Michael J. Roueche's Blog, page 12

We’ll be signing copies of “Beyond the Wood” at Weekend Civil War Event

We’ll be at this Saturday’s (September 15) Civil War re-enactment in Parker, Co. If you’ve never attended a re-enactment, it’s fun and educational for all ages. Great family activity. The weather looks great. Come enjoy the day and drop by and say hi.

Chris Michlewicz at the Parker Chronicle wrote an article about the re-enactment, if you want more information.

Also, details of the schedule are found at Historical Douglas County.

We’ll see you Saturday.

Article Highlights “Beyond the Wood” Inspiration and Writing Process

The Parker Chronicle, a local newspaper, ran a very nice article about Beyond the Wood. It told much of the story of some of the experiences that inspired the book and motivated me to write it. The reporter Chris Michlewicz was great to work with, and I appreciate his interest in the book.

The article, “First-Time Author Earns Praise,” is posted at OurColoradoNews.com.

All of Shakespeare by the 450th: Amazing Rhyming and Language Fun in “Love’s Labour’s Lost”

I’ve finished my eighth Shakespeare play and had fun doing it. I’d never read about or seen “Love’s Labour’s Lost” until this month, and I was pleasantly surprised. According to the New York Times, “For some reason, this once rarely performed comedy has become newly fashionable.” Glad to hear it’s again popular because, while you can’t take it too seriously, it is entertaining. The plot revolves around four young men who swear to live a three-year ascetic-like life of little food, little sleep and banquets of arduous study. The King of Navarre, leader of the band, also convinces his followers to give up any contact during that time with women. Immediately their vows are tested (and they fail spectacularly and immediately at them) by the arrival of the Princess of France with three lovely and witty young women.

Words that come to mind after reading the play: Language, rhyme and wit. Foolish vows and games, and lack of self-control. But I’m left mostly with the message that the world is a very serious place: We can try to ignore its serious essence with all kinds of frivolity, but in the end, the seriousness nature of life overtakes us, rendering our frivolity embarrassingly shallow and us without some of the most desired and important things in our existence.

For even a lighter version of the play, Kenneth Branagh did a shortened version as a musical, where the music and words of such luminaries as Cole Porter, the Gershwin brothers and Irving Berlin replace a big chunk of Shakespeare’s words. It was entertaining, except for one dance scene which seemed totally out of place.

Favorite Word: Honorificabilitudinitatibus, which is “the quality of deserving honor or respect; characterized by honor—honorableness.” If you need a little help pronouncing it, here’s a link to several pronunciation samples. Apparently, it’s the longest word in English (if it is English) that has alternating vowels and consonants.

Love’s Labour’s Lost earns 4 Bards for Fun with Language:

 

Quotes that appealed to me for various reasons (and a brief thought on a few of them):

King Ferdinand: “…brave conquerors,—for so you are, that war against your own affections, and the huge army of the world’s desires….”

Longaville: “He weeds the corn and still lets grow the weeding.”

Biron: “…for every man with his affects is born, not by might mater’d but by special grace….”

Costard: “Such is the simplicity of man to hearken after the flesh.”

Princess: “I am less proud to hear you tell my worth than you much willing to be counted wise in spending your wit in the praise of mine.” (How much praise is spent for the benefit of the giver and not the praised?)

Princess: “All pride is willing pride, and yours is so.”

Princess: “A giving hand, though foul, shall have fair praise.”

Longaville: Speaking of his oath to not come near a woman: “If by me broke, what fool is not so wise to lose an oath to win a paradise?” (Rationalization comes so easily.)

Dumain: “O, would the King, Brion, and Longaville, were lovers too! Ill, to example ill, would from my forehead wipe a perjur’d note for none offend where all alike do dote.” (The “everyone’s doing it” excuse has been around a long time.)

Moth: “They have been at a great feast of languages and stolen the scraps.”

Princess: “A heavy heart bears not a nimble tongue….”

Rosaline: “A jest’s prosperity lies in the ear of him that hears it, never in the tongue of him that makes it….”

Next Up: “The Merchant of Venice”

“Never Give Up, Never Surrender!” Especially When We’re Talking Real Life.

“Never Give Up, Never Surrender!” is the classic quote from the very fun Star-Trek parody “Galaxy Quest.”

