Dh just drove her in; said there wasn't any sign of trouble. Either the drizzle drove them off or the PD explained to them the charges that would follow should they step a toe across the legal line. Very relieved.

The gun rights groups that are actually from here have denounced this idiocy and asked them not to do it. Like zoobie said, these are Disturbing Freaks. To whom the well-being of lots of children, many of them living away from home for the first time and taking their first college finals, is beneath concern. Oooooh I'm angry.

"Come and Take It Texas" and "Don't Comply." There is a parade of rifles simultaneously scheduled for downtown.

I'm going to have to take a roundabout route, and hopefully avoid directly experiencing the excitement, but I'm informed that it will involve sound amplification of the gunshots. So everyone will get to listen to gunplay while scribbling in their blue books. What could possibly be the down side?

Tomorrow I need to get Great Girl to campus for a final exam, about which she's already pretty anxious. This will be made more challenging by the group of lunatics who have decided to stage a Mock Mass Shooting next to the college campus--in fact, along the very road I need to be driving on. Finals Week was deliberately chosen, and in fact this tasteful display was originally planned to be performed right on the campus, in the midst of already-stressed students (until the University said they'd be arrested for criminal trespass). Both the pro- and anti- sides of our current local concealed carry debate think this is an awful idea and have appealed to them not to stage this. They are undeterred. I lack words for any of this.

Well the tamales are actually a Christmas Eve thing: my MIL will be handling Christmas Dinner the next day. So something light with it, just rice and beans or guacamole salad.

Robin, I breathed a sigh of relief when my name wasn't listed as I feel as if I'll never have spare time again. And I haven't even begun Christmas preparations. It'll be last-minute store-bought tamales again this year.... Anyhow let me think if there's some topic I can volunteer to post on, much, much later. I read some Molière, Le Médécin Malgré Lui (in English; who has time?) to keep up with Middle Girl's assignments. Oh that wacky French wife-beating humor, how well it doesn't age. And I dug Out of Africa from the bottom of TBR purgatory. This is a book that apparently has negative Cultural Virtue Points: several people have already expressed surprise that I hadn't already read it and mentioned that they read it back in high school. Which is interesting, as it shows it's not the fact of being a classic that gets CVPs; I think it has to be an intimidating classic. Something everyone's heard of but hasn't read.

Late again. I've finished The Good Soldier Å vejk, which I imagine is what Catch-22 would have been like if written by Rabelais. In Czech. Rosie, I hope things went okay. Amy, happy belated birthday.

Yes! When I read it, people kept being impressed to the point I'd hide the cover. I felt ashamed for getting Cultural Virtue Points for fun reading. I think long plus Russian scares people off.

Oh so late checking in again. The last Thanksgiving guest has gone home (!), the two birthdays immediately following turkey day have been birthdayed, and I can read again. I finished only one short thing in all that vacation break (what was I doing with all my rest time??): Euripides' Alcestis, which I read because Middle Girl was assigned it and I'd forgotten much of it. For the same reason I will shortly be reacquainting myself with Molière. And two-thirds of the way through The Good Soldier Švejk, which Jane has described so well that I am left only to provide an exemplary excerpt. ----------------- '... If I say to you: "Jump into the fire", then you must jump into the fire, even though you don't want to. What are you looking at?' Švejk was looking with interest sideways at the wall where a cage hung with a canary in it, and fixing his kindly eyes on the lieutenant he answered in a gentle, good-natured tone: 'Humbly report, sir, there's a Harz canary in there.' And after having interrupted in this way the flow of the lieutenant's words Švejk adopted a military stance and looked him straight in the eyes without blinking. The lieutenant wanted to say something sharp, but observing the innocent expression on Švejk's face said nothing more than 'The chaplain recommended you as a frightful idiot and I think he was not wrong.' 'Humbly report, sir, he certainly was not wrong, When I was serving as a regular I got a complete discharge for idiocy and for patent idiocy into the bargain. In our regiment only two of us were discharged in this way, me and a Captain von Kaunitz. And whenever that captain went out in the street, if you'll pardon me, sir, he always at the same time picked his left nostril with his left hand, and his right nostril with his right hand, and when he went with us to the parade ground he always made us adopt a formation as though it was going to be a march past and said: "Men, ahem, remember, ahem, that today is Wednesday, because tomorrow will be Thursday, ahem."' Lieutenant Lukà š shrugged his shoulders, like a man who did not know how to express a certain thought and could not immediately find words to do so.

