Joe L. Wheeler's Blog, page 15

BLOG #10, SERIES 4

WEDNESDAYS WITH DR. JOE

IN PRAISE OF OLD MAGAZINES

March 6, 2013

During the last couple of years the chances are excellent that at any given moment, day or night, I could have been found leafing through, or reading an old magazine. Far more likely than immersion in a book.

Why? Because it is in old magazines that the greatest stories ever written are most likely to be found. During the Golden Age of Print in America (1880s through the 1950s), magazine was king. During much of that time, magazine editors paid writers more for a given story or book manuscript than movie producers or publishing house editors. This is why the appearance of a given story in a magazine normally predated its appearance in a book.

If you were a child or a teen during that Golden Age, you had ever so many choices: long-lived magazines such as The Youth’s Companion (a weekly for over a hundred years), St. Nicholas (a monthly from 1873 to 1939), The Youth’s Instructor (a weekly for over a hundred years), Little Folks, Girl’s Own, Boy’s Own, Young People’s Weekly, Boys World, Girls’ Companion, Jack and Jill, just to name a few.

During that time period, there was an unspoken consensus in the adult world that children were to be protected from obscenities, the dark side of human nature, and printed material that would degrade or disillusion. The flip side was that since America, since its founding, was built on Judeo-Christian bedrock, authors who could memorably articulate those values in their stories and books became household words across the nation, in the Commonwealth, and in the Western World. Recognizing that children would become their favorite stories, parents everywhere religiously conducted daily story hours since the values in these magazines and books could be internalized in the hearts and souls of their listening children. And it worked!

Not so today. Today, when the Christian community is, more often than not, on the defensive, with a secular media vastly out programming it, parents everywhere feel overwhelmed. How can they prevent their children from being destroyed by a society that is openly hostile to Christianity?

I submit that Story is the answer. The stories that once could be found in most every household—but today are crumbling out of existence in old magazines that are being lost to posterity at an alarming rate. Indeed, so fast are these wonderful priceless old magazines being cut up, destroyed, hauled out to the dump, that they will soon be all but extinct.

And this is why my wife Connie and I have dedicated what’s left of our lives to preserving as many as possible of the best of these long ago treasure chests of stories. Sixty-six of our eighty books so far are story anthologies—and most originated in old magazines.

And that’s why, day and night, we are racing against time to preserve as many stories as possible before God calls us home.

BLOG #9, SERIES 4

WEDNESDAYS WITH DR. JOE

DR. BEN CARSON

A LIFE OF SELFLESS SERVICE

February 27, 2013

I am bridging from Lance Armstrong and Tiger Woods to a refreshing example of a man who represents, to untold thousands, a prototype we can all admire, look up to: Dr. Ben Carson, famed Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon and humanitarian.

I referenced him at the conclusion of last week’s blog, for he had just wowed the media by his insightful keynote at the National Prayer Breakfast. And not just the media, but the nation as a whole.

I’ve been an admirer of his for over a quarter of a century. During those years, Dr. Carson has written several very insightful books—such as his Gifted Hands. I’ve listened to a number of in-depth radio and TV interviews and have yet to find anything creating daylight between his talk and his walk.

During a recent hour-long interview on Fox News, Dr. Carson was asked if he was interested in running for president. He answered that he had no plans to do so—he only wanted to serve.

I’ve been privileged to speak one-on-one at length with him only once. Some years ago, traveling to a speaking engagement with my wife Connie, we were stranded by a blizzard in an airport; Dr. Carson, it turned out, was returning to Baltimore, with his wife, from a speaking engagement, and happened to be stranded in the same airport. So, with nothing else to do, we talked. And talked.

Dr. Carson is very understated in his speech (soft-spoken, another way to describe him). He is also refreshingly humble—and deeply spiritual. And caring. His patients have known that for decades, long before the country at large did.

