The Importance of Titles

One of the hardest parts of writing a book is choosing a title. Last week I mentioned my current work-in-progress using the title Burned Out, but I had actually changed it by then. As I got farther into the book, I realized that the title wasn’t appropriate since my protagonist was only burned out for the first third of the story. It is now titled Agamiing after the fictional village where most of it takes place. That may sound like a strange title, but many women’s fiction novels are named after their settings.

I usually consider several options and choose a working title before I start writing. That working title often becomes the final one, but not always.

My first middle-grade historical novel went through several title changes. My protagonist is a half-Japanese girl living in California when Pearl Harbor occurs, and it follows her as she is temporarily confined at the Tanforan racetrack before moving to more permanent quarters at the Topaz War Relocation Center in the Utah desert. My initial title was “Topaz” since that camp takes up more pages than any other location in the book, but I wondered if that was too dull. As I mentioned above, fictional settings are often used in women’s fiction titles, but they are less frequent in children’s novels. Besides, Topaz was a real place and there are many books written about it.

Then I tried “Topaz Blue,” trying to capture the mood of the camp, but I wondered if that was too obstruse or too depressing for my young audience. By the time the book was published, the title had changed to Desert Jewels. Its meaning is explained by one of the teachers in the camp, who calls the children precious jewels and compares them to the topaz found in the desert.

Then there is the middle-grade book that I have coming out in October, which tells the story of a girl whose father takes a job as an assistant lighthouse keeper and moves his family to a remote island. I named the fictional island “Lonely Rock” and used that as the working title for the book. Although it fits the island, it’s a boring title for a book, and I am looking for a better one before the book is published.

My latest thought is to use “Surviving the Storm.” It isn’t one long storm, as in a disaster story, but there are storms in both the book and the protagonist’s heart. The picture at the head of this post is a mockup of a possible cover, using a negative image of a photo I took in 2021 of Portland Head Light in Maine. Although that lighthouse isn’t identical to the one described in the book, it’s close enough and is the best of my own photographs for the purpose. I still have a little time to decide, though, so both the title and the cover could change before publication.

But I’d love to know what you think of them both.

Writing a Book Within a Book

 

Last week I wrote about using a story as a means of recommending books to readers. This week I’m going to talk about how to write a story within a story.

The Arabian Nights is a classic example. To keep her husband from killing her, Shahrazad entertains her husband with story after story, always withholding the ending until the next night. That is the story that frames 1001 others, including the story of Aladdan.

Then there is Shakespeare’s famous play within a play, where Hamlet hires a group of roaming actors to tell the story of his father’s death.

Among my favorite modern examples are Anthony Horowitz’s novels about editor Susan Ryeland. In Magpie Murders, for example, she edits a murder mystery for publication while a real murder mystery unfolds around her. The contents of the book she is editing are an integral part of the plot and are included in the text.

The protagonist of my current work in progress is an author, and Burned Out contains passages from the book she is writing about her detective’s last case. That means I have to face the question of how to best weave the inner book into the main plot.

The fact that the book is being written is important to my story, but, unlike The Magpie Murders, the contents of the inner book are not integral to the plot. That means I only need bits and pieces of the book my protagonist is writing, although I will incorporate enough of the manuscript to give the reader the general plot of the inner book, including the solution to the case.

One thing I’ve discovered, however. It can be as much fun writing a book within a book as it is to write the main one.

I just hope it will be as much fun to read.

Writing Book Recommendations Into a Story

 

Whenever I read a book that mentions what the characters are reading, I rush to the computer to read the description and check the “Look Inside” feature. If the book looks interesting, I buy it. If not, I give it a pass. That doesn’t mean it isn’t a good book, however. It’s simply that everybody’s tastes are different.

I don’t always get it right, of course. There have been times when I didn’t think I’d like something until I read it. It isn’t only a truism that you can’t judge a book by its cover—sometimes you can’t judge it by its description, either.

Most of my protagonists are big readers, and I often mention their reading materials in my stories. Occasionally there is a reason to create or use a fictional title, but absent that I use real ones. That’s because I like to share the books I enjoy with my readers.

