A personal library

Robert Caro is the author of "titanic biographies of Robert Moses (which took seven years) and Lyndon B. Johnson (a multivolume project that began in 1976 and is still ongoing)." The Washington Post has just published an article about his very extensive personal library. I particularly enjoyed this:

.... Lower [in his bookcase] in much easier reach, sit the Horatio Hornblower novels by C.S. Forester, about the ascent of a British Royal Navy officer during the Napoleonic Wars. The young Caro loved the series so much that, whenever the public library got the latest installment, he would plop down on the building’s metal steps and start reading right there. As a gift, his wife, Ina, who has worked as his researcher on all his books, had Caro’s set rebound in blue, with anchors and naval insignia on the spines.

“I had them all my life,” he said. “It means a lot to have the very pages — because I read these books so many times that I sort of know where the words are on the page. And I’m ashamed to tell you how often I reread them.”

“Oh dear,” he said, his eyes falling on a different stamp, on the top edge of one volume: the faded words “East Meadow Public Library.” “Well, that’s quite true, I was not always good at returning these books. This is going to look really bad! It’s too late.” ....

“Sometimes you look at these bookshelves,” Caro said, “and I have all these memories, all wrapped up in them.” .... (more)

The book cover illustrated above is of one of the Hornblower books in my library.

Sophia Nguyen, "A peek inside Robert Caro’s home library, hidden shelves and all," The Washington Post, Jan 17, 2025.

David Lynch’s only Disney movie

Among the notable deaths reported today is that of filmmaker David Lynch. I've watched several of his films and TV series. Enjoyed some of them but I haven't revisited any except this: 

The Straight Story (1999)

It’s David Lynch’s only Disney movie, which is delicately illustrated with scenery that looks like it’s been pulled out of the pages of National Geographic. The story concerns an aging man who travels across the heartland on a dilapidated lawn mower, hoping to reunite with his brother (played by Harry Dean Stanton). It’s not only Lynch’s most romantic film, it’s also the only one where his strange interpretation of Americana becomes almost Rockwellian. There is nothing Lynchian about Alvin Straight, who’s a swisher-smoking wiseman who shares his thoughts over crackling campfires and warm meals—each time his eyes filling up with tears. Though it’s based on an unusual story that made headlines in 1994, Lynch’s interpretation of Straight’s story is elegiac. This is a film about an aging outlaw taking his last ride towards the sunset.

Not really about an "outlaw" at all, but a decent old guy played by Richard Farnsworth who wants to see his brother at least one more time. It's set in Iowa and Wisconsin where the real events happened.

Art Tavana, "Nineteen of the Loneliest Films Ever Made," Quillette, April 19, 2020.

Against stupidity we are defenseless

A comment I read today led me to look for a Bonhoeffer essay apparently included in Letters and Papers from Prison. My immediate inclination was to apply the insights to the left but, of course, they can apply to just about any group.

Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease.

Against stupidity we are defenseless.

Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed — in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical — and when facts are irrefutable, they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack.

For that reason, greater caution is called for than with a malicious one. Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous.

If we want to know how to get the better of stupidity, we must seek to understand its nature. This much is certain, that it is in essence not an intellectual defect but a human one. There are human beings who are of remarkably agile intellect yet stupid, and others who are intellectually quite dull yet anything but stupid. ....

The fact that the stupid person is often stubborn must not blind us to the fact that he is not independent. In conversation with him, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with a person, but with slogans, catchwords and the like that have taken possession of him. He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being. Having thus become a mindless tool, the stupid person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil. This is where the danger of diabolical misuse lurks, for it is this that can once and for all destroy human beings. .... (more)

I found the essay at: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, "On stupidity," North State Journal, Jan 15, 2025.

Alone against a warship

I've seen the film and own a DVD of Sailor Of The King, a pretty good film based on a book by C.S. Forester, Brown on Resolution, that just entered the public domain. It was one of the first Forester books dealing with nautical subjects. The text is available at Standard Books with this description:

Albert Brown was fated to enlist in the British Navy, his destiny set by his unusual birth and upbringing. While on operations in the Pacific during the First World War, his ship is sunk—but he survives, and is taken on board the German cruiser that sank them. It too has suffered damage, and heads to the Galapagos Islands to effect repairs. In this unlikely and hostile setting, Brown, alone, pits himself against the German ship and its crew, seeking to delay its progress while British naval reinforcements make their way to the region.

