Mary, Blogawards, Blogrolls and Sparks

I am sorry to keep saying it, but for some reason the email situation in my life is not getting better, so please bear with me if you’ve emailed me. I like to be able to respond to email in appropriate time, and it stresses me out to see so much email going unanswered, but I am trying. There seems to be an increase in bloggers who simply send out links to every piece they write hoping to get linked to, and I’m losing patience with that. It’s a perfectly normal thing for a blogger to pass a post saying, “hey, I wrote this, you might find it interesting” (most of the time I do) but it’s something else when a blogger automatically sends a link to everything he writes (male bloggers seem to be the ones doing it) and it’s starting to wear me out. Do I sound cranky? I’m not. Just a bit harried.

My L’il Bro Thom (whom I have asked to guest blog here, several times, and who always refuses even though he needs a blog) sent this article my way: Mary not just for Catholics anymore.

Well, of course she isn’t. Time magazine recognised a while back the growing appreciation of Mary by non-Catholics.

By co-incidence, I just received a copy of Jon M. Sweeney’s Strange Heaven; The Virgin Mary as Woman, Mother, Disciple and Advocate in the mail, and it looks like a very good read. Sweeney is Anglican Episcopal and the book seems to be written “by a Protestant, for protestants” in an ecumenical manner. It’s not a pedantic treatise, either; it looks to be a nice, warm look at Mary through scripture, early church fathers, tradition and even poetry, meant to help non-Catholics who are interested in Mary find her from a post-Reformation perspective. I’m very taken with the cover art.

I’ve been having a bit of a blast checking out what folks are ordering via The Bookshelf as they finish up their Christmas shopping. Lot’s of folks picking up “self-help” stuff to give to others. 8 of you have ordered Essential Manners for Men for the young men in your lives, and – inspired, apparently – 3 have bought some female counterparts: Better than Beauty and A Guide to Elegance, two books which I checked into and found kind of charming in a dated-but-still-very-useful way. So, of course, I had to go and order them too, for my nieces, who are (it must be said) a ragtag crew. And someone ordered The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had, a book I (quite undereducated as I am) might have asked for this Christmas had I thought of it. The Digital Photography Book would have been a great gift for my FIL, had I known about it sooner! Lies That Go Unchallanged in Popular Culture, however, seems like an after-Christmas-bleak-midwinter sort of book, to me.

Another interesting book I would not have seen were it not for you guys is No Price Too High: A Pentecostal Preacher Becomes Catholic: The Inspriational Story Of Alex Jones. I had heard of Alex Jones, the Pentacostal pastor who came into the RC Church and brought part of his flock with him, but I didn’t know he had a book out. Looks good. Also, if you’re interested in Atheist-to-Believer stories, check this one out at Happy Catholic. If you’re interested in Protestants and Catholics finding common ground, you might like Your Word Is Truth: A Project of Evangelicals and Catholics Together (Paperback)

Since Red is my favorite color – and I’m a sucker for pottery and dishware – I must say I’m a little envious of whoever is getting the Scarlet Fiestaware place-setting, too. And the entire Fifth Season of 24! And these incredible Villa Bellissima Placemats, which have me thinking about eating al fresco in the warm sun! (It shames me, sometimes, to admit just how much of a girly-girl I can be…)

Alright, enough shopping – links to all of those items are at the bottom of this post, and as ever, whenever you purchase anything at amazon via my site, a percentage of the proceeds to go the hospice which took such wonderful care of my brother S, and the rest goes to support the upkeep of this site. I am very grateful that so many of you have done your shopping online, and through here!

Okay, quickly – The Blogawards! I know I haven’t been talking about them. I’ve been distracted and busy and to be honest only half paying attention. I am happy to see my hero James Lileks running away with it because he is a genius and a writer-and-a-half, and although a few lefties have felt the need to write me “taunting” emails because I am either lagging behind one of their left-wing favorites or am about to be overtaken by another (can we say “someone doesn’t have enough to do…” Yes, we can!) I assure you, I’m not fretting about it. It really is nice just to be a finalist. But if you would like to vote for me, you can do so here. ;-)

Blogrolls: Kim at Musing Minds wrote to give me a heads up that The Anchoress Online is on the blogroll at Tom Delay’s new blogsite (RWN has an interview w/ DeLay here). Ah! There is a little Stewie Griffin voice inside of me saying, “well, finally, maybe people will listen to me,” but then I remember that the fellow is out of office, and that CBS Public Eye has me on their blogroll, too, and I know they’re not listening to me! So I don’t know what it means, and it doesn’t really matter because it’s Advent and there is so much more to think about.

If you don’t want to think about Vespers at Advent, maybe think about some things in dire need of mending via Obi’s Sister. Or Dick Meyer’s ruminations on truthiness, which I’d like to write about when I get a chance.

Or wonder at this new milblogger writing GOOD things from Iraq.

or enjoy this incredible bit of Miss Ella Fitzgerald singing a goose-bump raising rendition of “Misty.”

or, think about one of my favorite poems:

Sparkles from the Wheel

Where the city’s ceaseless crowd moves on the livelong day,
Withdrawn I join a group of children watching, I pause aside with them.

By the curb toward the edge of the flagging,
A knife-grinder works at his wheel sharpening a great knife,
Bending over he carefully holds it to the stone, by foot and knee,
With measur’d tread he turns rapidly, as he presses with light but
firm hand,
Forth issue then in copious golden jets,
Sparkles from the wheel.

The scene and all its belongings, how they seize and affect me,
The sad sharp-chinn’d old man with worn clothes and broad
shoulder-band of leather,
Myself effusing and fluid, a phantom curiously floating, now here
absorb’d and arrested,
The group, (an unminded point set in a vast surrounding,)
The attentive, quiet children, the loud, proud, restive base of the streets,
The low hoarse purr of the whirling stone, the light-press’d blade,
Diffusing, dropping, sideways-darting, in tiny showers of gold,
Sparkles from the wheel.
– Walt Whitman

Happy shopping, happy listening, happy thinking, folks.