A couple of years ago a correspondent suggested that I try some of
Robert Barnard’s mystery novels. I managed to find a couple
at a local used bookstore, and indeed I enjoyed them, but I had little
luck finding any more after that. That changed during my recent trip to
Ann Arbor; at a used bookstore there, I found nine of his paperbacks at
$2.50 each, and I nabbed them.

This is the first of the set, and it’s a treat. It takes place in the
Yorkshire town of Hexton-on-Weir. The ladies of Hexton are set in their
ways, and when it comes to Divine Services their tastes are decidely
low-church. Nothing Romish or papistical for them. But the long-time
Anglican vicar has passed away, and the Bishop’s appointee for the
position is not only high-church (Heavens! He lights candles and wears a
cassock!) but also celibate. This cannot be borne, for the ladies of
Hexton are accustomed to running the town behind the scenes, and an
unmarried vicar simply Will Not Do. How would they control him?

This is the kind of mystery in which the murder comes about halfway
through, thus giving you two mysteries in one–first, who’s going to die,
and second, whodunnit. The details of village politics are delightfully
petty without becoming farcical, and the ending is satisfyingly
unpredictable. All in all, I give it two thumbs up, and I’m looking
forward to the next one.

Here’s another kids’ book I read to myself rather than to David. It had
been a tiring day, and I wanted a comfort book. This one filled the bill
admirably. I don’t intend to say much about it; I expect that most of my
readers have already made up their minds about the Narnia books one way or
another.

However, this book does illustrate one of the points I made in my recent
post on The Two Churches: it shows how Christ (in the
person of Aslan) meets us where we are–and then takes us further than we
could have imagined, and often not in a direction we’d have been willing to go without his prompting.

What this book made abundantly clear to me is that I am almost totally
ignorant of French history. That is something I intend to remedy before
continuing the series. It would be nice to be able to at least place
Richelieu in the correct century without looking him up.

This is a romance, a spy novel, a tale of male friendship and a character
study of different temperaments. Actually, it reminded me more of a
superhero tale than anything else. There’s dashing about and derring do,
really cool fight scenes, a little romance, a lovely queen to protect and a
couple of merciless and totally evil bad folks. The heroes are courageous
and clever and there’s even loyal sidekicks to step in and help out them
out.

Dumas occasionally gets a bit wordy, but then I have never had a problem
skipping or breezing thru something if it bored me. I can always go back and
reread if I miss something. I definitely plan on continuing the series,
after brushing up on the actual history behind it.

If you’re just here for the book reviews and the cute kid stories,
feel free to skip this.

Some little while ago, the General Convention of the Episcopal Church met
and confirmed a gay man, Gene Robinson, as Bishop; the Convention also
determined that it should be up to individual bishops to allow or forbid
the blessing of same-sex unions within their dioceses. These decisions
were in all the newspapers, and have been widely commented on in the
blogosphere.

What’s largely been lost in most of the commentary I’ve read is how
deeply split the Episcopal Church is on this issue–and how little, at base,
the division has to do with sexual morality. Instead, it’s the result of
a disagreement about the basic meaning of the Christian faith. It is not
an exaggeration to say that for many years now the Episcopal Church has
in fact been two churches: one preaching the Gospel of Repentance, and
one preaching the Gospel of Inclusion.

Katherine Kersten, writing in the Wall Street
Journal, said this about General Convention:

Speakers who urged approval of homosexual unions did not use the
vocabulary or categories of thought of the Bible or the Book of Common
Prayer. Instead, they appeared to embrace a new gospel, heavily
influenced by America’s secular, therapeutic culture. This gospel has two
watchwords: inclusion and affirmation. Its message? Jesus came to make us
feel good about ourselves.

While I doubt the speakers in question would agree with quite that
formulation of their views, Kersten is more-or-less correct. She goes on,

Adherents of the gospel of inclusion offered arguments like
this: “The church should bless same-sex partnerships so everyone feels
included.” “People will want to join this church if they see others being
welcomed.” “God is love. He doesn’t care about the gender of the people
we love.”

This week’s events in Minneapolis suggest that, in 2003, the
three historic bulwarks of Episcopal Church doctrine–Scripture,
tradition and reason–are crumbling in the face of the gospel of
inclusion and affirmation.

To be sure, the new gospel’s disciples do not generally
jettison Scripture outright. Instead, they radically reinterpret it,
using techniques imported from America’s postmodern universities. Walter
Brueggemann, a theologian quoted in a pro-same-sex-union Episcopal
publication, put it like this: Scripture is “the chief authority when
imaginatively construed in a certain interpretive trajectory.” Approached
this way, inconvenient passages can be dismissed as inconsistent with
“Jesus’ self-giving love.”

