The Need for New

Posted on July 26, 2021 by Kay Pelham

Recently a parent asked my husband if his Glee Club, in which her children had participated, always repeated songs. Apparently, they had been comparing notes with former members, and these former members, for whatever reason, said several times to their friends, “Oh, we did that song.” Whether or not it should have, it made the current members feel their experience was less than. My husband explained to this parent that, yes, new music was learned, but there was also something known as “repertoire”, where some things became standard fare, and repeated performances of these songs happened. I wondered how these kids could be unfamiliar with groups in the performing world — their own favorite bands, perhaps — who sing their own music repeatedly in concert. I was reminded of this interaction when reading this posting from one of my favorite “bands” — The King’s Singers:

This is one of the best-loved arrangements in our library, and it means so much to us. Getting the opportunity to expand it and create a version with Voces8 (as the encore in our ‘Live From London’ concert) was just wonderful.

They have a library of tunes that they perform (and sometimes even record more than once). They sometimes expand and create new versions of those songs. Why do we allow that for and expect that of the groups we listen to, but feel that we ourselves in our own groups should always be learning something brand-spanking new to us? Where do we even leave room for improving on our own work? Why are we willing to work hours and hours on a song, give one performance of it that lasts less than 5 minutes, and then be ready to put it away forever?

The selection that The King’s Singers shared is actually an arrangement of a song written, performed, and recorded by Billy Joel. Which brings me to another point. Imitation in art, which here would be not just a sampling, but a complete cover. Today we have this notion that imitating any part of an already known story or song is cheap or “lame”; whereas, in the past, imitation was expected. Audiences at first showings of Shakespeare’s plays already knew the stories for the most part — they contained known myths or histories or standard tropes in story. They were thrilled to know what was coming, and if there was a twist, then that was very cool, too. Today we say, “Oh, that’s been done before. Can’t they come up with anything New?” I was one of these kinds of people once….upon a time. Even though I had your standard English and literature elementary to college education, and read tons of stories on my own from the time I could read on my own, I did not know about this (sanctioned) imitation thing until the past few years as I listened to The Literary Life podcast and had classes with Angelina Stanford and Co.

Methinks we’ve become rather arrogant in our modern age, always wanting something New. We’re so Progressive. If it’s completely New it must be better than the Old and Already Done. And we want nothing else but that. It doesn’t matter if it good art or not. New is better than Old and Already Done. Already Done equals Boring. This is sad to me. And not right.

So I leave you with this beautiful art — The King’s Singers arrangement mentioned above. It’s Old and Borrowed and Already Done. Tell me this is not worth singing and hearing over and over.

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A Facebook post from a year ago that illustrates my post “How to tell if a child learned how to read correctly”

Posted on July 22, 2021 by Kay Pelham

This appeared in my FB memories from a year ago, and I thought that what was said here went along well with my blog post of 2 days ago, especially at the point where I wrote “…there are methods of education that claim to teach virtue, where a student does tons of memorizing of things and performing of those things … and I see the outcome of persons with a ton of hubris — which I hope you know is not a Virtue.” In the FB post, I quoted someone (with permission) who was familiar with one of those methods (the name of which I chose to edit out. See brackets below), had used it herself for a time, and who gives witness to the results I shared above.

“I made my decision to homeschool with tears in my eyes reading Charlotte Mason’s Attainments of a six-year-old. THAT was what I wanted for my sons – what beauty! That was 12 years ago. We did 1 year of AO and then 3 years of [another curriculum] and I bought into all that was described because I had no clue what a good education looked like. They had studied it all! They had ‘put God in the center’. After my 3 years, I opened my own co-op with a combination of things I did [with the other curriculum] for the youngsters and AO. …And what I’ve found over these 12 years, including spending time with [that other curriculum’s] graduates – (and this is just my experience, and not intended to harm) – is a lack of love of the beauty of what God created and a desire to know Him with delight, in the classical model. They are sort of puffed up from what I’ve seen and focused more on how accomplished the child is, rather than how much they care.”