Variations of its most famous line have been used perennially (even before the film) to motivate us to do our best, be persistent, etc. But it’s particularly meaningful when we see its personification as a finished or nearly finished product in real life.

During the 2012 Olympics and during Michael Phelps great run of success, a New York Times video asked the question: “Greatest Olympian of all Time?”; and concluded that it was not Phelps in spite of his amazing accomplishments. It claimed the honor of “Greatest Olympian” for Jesse Owens because of his 1936 on-the-track symbolic confrontation with Hitler and thus his subtle attack on the hypocrisy of racism in the US. It argued that his impact on history makes Owens the greatest. I liked the reasoning and appreciate Owens using his gifts and accomplishments to strengthen world resolve against Nazism and every action that weakened segregation and racism in the US.

But, if you’re going to make that case, you’ve got to put someone else on the list for consideration as the greatest Olympian—a man whose life and even after-life have required adherence to that Galaxy Quest motto.

According to an interesting article in the Washington Times, the Associated Press (AP) in 1951 proclaimed our candidate “the Most Outstanding Male Athlete of the first half of the 20th century. Baseball slugger Babe Ruth … finished a distant second.” AP started their annual proclamations in 1931, and Jesse Owens won the annual recognition in 1936. Our athlete’s sports career ended before the annual recognition began. According to Jim Adams, a senior historian with the National Museum of the American Indian in the Washington Times Story, “He [our candidate] played the same kind of role in refuting racial myths about indigenous people that Jesse Owens later did about African-Americans.”

Our candidate is Jim Thorpe, winner of both the Olympic decathlon and pentathlon competitions exactly a century ago, and the article reminded me of what a great athlete—and apparently person—Thorpe was. It also highlighted—news to me—that his struggle for respect still continues: “Never give up. Never surrender!” But more on that later.

Some amazing stuff and quotes from the article:

“During the 1912 Olympic tryouts, Jim threw the javelin standing still. He didn’t know you could have an unlimited run-up approach. He didn’t have any sophisticated training. His was that of a 6-year-old boy growing up in the Oklahoma Indian territory, going on 30-mile hunts with his father and catching horses.”


“…When [Jim's coach at Pennsylvania's Carlisle Indian Industrial School Glenn 'Pop'] Warner first suggested to Thorpe that he participate in the 1912 Olympics, the latter man had no idea the games existed.”

The following anecdote is hard to fathom, but is specifically noted as a true story:

“Before the final event of the decathlon…—a 1,500-meter foot race—Thorpe reached into his bag and found that his shoes were missing. Undaunted, he borrowed one shoe from a teammate and found another in a trash can. The discarded shoe was too small for Thorpe’s foot; the borrowed shoe was so large that he had to wear extra pairs of socks to keep it from slipping off. Still, he captured a gold medal and won the race in 4 minutes, 40.1 seconds — an Olympic decathlon record time unsurpassed until 1972.”

“’In the 400-meter race [in the London Olympics decathlon] a couple of days ago, the gold medal winner beat Jim’s time by 0.7 of a second,’ Mr. [Bob] Wheeler said. ‘That’s on a modern, high-tech composite track. The track was cinder when Jim ran.’” (More on Wheeler in a paragraph or two.)

Thorpe “helped found and popularize the National Football League and was arguably the best-known, most-revered athlete of his era.”


Thorpe played professional basketball, baseball and football. “Thorpe made his biggest mark in football. In 1915, he signed with the Canton Bulldogs; immediately, the team went from attracting about 800 fans per game to as many as 12,000. The Bulldogs won three championships, and in 1920 they joined 13 other teams in the nascent American Professional Football Association, which two years later became the NFL. Thorpe was named the league’s first president, while he was still playing for Canton,’ Mr. Wheeler said. ‘His popularity and name meant the survival of this fledgling new sport.’”

But Thorpe’s story only begins with these facts and the needed persistence extends well past his lifetime. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) unfairly broke its own rules to strip Thorpe of his medals, months after he won him. Only the persistence and extensive research of the fore-quoted Bob Wheeler and his wife, Florence Ridlon, forced the IOC to give Thorpe back his medals 30 years ago—unfortunately, it came only posthumously for the athlete.