As for his possibly running for the presidency, I’m not at all sure it would be good for him and his family: just the thought of this principled man having to face unsubstantiated attack ads, each geared to finding something in his past they could twist, distort, ridicule, disparage—sends chills up my spine. On the other hand, we’ve never needed a voice like his more than we do now.

It is enough for me to say, Thank God America is still producing men like him!

BLOG #8, SERIES 4

WEDNESDAYS WITH DR. JOE

THE DECLINE AND THE FALL OF THE AMERICAN HERO

Part Two

February 20, 2013

ADULATION

Last week, I wrote about the leveling process of perceived greatness that is societally generated. Now, let’s turn to two other factors: adulation and inner erosion.

On April 5, 1887, Lord Acton famously postulated in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, that “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” By extension, we might also conclude that adulation tends to destroy and excessive adulation destroys completely.

Few things in this journey we call life are more destructive than adulation—or more difficult to remain impervious to. One has to be almost superhuman to resist it for long. In the newspapers recently was a column that addressed this issue: the subject being an obsequious interview of retiring Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton and President Obama (perhaps the most powerful person in the world today, and Clinton, the person second in line to succeed him in case of death or incapacitation). The writer of the column felt that the interview imploded once it degenerated into fawning by the outgoing Secretary of State. Clinton perhaps didn’t realize at the time that there is a fine line between respect for the office of the President and obsequious overkill.

But who of us has not been guilty of the same sort of thing in our own interactions with those who are powerful and can, by a word or an act, strengthen or weaken our standing in the eyes of our peers? Nevertheless, just think of the impact of such adulation on the recipient—especially when such behavior is replicated in others, day after day, week after week, month after month, and year after year. Could you remain unchanged were you the recipient of it? Could I?

Yesterday, a similar situation occurred on Fox Television when famed neurosurgeon Ben Carson of Johns Hopkins was “interviewed” in what turned out to be an overkill of adulation both by the interviewer and by the studio audience of VIPs. I’m not denying that Dr, Carson isn’t worthy of such obsequiousness, I’m just wondering what the effect was on him. And, as a sidebar, I wondered if I could have resisted it.

Where all this is leading to, I’m sure you’ve already figured out: the impact of continual—not just national but international—adulation on perceived superheroes such as Tiger Woods and Lance Armstrong. Were they truly noble, how long could they have held out against it?

INNER-EROSION

But the third leveling factor is by far the most significant of the three (deconstructing, adulation, and inner-erosion). Inner-erosion is insidious in that it tends to destroy the victim of it from inside, thus the person infected by this virus all too often remains unaware of what’s happening within. And since we all tend to view our actions through rose-tinted-glasses, it is very difficult for any of us to be objective about our own inter-deterioration. History—and Scripture—are full of prototypes of such inner-erosion. Just look at Saul, David, and Solomon (all three devoured from within by inner-erosion). Look at Nebuchadnezzer (“Is not this great Babylon that I have built?”); Napoleon, Henry VIII, Lord Byron, Louis XIV, Benedict Arnold, Richard Nixon—the list is endless.

America’s greatest poetess, Emily Dickinson, likens this inner-erosion to a work of art, a perfect piece of sculpture, that, ever so slowly (so gradually that the process is almost impossible to see with the naked eye) is chipped away in tiny almost invisible fragments—until, one fateful day, all the world can see is a ruined work of art.

Both Tiger Woods and Lance Armstrong eroded from within, over long periods of time. The very first time each was false to what he knew was right was a first chip. The first time Lance doped in order to win was a chip, and then came chip, chip, chip, and chip. And to avoid losing his perceived cycling supremacy, the first time he viciously turned on, and sued, associates who dared to tell the truth about what it was that made all those Yellow Jersey victories possible—another chip and then, of course, a long succession of such chips. And then there it was for all the world to see: a ruined work of art.