I’m considering a Part 2 (and more!) about the wrong way to read, the wrong way to acquire knowledge, and the wrong way to “dispense” knowledge”, and the results I have seen in my long life in the people that have come out of such systems. I’ve been making a list, checking it twice. You better watch out. Santa Kay is coming to town.

Because there must be a picture

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How to tell if a child learned how to read correctly

Posted on July 20, 2021 by Kay Pelham

A-ha! This post is probably not going to go where you thought it would by that title. There is learning how to read, and then there is really learning how to read.

Let’s go with the first one since that’s probably what you clicked to read about. I started official reading lessons with my son when he was three. (Not necessary, but it is what I did, and thankfully, I didn’t ruin him.) By the time he was five he was reading at a 2nd grade level — so the book we were using told me. How could I tell he had learned to read? Because he could read to me. Easy-peasy. Lemon squeezy.

Now on to what I really wanted to write about. Our approach to educating our son over his 18 years has to been founded in the philosophy of Charlotte Mason. Through the years, I have added on for myself, through discussions and reading, the educational philosophy of thinkers from the ancient Greeks to the present day, and found so many right in alignment with the ideas of Miss Mason. Charlotte Mason did not invent a philosophy. She says so herself. She was, as others have said, standing on the shoulders of giants. One of the hallmarks of a Charlotte Mason education is the practice of Narration. This practice does not formally begin until the age of six (I say formally because who can keep a 3 year old from telling you all about their day, their play, a story). Narration is the very simple practice of reading, looking (at a picture, at nature), listening (to music), and allowing the child to tell what they saw. Not what you the teacher saw, or what you want or think they ought to see, but rather what did the student see. This oral presentation, which can be done with words or play or drawing, grows into the written presentations of the middle/high-schooler.

So why am I talking about Narration when addressing ‘how to read’? Basically, because that is the extent of literary analysis in a Charlotte Mason education. We do not tear apart a story — especially for the youngest students — but see it as its whole. All the literary devices will come to life as the child compares one story to another, one event to another, one song to another, one painting to another. Well, that list could go on and on because they will be comparing stories to songs and pictures to events, etc. There certainly is a place to later define those literary devices that they are noticing, but not until the later years. And that’s where my next paragraph is going to take us.

One of my recent educational philosophy acquisitions is being under the tutelage of Angelina Stanford, through her podcast, as well as her classes and webinars. Angelina teaches middle-school, high-school, and adult classes. Angelina knows story. She has been studying and teaching story for 30 years. The most excellent thing about her to me is that she is still learning. She knows so much, but shows no hubris about that, and is always open about what she doesn’t know and what she has just learned. The entire academic year of 2020-2021 I took her “How to Read Literature” class, in which we she took us through stories from fairy tales to modern novels, teaching us about the standard motifs, metaphors, and images used in story. This summer I took her 2-week intensive on “How to Read Fairy Tales”. Besides all the things I have learned in her classes, I am particularly fascinated by her stories of her middle-school students and their responses to her teaching them these same ideas through story. Her students are excited. They get it. They love it. They have seen the connections most likely on their own (through narration, for most of them), but Angelina is helping them to see that there is a reason for those connections, those things that they see over and over in stories (both in books and movies), and what those things are called. As is often said, all the st0ries are connected. This kind of ‘analysis’ does not kill a story (as so many school and professional efforts do), but rather brings it even more to life. For anyone interested, here is a video that Angelina did to help others see how her way of teaching story aligns with Charlotte Mason principles.