Tradition fares no better at the hands of the gospel of
inclusion. The Episcopal Church has always regarded marriage as the
sacrament that sanctifies the “one flesh” union of man and woman. But the
new gospel expands the notion of sacrament to include anything that
“mediates” the grace or blessing of God and causes us to give thanks. As
a result, the Rev. Gene Robinson can describe his relationship with his
male partner as sacramental, because “in his unfailing and unquestioning
love of me, I experience just a little bit of the kind of never-ending,
never-failing love that God has for me.”

In short, the Gospel of Inclusion says that God accepts us where ever and
whoever we are, and loves us as we are, and that because he loves us we
are OK as we are. The Gospel of Inclusion thus has little use for
forgiveness of sins–achieving personal wholeness, instead, is the key. As
Kersten points out, though, this view requires
explaining away inconvenient Biblical passages. Now, the Good Lord knows
there are many inconvenient Biblical passages I’d just as soon
ignore–and that’s generally a danger signal that I’d better
pay close attention to them instead.

The Gospel of Repentance is the traditional view of Christianity. It
says that yes, indeed, God loves us where ever and whoever we are, and
that he calls each of us into a close relationship with Him. But He does
not call us to remain as we are–He calls us to repent of everything in
us that is incompatible with Heaven and to be transformed by His love.

The Gospel of Inclusion says that we are Holy because God loves us; the
Gospel of Repentance says that because God loves us, He will endeavour to
make us Holy. The central fact of Christianity, Christ’s crucifixion and
resurrection, is the prime act by which God so endeavours to make us
Holy; thanks to Christ’s sacrifice, we can be forgiven of our sins. But
the Gospel of Inclusion, which says that we are Holy as we are, has
little use for the crucifixion:

The gospel of inclusion has little place for repentance or
transformation. Thus, it has little place for the central feature of
Christianity: Christ’s Cross, which brings redemption through suffering.
This new gospel may be appealing, for it permits its adherents to
“divinize” their own, largely secular agenda. But in a Christian church,
it cannot easily coexist with the Gospel of Christ.

And, in fact, it does not. And this is why many conservative Episcopalians
are so distressed and dismayed by the General Convention’s recent
actions: they are yet another sign that the Gospel of Christ is being
jettisoned in favor of the Gospel of Inclusion. The Gospel that has the
power to transform is being abandoned in favor of the Gospel that says,
“There, there.” I believe that the followers of the Gospel of Inclusion
are genuinely motivated by a desire to share Christ’s love with all
people–but thanks to their theology, the people who come to the Episcopal
Church thanks to their inclusiveness are being sold a sham–a “faith” that
affirms them in their broken-ness and tells them that they are, thereby,
whole, rather than a faith that can bring them to true wholeness. In the
end, the inclusivists are short-changing the very people they hope to
help.

Please note: during this essay I’ve said nothing one way or the other
about homosexuality–following C.S. Lewis, I find it unwise to shoot my
mouth off over temptations to which I’m not personally subject. More to
the point, I’m not claiming that gays are any more broken than the
population as a whole, nor that homosexuality is the chief sign of
broken-ness in a gay person’s life. In my experience, there’s plenty of
sin to go around and although Lust gets all the press the other six
Deadly Sins–Pride, Envy, Sloth, and the rest–are generally more serious
problems for most people.

So it’s not the moral question that gets me riled; it’s the attempt to
make the teachings of Christianity conform to the spirit of the age, and
the consequent rejection of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross.

So why do I bring this up? As I say, many conservative Episcopalians are
distressed by these recent events, and are wondering what they should do.
Some have proclaimed that the Episcopal Church is dead. Many–whole
parishes, in some cases–are seriously planning to leave the Episcopal
Church altogether. I think there’s another way–but that’s another post.

Coraline and her mother and father move into an old house that’s been
subdivided into flats. It’s an intriguing place, with an overgrown old
garden in back, two ladies who were once in the theater living downstairs, and
an old man who claims to be training mice to perform on stage living
upstairs. There’s a lot to explore, which suits Coraline down to the
ground. The most interesting thing is a door in the corner of the
drawingroom, a door that used to lead to the other half of the floor but
now goes nowhere because it’s been bricked up on the other side.

And then one day it rains, and Coraline has to explore indoors. And
though the old black door is locked, Coraline knows where the key is
kept….