The books listed in the graphic at the top of this post are just some of the ones my current protagonist reads. If you haven’t read them, check them out. If they don’t interest you, that’s fine, but if they do it will give you something to add to your reading list.

Because I’m always looking for ways to encourage my readers to read other books.

Happy Birthday USA

 

Two-hundred-fifty seems like an awesome milestone birthday. For a person, it would be. As a country, though, it means we are still in our infancy. Compare the USA to Egypt, which has existed over 5,000 years since it was first unified, and even to England, which is over 1,000 years old.

Being an infant isn’t such a bad thing. Infants are full of promise. While they are born with some limitations (not everyone has the ability to be a great athlete or a concert violinist, for example), they are also born with vast possibilities. So while it isn’t true to say they can grow up to be anything they want, they do have immeasurable choices. They don’t achieve their full potential on their own, however. They need parents who play an active role in their lives, guiding them rather than criticizing them.

Even for people who approve of the current political environment, few are perfectly happy with the course our country is currently taking. It’s been that way for the last 250 years, and it will continue that way for however many years are left in the country’s future.

Just as with a human infant, the USA has plenty of potential to turn into something great if its parents take their responsibilities seriously, guiding rather than criticizing.

Whether you agree with the current administration or not, the country’s relative youth is a source of hope. But here’s the rub. America’s citizens, both individually and as a whole, are its parents.

Do you take your responsibility seriously?

He Comes at Every Season

 

With the advent of summer, I decided to print a poem about the seasons that I wrote back in 2014. Without further ado, here it is.

He Comes

He comes in summer
In thunderstorms and showers
Cleansing the earth.

He comes in autumn
When trees proclaim his glory
With blood-red leaves.

 

He comes in winter
As white blankets cover seeds
Soon to awake.

He comes in spring
When a tiny robin’s egg
Brings forth new life.

 

Jesus comes all year
Into the hearts of Christians
Saved by His grace.

The Missing Piece

 

Have you ever thought you had finished a jigsaw puzzle, only to find one piece left over? That happened to me this past week.

The leftover piece had been driving me insane because I kept trying to figure out where it fit. It had black on it, and the only areas I hadn’t completed were yellow with minor amounts of blue. Or that’s what I thought, anyway. But after I had finished the rest of the puzzle, I ran my hand over the entire thing and found the hole and a place where I hadn’t been looking. Yes, there was black there, but I had thought everything was filled in.

Obviously, the problem wasn’t an extra piece that was left over but simply one that was left out.

Like jigsaw puzzles, novels must be carefully crafted so that every piece fits.

I was halfway through my current work-in-progress when I woke up in the middle of the night because my subconscious told me my timeline didn’t work right. As I lay there, I came up with what I thought was a good solution, and I got up and went into the office to write it down before I forgot it.

When I looked at it again in the morning, I realized that it solved the timeline issue but created new problems. Now fully awake, I came up with a better solution. Unfortunately, it required me to make changes throughout the manuscript. Still, the extra work was worth it. The new solution fit into the hole exactly, both as to shape and as to color.

Because, like jigsaw puzzles, novels need the right pieces to complete them.

A Hodgepodge of Writing Quotes

 

The TV game show Jeopardy is known for its skill in finding synonyms for the word “miscellaneous” when creating categories with unrelated material. I’m not as good at it, but I try nonetheless, so I am calling this a hodgepodge of writing quotes. It includes a little bit of everything about being a writer.

***

“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.” Stephen King, On Writing (2000)

“Writing is one-third imagination, one-third experience, and one-third observation.” William Faulkner

“If you’re going to be a writer, the first essential is just to write. Do not wait for an idea, Start writing something and the ideas will come. You have to turn the faucet on before the water starts to flow.” Louis L’ Amour

“It is better to write a bad first draft than to write no first draft at all.” Will Shetterly

“Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” E.L. Doctorow

“Don’t say it was ‘delightful’; make us say ‘delightful’ when we read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers ‘Please will you do my job for me?’” C.S. Lewis

“The difference between the almost-right word and the right word is really a large matter—it’s the difference between the ‘lightning bug’ and the ‘lightning.’” Mark Twain