Now I need to answer that question about how to know if a child, or any person, has learned to read correctly. I am convinced after all these years of living (almost 60!), and all the learning I’ve been doing about learning — from childhood, then graduate school (I have a pedagogy degree), then teaching since graduate school, then raising and teaching my own son, participating in online and in person discussions, and reading, reading, reading books on how we learn, seeing the results over a lifetime of watching the adult results of various educational (and parenting) philosophies — that you can tell by a person’s way of being and acting, their ‘persona’. The kind of analysis that tears apart a story with a lot of psychological mess, and searches for The Theme, etc. places a person above the story and author (like they are better than them). And there are methods of education that claim to teach virtue, where a student does tons of memorizing of things and performing of those things (to my Dad: this is definitely what you called ‘showing out’) and I see the outcome of persons with a ton of hubris — which I hope you know is not a Virtue. I see it with little ones, with teens, with adults. There is a certain ‘aura’, if I may be a little voodoo, that I feel. I have come to firmly believe that the ones who truly understand story grow to be the humblest and kindest (and wittiest) of people. I’ve seen it in the adult children of my friends who taught reading in the truly Charlotte Mason way (not just “CM inspired”. Blah!). I see it in Angelina, and I’ve seen in her adult students, as we’re all recovering from the ashes of our own education and history of bad reading. It is not too late.

I saw a meme some years ago that said something like ‘people who read are the kindest people’, and I thought, ‘well, it depends on what kind of books you read’ because I knew some people with tons of shelves of books in their house and who read all the time who were not kind people. And now I would add that not only does it depend on what kind of books you read, but also on How you read them. Perhaps one day I will tell you about the idea of Mirrors and Windows in stories. Some people use stories as Mirrors, and it shows.

Just so there’s a picture to accompany this post, here’s my beautiful boy with some of his favorite books from his junior year.

Favorites from AmblesideOnline Year 11

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Retirement and Goals for my new life

Posted on May 2, 2021 by Kay Pelham

May 14 is my last day as a homeschool teacher. I have been directing my son’s education from birth. We began his official school education when I registered him with an “umbrella school” in Tennessee as K4 in 2007.

I intend to write a few blog posts, reminiscing and evaluating the good, the bad, and the beautiful of these past 18 years, especially concerning the particular curriculum we followed – AmblesideOnline.

For now, I’d like to share some of my more immediate wishes and goals for my new life:

  1. I would like to make some changes with how I run my piano studio, currently with 36 students. I may add openings, but only a very, very few. I have no intention to return to my overwhelmed status prior to the one blessing of covid, which was greatly reducing the size of my studio. I just need to tighten up the business side of it.
  2. I want to continue teaching “Story, Rhyme, and Song” for 3-6 year olds, perhaps adding another class and raising it to age 7.
  3. In contemplating how I can assist the overwhelmed homeschool mom, I will offer my services to read to their children, and throw in some reading instruction, if they would like.
  4. I will continue to study educational philosophy and be involved with the Charlotte Mason and AmblesideOnline community. I will make myself available for consulting both online and locally.
  5. By fall of 2022 I hope to be giving reading instruction (phonics) in a group setting, either at my own studio or through We, Montana!
  6. By fall of 2022 I hope to be teaching a “How to Read Literature”, based on all I’ve been learning with the Literary Life podcast and conferences, and classes with House of Humane Letters. This will be for middle-school, high-school, and adults, and will be either at my own studio or through We, Montana!
  7. Perhaps the most challenging of all — I want to finally stop caring (and obsessing at times) that some people don’t like me. I will be 60 years old in 6 months. I think it is about time.
  8. I will continue to seek Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, and my Creator, and living in His image.
We Can Do This!
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Goodreads Review: The Death of Ivan Ilych

Posted on April 25, 2021 by Kay Pelham

The Death of Ivan Ilych by Leo Tolstoy

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


So much to say about this little book about dying. It’s also about living. Tolstoy takes us through the different stages of Ivan Ilych’s life, the choices he makes, and the values he exhibits. We are allowed inside Ivan Ilych’s mind so that we know the true man. In the end Ivan Ilych struggles with the choices he made in life and the values that he had. Were they right? As he is in physical anguish, he is also in mental anguish when he evaluates what it was all worth now that he has come to this black tunnel. We also see his wife, children, and friends reacting to this illness. We’re not taken inside their minds as much as we are Ivan Ilych’s, so I’m not certain as to how much truth we know about them.