* * * * *

But having said all this, who am I to cast the first stone? When I take off my own rose-tinted classes and look at my own journey, I see so many mistakes, so many failures, so many sins, that I would despair were it not for the good Lord, who in His great divine mercy, stoops down each time to help me get off the floor, forgives me once again, and encourages me to try harder to be true to the better self in me, next time—and next time.

BLOG #7, SERIES 4

WEDNESDAYS WITH DR. JOE

THE DECLINE AND THE FALL OF THE AMERICAN HERO

February 13, 2013

Two weeks ago, I discussed the implosion of erstwhile superhero, Lance Armstrong. At its conclusion, I promised to return to the subject.

Heroes – we all have them. Boys especially. It is healthy to have in your mind a shining image, an idealized prototype one can grow towards. But it is not healthy when that ideal is shattered like The Picture of Dorian Gray. During the last couple of years, two of the world’s superheroes – Tiger Woods and now Lance Armstrong, have been toppled from their high pedestals, in the dust of the dramatic collapse of their reputations, leaving behind widespread disillusion and feelings of betrayal – not only in the young but in the older as well.

Heroism has always been with us, but the obsessive attempts to destroy heroes once they are perceived to have arrived at such status is relatively new.

This phenomenon has a long fuse, and was born (in a literary sense), in a French movement of prose fiction scholars label Naturalism, that flowered in the last third of the nineteenth century. Zola was its principal spokesman in Europe, and writers such as Dreiser in America. The novels that spread this philosophy were characterized by flawed heroes who, sooner or later, were destroyed by inner weaknesses and inherited tendencies. Generally, all their supposed heroes end up floundering in the muck in the midst of their shattered pedestals. God and spiritual values worth living by are noticeably absent in Naturalistic fiction.

All through the twentieth century, the moral slide continued, nudged down by Jacques Derrida’s deeply erosive movement (also begun in France) called Deconstruction; the net effect across the western world has been to undermine the foundations of all heroes and debunk anyone who is perceived to be noble or great in any way. Though the movement in America reached its “peak” in the 1960s and 1970s, it remains very much with us today. Its critics apparently have no life outside of character assassination – even of each other. No one, no matter how high, is safe from these intellectual harpies.

Parallel to Deconstructionism is the so-called Theatre of the Absurd movement, especially as portrayed in the dramas of playwrights such as Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet, and Eugene Ionesco (all of which have been widely celebrated and performed in America). In essence, these plays exemplify the illogical and purposeless nature of contemporary existence. They are directly related to the DADA and Surrealistic movements in art.

None of these literary practitioners have much of a place in their works for religion or values worth living by. The net result of generations of debunkers is today’s widespread sense of disillusion, immersion into virtual reality rather than the real world, addiction to substance abuse of all kinds (liquor, drugs, pornography, sexuality, etc.), and an almost terrifying rise in suicide. Not to mention the fallout on the moral front (the nonstop assaults on the institution of marriage, Christianity, and traditional values). Half of all marriages ending in divorce, live-in relationships are becoming the norm, and half of all children are being born out of wedlock, 75-80% in African-American households.

The same is true for our national heroes. For over a century and a half, these preachers of negativity have done their utmost to strip Abraham Lincoln of his spirituality and all the ethical and moral qualities that made him a worldwide icon in the first place.

Even Great Books classics have become an endangered species. In a world where there are no absolutes, no right or wrong, no goodness, no bravery, no courage, no greatness of any kind, neither in the arts nor in real life, there can be no great anything!

Instead, no subject is permitted to rise above all others: spiritual values are removed from life, the Decalogue is trashed, and God is replaced by Relativism.

Nathan Harden, author of Sex and God at Yale: Porn, Political Correctness, and a Good Education Gone Bad, has this to say: “And the fact that Yale [a symbol for American higher education here] as an institution no longer understands the substantive meaning of academic freedom—which requires the ability to distinguish art from pornography, not to mention right from wrong—is a sign of its enslavement to the ideology of moral relativism, which denies any objective truth (except, of course, for the truth that there is no truth).