“Don’t say you were a bit confused and sort of tired and a little depressed and somewhat annoyed. Be tired. Be confused. Be depressed. Be annoyed. Don’t hedge your prose with little timidities. Good writing is lean and confident.” William Zinsser, On Writing Well (2001)

“There are no rules in writing. There are useful principles. Throw them away when they’re not useful. But always know what you’re throwing away.” Will Shetterly

“I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English—it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don’t let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in. When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don’t mean utterly, but kill most of them—then the rest will be valuable.” Mark Twain in a Letter to D.W. Bowser, 3/20/1880

“Broadly speaking, short words are best, and the old words, when short, are best of all.” Winston Churchill

“Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader. Not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.” E.L. Doctorow

“Drama is life with the dull bits cut out.” Alfred Hitchcock

“The difference between fiction and reality is that fiction has to make sense.” Tom Clancy

“There is no great writing, only great rewriting.” Justice Brandeis

***

I’ll finish up with this quote by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: “Great is the art of beginning, but greater is the art of ending."

Writing is An Addiction

 

We’re having some work done on our condo and it will be a hectic week, so I’m taking the easy way out and populating today’s blog post with quotes about being a writer.

Why We Write

“I write for the same reason I breathe—because if I didn’t, I would die.” Isaac Asimov

“We do not write because we want to; we write because we have to.” Somerset Maugham

“The only reason for being a professional writer is that you just can’t help it.” Leo Rosten

“If you can see yourself surviving the rest of your life without writing, then don’t try writing. It’s a passion. It’s something that pushes you, that thrills you.” Stephen Bly

“You might be able to take a break from writing, but you won’t be able to take a break from being a writer.” Stephen Leigh

“Writing a book is a long, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.” George Orwell, Why I Write (1946)

It’s Not an Easy Job

“Writing is the hardest work in the world. I have been a bricklayer and a truck driver, and I tell you—as if you haven’t been told a million times already—that writing is harder. Lonelier. And nobler and more enriching.” Harlan Ellison

“I would never encourage anyone to be a writer. It’s too hard.” Eudora Welty

“A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.” Thomas Mann, Essays of Three Decades (1947)

***

Stay tune next week for quotes on other problems writers face.

__________

The image at the top of this post is an illustration created by Frank Merrill for a 19^th century printing of Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. It is in the public domain because of its age.

Portraying a Character's Attitude Toward Slavery

 

One dilemma that a writer of historical fiction faces is how to make the story historically accurate without offending readers. As mentioned last week, I faced this dilemma when writing my middle-grade historical novel Learning to Surrender with a protagonist who grew up in a culture where slavery was the established way of life.

My protagonist has never thought deeply about the issue, but here is a quote from the first chapter showing her initial feelings.  

As Charlotte waited for the artillery to stop firing, she frowned. Why did the North want to get rid of slavery? The Gibsons had always treated their slaves well, and Benjamin and Nettie didn’t have to worry about anything. They had a comfortable place to sleep and plenty of food to eat, and her parents never beat them. Yes, there were some bad masters and mistresses, but that was the fault of the owners, not the system.

That passage takes place while Charlotte, her family, and their two slaves are cowering in a small cave as cannonballs and bullets fly around them. The danger Charlotte is in and the fear it causes her create some sympathy for her in spite of her attitude toward slavery. At the least, they give the reader a reason not to give up on her yet.

The story tries to be true to the historical context in which slavery existed and was accepted by the white community in the deep South, but it also shows my protagonist grappling with the issue and learning what slavery meant to those in figurative (as well literal) chains. Here is the book blurb:

When the Union armies surround Vicksburg, 12-year-old Charlotte and her family find themselves living in a cave. As she discovers what it is like to lose control of her life, will her attitude toward slavery change?

Of course it does. Otherwise, she would have been an unsympathetic character all the way until the end.

If the readers had gotten that far.

__________

My research indicates that the image at the top of this post, titled “The Auction Sale,” is one of six illustrations created by Hammet Billings for the 1852 edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe. It is in the public domain because of its age.