I could relate to some of the feelings of the family and friends. Twenty-three years ago I left my NY home and went to Alabama to spend what would turn out to be the last 6 weeks of my younger brother’s life. I was with him the moment he took his last breath. It was not pretty. My brother was staying in the home of our older brother. During that time that the family was caring for him, I observed the interactions with the many, many visitors that James had. Yesterday I shared the following on social media:
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I’m reading/listening to “The Death of Ivan Ilych”, and some of it is reminiscent of spending those last weeks with my brother James as he was dying from cancer. Although my family is not quite like Ivan’s family and friends, there are ideas that are similar to what was most likely going on in all our hearts and minds.

I have no way of knowing all that my brother James was thinking and feeling in the way that Tolstoy takes us into the thoughts and feelings of Ivan, but here’s one thing that brought James to mind:

“Peter went out. Left alone Ivan Ilych groaned not so much with pain, terrible though that was, as from mental anguish. Always and for ever the same, always these endless days and nights. If only it would come quicker! If only what would come quicker? Death, darkness?… No, no! anything rather than death!”

James had friends who were very faithful in visiting him at our brother Mike’s house where James lived out his last days. James was very well loved. I overheard a conversation where a friend was telling him that he was being “a great example of dying” (meaning, I assumed, that he was exhibiting great peace considering what was drawing near, and possibly more of an encouragement to his friends than they were to him). I heard James respond, “But I don’t want to be a great example of dying; I want to be a great example of living.”

I’m reading now about Ivan’s wife and family going out to a concert (that I think Ivan had bought tickets for in anticipation of going himself), and the wife is saying that, of course, she’d rather stay home and be with him, but that she has this obligation. I remember that feeling of guilt for enjoying things in life when James couldn’t. And that feeling lasted long after he died. It took me several years to recover the enjoyment of the things I love in this life. Sometimes, 23 years later, I still struggle with being okay with it.
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As I ended the book this morning I wondered, How did Tolstoy know so much about dying?

“The Death of Ivan Ilych” ought to be required reading for every high school student. Although he won’t be able to fully relate to someone approaching death, evaluating and mourning over his life choices, it might at least insert the idea that things aren’t as big a deal in the end as they seem in the moment when you’re 20 and 30 and 40. What is really Worth it All?




View all my reviews

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There

Posted on April 4, 2021 by Kay Pelham

Today a Facebook page that I follow asked, “One thing you could never homeschool without is ________?” and since I was sitting there doing my Saturday planning, my response was “Planning”. Oh, you want to know the rest of what I said? “Six more weeks to go, and I’m done forever, but I still take time to plan each week. Don’t think I’ve just winged it any week in these 15 years, unless I just threw in the towel and gave us a week off.”

Then my friend Cindy posts her “annual catalog post” in the form of a rhetorical question that addressed the fact that moms are lured by curriculum that promises to form virtue in their child(ren), as if it was our job or even in our power (or that magic curriculum’s power) to do so.

So I’m washing dishes (and poke myself in my already hurting thumb joint with the tomato knife), and I’m thinking about my Planning to the bitter end, and all the good books that we’ve read through the years in hopes of molding my son’s heart, mind, and soul, and I’m thinking about my mother. My mother didn’t homeschool me, but what she was was There. And of all the planning and reading I’ve done through these 18 years of his life, I’m betting if there’s anything that I have done for my son’s heart and soul, it was just being there. I can remember the comfort and security I felt as a child and teen finding my mother at home when I arrived from school. Maybe we chatted about my day, but mostly it was about just being. I don’t know if my son feels the same about me, or if he ever will recognize what it has done for him, but I know it has made a difference. And it has been worth it all.

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The Rightness of Indignation

Posted on March 5, 2021 by Kay Pelham

I wrote the following a year ago on this date. It came up in my Facebook memories, and since I feel much the same today, I thought it worthy of posting here. It was good to revisit these ideas.