C.S. Forester became famous for his Horatio Hornblower series, but Brown on Resolution is among the first of his works of nautical fiction. In it, he weaves together the gritty social themes of his earlier work with meticulous accounts of naval adventure.

The book is set during World War I but the film moves the story to World War II.

Integral to humanity

From a review of Alister McGrath's Why We Believe:

His latest book, Why We Believe, provides McGrath with another opportunity to defend belief in the face of those who deride it as at best irrational and weird and at worst, dangerous. It coincides with the 1,700th anniversary of the Christian Nicene Creed, first adopted by the Council of Nicaea in AD 325, and still used today as a profession of faith by those with official positions in the Roman Catholic, Orthodox and Lutheran Churches.

But as McGrath rightly says of a creed – a word taken from the Latin credo, “I believe” – it might be a description of what a Christian believes, but it’s a limited statement. To truly understand belief, he argues, we need to see it lived. As he reminds his readers, CS Lewis, one of the 20th century’s most high-profile atheists-turned-Christians, as well as the creator of Narnia, understood that “the Christian narrative is primary; Christian creeds are secondary… creeds cannot convey either [Christianity’s] imaginative appeal or its subjective impact.”

McGrath’s basic premise is that belief, rather than being outmoded and unscientific superstition, is integral to being human. In a rewriting of Descartes’s cogito ergo sum, he argues that homo sapiens needs to make sense of life, not merely survive it. As the novelist Jeanette Winterson would put it, we are meaning-seeking creatures. Beliefs, whether humanist, or Christian, or that of another religion, shape the way we understand and experience the world.

The most interesting issue about faith and its understanding of human nature, after all, is how it keeps bubbling up, not only in people’s everyday lives but in public discourse. While humanists, as McGrath points out, believe in the inherent goodness of people, a Christian such as Miss Marple understands the simultaneous capacity for its opposite. Only this autumn, forensic psychiatrist Dr Gwen Adshead reached for Christian theology in her Reith Lectures to help explain evil. It was, she argued, an absence of good, and its antidote to evil was therefore to practise goodness – in other words, the development of virtue that theologians and philosophers from Aquinas onwards have been advocating.

McGrath uses this book to take on Dawkins et al once more: he complains that the New Atheists “degraded and rationalised faith”, and treated it as though it were “simply a form of data”. But he also gives an account of belief’s many facets, from the search for a big picture to the difference it makes to navigating a difficult world. He perceptively comments on how suffering, once seen as a connection between Christians and Christ, is now often perceived as a problem by Christian thinkers drawn into trying to rationalise pain. .... (more)

Catherine Pepinster, "Atheists, you don’t even understand what ‘belief’ is," The Telegraph, Jan. 9, 2025.

Creepy crawlies

About the only time I make up my bed is immediately after I launder the linens. That's because I am lazy and almost nobody (other than me) enters my bedroom. But now I have a new justification:

Tiny dust mites, only the largest of which are visible to the naked eye, exist in their hundreds of thousands – if not their millions – between your sheets. They might hide out in your mattress after a night spent eating the dead skin on your face, pillows and sheets, or linger on your duvet throughout the day.

These arachnids (yes, they have eight legs, like spiders) thrive in moist, damp places, and hoover up the dead skin left behind as your cells renew themselves throughout the night.

“Apparently the typical bed contains somewhere between 100,000 and 10,000,000 dust mites,” says Dr Sermed Mezher, a British GP....

...[D]ust mites don’t bite, and they are relatively harmless. But they do proliferate quickly, die off fast and create a lot of debris from their droppings. Those with an allergy to the tiny creatures can see their health derailed by this build-up: dry eyes, sneezing, coughing, wheezing and fatigue are all telltale signs that you might be allergic to dust mites. ....

While you can’t eradicate mites totally from your bedroom, it is possible to reduce their presence significantly by airing out your bed, washing your sheets regularly, and making sure that your room is kept at a reasonable temperature. ....

