Hello everyone! Watch for the name and design of these blogposts to change sometime over the next few weeks. You’ll start seeing “Respect Food Roles” as the title of the blog and the header will change to something food-related. I’m excited about the new content that I’ll be publishing. So don’t be freaked out if things look different soon. I’ll tell you exactly when the change will take place so you’ll know what to look for.
Well! Recently on the Happier podcast Liz mentioned that she had just read a fascinating book and she was buttonholing everyone she knows and insisting that they read it too. It sounded so good that I figured maybe I should take a look, especially since Liz is in the midst of producing a new TV series and barely has time to breathe. If she read it, well, it must be worth a look, I thought. My new month’s Audible credit was in place, so I decided to go ahead and use that. Wow. I was absolutely entranced and stayed so to the very end. The audiobook is voiced by a great reader, by the way.
I was reminded of this book (how many of my reviews start that way?) while I was writing some travel tips based on our recent trip to France. One of my recommendations, passed on from Rick Steves, Mr. European Travel himself, was to wear a money belt. His statement brought to mind the so-called “security pocketbooks” that Cornelia and Emily were forced to wear during their own trip to 1920’s France. This was, of course, during the days before women wore pants very much, and while they weren’t wearing layers of petticoats their skirts were longish and baggy. So see if you can picture this: an elastic belt around the waist with a narrow band attached to it hanging down and a purse thingy attached to that, dangling between the wearer’s legs. As long as you stand still or walk slowly the thingy should be unobtrusive, but if you’re at all active it will start swinging. There’s a very funny scene early on when Emily and Cornelia are dancing (I think it’s onboard their ship) and their purses start bumping into the knees of their dancing partners. Both girls exit the dance floor looking embarrassed, followed by their partners who look puzzled.
Sex Matters: How Modern Feminism Lost Touch with Science, Love, and Common Sense
If you follow my postings over on my personal Facebook page, or if you read the conservative news outlet National Review, or if you were following the news back in February when she was booed at the CPAC convention for daring to say that it was perhaps a bit hypocritical for conservatives to excoriate Bill Clinton for his sexual misbehavior but to give Donald Trump a free pass, then you know the name of Mona Charen. (Read her NYT editorial about her CPAC experience here.)
Hi folks! I’m finally back to the blog after five weeks off. My last post was written on May 14, three days before we departed on our big trip to France. My intentions were good about writing some posts from the road, but that never happened. I think I started one post early on and never came back to it; after that I just let it slide. When we got home I had tons of ideas I wanted to write about, but they weren’t the kind of thing that lends itself to an article. Rather, I’m working on a short book, tentatively titled “The Intentional Traveler: An Insanely Detailed and Practical Guide” or some such. Originally I thought of it as a Kindle single and a downloadable PDF, thinking that I’d shoot for about 10,000 words. Well, I’ve written only two sections and am already well over that mark. There’s just so much about traveling, just as there is about life in general, that never gets discussed. Well, I’m your person on the spot for that. I always want to know that backstory, the details, the procedure. If you’ve ever read one of my recipes you’ll know that my notes are sometimes as long as the recipe itself. I want you to know all about how to make it!
Next Wednesday, May 16, Jim and I will be boarding a plane for FRANCE. I said last year that I’d like to visit Paris for our 25th anniversary, but with everything that was going on in 2017 (our move, a big trip already planned that included a family reunion and taking Gideon to grad school) it just didn’t seem doable. There was some talk of perhaps going in the fall, but that just never got off the ground. (Ha.) So we decided to go this year. The Cherry Creek Chorale’s last concert is this weekend, the annual business meeting is next Tuesday, and then the season is over. (You’d think that the Chorale was my job, or something.)
I posted an article from one of my favorite blogs, “Addicted2Decorating,” sometime last week on my Facebook page, and the more I thought about it the more I wanted to write something about it myself because it’s such excellent advice for every area of life. I can’t remember how much I’ve said about the author of this blog, so let me briefly recap:
I was struck with this thought while working on the material I presented a couple of weekends ago at a Christian women’s retreat. My actual topic was about the different choices we make about the food we eat, which I placed in the following hierarchy:
| Level 1: Choices controlled by actual health conditions: true food allergies, celiac disease, diabetes, etc. |
| Level 2: Choices controlled by conscience or conviction: vegetarianism because of discomfort with the suffering of the animals killed for meat, keeping kosher either because of personal religious beliefs or because of a desire to maintain connections with family members who hold those beliefs, etc. |
| Level 3: Choices controlled by preference or by belief in the efficacy of a certain diet or lifestyle, often based on faulty information and often harking back to an idealized vision of the past. |
Well, folks, it’s all over. My tiny part in this fairly big production is now a thing of the past. It was so much fun! We didn’t have a huge crowd for either performance, but the people who did come were quite enthusiastic. And our small chorus added to the overall effect. Everyone was pretty pleased, I hope. We added to our stock of good will with the Arapahoe Philharmonic. We bonded. We invested time. And we got to hear Mozart’s glorious, glorious music performed by some very talented singers. I’m so glad I stepped up and volunteered to do this. (Be sure to read Laura Vanderkam’s post about her own singing experiences. So fitting that she wrote about that today!)
And now it’s Monday morning, and life has moved on. I came home yesterday at about 6:00 and just vegged out in front of the TV, but that was perfectly okay. This morning I’m up and at ‘em. There’s so much stuff to do! Writing projects. Gardening projects. Getting ready for the big trip to France in three and a half weeks. Getting ready for the final concert of the year for the Chorale. (Do come! It’s going to be such a nice evening!) And just the ongoing business of life. The lovely performance is receding into the past even as these words go onto the page. I reminded myself several times yesterday afternoon to be present, to pay attention, to be in the moment, and I succeeded in doing that at least some of the time. It’s very hard to keep your mind from racing ahead.
The title comes from a recent BSF lecture, an idea that is so obvious that it gets overlooked, especially by me. Our teaching leader was talking about the Billy Graham crusades that took place in past years, when whole stadiums would be filled to hear the dynamic preacher. But, as she said, the results came about not just because of Mr. Graham’s own spiritual standing, Scriptural knowledge and personal magnetism but because of the advance teams’ work. They would go to a city where a crusade was to take place and meet with churches, scope out the venue, recruit volunteers to help with everything from counseling to cleanup—on and on. Without all of that unseen work the crusades just wouldn’t have happened, or if they had they’d have been much less successful. Whether or not you agree with how the message of the Gospel was presented in those crusades, and many don’t, the fact is that they were masterpieces of organization, and of organization that was done ahead of time.