A Historical Dilemma

 

Last Sunday’s Bible class topic was Paul’s letter to Philemon, which deals with slavery. It reminded me of the struggle I had with that issue when writing Learning to Surrender, which has since been published and is available on Amazon. The story takes place during the Civil War siege of Vicksburg, and my dilemma over slavery was how to make the book historically accurate without offending my readers. This week’s blog post is a slightly revised reprint from February 19, 2024, just before the book was published. Next week I’ll tell you how I resolved the dilemma mentioned in the reprinted post.

Creating Sympathy for Characters with Unsympathetic Beliefs

During a trip down the Mississippi River to research a different book, I came across information on the 1863 Siege of Vicksburg, where the residents dug and lived in caves that served as bomb shelters. The idea intrigued me, but it had one big negative.

There were few, if any, abolitionists in Vicksburg at the time. Early in the writing process, I came up with several ideas of how I might make my character and her family secret opponents to slavery, but Roland wasn’t sure that even closet abolitionists existed in the deep South then. Besides, that choice didn’t feel right. Historical realism dictates that my main character believe in slavery, so how could I make her sympathetic in spite of her unsympathetic beliefs?

This isn’t an unusual situation for a writer to be in. Many stories begin with an unsympathetic protagonist whose change in character or beliefs is at the crux of the story. Think of Ebenezer Scrooge, who starts out as a people-hating miser and ends up as an open-hearted and generous person. Or Mary Lennox from The Secret Garden, who is one of the most spoiled, selfish heroines in children’s literature until she starts having compassion for someone else.

Readers don’t usually identify with unsympathetic characters, and they don’t like to read about people they don’t identify with. Unless we catch their interest at the beginning of the book, they won’t read on. That means that one of our tasks as writers is to generate sympathy for unsympathetic characters or for otherwise likeable characters with unsympathetic beliefs. Charles Dickens did it with humor. Frances Hodgson Burnett did it by showing the circumstances that formed Mary’s obnoxious character.

Generating sympathy for a main character with unsympathetic beliefs is just part of the job.

__________

The drawing at the head of this post comes from Harper’s Encyclopedia of United States History (vol. 10), John Lossing Benson, ed. (New York, NY, Harper and Brothers, 1912). It is in the public domain because of its age.

Developing Characters

 

The protagonist in my current work-in-progress has to give a keynote speech on developing characters. The majority of the speech goes horribly wrong, but it starts well. In fact, I’m so much in love with her opening that I have used it in the next two paragraphs. What follows them is an abbreviated version of how Jo might have continued if she hadn’t been burned out. The writing project I reference is one of my own, however.

William Faulkner said, “It begins with a character, usually, and once he stands up on his feet and begins to move, all I can do is trot along behind him with a paper and pencil trying to keep up long enough to put down what he says and does.” That’s been my experience, too. As writers, we don’t create our characters. They create themselves.

So where do we find them, and how do we keep up with them once we do?

Every writer is different, but here is my process.

Unlike Faulkner, I begin with a plot idea, but, like him, it is my characters who shape the story. I find them in bits and pieces of the people around me in real life, and, occasionally, in books. My mind accumulates the knowledge subconsciously, and it pops out when I need a character.

Imagine Lewis Carroll creating the Mad Hatter and his friends. He can’t have known anyone with those exact personalities, and obviously the traits he used were greatly exaggerated. But he must have known people with the seeds of those characteristics or he couldn’t have painted such a convincing picture.

I create the characters, and I get to tell them what to do. But sometimes they have a mind of their own. When that happens, it’s my job to decide whether to let them follow it.

For example, I have been working on a story where a girl heads out west in a wagon train with her older sister and brother-in-law. Although all of them are inexperienced, my original plan was to make both the sister and the brother-in-law particularly naïve and helpless. It wasn’t long before the brother-in-law rebelled, however.

To put it in Faulker’s words, the character stood up on his feet and began to move, and I had to trot along behind him trying to keep up. Fortunately, he knew himself better than I did, and the book is better for letting him take the lead.

In the long run, it’s my book, and I get to decide how my characters will act. But forcing them to do things they don’t want to do creates cardboard cutouts. It also proves the truth of a quote by G.K. Chesterton, “A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.”

Because sometimes the characters know themselves better than I do.

__________

The image at the top of this post is one of John Tenniel’s illustrations for the original 1865 edition of Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. It is in the public domain because of its age.

