of all faiths to recognize the common aspirations we share.”

He made this comment in his statement on the Jewish holiday emailed to the press:

Michelle and I send our warmest wishes to all those celebrating Hanukkah around the world.

This Hanukkah season we remember the powerful story of the Maccabees who rose up to liberate their people from oppression. Upon discovering the desecration of their Temple, the believers found only enough oil to light the lamp for one night. And yet it lasted for eight.

Hanukkah is a time to celebrate the faith and customs of the Jewish people, but it is also an opportunity for people of all faiths to recognize the common aspirations we share. This holiday season, let us give thanks for the blessings we enjoy, and remain mindful of those who are suffering. And let us reaffirm our commitment to building a better, more complete world for all.

From our family to the Jewish Community around the world, Chag Sameach.

Big words from a guy who doesn’t seem to realize that, in the Hanukkah story, HE IS ANTIOCHUS.

Today’s book pick, an excellent choice for a Christmas present, is recommended by my sister, Sarah Johnson:

*****

The Story of Holly and Ivy

by Rumer Godden, illustrated by Barbara Cooney

Yes, this book does contain orphans and dolls, but no, it is not sappy.  Ivy is a girl who falls through the cracks of a community’s system of charity– she’s the only orphan at St. Agnes’s not to be invited to a patron’s home for Christmas.   She finds herself on a train bound for the Infants Home, the only place available to take her in. But in a moment of nothing-to-lose recklessness, she gets off at a different  stop– to look, she says, for her grandmother.  In the face of another child’s cruelty, she has insisted that this grandmother lives in Appleton, a name she remembers from somewhere.  So when she learns from fellow passengers that Appleton is a real place, she jumps at the chance that her grandmother, too, might be real.   She’s young enough to operate in that in-between world where fantasy and actuality are not distinct territories.  But what she finds in Appleton– the market in full swing on Christmas Eve– is a sensory feast:  

There were stalls of turkeys and geese, fruit stalls with oranges, apples, nuts, and tangerines that were like small oranges wrapped in silver paper .  .  . A woman was selling balloons and an old man was cooking hot chestnuts.  Men were shouting, the women had shopping bags and baskets, the children were running, everyone was buying or selling and laughing.  Ivy had spent all her life in St. Agnes’s; she had not seen a market before; and, “I won’t look for my grandmother yet,” said Ivy.

She doesn’t give up the quest, but neither does she pass up this chance to experience everything a market square has to offer.  She spends all the money in her pocket on chestnuts and tea and a blue balloon.  That’s one reason I say this story isn’t sappy:  Ivy isn’t an ideal designed to gratify our emotions;  she acts the way a real child might act.

The book is delicious, though, in the perfect weaving-together of its narrative strands, and it has the happiest ending you could ask for. It’s a Christmas story that doesn’t mention the Christ child, yet the mystery of the first Christmas pervades it in a natural, unobtrusive way.  Here’s an example:  after the market shuts down, Ivy finds shelter in a shed built against the back of a bakery; the oven’s heat, retained by the bricks, is enough to keep her warm through most of the night.  This image works beautifully in its own right;  only several hours after putting the book down did I recognize the echo of a child sheltered in Bethlehem, “house of bread.”

And not till even later did I see the deeper resonance of Mrs. Jones, the “grandmother” Ivy finds. The narrator tells us, “This is a story about wishing.”  What that statement finally means is that it’s a story of grace really given, in spite of being too good to hope for– like the grace promised in the prophecy from Isaiah:  “For it is written, ‘be glad, O barren woman, who bears no children; break forth and cry aloud, you who have no labor pains; because more are the children of the desolate woman than of her who has a husband.’” The sad Mrs. Jones and the lost, wandering Ivy turn out to be very apt representations of fallen mankind.   All the emotion of their fulfilled hope is present in the story, but in a quiet, subdued, and very English way.

The Story of Holly and Ivy  works wonderfully as a read-aloud for children as young as six.  The Viking Kestrel edition, with Barbara Cooney’s luminous illustrations, would make a terrific Christmas gift.