Where ... all the Verbs....?

In our 2 small churches, we have 27 people who committed to God and one another that we would read the daily lectionary in 2011. We're very excited, and hope people are finding it both a challenge and a joy.

We are using the "daily office" readings from the Canadian 1962 edition of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. It gives 2 morning and 2 evening readings. Jumps around a bit, but by Advent 2011 we'll have covered 90% or so of the Bible. Quite a challenge!

Most are using The Message version.

I (Steve) am using the New American Standard Bible. The NASB uses italics "to indicate words which are not found in the original [languages] but implied by it." Knowing this, imagine my surprise on reading Revelation 4 on Sunday!

If you don't know Rev. 4, it's this awesome scene of worship in the heavenly throne room. Go read it now!

What struck me is that, from verses 3 thru 7, very few verbs are NOT in italics in NASB. It's all descriptive, and words like "there was" and "there were" appear in italics 8 times!

So I went back and re-read those verses, skipping the italics. Wow, did it ever change the feel of the verses! What before was slow, prosaic description (the 1st creature was like a lion, ho hum) became filled with breathless amazement (the 1st like a lion! The 2nd like a calf!)

I like that in my Bibile reading, breathless excitement.

Photography = Free Microeconomics Textbook!

We're very excited! we just received payment from a publisher for using one of our photographs.

Many months ago, an editor from McGraw-Hill Canada contacted us, asking to use one of our photos from our current town, Hudson Bay, Saskatchewan, in a new textbook on Microeconomics.

We sent them a selection, and they chose this one, of the elevator and hotel, two key landmarks in town.

Yesterday the agreed-upon payment finally arrived by mail: a hot-off-the pressees complimentary copy! With our photo there on p. 728, in chapter 19, in the section on "Oligopoly Markets"

From Day 1 we've wondered: why a photo of Hudson Bay? It's by far the smallest place I (Steve) have ever lived, with limited shopping, so our town is very micro-economic in my mind. But why in a textbook?

Now we know: the photo illustrates a real-world application of the chapter's principles, asking "How many tire dealers can Hudson Bay support?"

I must say, it's the jazziest Economics textbook I've ever seen, filled with interesting bits, like cartoons (from Calvin & Hobbes to The New Yorker), and applying economic principles to the "Battle of Wits" between Westley and Vizzini in The Princess Bride, among other things. And of course thousands of those little curved Economics graphs!

-SP

Microeconomics (Canadian Edition) by Bernheim, Whinston & Martin, McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 2011. ISBN 9780070969278

Gryffin-Gram 2010

Christmas Greetings from Gryffin, Julie and Steve!

This year, we sent out about 350 Christmas cards, before running out of time and budget. We apologize to all of the friends and family we missed sending greetings to by post this year, but good news! Gryffin has found a way to send his (and our) greetings to you nevertheless! (Ah, such a persistent and thoughtful terrier he is!)

As every year, Gryffin has written a fabulous newsletter for Christmas 2010. This year's highlights include photos from our travels, Gryffin's winning coffee label photo, and a recipe for Slow-Cooker Pickle Roast.

Check out the Gryffin-Gram by downloading it here: Gryffin-Gram 2010. For all you tech-savvy folks - it's a pdf. For all the rest of us - all you need to be able to view it is Adobe Reader, a free program which most people have these days.

Merry Christmas from Julie & Steve...with an enthusiastic wag and face-licking from Gryffin! :-)

What is a "Book"?

What is a "Book"?

You would think Julie and I could have figured this out by now - our shelves are filled, after all, with thousands of paper + cardboard + cloth + ink things that we call Books.

So many, in fact, that I wrote us a Home Library database program to keep track of them all - titles, authors, dates, subject keywords, loaned to whom, etc.

In a typical year, I read about 30 books. Like the list-keeper that I am, I record the ones that I read, and when, and what I thought of them. But since buying an iPad in the summer, I have started to wonder, well, what is a Book? Should the e-books I read on the iPad count in my 2010 list?

This latent question, percolating beneath the surface of my mind, came to the fore this morning, when I read The Idea of the Book, a review in the Books and Culture magazine.

I appreciated the author's teasing out of the differences between Book-as-Object, that physical thing that any toddler can identify, and Book-as-Concept, a "considerable length" textual document that "expresses a long story or complex sequence of thoughts," regardless of technology (scroll, codex, eBook, whatever)

I wonder: does The Cat in the Hat meet his Book-as-Concept definition?

So now I'm inclined to add those eBooks to my already-read list. Do I now need to go back and rethink some of the assumptions in my Home Library database program..?

-SP

What it's like to be a priest - book review by Julie

This Odd and Wondrous Calling: The Public and Private Lives of Two Ministers by Lillian Daniel

Fantuz Fancies

A Fantuz Fancy - by Julie & Steve

The Saskatchewan Roughriders are off to the CFL playoffs!

Saskatchewan folks are nuts about the Riders and their bid for the Canadian Football League's 2010 Grey Cup. To celebrate, we made Rider cookies. We took them to church in Arborfield yesterday, and they were a hit! So here, by popular demand, is the recipe:

Fantuz Fancies

Ingredients:
1 cup butter, melted
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup brown sugar
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 tsp vanilla
2 beaten eggs
2 ½ cups flour
1-2 cups chocolate chips
2 cups crushed Fantuz Flakes* or other flake-based cereal (e.g., Corn Flakes)

Ingredients for Fantuz Fancies

* Fantuz Flakes are a special cereal, created to honour Saskatchewan Roughrider player Andy Fantuz. They're part of a host of products made for the 100th anniversary of the Riders in 2010.

Method:
1. Preheat oven to 375 F, with the rack in the middle position.
2. Melt butter, add sugars and stir. Next, stir in soda, salt, vanilla and beaten eggs. Then add flour and mix dough well.

Finished Fantuz Fancies

3. Add crushed Fantuz Flakes and chocolate chips and mix thoroughly.
4. Form dough into walnut-sized balls with your fingers and place on greased cookie sheet, 12 per sheet. Press Fantuz Fancies down slightly with palm or spatula.
5. Bake at 375 for 8-10 minutes.
6. Cool on cookie sheet 2 minutes, then remove to wire rack until completely cool. (The rack is important – it makes them crisp.)
7. Frost with green or white icing, then make the Roughriders' "S" with sprinkles on the top of the cookie, in the opposite colour. (We used a cookie stencil we made out of an icing jar top.)

Yield: 5-6 dozen. If Fantuz Fancies spread out too much in oven, reduce heat to 350 F and do not flatten fancies before baking.

- Adapted by Julie Golding Page, from Chocolate Chip Crunch Cookies, in Joanne Fluke’s Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder

Film & Faith

We've been film fanatics for years, and we can't seem to help starting a film group in each new community we live in. But our film groups have a twist - they combine watching films with exercising our faith in God.

Intrigued? Why not check out our article, published in The Anglican Planet this month. (That's a cross-Canada, monthly Anglican newspaper.)

Here's the link: http://www.anglicanplanet.net/canadian-news/2010/11/3/film-faith-meeting-god-at-the-movies.html

Hope you enjoy reading it as much as we did writing it. Let us know what you think!

And beware, combining film & faith is so much fun, it's addictive! ;-)