Under the dictates of moral relativism, no view is more valid than any other view, and no book is any greater or more worth reading than any other book. Thus the old idea of a liberal education—that each student would study the greatest books, books organized into a canon based on objective criteria that identify them as valuable, has given way to a hodgepodge of new disciplines—African-American Studies, Latino Studies, Native American Studies, Women’s Studies, Gay and Lesbian Studies—based on the assumption that there is no single way to describe the world that all serious and open-minded students can comprehend. . . .

Unfortunately, what’s happening at Yale is indicative of what is occurring at colleges and universities across the country. Sex Week, for example, is being replicated at Harvard, Brown, Duke, Northwestern, the University of Illinois, and the University of Wisconsin. . . . Our universities have lost touch with the purpose of liberal arts education, the pursuit of truth.”

–Man, Sex, God, and Yale, by Nathan Harden (Hillsdale, Michigan: Imprints, January 2013).

Truly, America is at the crossroads!

BLOG #6, SERIES 4

WEDNESDAYS WITH DR. JOE

DR. JOE’S BOOK OF THE MONTH CLUB #17

EDWARD EVERETT HALE’S THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY

February 6, 2013

Since February is our shortest month, and since we’re already almost a week into it, I’m being merciful to our faithful readers and choosing one of the shortest books I know of as this month’s selection.

Since my book Abraham Lincoln Civil War Stories is due to come out in June, I felt it would be fitting for me to take the month we celebrate Lincoln’s birthday and weave in a small little book that so ties into that great war that it is inextricable.

Edward Everett Hale (1822 – 1909) was born in Boston of illustrious stock. His father was proprietor and editor of the Boston Daily Advertiser; his uncle, Edward Everett, was considered to be the nation’s leading orator (it was he who gave the main address at Gettysburg – Lincoln’s part was an afterthought); and his great uncle, Nathan Hale, was a Patriot spy during the Revolutionary War who, when captured by the British, just before he was hanged the following day), uttered those now immortal words, I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.

Edward Everett also had a distinguished career, graduating from Harvard in 1839, pastor of leading churches prior to becoming Chaplain of the United States Senate. A prolific author, he wrote for such journals as The North American Review, The Atlantic Monthly, and The Christian Examiner, besides penning or editing more than sixty books – fiction, travel, sermons, biography, and history.

But out of all his prodigious output, only one book has stood the test of time: The Man Without a Country, first published in The Atlantic Monthly. Though a work of fiction, there were certainly real-life prototypes to draw from, men who proved to be traitors to their nation while continuing to profess loyalty. One traitorous congressman, Lincoln, rather than having him executed, had him arrested and escorted by Union soldiers under a flag of truce into a Confederate army headquarters, where he was delivered into their care with the explanation that here is where he wished to be. The entire nation laughed. But the ex-congressman wasn’t happy there either. Hale wrote in such a realistic style that many readers assumed it to be factual. It did much to strengthen the Union cause and encourage more citizens to make love of country central to their lives.

It is an easy but poignant read, well worth the time and effort it till take you to track down a copy and read it:

The Man Without a Country, by Nathan E. Hale (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1888). It has been reprinted many many times.

TAGS

Edward Everett Hale

The Man Without a Country

Edward Everett

Nathan Hale

Gettysburg

Civil War

Patriotism

BLOG #5, SERIES 4

WEDNESDAYS WITH DR. JOE

HUMPTY DUMPTY – AND – LANCE ARMSTRONG

January 30, 2013

During the last several years, we’ve seen the fall of two of the world’s super heroes: Tiger Woods and Lance Armstrong. But of the two, Armstrong fell further. Reason being: Woods betrayed his immediate family; Armstrong betrayed us all. Let me tell you why.