But, unbelievably, there’s still more to the article and the story: “During Thorpe’s 1953 Native American burial service in Oklahoma, his third wife and widow, Patricia, pulled up in a hearse. Declaring that Thorpe was ‘too cold,’ she took his body and coffin to Pennsylvania, where the small towns of Mauch Chunk and East Mauch Chunk had agreed to combine and change their name to Jim Thorpe, Pa. in a macabre bid to attract tourists. Today, Thorpe’s remains still lie in a mausoleum there while his four sons have fought a decades-long, unresolved court battle to return their father to Oklahoma.” I understand that Jim Thorpe probably never visited either of the towns.

Never-give-up-never-surrender Wheeler and Ridlon have dipped their proverbial toes in this Jim Thorpe controversy as well, working with Thorpe’s sons and garnering support reportedly of more than 100 American Tribes in their efforts to move Thorpe’s remains to his native Oklahoma.

But there’s always another side: Not all descendants agree with moving Thorpe.

If you’d like to read more or support the effort to move Jim Thorpe’s body to Oklahoma, visit a web site Wheeler’s set up: www.jimthorperestinpeace.com.

There does seem to me to be something unseemly and exploitative about using a human’s remains to create a tourist site of any kind, but especially if the location is unrelated to the person’s life.

The battle for Jim Thorpe continues: A Tug of War for a Man’s Remains. Never Give Up. Never Surrender!

Name that Flag: Win Free Book

 

What are the three flags behind us?

Late last week, I got a note and photo from Charles H. Smith, chairman of the Literary Committee of the Military Order of the Stars and Bars (MOS&B). Here’s the photo of the two of us with the Cooke Fiction Award in front of three flags at the MOS&B convention.

For a chance (drawing of all who answer correctly) to get a free copy of Beyond the Wood, can you identify all three flags? (To make it easy I’ll tell you the one on the right is the US flag. Come to think of it, that may be the second hint in this blog.) If you don’t know right off–that’s why you have that smart phone or internet connection. Good luck.

Enter in the comments section on this blog’s page or on my author page on facebook.

I’ll post the correct answers in a week or two.

Warnings, Cranks, Strikers and the Dead Among Gentlemen

“First warning to the Striker” shouted the man in the tall black top hat, but no one seemed too concerned, and on the next high-arched hurl, the striker crushed the ball into the sky blue that carried it with one bounce into the arms of a waiting scout. One runner dead.

All of this sounded vaguely familiar, but . . .

Over the weekend, we ventured out on a warm, sunny, breezy day to an open high-desert field with a very natural turf hiding deep holes and shallow pits. (Yes, the field could have been smoothed out a bit, but at least it wasn’t artificial turf.) For us, it was the perfect summer day for a baseball game, but we were there for a vintage 1860s base ball (two words) game, a select gentleman’s game. Only the Civil War democratized the sport and made it the true national pastime.

It was a tournament, with back to back games involving teams from Colorado, Massachusetts and Arizona, and sponsored by the Colorado Vintage Base Ball Association and the Parker Area Historical Society. I had dragged along my wife, assuring her that it was required research for my next Civil War book.

Starting Line Up for the Parkers Base Ball Club

Starting Line Up for the Denver Blue Stockings

We watched the home club nine “The Parkers” from Parker, Colorado, take on the visiting Denver Blue Stockings. It was not close, with Denver taking a quick and commanding lead, so after a while we wandered over to enjoy an equally uncompetitive match between the Mudville Base Ball Club of Massachusetts and Arizona Stars and Stripes (one ballist reported that the latter plays every other week, except during the summer). But competition was never the purpose of the matches according to the program that indicated: “Game results are always subordinate to its educational and entertainment goals.”

In both matches, the aces (runs) added up faster than I could count, but the most important difference between the modern game and this exhibition was there were no psychological games between hurlers (pitchers) and strikers (batters). No last-second holding up the striker’s hand and stepping out of the striker’s box (in fact, I don’t think there was a striker’s box), no long hurler concentration or communication between the behind (catcher) and the hurler. Just hurl after hurl, hit after hit in quick, entertaining succession.