_____________________________________________________________

What follows is a long quote from C.S. Lewis’ book Reflections on the Psalms. I will follow it up with some context and my thoughts. (The bold of some sentences is my addition.)

One’s first impression is that the Jews were much more vindictive and vitriolic than the Pagans.…we cannot be certain that the comparative absence of vindictiveness in the Pagans, though certainly a good thing in itself, is a good symptom. This was borne in upon me during a night journey taken early in the Second War in a compartment full of young soldiers. Their conversation made it clear that they totally disbelieved all that they had read in the papers about the wholesale cruelties of the Nazi régime. They took it for granted, without argument, that this was all lies, all propaganda put out by our own government to “pep up” our troops. And the shattering thing was, that, believing this, they expressed not the slightest anger. That our rulers should falsely attribute the worst of crimes to some of their fellow-men in order to induce others of their fellow-men to shed their blood seemed to them a matter of course. They weren’t even particularly interested. They saw nothing wrong in it. Now it seemed to me that the most violent of the Psalmists—or, for that matter any child wailing out “But it’s not fair”—was in a more hopeful condition than these young men. If they had perceived, and felt as a man should feel, the diabolical wickedness which they believed our rulers to be committing, and then forgiven them, they would have been saints. But not to perceive it at all—not even to be tempted to resentment—to accept it as the most ordinary thing in the world—argues a terrifying insensibility. Clearly these young men had (on that subject anyway) no conception of good and evil whatsoever.Thus the absence of anger, especially that sort of anger which we call indignation, can, in my opinion, be a most alarming symptom. And the presence of indignation may be a good one. Even when that indignation passes into bitter personal vindictiveness, it may still be a good symptom, though bad in itself. It is a sin; but it at least shows that those who commit it have not sunk below the level at which the temptation to that sin exists—just as the sins (often quite appalling) of the great patriot or great reformer point to something in him above mere self. If the Jews cursed more bitterly than the Pagans this was, I think, at least in part because they took right and wrong more seriously. For if we look at their railings we find they are usually angry not simply because these things have been done to them but because these things are manifestly wrong, are hateful to God as well as to the victim.

Lewis is looking at the Psalms that call down curses on their enemies and thinking through how this might trouble believers. How could God’s chosen people do this kind of thing. He notes that some people might say, Well, this was pre-Christian times and even the pagans did this kind of stuff. So he goes searching in the pagan writings and says, “I can find in them lasciviousness, much brutal insensibility, cold cruelties taken for granted, but not this fury or luxury of hatred. I mean, of course, where writers are speaking in their own person; speeches put into the mouths of angry characters in a play are a different matter.”

How could this be? How could pagans be more tolerant than God’s own people? He says some other interesting things before you get to the part I quoted above, and boy howdy, I wish I had the time and energy to explain this more, but here goes something: In summary, the pagans might seem more tolerant because they didn’t care about good and evil. And this leads to some interesting ideas. For instance, he says: “It seems that there is a general rule in the moral universe which may be formulated ‘The higher, the more in danger’.” So what in the world does that mean? Or could it mean? This is what I’m thinking right now: In some areas there is way more temptation to sin because we care. Something matters to us. We have passion for it.

I hope you read all the quote above. I hope you read that story about the soldiers and really thought about it. And if you still need more context and want to think more about this, go read the book. But I’ll tell you what struck me immediately when I first read this a few nights ago: Often in my life, and in my husband Jack’s life , people have said, ‘Calm down, it’s no big deal, why are you getting so worked up about, let it go, it doesn’t matter…..’ And it has frustrated me that people (who I would have thought would) do not Care. They don’t really Care about what is Right and what is Wrong. That’s why they can stay calm. That’s why they tolerate bad behavior and lies. So be careful admiring the Patient and Tolerant. I’d rather keep Caring about what is Right and overcome whatever temptation and sin that that provokes. I’ve actually thought sometimes about just stopping Caring. It’s really frustrating, and often depressing. But I’m not going to do it. I will keep Caring. Caring about Truth and what is Right and Just and Fair.

