Author note: Meet Lauraine Snelling

Lauraine Snelling has more than two million books in print, which makes her a pretty successful author by most standards. And yet outside of certain (primarily Christian) circles, you can mention her name and get a blank stare. (Welcome to the world of bookselling.) Her website is here. She seems like one of those writers I wouldn't mind having as a neighbor, I must say.

Her latest book, due out later this month, is


The Brushstroke Legacy

For what it's worth, I don't generally read much in the "Christian fiction" genre, so I'm not overly familiar with her work. A few years back I read three or four books of hers to get a feel for what I was selling, and those particular books reminded more than a little of the couple/three books by Janette Oke that I'd read, also to get a feel for what I what I was selling. It was a small sampling from each author, you understand, just enough to form a hunch that fans of one might like the books of the other.

Cindy Swanson did a review of Snelling's book Saturday Morning last year, in which she said, "..Lauraine Snelling is best known as a writer of historical Christian fiction, but she hits one out of the park with her latest contemporary fiction offering..."

FaithfulReader.com did an interview with Snelling in June 2004, which you can find here. I have to admit, some of the authors she has in her favorite authors list took me a bit by surprise. (It is, I would like to add, a very eclectic list, which I like to see in an author's favorite authors list.)

There was once a small boy who banged a drum all day...

I have been having trouble with links (again, still). More specifically, my outgoing links seem to be invisible to various tracking sites much of the time, but not all of the time. The same goes for incoming links. On top of that, Technorati insists I haven't updated in 507 days. (Have I been blogging that long?) So I have been fussing around, trying to figure out how to make my blog lose whatever surprisingly-effective cloaking device it put on while I wasn't looking. ;)

So far I'm having no luck on that front at all.

But I did, in the process, stumble across this wonderful little story about various ways of dealing with a boy with a drum.

The Saturday Review of Books...

...is up at Semicolon.

Saudi religious police outlaw cat or dog sales in part of the country

According to Donna Abu-Nasr, writing for the Associated Press (The Washington Times, September 9, 2006), the Muttawa, the enforcers of Saudi Arabia's strict Islamic code, have decided pet owners parading their pets in public "is blind emulation of the infidels" and so have banned dog and cat sales in the Red Sea port city of Jidda and the holy city of Mecca. The article goes to the trouble of putting the matter into context. Read it here.

Southern Baptists and 9/11

Baptist Press (BP News) has a number of articles related to the September 11 anniversary, including:
Challenge of 9/11 strengthened Southern Baptist Disaster Relief
New York, 5 years after 9/11: Baptist ministry continues
As a N.Y. teen, he found faith beyond a ‘horrible tragedy’
Daughter on 9/11 jet ‘wouldn’t want us to give up on God’
‘Fear to Faith’ workshops ease minorities’ post-9/11 trauma
WORLDVIEW: Sept. 11, five years on

Book note: Twenty and Ten, by Claire Huchet Bishop

See Karen Edmisten: Twenty and Ten for a recommendation for children's book about a nun and several Christian children helping Jews targeted by Nazis.

She doesn't mention it, but this is the book that inspired Miracle at Moreaux, starring Loretta Swit.

When kindness has left people...

See Wittingshire: Lapses in Kindness for a laser-guided passage from Willa Cather's My Mortal Enemy about what it's like to not find kindness where you've always found it.

Oregon high court rules for Scouts

Oregon high court rules for Scouts, against atheist mother by Tim Fought, Associated Press, as published in The Seattle Times:

PORTLAND — The Oregon Supreme Court today rejected the discrimination claim of an atheist whose son was required to attend a Boy Scout recruiting session in a Portland public school.

The Scout oath requires members "to do my duty to God and my country" but simply providing information to pupils in public schools isn't discrimination under Oregon Law, the court said.

Reversing a lower court, the justices denied the claim of Nancy Powell, whose son, Remington, was in elementary school when the dispute began in 1996.

The justices said the recruiting process on school grounds treats all students the same.