The clubs were playing by rules followed in Colorado in the 1860s which grew out of New York rules, calling for clubs with nine players, striking from a home base, with three other bases forming a diamond shape. One judge (think umpire) per match stood uncomfortably close to the striker where he could look the striker in the eye and had a clear view of the underhand, slow-pitch-softball-like hurl. We are in Colorado so one of judges was attired with cowboy hat and six-shooter, which he discharged at least once while I was watching—but not at anyone. The outfield was filled with three scouts, while the infield had one short scout (short stop) and three base tenders.

Some of the most interesting rules and terminology (as I could catch it or read it in the program) was that someone who was out was called “dead,” so at times there were “two dead runners.” The runners were “legging it” as they ran, and a fair ball was determined by where the ball first hit the field, rather than where it ended up. All runners advance on a walk and a striker was out if a fielder caught his ball either on the fly or on one bounce. A walk required five pitches: two warnings to the hurler for out-of-the-informal-strike-zone hurls, then three more bad hurls or balls. A striker only got one warning for good hurls they passed up before having three more good hurls before they would strike out.

Arizona Stars and Stripes in Field Against Mudville Base Ball Club of Massachusetts

No one wore gloves, which on this day caused great crank (fan) and ballist sympathy for the ballist who tried to catch a hard line drive and ended up only bruising his palm and deflecting the ball into right field. Cranks were literally involved in ways we’d love today: If a ball was hit foul and a crank caught it on the fly or one bounce, if he handed it to a fielder from the team he supported (without it ever hitting the ground), the striker was out. And, this one is the best: If the judge had a question about a call, he could consult with the cranks—that’s the way baseball ought to be called! According to the program, seeking crank opinion on calls “continued in the National League until nearly 1900.” Sounds like a third-millennium-type rule to me destined for a smart-phone app and reinstallment in the game.

No high fives at home base in this version: The only required celebration at the plate following an ace was the scoring ballist had to report to the scorer’s table, ring a bell and ask that his ace be tallied.

A great day at the ballpark watching the men, women and youths out on the field. It was far more entertaining than I had anticipated, and I’ve concluding it may just be more interesting and fun (and definitely faster) than its descendant. I’m adding it to my annual list of stuff to do.

Ebooks in Libraries? Publishers May Have Something Else in Mind.

Last week we went to a focus group sponsored by Douglas County Public Libraries (DCPL). The system is a leader and pioneer in getting ebooks into library systems. DCPL invited authors from around Denver to give input for the system’s nascent plans to help publish independent ebooks and to place high-quality independently published and self-published ebooks in libraries (perhaps even beyond Douglas County). I’ll write on what they’re planning in the future, but today I want to highlight some facts that were presented to us:

According to DCPL, three of the six big publishers won’t sell ebooks to libraries. (I find that fact intensely interesting and troubling.) About 300,000 “big six publisher” books (290,000 in ebook format) are produced annually. 2.7 million books are now self-published each year. Sixteen of the last 100 best sellers on the New York Times best seller list were self-published.

Publishing’s rapid and radical changes raises two interesting issues:

1) We are currently seeing a battle for power in this new digital book age. It’s happening at the bookstore, publishing and writing levels. Combatants in this raging war include the new giants (Amazon, Apple, etc) and the former giants (big six publishers, Barnes and Noble, independent book stores, big-name authors), with self-interest and money seemingly driving decisions and alliances. The settlement/continuing struggle between the justice department and Apple and their allies continues, as indicated by two recent articles: Amazon’s the Villain and Justice Department Slams Apple.

2) With so much content out there and the traditional gatekeepers losing grasp on control of that content, how do we find what’s worth our while? This is something DCPL is figuring into their calculations, and it’s something we all have to consider as we decide what to read next.

Exciting and interesting times in writing and publishing.

All of Shakespeare by the 450th: Dreamy or Just Drowsy?

The quick answer: Drowsy. I just about slept through my reading of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I like a good dream, but after this one I woke up in a bad mood. My last exposure to A Midsummer Night’s Dream was in a local high school, and I think that’s where I’ll leave it. Let me admit that fairies are not my favorite characters. Considering its continued popularity, I’m clearly out of the mainstream. (Maybe I’m just getting tired of the comedies.)