Plotting a New Book

 

I’ve just begun the first draft of a new book. This one is women’s fiction about a writer who is burned out. No, it isn’t me, especially not the burnout part, although we do share the same writing philosophy and practices.

In Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, the landscape is set out like a giant chess board and Alice has to figure out how to get across it to change from a pawn into a queen. That’s sort of how I look at setting out to write a book.

What follows is a reprint of my July 20. 2020 post. The murder mystery that’s referenced is my still unpublished COVID-19 project.

The Power of Flexibility

Writers are sometimes classified as either plotters or pantsers. Plotters have every twist and turn planned before they even start writing, while pantsers start with a germ of an idea and then sit down and write by the seat of their pants. Then there are the many writers, like me, who fall somewhere in between.

I start with an outline. I know the beginning and the ending and then pencil in each chapter. That’s sort of like deciding where to go on vacation and then choosing the route to take. Maybe we want to get there quickly, so we stick to the freeways. Or we decide to take the scenic route. Or maybe we want to see specific places that require us to go out of the way.

The outline is what gets me started, just as a trip itinerary does. But although the destination rarely changes, the route may.

As a trip planner, I know every stop I intend to make. Then one site takes less time than we expected so we add something else nearby. Or another site is so fascinating that we spend extra time there and may cut something else out. We may even decide to leave the freeway and wander along the scenic route or vice versa. To be honest, though, that doesn’t happen very often. My trip planning is more rigid than my writing outline.

As I write, new ideas pop into my mind. They often fit within the current structure, but that isn’t always the case. I’ve already added two unplanned chapters to the first draft of my murder mystery because I need them to round out my main POV character. I have also cut—or rather combined—several chapters after I realized that my secondary POV character wouldn’t be present for those events and would have to learn about them second-hand rather than by participating in them. Sometimes telling is necessary, but it takes less space than showing does.

If I didn’t start with an outline, I would soon get lost. But if I stuck to it rigidly, I would miss out on the scenes that pop up along the way.

Flexibility is key.

__________

The image at the top of this post is one of John Tenniel’s illustrations for the original 1872 edition of Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll. It is in the public domain because of its age.

Celebrating Moms

 

This is the eleventh Mother’s Day that I will celebrate without mine. A year-and-a-half before she died, I wrote a poem to her and all mothers. I suppose it works best for mothers of young children, but it celebrates all of them. Here it is.

For Mother’s Day

 

More precious than diamonds,

     More fun than movie nights,

Sweeter than chocolate,

     Lovelier than roses.

 

Mothers.

 

Necklaces, rings, and bracelets,

     Tear-jerkers and popcorn,

Cadbury, Godiva, and Fannie May,

     Fragrant Damask and climbing Floribunda.

 

Mother’s Day gifts.

 

Best of all are happy children,

     Sentimental verses sincerely meant,

Gifts made with childish hands,

     Burnt toast on breakfast trays.

 

Love.

 

Happy Mother’s Day.

Cheap Art

 

My regular readers know that I love photography. I’ll never be an Ansel Adams or a Dorothea Lange, but I enjoy taking pictures and seeing what I can do with them.

Over the years I’ve used my images for jigsaw puzzles, placemats, note cards, mugs, and, of course, wall art. My office is decorated with photos from my travels and our dining room has a wall of Lake Michigan lighthouses, but my most recent venture is our newly remodeled bathroom. Instead of re-hanging the art we had before, Roland suggested using some of my photographs. And since the predominant color in the bathroom is now grey, I suggested using black-and-white images.

After going through some of my photos, we decided on a waterfall theme and selected three images to enlarge and hang. The one at the top of this post is Multnomah Falls in Oregon, which I took while on a cruise of the Columbia and Snake Rivers in 2025. The two that follow were both taken in Minnesota during a 2015 research trip. The first is the High Falls at Pigeon River, and the second was taken somewhere along Minnesota 61.

The title of this post is a little misleading, though. By the time I paid to get the images blown up to 20 X 16 inches, bought three nice frames, and replaced the original plexiglass in the frames with a non-glare version, it wasn’t cheap art. Still, I’m happy with the result and prefer what we have to something we might have bought “off the rack.”