Coraline is supposedly a children’s book, written for (I’d
guess) intermediate readers; it’s also a truly creepy little horror
story. As always, Gaiman does a wonderful job of creating a tiny little
world with its own surreal laws–what I think of as a pocket universe.
The only author I can think of who has done it better is
Sheri Tepper, and even she’s done so only in her “Marianne”
series, which is blessedly free of the heavy-handed Significance of her
later books.

Being a Gaiman fan I bought it for myself, and while I might read
it to Dave, I think I’ll wait for a couple of years–too scary.

The other day David bought himself an SD Gundam action figure. SD Gundam is some kind of Japanese cartoon that he’s seen on TV. The figure looks like a robot in bright white, red, and yellow samurai armor. We had the following conversation about it.

“I think I’ll call him ‘Ninjer’,” says David.

“You mean ‘Ninja’,” I say.

“No, I mean ‘Ninjer’,” says David.

“But that sounds like he has a ninjury,” I say.

David looks at me with withering scorn.

“Dad, you just don’t get it.”

Here’s the timeline. Last Thursday evening, I received my new camcorder. By Saturday afternoon, I’d shot a bunch of footage of the kids, and just for fun a little animation of a couple of David’s toys (An SD Gundam action figure, and a Lego Bionicle named Rakshi, if it matters to you). By the end of Sunday afternoon, I’d edited the rough footage into three short little movies totalling about five or six minutes of video, deleting infelicitous moments, tweaking the recorded audio, adding music, a few judicious transitions, and finally titles, and burned the whole thing onto DVD. We watched it on our TV before we had dinner.

And thanks to David Pogue and his book iMovie 3 and iDVD I even avoided the worst of the clueless newbie mistakes while shooting the footage. I held the camera steady; I didn’t use the zoom while I was shooting; I shot a variety of close up, medium, and wide shots; and I didn’t move the camera except to follow moving children. For these things, I can take a little credit–I might be clueless, but I’m teachable.

For the rest, I have to thank the folks at Sony and at Apple. It’s amazing what you can do when you have the right tools.

Around Christmas last year I started working my way through my library, winnowing out the books that I no longer wanted. I thought it would be appropriate to keep a list of them for future reference, and for fun I posted a full list to this weblog, with reasons. And then I got involved in other things, and now, about nine months later, I’m finally getting back to it. So here it is, still more books I no longer want.

Generative Programming, by Czarnecki and Eisenecker

This guys wrote a book to persuade everyone that “generative
programming” is going to be the next big thing. Now, generative
programming isn’t just one thing; they try to tie together a whole
bunch of disparate stuff, including some really exciting research done
by Charles Simonyi at Microsoft on something he calls “Intentional
Programming.” The authors really get quite excited about it. It’s a
pity that Microsoft pulled the plug on the research around the time the
book was published.

The XML Companion, by Neil Bradley

By now, you either know what XML is or you don’t care. I’m quite
possibly in both camps.

Windows 98 Annoyances, by David A. Karp

Blissfully, I am no longer annoyed by Windows 98.

Manuscript Submission, by Scott Edelstein.

I picked this up second-hand some years ago when I still thought that
submitting manuscripts was a good idea. Posting them on-line is
easier, and it’s more likely that somebody will read them. Life’s too
short to chase the publishing companies, unless one has no other choice.

Tcl/Tk Tools, by Mark Harrison et al.

A fine book, but it was published in 1997. There’s been a lot of water
under this particular bridge in the last six years.

Bloodwinter, by Tom Deitz

I went through a Tom Dietz phase some years ago; more recently I tried
re-reading his books, and discovered that the phase had definitely
passed. I bought this one (alas) shortly before I discovered this. It
was on a different shelf, or it would have gone with the rest.

The Gryphon King, by Tom Deitz.

So was this one.

Man-Kzin Wars VII, by Benford and Martin.

This might be OK; but I tired of this franchise before I got to this
book, and though I’ve had it since 1995 I’ve never been sufficiently
interested to read it. Out it goes.

Guerrilla Guide to Great Graphics with The Gimp

I no longer use the Gimp, so I no longer need the book.

2000 Children’s Writer’s and Illustrator’s Market

Yet another vestige of a dying past.

2000 Novel and Short Story Writer’s Market.

Ditto.

Saint Maybe, by Anne Tyler

This was one of my mom’s books. I’ve read a little Anne Tyler, and I
wasn’t so thrilled that I felt the need to read more.