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He Keeps Me Singing

Posted on March 2, 2021 by Kay Pelham

I was a sad girl when I met Jack Pelham in November of 1998. My younger brother (and best friend) had died from cancer in July, and my grief was unbearable at times. Three months after my brother’s death, I left New York, my home of the previous 11 years, with its memories of several visits from him, and moved to Tennessee to be near my family. Jack Pelham had left Florida for a fresh start in Nashville the week before I arrived from New York. We met some time in the next few weeks when in rehearsals for a charity show that the church we both had joined would be doing at the Ryman Auditorium.

Jack was finishing up his 17 year Bachelor’s degree in Music from Florida State. For this particular show, he directed a small chorus and maybe did a solo or duet. I did some solo piano pieces. The following year we did the show at the Grand Ole Opry House, and either before or after I became a regular member of Jack’s chorus in Nashville. Unbeknownst to him, Jack was slowly filling up the huge hole in my heart left by the loss of my brother. Jack was putting music and singing back into my life.

But I was still lonely for a friend like my brother James had been. Someone who cared about ideas and wanted to read about and think about and talk about ideas. About truth. About goodness. About beauty. This church that we were a part of was a very busy church. More about that some other day. People who genuinely wanted to study out and dig deep into ideas were very rare in this group. In 1999, after a few months break from this busy church, I returned and met Kathryn. Kathryn was more than a decade my junior and had cystic fibrosis. You wouldn’t know it upon first meeting her until she told you about it. I remember her telling me her life-expectancy was 31 years. I found it interesting, as I told her, that she has known this her whole life, and my brother died at 31, not knowing his whole life that 31 was his final year. Kathryn was very real, very smart, and cared about truth. Kathryn didn’t let her “death sentence” stop her from living. Kathryn had also been dating Jack Pelham. They had recently broken up but were trying to work things out. Long story short….really! …. although Jack and I had known each other through the music ministry in the church, it was through our mutual friendship with Kathryn that we became friends. And through this I discovered that Jack was way more than a very good musician. He cared about real things like Kathryn did, like my brother James had. Whether or not I would have gotten to know this about Jack without having known Kathryn, I will never know, but I sure am glad Kathryn was there. I am digressing a bit, but really, Kathryn was a big part of restoring my sanity. And at some point when she saw it just wasn’t going to work for them, she said, “You know, you two should be together.” To which I replied, “Oh, that would just be weird.” She did give her blessing in person to Jack to pursue a relationship with me. Kathryn passed away at age 34 in 2011.

Home. One of the things that would come up in chats with Jack was wanting to find “home”. We would know we had found “the one” when we felt we were at home. I made a travel cassette tape (remember those?) for Jack in that first (and only) summer of our dating. A few of the selections had the theme of Home. Linda Ronstadt sang “feels like home to me, feels like I’m all the way back where I belong”; Shawn Colvin, “Home, that’s where I want to be….because I can’t tell one from the other, did I find you or you find me….out of all those kinds of people, you got a face with a view. And I am just an animal looking for a home to share the same space for a minute or two…” I felt that I had found Home. We cared about the same things. We wanted to keep learning and asking questions about our beliefs. He knew who Cousin Pearl was! I was so comfortable with him. There’s a lot of peace when you don’t have to work your brain trying to not talk about what you want to talk about. You know what I mean? Small talk wears me out.

Wishing to record a song for our 19th anniversary, I found sheet music for some of the home-themed songs I had put on that cassette of long ago, but the one I ended up choosing is a recent find through one of my piano students. Here is (the unedited-until-I-can-get-help-from-JackorJames, and certainly unenhanced version of) Runnin’ Home to You.

Runnin’ Home to You, words and music Benj Pasek and Justin Paul

I started singing with Jack in 1999, some of our Nashville choir joined us to sing at our 2002 wedding, and today we have our Freedom Choir. He began filling up that musical part of my heart 22 years ago, and he still keeps me singing all these years later. And thinking, and reading, and studying, and talking about all the true, good, and beautiful things of this life.