Words that come to mind after reading the play: I guess it was about love, but it seemed more about antiquated laws that subjugated women to their fathers’ and the state’s will. A little manipulation to get a love or some other object was thrown in for good measure. From my personal experience, I’m not sure laws, father or husband could convince my wife and daughters to do anything they felt wasn’t right, so maybe you had to be there (England in the 1590s) to feel the drama and reality. Of course, manipulation is still with us, so maybe that keeps the play current; but manipulation never was the way to create a long-term, loving relationship.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream earns a lowly one Bard:

 

 

 

Quotes that appealed to me for various reasons (and a brief thought on a few of them):

Helena: Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind….

Titania: These are the forgeries of jealousy: and never, since the middle summer’s spring, met we on hill, in dale, forest, or mead, by paved fountain, or by rushy brook, or in the beached margent of the sea, to dance our ringlets to the whistling wind, but with thy brawls thou hast disturb’d our sport. Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain, as in revenge, have suck’d up from the sea contagious fogs; which, falling in the land, hath every pelting river made so proud that they have overborne their continents: the ox hath therefore stretch’d his yoke in vain, the ploughman lost his sweat; and the green corn hath rotted ere his youth attain’d a beard: the fold stands empty in the drowned field, and crows are fatted with the murrain flock; the nine men’s morris is fill’d up with mud, and the quaint mazes in the wanton green, for lack of tread, are undistinguishable. The human mortals want their winter here; no night is now with hymn or carol blest:–therefore the moon, the governess of floods, pale in her anger, washes all the air, that rheumatic diseases do abound: and thorough this distemperature we see the seasons alter: hoary-headed frosts fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose; and on old Hyems’ chin and icy crown an odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds is, as in mockery, set: the spring, the summer, the childing autumn, angry winter, change their wonted liveries; and the mazed world, by their increase, now knows not which is which: and this same progeny of evils comes from our debate, from our dissension; we are their parents and original. (This appears to be the true explanation of global warming: So it’s not caused by humans after all.)

Puck: Their sense, thus weak, lost with their fears, thus strong, made senseless things begin to do them wrong: for briers and thorns at their apparel snatch; some sleeves, some hats; from yielders all things catch. (The impact of fear in our lives.)

Puck: What fools these mortals be! (No comment required.)

Demetrius: Disparage not the faith thou dost not know.

Helena: So we grew together, like to a double cherry, seeming parted; but yet a union in partition, two lovely berries moulded on one stem: so, with two seeming bodies, but one heart, two of the first, like coats in hearldry, due but to one, and crowned with one crest. (Wonderful description of what unity of soul in love is.)

Lysander: Although I hate her I’ll not harm her so. Hermia: What! can you do me greater harm than hate? (A great question)

Theseus: Lovers and madmen have such seething brains, such shaping fantasies, that apprehend more than cool reason ever comprehends. The lunatic, the lover, and the poet are of imagination all compact….

Next Up: Love’s Labour’s Lost

Changing the World Starts with Fabricating a Quote?

Over the weekend, I happened to bump into two of my favorite quotes about changing the world. The first was on a tee-shirt and attributed to Mahatma Gandhi. “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” Short, easy: not much thinking required: perfect for me and for a tee-shirt or coffee mug. Unfortunately, while the sentiment is directionally correct, there’s no evidence he ever said those exact words. The actual quote (found in volume 13 of The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (Electronic Book), New Delhi, Publications Division Government of India, 1999, 98 volumes) reads:

Furthermore, is it not possible that the very existence of creatures like snakes or the cruelty in their nature reflects our own attitudes? Is there not cruelty enough in man? On our tongues there is always poison similar to a snake’s. We tear our brethren to pieces as wolves and tigers do. Religious books tell us that when man becomes pure in heart, the lamb and the tiger will live like friends. So long as in our own selves there is conflict between the tiger and the lamb, is it any wonder that there should be a similar conflict in this world-body? We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do.

Much longer, more subtle, more specific about what he thinks needs to change in each of us to effect a positive change in the world—heart, words, actions.

The second quote on changing the world is from Ezra Taft Benson:

The Lord works from the inside out. The world works from the outside in. The world would take people out of the slums. Christ takes the slums out of people, and then they take themselves out of the slums. The world would mold men by changing their environment. Christ changes men, who then change their environment. The world would shape human behavior, but Christ can change human nature.