Over the last two decades, my wife Connie and I have made watching the Tour de France an annual tradition, even getting up at 5:00 a.m. to keep up with the race’s progress. Why? Because of the mesmerizing presence of that indomitable cancer survivor, Lance Armstrong. How vicariously proud he made us feel of our nation, the bicycling sport, and the human spirit. Not just in America alone, for Armstrong became a world icon.

Then the doping dominoes began to fall, one after another; but, in spite of multiple accusations, Armstrong’s teflon armor withstood all attacks. We collectively believed in him, attributing the doping accusations to envy, sour grapes, or mere plea bargaining. After all, Lance had given us his word. Given it to us in thousands of sound-bytes. Had sued one after another of his accusers. Had spent a fortune to protect his good name.

And then, like a Greek tragedy: the fall. The long, long fall. The sitting in a chair opposite Oprah where he admitted, matter-of-factly, that yes, his entire climb to the very top of cycling’s Mount Olympus was riddled with lies: there was no substance to his room full of yellow jerseys, for they’d come to him via years of stacked decks—no level playing field for him! Yes, he admitted in deadpan fashion, he’d lied to everyone: teammates, racing officials, interviewers, fans, even his own son. He’d viciously attacked and done his best to ruin those who dared to speak the truth about him. In short, he’d lied to the entire world. And there, in that chair, he revealed to us all that the Emperor had no clothes—never had had clothes. It was all sham.

Why? For the same expressed reason all those other cyclists used to justify their acts: “because everyone else was doing it.”

But Lance was not “everyone else”—we’d held him to a higher standard than they.

Humpty-Dumpty had such a great fall that not all the king’s horses or all the king’s men could put him together again. The same is true of Lance—he can never be put back together again. Others who betray those closest to them, we may in time forgive. But not Lance, for he betrayed us all.

My wife and I will never again look at cycling the way we did before. Always, in the back of our minds, will be that insidious question: Are we being betrayed again? Which of today’s leaders got to the front because of doping? Of what value are time trials when some win through performance-enhancing drugs? Which ones are winning through deceit today? How many wide-eyed hero-worshiping children will be stripped of their innocence, their faith in their sports idols? How many will, as a result, become disillusioned, cynical about sports victories that used to mean something?

Next week, we’ll dig deeper into this international tragedy. Not just Lance and Tiger, but how we as a society have got this way.

BLOG #3, SERIES 4

WEDNESDAYS WITH DR. JOE

THE GIFT OF AWARENESS

January 16, 2013

Only the curious

Have, if they live, a tale

Worth telling at all!

—Alastair Reid

Again and again and again, in recent years, in searching for a place or address, it has happened: The person being asked for information looks at me with a blank three-watt look, and mumbles, “I don’t know where it is” or “Dunno” or “Huh?” It matters not if the place in question is only two or three blocks away!

Which brings me to today’s subject: “The Gift of Awareness.” One of the greatest gifts a parent, teacher, or mentor can bestow on a child or teenager.

Paradoxically, at no time in human history has this much knowledge been accessible, at one’s fingertips; yet at no time in human history has such knowledge been devalued more. Just look around you at the millions who are myopically majoring in minors and minoring in majors, steadily constricting their worlds into knowledge that means virtually nothing: pop culture (celebrities, media, and sports). More likely to be immersed in a meaningless virtual reality world than the real. Boys especially, locked into a Peter Pan existence on their computer keyboards. Both sexes bailing out of growth trajectories in favor of obsessive text-messaging and substance abuse (be it drugs, alcohol, pornography, pop culture, or virtual reality). Result: You walk up to them, ask a question; they look at you with zombyish eyes—there’s nobody home.

So where did we as a society get off the track? Early. The first time we snuff out the God-given sense of wonder each child is born with by responding to questions with, “Oh, stop bothering me! Go watch TV” or “Go play a video game!” “Stop being such a pest!”

Each time this scenario takes place, the child’s light of awareness dims, the inner-wattage is reduced. In time, the result is another walking zombie.

