Orthodox Christians should write and paint and sing and dance. We should make
movies and television shows. We should make clothes and produce textiles as art
as well (the fullness of culture is itself too large to describe in a sentence,
a paragraph or even a book). And in all these activities, they will be
expressive of the fullness of our humanity without having to stick an icon on
everything to prove its Orthodoxy.
-- Father Stephen in Glory to God for All Things
This is a picture of Lionel, my Useless Blob.
He's really here, jumping up and down. To adopt your own Useless Blob, click on him.
![[christian fandom]](http://www.valdyas.org/~irina/blog/graphics/page/cf125x125.gif)
2008-03-26
This is part 2 of the Hans Brinker review, with the names deconstruction.
If you’re actually using this page as a resource —I decided to split the blog post in two when I suddenly realised that some people might want to do that— please comment or mail to tell me if you’d prefer the names to be ordered thematically or alphabetically instead.
I don’t know what prompted it [ETA: a daughter trying to keep a beer bottle from squirting by plugging it with her finger], but I read Hans Brinker or the Silver Skates. And couldn’t stop reading it once I was underway, though it’s very dated (that figures; it was published in 1865) and it kept me wishing I had a time machine so I could go and be Mary Mapes Dodge’s copy editor, because she badly needed one. It’s surprisingly gripping.
Note that Hans Brinker is not the name of the boy with his finger in the dike. It’s a story-in-the-story in this book. That story is not, and never has been, something that every Dutch child knows; it’s only known in the Netherlands from translations and retellings of Hans Brinker or the Silver Skates. I shudder to think that whole generations of children in the United States had most of their knowledge of the Netherlands from this book alone. No wonder so many tourists arrive with serious misconceptions.
2008-02-08
Because there was no handy bus to where I wanted to go. Also, it was splendid weather for a bike ride, sunny and crisp but not too cold.
Or, alternatively, I decided on the bike because that’s where I happened to be when I made the decision to write what I’m writing now, rather than in a seat near the front of the No. 5 bus to Colmschate.
2007-04-23
I know someone who, like us, doesn’t have TV, but unlike us she doesn’t read newspapers either. She says it’s a very restful existence. She may be right, but I couldn’t do that: when I go without news for a few weeks, for instance on holiday, I do crave a paper. I often buy a foreign paper when I’m abroad, both to read the local language and see what people in that country find interesting and important.
There seems to be more and more silliness in the papers, though. And on online news sites too. Perhaps it’s only because I’ve been reading more critically lately.
2005-04-09
Foundations
for Christian Education by John L. Boojamra. A friendly priest gave it to me years
ago, I dimly remember skimming it at the time, I’m now reading it for Lent.
2005-03-13
I felt that I ought to read more Real Literature, but I balk at Dostojevskij, so I went in search of Jane Austen (who seems to be the author whose fiction I am). That’s on the English Literature shelf, and what I found there instead was The Prisoner of Zenda. I faintly remembered reading that years and years ago, or at least starting to read it or wanting to read it, so I took it out (most of the Eng.Lit. is over the living-room door) and couldn’t put it back until I’d finished it.