We've all been very busy with the holidays, naturally; when a moderator gets a chance to read this thread, could you let us know? It would be great if there were something as simple as turning off the Edit announcement feature. Thanks. :)

Glad you're back home, Heather; and hoping you have relief soon.

http://www.jerrysartarama.com Jerry's Artarama. It's the only place we can get the German-made Lukas watercolors Middle Girl prefers. http://www.jerrysartarama.com/discount-art-supplies/watercolor-paints-and-mediums/lukas-watercolors-and-sets/lukas-aquarell-studio-watercolor-sets.htm

Life story now deleted. :) Happy to scrape the palimpsests after class....

In Dutch, yet! How is it I've just recently learned about Don Camillo?

Nice socks, Robin. Trying to get some of The Good Soldier Å vejk in while my dad visits for the holidays. Got him started on The Gulag Archipelago, which he'd always been meaning to read; in part as a Cunning Plan to get myself some reading time! Meanwhile I read a quick and fun and fluffy book--yes I do read fun and fluffy: one of Giovanni Guareschi's Don Camillo series, Don Camillo and the Flower Children. The adventures of irascible parish priest Don Camillo in a small Italian town in the '50s and '60s, with his nemesis the Communist Mayor Peppone, and in this book with his newly assigned young, hip, Vatican 2 priest Don "Chichi" Francesco and Don Camillo's outrageous liberated motorcycle chick niece. Like I say, fluffy but I have no regrets. I think I'll have to read the rest of the series actually.

My posts are now including a note at the bottom that they've been edited. My vision is poor and I nearly always have to go back and repair typos, and usually don't note that I've corrected them. Am I doomed to have all my posts say "edited by Violet Crown" at the bottom from now on?

I've always been happy with Key To Algebra, which is really pre-Algebra and a reasonable nod in the direction of Algebra 1. Very inexpensive, straightforward, and easy to use. Like other Key To series, you may have to provide extra problems for further practice or review.

Many happy returns of the day, Robin!

--Now, son, who's that? --Saint Michael. --Who's that? --Saint Michael! --And what did he do? --He cast Satan out of Paradise. --Good boy!

I'd take the Windsors over the Kardashians any day.

And the spread of Bible translations to the middle class had a lot to do with the invention of the printing press. It's always a little weird to hear the Catholics blamed for not widely disseminating the Bible, when it had to be copied entirely by hand. Once the Age of Exploration was underway, translating was going on everywhere. As soon as the Jesuits were in Japan, for instance, they began translating the Bible into Japanese. Yet I only recently got to hear that it was too bad the Japanese peasant converts weren't given copies of the Bible so they could keep their faith alive when the Jesuits were expelled; and that this was more evidence that The Catholic Church Hates the Bible. (Of course, they did keep the faith alive....) I like to think of it as being on the Non-made-up-stuff side of the argument.

There was quite a lot of translation of Scripture into vernacular languages before the Reformation. (Ss Cyril and Methodius being an outstanding example; with papal blessing!) But like you say, people know how to Google, and "vernacular bible translations" is easy to spell, so I won't get longwinded. The main thing is that through most of Church history, in the West, anybody who could read, could read Latin.

Uh, no.

Welcome, Angelaboord! I haven't read any Godden other than In This House of Brede, but I quite liked it. Maybe your book will appear soon.