Contrast that tragic result with the flip-side: a child or teen whose questions are enthusiastically fielded. Such lucky people grow up to be an Einstein, a Bill Gates, a Steve Jobs, an Edison, or Tesla. Or in the humanities, an Emily Dickinson or a Leonardo; a Tolstoy or a Schweitzer; a Dante or a Bronte; a Georgia O’Keefe or a Winslow Homer.

Blessed beyond belief is the child or teen who is mentored by a parent or teacher who is excited about life and growth and becoming. Could it be that the current wave of homeschooling is but the result of teachers and administrators who are devoid of such excitement, who blight their students’ lives by boring them?

What we need is a new concept of achievement: might it not be true that taking the time to ignite the mind of just one child or teen—such as Annie Sullivan so famously did with deaf, dumb, and blind Helen Keller—would by itself be worth having lived?

Beloved, what do you say to our making ourselves a committee of one determined to bestow the gift of awareness to children and teens in our homes, our classrooms, or proximity?

    BLOG #2, SERIES 4

    WEDNESDAYS WITH DR. JOE

    WHAT IS A FRIEND?

    January 9, 2013

    

    

    “A FRIEND IS A RARE BOOK OF WHICH

    BUT ONE COPY IS MADE”

About thirty years ago, a cherished friend, one of my Adult Degree Program students honored me beyond belief by gifting me with this plaque.  It has held the place of honor hanging on my office wall ever since.  Every day of my life, it greets me and reminds me that each of my friends is indeed a one-of-a-kind.

And the more years that pass, the more such friends come to mean to me.  When we lose such a friend it’s like an irreplaceable part of our being has been ripped out.

It is because of this truth, this undeniable reality of life, that I urge each reader of this blog to stop everything today in order to tell each such friend how very much he or she means to you.

Tomorrow it may be too late!

    BLOG #1, SERIES 4

    WEDNESDAYS WITH DR. JOE

    DR. JOE’S BOOK OF THE MONTH CLUB #16

    GRACE RICHMOND’S FOURSQUARE

    January 2, 2013

It is a new year.  The beauty of new years is that they each offer the opportunity to write on a blank slate, to make a brand new start.  2012 is gone – never to return.  2013 is here, young and vibrant, begging to be used.

It is the perfect blog to anchor our reading for the new year as well.  But before I discuss our sixteenth book, since a number of blog-readers may not have been with us back in the fall of 2011 when Dr. Joe’s Book of the Month Club began, I’m pausing a moment to explain what makes this series different from all others.  Primarily, the fact that I personally choose each selection — not a committee.  From a lifetime of voracious reading, 34 years in the classroom, and studying books en route to a bachelors in history, a masters in English, and a doctorate in English (History of Ideas concentration), certain authors and certain books have risen to the surface.  Books that several generations of students have weighed in on.

I am not a traditional academic, fixated only on classics blessed by academics, but rather a professor who chooses the best and most meaningful books from academic classics, popular culture, and Christian publishing.  Books that have the potential to change lives, to ennoble, to entertain, to inspire.  To put it more succinctly, I draw from books I have loved personally.

A number of our “club” members are former students of mine who miss our book discussions and have signed on for more.  What a joy it is for me to welcome them back into my life!  The rest of you, well you’re now my students too.  A surprisingly large number of people, over the last 21 years, have sighingly said, “If only I could have been one of your students!”  Well, by joining our book club, you become my students.

Though this book was written a little over 90 years ago, never has it been more timely or more needed than it is today.  Today when, all too often, educators jeer at Christianity and Judeo-Christian values in their classrooms, advocating in their place a gospel of secularism divorced from God, and leaving in their wake a moral twilight.

How long has it been since you read a novel that elevated those old-time values Americans used to live by, and expected to see incorporated into the educational institutions of the land?