Friendship … is born at the moment when one man says to another “What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . . ~CS Lewis, “The Four Loves”

Love does not consist of gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction. ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, “Airman’s Odyssey”

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Parents Aren’t Supposed to Bury Their Children

Posted on February 25, 2021 by Kay Pelham

We buried our daughter on this day 15 years ago, the day after she had breathed her last in my mother’s arms. The funeral home hosted a visitation for family and friends, and then we all drove to the cemetery to hear words from her father, sing Amazing Grace, and then lower her little body into the ground. When I entered the room where her coffin was at the funeral home, I first saw my mother and father. I hugged my 88 year old dad as we cried together, and I said, “I know, Dad, parents aren’t supposed to bury their children.” My dad had suffered his own loss and buried his youngest child 8 years before. Our daughter is buried next to her Uncle James. Dad passed in 2015 and is resting beside his son and granddaughter.

On a visit with my Tennessee family in 2019 I took my usual tour of Leonard Cemetery, where many members of my Dad’s family are buried. On that visit I especially noted how many in my family have had to bury their children. I have not suffered alone. There in front of my paternal grandparents are the markers for their two infants that they lost at birth and their daughter who died at age 14. Next to my dad’s older sister Irene and her husband Will is their 4 year old daughter Linda. Dad’s younger sister Annise and her husband Vandal have their one-day old son Stephen next to them. Annise’s grandson, the son of her daughter Martha and husband Dwight, killed in a car accident just before his 21st birthday, is also there.

Is seems so wrong, doesn’t it? We feel that this is not the way it is supposed to be. Parents ought not have to bury their children. My dad had expressed this idea in his struggle with his youngest child’s cancer and eventual death. I knew he was reliving those feelings as we buried Grace, and it’s why I said what I did to him that day. Many things in this life don’t make sense to us, and so it is with our babies who are born unable to live long, like our Grace, my cousin Stephen Crawford, and uncles Hillman and Carl Davis, or children who die in tragic accidents, as my cousins Linda Bean and Joseph Smith did, or from sickness, such as the cancer that took my brother James at 31, and the virus that took my Aunt Olene at 14. But we survive and go on loving and caring for those still here. Perhaps we’ll understand it by and by.

The death of one that belongs to him is precious to the Lord.
~Psalm 116:15 ICB

“While the child was still alive, I fasted and wept, for I said, ‘Who knows whether the Lord will be gracious to me, that the child may live?’ But now he is dead. Why should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he will not return to me.”
~King David, at the death of his infant son, 2 Samuel 12:22,23

By and by, when the morning comes,
All the saints of God are gathering home.
We will tell the story of how we’ve overcome.
We will understand it better by and by.
~Charles Albert Tindley

Mouse over the photo gallery below.

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The Case of the Awesome Sister

Posted on February 21, 2021 by Kay Pelham

Some time after I had started piano lessons at age 7, my mother asked my sister Karen, five years my senior, if she wanted to take lessons. Karen responded, “Why would a lawyer need to know how to play piano?” Karen was a huge Perry Mason fan, and lawyering was her goal at that point in her life. She ended up with a degree in journalism and lost the zeal along the way for having a law practice, but she remains a Mason fan, knowing all the TV episodes, as well as collecting the Erle Stanley Gardner novels. (By the way, Karen was writing and telling stories long before that journalism degree. She’s still writing and telling stories at her blog and other venues.)

I often spend the evening watching episodes of Perry Mason. I enjoy them for the stories, the settings, for recognizing actors in their early years guesting on an episode, and just for the good old style of television production, but mostly they make me feel near my big sister. I’ve been particularly fascinated recently with that theme music, so I took on the task of learning an arrangement of it to share for Karen’s special day.

Happy Birthday to the one who taught me to love the best in music, literature, and drama. And for always being there for me when I’ve got questions about Perry, or Andy, or John, or any stock cast member of old movies and TV. You are the best.

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