The Way of the Explorer, by Dr. Edgar Mitchell

My sister gave me this some long while back. It’s written by one of
the Apollo astronauts, and is subtitled “An Apollo Astronaut’s Journey
Through the Material and Mystical Worlds.” As I work in the space biz,
she thought I’d find it interesting. Alas, I find it rather appalling.
Leafing through it I find such sentences as

In many religious traditions (including Christianity in its
early years), subjective experience is believed to be carried forward by
the reincarnation of souls into successive life experiences.

Whoops! Nope, sorry, unh-uh.

He ends up espousing some kind of weird pantheism based on the notion
that the cosmos itself is conscious. Bad astronaut. No cookie.

The Hollowing, by Robert Holdstock

When Holdstock wrote Mythago Wood, I thought he was just
amazing. I’ve since decided that there’s less here than meets the eye.

The Children’s Hour, by Jerry Pournelle and S.M Stirling

It was OK the first time, but that’s enough.

Ten Philosophical Mistakes, by Mortimer J. Adler

I bought this hoping that it would interesting and fun. Interesting,
yes, somewhat, but deadly, deadly dry.

Python and Tkinter Programming, by John E. Grayson

Now, I’m a programming language junky. I like the language Python,
though I’ve never had the opportunity to use it for anything important.
I’m a big fan of the Tcl language, and its “Tk” GUI toolkit. So when
this book came out, explaining how to do Tk GUI programming in Python,
I grabbed it. And frankly, despite being an experience programmer, and
despite knowing Tk pretty well already, I couldn’t make heads or tails
of it.

HTML: The Definitive Guide, 2nd Ed., by Musciano and Bill Kennedy

A fine book, but obsolete.

PalmPilot: The Ultimate Guide, by David Pogue

Perhaps once upon a time it was, but now it’s garbage.

The pressure of having three kids in the house finally caused my brain to snap the other day, and I bought me a camcorder.

Actually, it was only partly the kids’ fault; some of the blame rests on Steve Jobs, and that computer company of his–the one that ships digital video editing software with every computer they sell. I suddenly realized that not only can I shoot video footage of my winsome young’uns, I can edit out the dull bits, keep the cute bits, and put it all on DVD for my extended family to roundfile expeditiously.

That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it. I’ve bought a camcorder, as if I had time for yet another expensive time-consuming hobby, and so clearly I’ve gone stark staring mad. Remember that as you read on.

The camcorder is a low-end Sony digital camcorder that uses MiniDV tapes and connects to my PowerBook via Firewire. It’s a nice little unit, about the size of a mass-market paperback of Gone With The Wind. Or perhaps Les Miserables; we’ll see. So far it appears to work quite nicely.

But the real star is iMovie, which as I say comes shipped with every Macintosh. iMovie knows how to talk to my camcorder; all I did was connect the camcorder with the PowerBook using a Firewire cable, and iMovie announced detected it immediately. I installed nary a driver, nor did OS X offer to install for me; it was true plug-n-play, right out of the box.

And then, iMovie effortlessly imports the video I’ve recorded, breaks it up into scenes automatically, and then allows me to view it, stretch it, chop it in pieces, run it through filters, add soundtracks and titles, and then export it back to tape, to a Quicktime Movie, or to DVD. I cannot express how much better even the goofiest home movie sounds with some decent music backing it up.

The iMovie interface, like most of Apple’s recent software, is deceptively simple. There’s definitely more there than meets the eye. Usually I like this, but in a few cases, they’ve made it a little too simple. For example, I added a title to a clip; later I wanted to get rid of it. I simply could not figure out how to do it! Finally I looked up the answer–you highlight the clip and press Delete. Silly me; I’d never have guessed that in a million years. I’d have thought–how stupid of me–that pressing delete would delete the clip altogether.

The book that came to my rescue is iMovie 3 and iDVD, by David Pogue; it’s one of the generally excellent “Missing Manuals” series, and it’s excellent. The book begins with three chapters on shooting digital video: what to look for in a camcorder; basic videography, including lighting and sound; and how to shoot specific kinds of things, including interviews, weddings, and so forth. How to use iMovie doesn’t come in until the fourth chapter; and then the book ends with several chapters on how to use Apple’s DVD authoring software, iDVD.

Now that I’ve got the camera and the software, I’m embarked on a special project that involves shooting video of the kids, turning various camera features on and off, and all the other things one does at a time like this; I’m calling it “The Usual Foolishness”. It’s sure to be the next big thing in home video.

Chapter 34 and Chapter 35 of my novel Through Darkest Zymurgia! are now available for your delectation at Once-Told Tales.

This week: ascending the tiger!