Both quotes imply that the problem with the world is within man and woman kind: Our natural tendencies (like Gandhi’s “cruelty” of the snake) give us conflict, greed, war, hatred, cruelty. He concludes that it’s up to each of us to take the first step. Benson suggests the change is only possible through our choice to come to God. In both views, it’s our individual decision to change or not change ourselves that changes or doesn’t change the world. None of this world betterment is within the power of government, protests, unions or grass-roots political movements or in the products and services or power of entrepreneurs or international corporations.

All of this brings me to one last entertaining quote (probably apocryphal, but not worth the effort to find out): Jerry Garcia supposedly said something to the effect of “Somebody has to do something, and it’s just incredibly pathetic that it has to be us.”

“Us” is all we’ve got if we actually want to make this world a better place. “Us” is the total of each person and choice, but it still must be a thousand, a million, a billion people who decide to change who they are individually. Fundamental change in the world comes only from fundamental change in each of us, and, as Gandhi suggests, that begins with my choice, and I do not have to (or better, cannot) wait to chose until I see changes in others.

All of Shakespeare by the 450th: Wit, Slander and Generous Hearts

“Much Ado About Nothing”: That’s easy for Shakespeare to write, but I’m sure if you asked Hero and her father, the aspersions cast on the virtuous young woman weren’t “nothing.” I just finished Much Ado About Nothing, and I’ve concluded it’s my favorite so far. With the wonderful and totally nonsensical but comprehensible dialogue of Dogberry; the unending wit of Beatrice and Benedick; and the quick-to-accuse Claudio and Don Pedro; the scheming brother; and the quiet, simple dignity and honest heart of Leonato, I was absorbed in feelings of empathy for Hero, the seeming object of all choices and action in the play. It seemed that Hero, who I feel I know only through comments and actions of other, did little in the play, but was like a ball, kicked this way and that by everyone else on the field.

Words that come to me as I think of the play include: Destructive power of slander, power of suggestion; cost of judging others; the pain of adversity; the challenge of strengthening those in adversity; and once again the unrealistic ease of forgiveness to get to a happy ending (although there was greater pain in this one getting there than in earlier plays).

Much Ado About Nothing earns:

 

 

 

Quotes that appealed to me (for various reasons) and a brief thought on a few of them:

Claudio: Silence is the perfectest herald of joy: I were but little happy if I could say how much.

Leonato: She is never sad but when she sleeps; and not ever sad then; for I have heard my daughter say she hath often dreamed of unhappiness, and waked herself with laughing.

Don John: How canst thou cross this marriage? Boracho: Not honestly, my Lord, but so covertly that no dishonesty shall appear in me.

Balthazar: There’s not a note of mine that’s worth the noting. (I can relate.)

Friar: Come, lady, die to live…. (The thought was completed later in the play by Leonato) Leonato: She died, my lord, but whiles her slander liv’d.

Leonato: Nor let no comforter delight mine ear but such a one whose wrongs do suit with mine. Bring me a father that so lov’d his child, whose joy of her is overwhelm’d like mine, and bid him speak of patience; measure his woe the length and breadth of mine, and let it answer every strain for strain, as thus for thus, and such a grief for such, in every lineament, branch, shape, and form: If such a one will smile and stroke his beard, cry—sorrow, wag! and hem when he should groan, patch grief with proverbs, make misfortune drunk with candle-wasters,—bring him yet to me, and I of him will gather patience. But there is no such man: for, brother, men can counsel and speak comfort to that grief which they themselves not feel; but, tasting it, their counsel turns to passion, which before would give preceptial medicine to rage, fetter strong madness in a silken thread, charm ache with air and agony with words: No, no; ’tis all men’s office to speak patience to those that wring under the load of sorrow, but no man’s virtue nor sufficiency to be so moral when he shall endure the like himself; therefore give me no counsel: my griefs cry louder than advertisement. …I will be flesh and blood; for there was never yet philosopher that could endure the toothache patiently, however they have writ the style of gods, and make a pish (an exclamation of impatience or contempt) at chance and sufferance. (How inadequate we are in comforting those who suffer; and how hard it is for the suffering to accept comfort. You can’t help but think of Job as you read this.)

Next Up (if you’re reading along): A Midsummer Night’s Dream