"It is in the later enrollment in the organization that the Boy Scouts differentiate among those who do not profess a belief in the deity and those who do," the court said. "That enrollment, however, is not done by the school district, nor is it done in any public elementary school activity."

Dissenting, Justice Rives Kistler said the Scouts' offer "appeared to be open to all the elementary school children without limitation," but that wasn't the case.

"That offer, both in fact and in operation, divided the elementary school children into two groups: those whose religious views agreed with the Scouts' views and those whose views did not," he wrote.

The case can be read here.

hat tip: The Alliance Alert

More on Rives Kistler here.

Science study showing brain-damaged woman's imagination in good working order stuns some

See Signs of life: brain-damaged woman stuns doctors with her tennis skills by Deborah Smith, Science Editor, The Sydney Morning Herald, for just one of hundreds of articles out there right now about the recent study that showed how a brain-damaged woman in a 'vegetative' state responded to suggestions that she imagine herself doing one thing or another. I've been trying to find an article without pro-euthanasia baggage attached, and have been having a hard time, but this one's about as close as I've come. (And even it wraps up with a push to go make an advanced directive.)

I've seen misreporting of Terri Schiavo's condition in today's avalanche of articles, and I've seen shrill defensive maneuvers by doctors who have advised families to pull the plug, and I'm noticing offensive maneuvers by those in the euthanasia camp, but at least this study and the hue and cry in the press should spread a little doubt where it needs to be re-established in my opinion.

Why this study's results surprise so many people, I don't know. Way back in the 1970s, when I worked briefly in a doctor's office and also when I got some first aid training, we were trained that it was always safest to assume that people who are unconscious can hear and understand more than you might think. When did we lose that experience-based view of things?

Addition: Amy Welborn succinctly covers related moral issues.

Today in History: September 8

Today is the anniversary of the storm that devastated Galveston, Texas, in 1900. The Library of Congress has more at its American Memory site.

How very odd to look out the window and...

...see it raining bricks.

Luckily for me, I heard a strange racket just before that, and caught sight of a young man who works for our landlord setting up a ladder. And luckily the landlord had told me a few weeks ago that sometime before winter he was going to have the chimney taken down so the roof could finally be fixed properly. (We've had all sorts of leaks.)

Now, if I could just get the cats convinced that the pounding and shaking and thuds are not signaling the end of the world we'll be in great shape... ;)

Whoever's on the roof (I think there might be two of them? I'm certainly not stepping outside in a rain of bricks to chance a peek), is making very fast work of it. The bricks, by the way, are shattering to dust, for the most part, when they hit the blue tarp laid out on the ground to collect them. They are, in other words, badly weathered bricks, and it's certainly time for them to come down off our roof. The chimney no longer exists in the living quarters anyway. I presume it got taken out in some 'modernization' move long since. Just a guess. Why they didn't take out all the chimney at once and patch the roof back then I don't know. I guess to leave the upper chimney in place was easier? And maybe cheaper?

I'm looking forward to being rid of the leaks. I am also, ahem, circling the kitchen and playing with color combinations in my head, now that I'm beginning to think it might be worth my while to go ahead and paint in there. (There's no sense painting a ceiling that leaks, is there?)

Moms for Modesty banding together, speaking out

Those of you with daughters might want to check out the Moms for Modesty movement that just got launched and seems to be taking off like a rocket.

hat tip: Shannon

Works-for-Me Wednesday: Easier can opener

As some of you know, we live with handicaps at this house. Can openers had proved to be a major annoyance. The manual ones were very difficult for one family member to use, and the electric ones we'd had weren't much better since they required getting everything lined up just so, using both hands at once.

So, we tried the No-Hands One Touch Can Opener, and, to my surprise (the ads made it look cheap, I thought) it works very well. And it's very forgiving of clumsiness. I see Sharper Image has something very similar. A side bonus: it looks perfectly ridiculous as it works, which is good for grins. (I know, I know, I am too easily amused.)