It’s nice to have a hobby that I can get some use from.

I Thank God for My Beta Readers

 

I am currently revising a middle-grade historical novel to incorporate my beta readers’ comments, and I just received the evaluations back on another one. The responses highlight how important beta readers are to the writing process.

It’s been a while since I was my readers’ age, and when I write for boys I have the further disadvantage of never having been one. So it’s extremely helpful to get feedback from members of my intended audience. Fortunately, a local school has been responsive to my request for beta readers from the third through sixth grades.

One of the questions on my evaluation form asks if the beginning of the story makes the evaluator want to keep reading. Most of the time the answer is “yes,” although the reason might be fairly vague. Each of the last two times I asked for feedback, however, I got a couple of “no”s, and I am taking them to heart.

The book I am currently revising begins in Oklahoma during the dust bowl and started with fears of losing the farm to foreclosure. One of the “no”s said it didn’t grab her attention, but the other was more explicit, stating that “it sounded like a very old boring story that grandparents would tell you.” I hadn’t thought of it that way at the time, but now I have images of the old silent films where a villain with a handlebar mustache is attempting to foreclose and ends up tying the farmer’s pretty daughter to a railroad track. Or maybe she is referring to the type of story where the grandparents walked five miles to school every day and it was uphill in both directions.

Based on those beta reader comments, I revised the first chapter so that the book now starts with a dust storm. The foreclosure subplot still exists but is less dominant, with more emphasis on the physical dangers from the dust storms.

That book has a female protagonist and, therefore, less appeal to boys, so I didn’t have any male beta readers. I did ask for them on the one I just got back, however, since it has a male protagonist and is intended to attract boys.

That story has Matthew and his family traveling to the California gold fields in 1850 using a route that takes them over the Isthmus of Panama. It begins on a farm in New York and, although Matthew is restless from the start, the first chapter is used primarily to set the scene. One of my male beta readers said the beginning did not make him want to keep reading “because it sounded boring to me, like more actionpacked themes.” I assume that he meant he wants more action packed into it, and I will try to do that when I revise the manuscript.

Not that I can accommodate every beta reader comment, however. The other boy who answered “no” to wanting to keep reading gave “it was sad” as the reason. Matthew’s mother and dog die before the story begins, and the farm constantly reminds him of them. That’s part of the reason he is restless, and I think the story will be weakened if I get rid of that motivation. Still, maybe I can tone the references down a bit.

One of my major concerns with that book is whether 14-year-old Matthew’s selfishness will turn off readers, and male readers in particular. I didn’t ask that specific question because I didn’t want to put it in their minds if it wasn’t already there, but I hoped that several of the questions I routinely ask would clue me in. One of those questions asks if the beta reader would want Matthew as a friend. The majority of comments said he seems nice, although one boy described him as “disloyal but nice.”

Two other routine questions can also help me discover the readers’ feelings about the protagonist’s selfishness. One asks if Matthew acted like a 14-year-old boy. One male beta reader said he acted too young, while the other readers classified him as “just right.” More telling is the question whether Matthew sounds like a real 14-year-old boy and asks for reasons. The beta reader who said he acted too young also said he didn’t act like a real 14-year-old boy, but the reader must not have felt Matthew was too far off the mark. As the comment put it, “He sounds 13 so not that big of a difference if he sounded a little more mature he’d make the cut.”

I’ll go through the next draft with an eye to making sure I’m not overdoing Matthew’s selfishness, but I was encouraged by the evaluations.

Beta readers provide valuable feedback that helps me improve my stories, so I literally thank God for them.

__________

The image at the top of this post is from the 1925 edition of Little Men by Louisa May Alcott. The illustrator was Clara Miller Burd, and the illustration is in the public domain because of its age.

A Jigsaw Puzzle World

 

Two or three weeks ago I started a jigsaw puzzle created by Bits and Pieces using a painting of the Last Supper by Ruane Manning. Unfortunately, I didn’t finish it until this Thursday, which was a week after we celebrated the event it commemorates. Nonetheless, it’s never too late to remember the Last Supper or its aftermath.