This is just such a book.  It moved me many years ago, and moves me still.  Expect to see questions such as these incorporated into the fabric of this timeless romance.

•    Are writing and literature that erode rather than enhance and create Judeo-Christian values worth reading and internalizing?

•    Is extensive exposure to the seamy side of life conducive to purity?

•    Do we still need Christian-based colleges and universities today?

•    Is the product (graduates) of Christian colleges different from that of secular institutions that steer away from spiritually based ethics?

•    Are our youth strong enough to resist mentors who themselves live lives at variance from the values once prized by early Americans?

•    How do mentorees avoid becoming clones?

•    What is the impact of positive versus negative examples?

•    Is it easy–or is it difficult–to cripple or destroy the human spirit?

•    What is this thing called “creativity”?

•    How powerful is music?

•    What does it mean to be a real leader?  Ought a leader to be passionate?

•    What is the role of drama in our lives?

•    Is big better than small?

•    How powerful are books?

•    What do you consider most significant about this book?

•    Is it dated?  If so, how?

•    Does the book change you?  How?

GRACE LOUISE SMITH RICHMOND

(1866 – 1959)

Our readers will remember an earlier book selection by Richmond, her wondrous romance, THE TWENTY-FOURTH OF JUNE (SEE May 23, 2012 blog).

Grace Smith was born on March 3, 1866, in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, to a minister father, the Rev. Dr. Charles E. Smith and mother, Catherine “Kitty” Kimball Smith. Grace was a direct descendant ot the state’s founder, Roger Williams.  An only child, Grace grew up the focal center of her parents’ manse.  In 1885, after having pastored Baptist churches in Mt. Auburn, Ohio; New Haven, Connecticut; and Syracuse, New York, Dr. Smith was called to Fredonia, New York; and there he would remain for the rest of his life.  On Oct. 29, 1887, Grace married the personable young family doctor, Dr. Nelson G. Richmond, who purchased a home next door to the manse.  So after marriage, Grace merely moved next door.  And it was here in Fredonia that the bride would write her many stories, essays, and novels.

The home.  It all starts there, the action happens there, and it all ends there.  Because of this, Grace Richmond is known as “The Novelist of the Home.”  Of the thousands of writers who have written about the home, only Richmond earned that title.  Only in her fictional world is the home the all-in-all, the core, the bedrock.

Among her other beloved books are novels such as The Indifference of Juliet, The Second Violin, A Court of Inquiry, Red Pepper Burns, Strawberry Acres, The Brown Study, Red Pepper’s Patients, Red and Black, Foursquare, Cherry Square, Lights Up, At the South Gate, The Listening Post, High Fences, and several Christmas novelettes.  She was among the most prolific short story writers in America.  Most of her novels were serialized as well.  For 40 years, she was never out of print.  Of the dominant family authors of the first half of the twentieth century, only Zane Grey, Gene Stratton Porter, and Harold Bell Wright were better known than she; and her name ranked up there with Frances Hodgson Burnett, Kate Douglas Wiggin, Lucy Maud Montgomery, Pearl S. Buck, Bess Streeter Aldrich, and Temple Bailey.  It was illustrious company indeed.  At the height of her popularity she was paid upward of $30,000 for magazine serializations (a princely sum back then!).  Doubleday would sell more than 2,500,000 copies of her books.

You should be able to pick up a First Edition or reprint of the book on the web.

Foursquare, by Grace S. Richmond (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1922).  First Edition features special chapter illustrations.

BLOG #52, SERIES #3

WEDNESDAYS WITH DR. JOE

CHRISTMAS 2012

December 26, 2012

“And it came to pass in those days that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed . . . .

“And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city.

“And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem (because he was of the house and lineage of David) to be taxed with Mary, his espoused wife, being great with child.

“And so it was that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered.

And she brought forth her first born son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room in the inn.”

Luke 2:1-7, KJV

Wishing each and all of you a blessed Christmastide!