A Visit to an Iris Farm.
I intended to stay around the house this weekend to get some correcting done until I saw the Pleasants Valley Iris Farm open house listed on Facebook. C.J. and I are not so much fans of irises as we are fans of show gardens. On a trip to Canada several years ago we stumbled on a dahlia farm that had a stupendous show garden. More varieties of dahlias than we knew existed, all of them in bloom, ranging from flowers the size of quarters to blooms bigger than a human head.
The irises we saw yesterday are not yet fully in bloom yet, I think we should have waited a week, but we still enjoyed them. We ordered three rhizomes which will come in the mail ready to plant sometime in late August. I expect we will have forgotten about them by then, so they will be a surprise.
The Search for a Few Good Book Blogs.
How often do you add new blogs to your blog roll? It's been a while since I've added to my blog roll. Last week I opened the whole thing up and found 12 that had not been updated in over two months. So, I'm looking for a few good book blogs to replace those I retired.
If you know of a good book blog please leave a link in the comments below. Feel free to leave a link to your own blog, too, if it's not in my current blog roll. I feel like I could use a few new voices, new to me anyway. I prefer book blogs that take me to unexpected, eclectic reading from all sorts of genres and perspectives. Which is really just a high-fallootin' way of saying I'll read just about anything.
Religion in Our Time.
Religion can be a difficult topic in our household--one former Baptist now an atheist married to one devout Catholic who just can't support a church that calls his marriage a sin anymore. Both of us are well versed in the Bible from childhood and both of us have strong opinions on religion.
And both of us got something out of Andrew Sullivan's recent piece on A "Rigorous" Theology. If you missed it, it's well worth a read. Some highlights:
We cannot deny Darwin without also denying God, to put it provocatively, since God cannot be in contravention of Truth. And sincere Christianity is a faith, it seems to me, that can embrace the deepest truths about human existence and salvation as revealed by Jesus without also embracing every empirical nugget in the flawed, mis-copied, mis-written, second generation oral accounts of the life of Jesus, let alone the even older myths and stories the Jewish people told about themselves through the millennia.
...
Does a force exist that is behind everything we are and see and know? Is that force benign? Does that force love us? Was the only way that truth could be revealed was by God becoming man and sacrificing himself to show us the only way to save ourselves? Today, in the darkness of the Cross, I say yes to these questions, which go to depths that literal parsing of parables or Gospels misses entirely. Which is why Scorsese's version of the Passion is so much deeper and truer than Gibson's.
The article has already sparked several interesting discussion in our household.
I intended to stay around the house this weekend to get some correcting done until I saw the Pleasants Valley Iris Farm open house listed on Facebook. C.J. and I are not so much fans of irises as we are fans of show gardens. On a trip to Canada several years ago we stumbled on a dahlia farm that had a stupendous show garden. More varieties of dahlias than we knew existed, all of them in bloom, ranging from flowers the size of quarters to blooms bigger than a human head. The irises we saw yesterday are not yet fully in bloom yet, I think we should have waited a week, but we still enjoyed them. We ordered three rhizomes which will come in the mail ready to plant sometime in late August. I expect we will have forgotten about them by then, so they will be a surprise.
The Search for a Few Good Book Blogs.
How often do you add new blogs to your blog roll? It's been a while since I've added to my blog roll. Last week I opened the whole thing up and found 12 that had not been updated in over two months. So, I'm looking for a few good book blogs to replace those I retired.
If you know of a good book blog please leave a link in the comments below. Feel free to leave a link to your own blog, too, if it's not in my current blog roll. I feel like I could use a few new voices, new to me anyway. I prefer book blogs that take me to unexpected, eclectic reading from all sorts of genres and perspectives. Which is really just a high-fallootin' way of saying I'll read just about anything.
Religion in Our Time.
Religion can be a difficult topic in our household--one former Baptist now an atheist married to one devout Catholic who just can't support a church that calls his marriage a sin anymore. Both of us are well versed in the Bible from childhood and both of us have strong opinions on religion.
And both of us got something out of Andrew Sullivan's recent piece on A "Rigorous" Theology. If you missed it, it's well worth a read. Some highlights:
We cannot deny Darwin without also denying God, to put it provocatively, since God cannot be in contravention of Truth. And sincere Christianity is a faith, it seems to me, that can embrace the deepest truths about human existence and salvation as revealed by Jesus without also embracing every empirical nugget in the flawed, mis-copied, mis-written, second generation oral accounts of the life of Jesus, let alone the even older myths and stories the Jewish people told about themselves through the millennia.
...
Does a force exist that is behind everything we are and see and know? Is that force benign? Does that force love us? Was the only way that truth could be revealed was by God becoming man and sacrificing himself to show us the only way to save ourselves? Today, in the darkness of the Cross, I say yes to these questions, which go to depths that literal parsing of parables or Gospels misses entirely. Which is why Scorsese's version of the Passion is so much deeper and truer than Gibson's.
The article has already sparked several interesting discussion in our household.
12 comments:
How many blogs do you usually read?
Two of my faves for eclectic purposes are
Fyrefly's Book Blog - http://fyreflybooks.wordpress.com/
and
Trisha's
http://www.eclectic-eccentric.com/
Two of my favorites are Reading Matters and Reflections From The Hinterland.
I've probably got way more blogs that I follow than is healthy, but here are some you might like:
Greg at New Dork Book Reviews
http://thenewdorkreviewofbooks.blogspot.com
Jill at Rhapsody in Books
http://rhapsodyinbooks.wordpress.com
Also would mention Trisha (listed by Christine)
I love flower shows...what a beautiful way to welcome in the spring!
It's not just a book blog, although she posts very articulately about the books she reads (and she reads a lot): www.girldetective.net
And you're welcome to check me out too. :-)
www.newcenturyreading.com
For some reason, your comment posting page doesn't let me link to my site.
Thank you all. Turns out, we all read many of the same blogs. ;-)
I have added Girl Detective, Rhapsody in Books and New Century Reading to my blogroll.
Amy, I don't know what to tell you. I've not be satisfied with the comments features on Blogger for some time. Wordpress seems to be much better at them to me.
Well, you see it hasn't prevented me from commenting. It will never silence me! :-)
You've got most of my favorites convered, but I don't see Evening All Afternoon (www.eveningallafternoon.com) or Jenny's Books (http://jennysbooks.wordpress.com/). They're particular favorites of mine that I think you'd like.
And thanks for the link to the Sullivan piece. I don't agree with everything he says, but he does make some excellent points about the problems of literalism. (I read the Mark Lilla book he mentions in seminary and had mixed feelings about it.)
Amy, Good!
Teresa, I've added both to my blogroll. I have the Mark Lilla book on hold at my local library. I'm looking forward to it.
You're always welcome to pop by my blog: http://nomadreader.blogspot.com I enjoy your blog and also mostly read literary fiction (with a special focus on prize lists!)
Thanks for the link to that Sullivan article. Definitely need to check that out.
I'm going to go read that article right now--thanks for not being afraid of a scratchy topic.
Irises are an interesting flower. They have a lot going on.
I always feel overwhelmed with book blogs but I recently added yours to my list. If you don't read Raych at Books I Done Read, you are missing a unique reviewing voice.
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