I'm not familiar with the Disabled Hands website I've linked to above for product info, but it looks like a good site for all sorts of ideas and tips and products for people with diminished hand function. A bonus: They ask for reader tips and recommendations, so it's apparently something of a community as well as product flogger. I'll be checking it out, at any rate.

More Works-For-Me-Wednesday tips can be found at Rocks In My Dryer.

In case you're interested in life in Kenya

A blogger who goes by the name of Nairobi Paul commented on one of my earlier posts, and I finally got around to checking out his blog. He introduces himself this way:

My wonderful wife is Heather. Our fun-loving kids are Jay (93), Ben (96) and Rachel (01). We serve with Caleb Project and are based in Nairobi, Kenya, lent to Wycliffe Bible Translators. Nairobi is the largest city in east Africa.

He's been blogging just over a year at My Part of Nairobi.

I thought this post, on a tailoring school equipped with foot-treadle machines, with hand-drawn patterns posted on the wall, was interesting. As he says, "It's amazing what can be done when resources are limited."

Book note: The Man Who Fed the World, by Leon Hesser

Ronald Bailey has a review of a new book, The Man Who Fed the World, by Leon Hesser, over at OpinionJournal. It begins:

Who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970? You may be forgiven for not remembering, given some of the prize's dubious recipients over the years (e.g., Yasser Arafat). Well, then: Who has saved perhaps more lives than anyone else in history? The answer to both questions is, of course, Norman Borlaug.

Who? Norman Borlaug, 92, is the father of the "Green Revolution," the dramatic improvement in agricultural productivity that swept the globe in the 1960s. He is now the subject of an admiring biography by Leon Hesser, a former State Department official who first met Mr. Borlaug 40 years ago in Pakistan, where they worked together to boost that country's grain production. "The Man Who Fed the World" describes, in a workmanlike way, how a poor Iowa farm boy trained in forestry and plant pathology came to be one of humanity's greatest benefactors...

Man Who Fed the World

One of my college research assignments was to study the downsides and failures of "The Green Revolution." For instance, as I remember it, early efforts sometimes put one variety of a single crop from horizon to horizon and sometimes beyond, which led to some pretty spectacular crop failures. Plus, the heavy reliance on chemical fertilizers caused more than a few problems. Having said that, "The Green Revolution" definitely had its merits, among them the development of drought-resistant, disease-resistant, sturdier varieties - or even more nutritious ones. Just the push to develop wheat that didn't "lodge" (get knocked to the ground by wind, etc.) made a huge difference in crop yields. Pro and con, there's no doubt in my mind that Dr. Borlaug and his associates changed the world of agriculture, and also the course of world history.

High school teacher says he's willing to use a conservative book...

...but claims he doesn't know of a good one for his purposes. In a nutshell, he'd assigned the book "What's the Matter With Kansas?" for his Politics and Government class, and some of the parents and kids objected, asking for equal time for a conservative book. He claimed he's had trouble finding a suitable book but proclaimed himself open to suggestions. Bookworm has the story, and you should leave any suggestions with her.

Yawn, cough, sniffle

Thank goodness for tea, soup, ice cream, books, DVDs, and comfy old quilts. (I'm down with a bug, in case you've been wondering where I've been.)

The Saturday Review of Books...

...is up at Semicolon.

We get results

Back in April 2005 I posted a poem about 'When I'm an old lady and live with my kids.' I'd found several versions floating around, but none that credited an author. I asked for help finding the proper person to credit.

Dave Baxter writes that his mother, Joanne Bailey Baxter of Lorain, Ohio, wrote the original back in 1991. His comment and a copy of his mother's poem are here.

In case you haven't made her acquaintance yet...

...may I suggest meeting Debra over at As I See It Now? (Check out her other blogs, too.)

...or the anonymous lady behind A Circle of Quiet?

...or Katherine? (She's moved to Britain from France, by the way. So now we get a whole new set of "did you know they did that this way over here?" posts.)