The puzzle was a fitting activity for Holy Week and the days following Easter. It also reminded me of a poem I wrote in 2022. It’s rather juvenile and will never win a prize, but the thought fits the season. So here it is for your reading pleasure.

A Jigsaw Puzzle World

The world was in pieces,

     Broken by Sin.

Then Jesus came

     To put it together again.

If you’re groaning at how bad that was, I’ll leave you with this cliché.

It’s the thought that counts.

Celebrating Easter

 

With the war in the Middle East, it’s unlikely that anyone celebrated Easter at the Garden Tomb in Jerusalem this year.* In fact, its website says the tomb is closed until further notice “due to the current situation.”

Nobody knows exactly where Jesus’ body was laid after His death, and the Garden Tomb is only one of several possible sites. Still, I celebrated Easter there in 1958 and, as a seven-year-old, I thought it was an awesome experience. I’m sure it would be even more moving as an adult. So it’s too bad that nobody is celebrating there this year.

Still, it is the event, not the place, that matters.

The important thing is that Christ died for our sins and then rose again. To paraphrase Paul in 1 Corinthians 15, if He hadn’t risen, we would still be dead in our sins. Or, to put it in the words of the chorus of the hymn “This Joyful Eastertide” by George Woodward (also taken from 1 Corinthians 15):

Had Christ, who once was slain,

Not burst his three-day prison,

Our faith had been in vain;

But now has Christ arisen, arisen, arisen;

But now has Christ arisen!

 

Alleluia! Christ is risen! Alleluia!

__________

* My father took the photo at the top of this post on Easter Sunday, 1958, as we attended service at the Garden Tomb.

Pieta Art

 

Pietà means pity, and in art Pietàs depict the dead Jesus lying on His mother’s lap after being taken down from the cross. The image was first popularized by Michealangelo’s 1499 sculpture, which was created for the Vatican and still resides in Saint Peter’s Basilica there.

That’s the photo at the top of this page, which I took during a visit to the Vatican in 2018. Unfortunately, it was behind bulletproof glass because it had been vandalized in 1972. The line running through the photo is in the glass, and I couldn’t get the Pietà from the right angle without the line.

There is nothing in the Bible to support the fact that Mary held her dead Son, although it isn’t impossible. Still, I like the image because it shows Jesus’ humanity by depicting His human mother as well as His death.

Here are a few other pieces of art that depict the Pietà, starting with a painting by Giovanni Bellini around 1505.

The next two are sculptures from the 16^th Century. The first is Spanish, but the actual artist is unknown. The second was created by Ippolito Scalza in 1579 and includes two additional characters. If you look beneath Mary’s raised arm, you can see Mary Magdaline caressing Jesus’ hand and foot, and the man is Nicodemus holding the hammer, rope, and ladder used to remove Jesus from the cross.

The final photo shows a later painting done by French artist William-Adolphe Bouguereau in 1876. In it, angels mourn with Mary.

As we look toward Good Friday, let us not forget that it was Jesus’ humanity that enabled Him to die for our sins.

For that, I will be forever grateful.

The Rhythms of Argentina and Uruguay

 

As mentioned last week, Roland and I began our recent South American cruise in Buenos Aires, Argentina. And what does that make you think of? The tango, of course.

On our first full day in Buenos Aires, we went to lunch and a tango show at La Ventana. We have discovered that music and dance shows on excursions are usually geared toward tourists and vary greatly in quality. This show was quite good, however. The photo at the top and the following one show some of the dancers.

Besides the dancers, the tango show included a couple who could have been in a circus because of their skills with their hands, both on drums and with swinging ropes. That’s the next two photos.

The next day we were docked in Montevideo, Uruguay, where we visited the Museo del Carnaval. Uruguay outdoes New Orleans by celebrating Carnival for 40 days. Aside from the costumes and parades, there are Murga groups presenting musical stage shows that are mostly satire on the national and world-wide political situation. We saw a show at the museum, and it was pretty interesting.  Instead of politics, however, this show was designed to explain what Murga groups are and do. That’s the final three photos.

From there, our trip concentrated more on wildlife and geography, which I covered in earlier blog posts. The entire trip was entertaining and educational, but next week I’ll leave South America and turn to another subject.