Between washes, against conventional advice, it’s best to leave your bed unmade throughout the day .... Mites thrive in warm, damp environments, so by airing out your bed you’re “allowing your mattress and sheets to respond to the temperature of the room more quickly,” (emphasis added)

Lauren Shirreff, "The creepy crawlies living in my bed – and how I got rid of them," The Telegraph, Dec. 7, 2024.

In the public domain

Every January 1^st more works go out of copyright and enter the public domain. This year, in the United States, the songs, books, and films, are those published in 1929. Standard Books selects twenty of the "best," books available on their site including, for instance, The Sound and the Fury by Faulkner, All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway, and others, including several by authors I always enjoy:

• Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett
• The Dain Curse by Dashiell Hammett
• The Seven Dials Mystery by Agatha Christie
• The Courts of the Morning by John Buchan
• The Man in the Queue by Josephine Tey
• Brown on Resolution by C.S. Forester

Each of the above is linked to a page where it can be downloaded or read online. All but one are mysteries. The non-mystery is the C.S. Forester, a WWI naval thriller. The Buchan is a Richard Hannay I haven't yet read but will soon.

"A slayer of Communists"

John Podhoretz is not particularly fond of Bob Dylan but liked A Complete Unknown because of a theme Podhoretz isn't sure the director understood. Who knew that electrified guitars were anti-Communist? From the review of the film:

The hidden story of A Complete Unknown is that Bob Dylan is a slayer of Communists—maybe not because they’re Communists, but I’ll take what I can get.

His rebellion against the elders in the folk movement of the 1960s was a rebellion in part against the static conformity and dreary humorlessness of the far-left politics that had dominated that corner of the music world for a quarter-century.

That is the secret hidden text of A Complete Unknown, the biopic in question, even if co-writer and director James Mangold might not completely grasp it. The not-so-hidden general theme of the movie is that Dylan is the inceptor of the new American age of the 1960s because he rebels against and ultimately rejects the expectations of elders and authority figures. What Dylan’s mentors, users, financial exploiters, and groupies want is the voice of social justice inveighing as he does against "Masters of War"—but a social-justice warrior is not what he wants to be. And this guy simply will not be what other people want him to be. In a genuinely brilliant performance, Timothée Chalamet captures Dylan’s combination of insolence, petulance, self-assurance, and hunger for authenticity without ever once trying to make the man even remotely endearing. In an equally brilliant performance, Edward Norton plays Pete Seeger, seemingly kindly but deeply self-satisfied, the mentor from whom Dylan must break away to be free. Their dynamic is the beating heart of A Complete Unknown. ....

The Princeton historian Sean Wilentz, no conservative to put it mildly, lays it out authoritatively in his 2010 book, Bob Dylan in America: It was the political aesthetic of the American Communist Party and its fellow travelers, which had reached its entropic phase by the time Dylan stepped off the Greyhound. The world of folk music was, by then, led by a hidebound Establishment of its own that had emerged from the Popular Front—the effort, in the United States during the 1930s, to advance the interests of Stalin’s Soviet Union through the seizure of the high ground of culture.

It was led by an unreconstructed Stalinist named Alan Lomax, who worked out of the Library of Congress during the FDR era recording and storing and transcribing what he believed to be authentic working-class musical art unstained by bourgeois Kulak values in pursuit of revolutionary change. (He was assisted in these efforts by nepo daddy Charles Seeger, Pete’s paterfamilias.)

The key tunes of the time were the celebration of the radical Wobbly labor agitator Joe Hill and the anthemic "Which Side Are You On?" nominally about the Harlan County mining strike of 1931—but over time the "side" in question was the Soviet side in the battle between democracy and Stalinism.

A Complete Unknown concludes with Dylan’s betrayal of the aesthetic principles of the Popular Front through his embrace of electrified instruments—which an enraged Lomax and others considered a surrender to the capture of the youth vanguard that was supposed to save America from bourgeois conservatism by capitalist tools like the Beatles.

John Podhoretz, "REVIEW: ‘A Complete Unknown’," The Washington Free Beacon, Jan. 3, 2025.

A New Years' prayer

Samuel Johnson on New Year's Eve, 1749/50:

ALMIGHTY GOD, by whose will I was created, and by whose Providence I have been sustained, by whose mercy I have been called to the knowledge of my Redeemer, and by whose Grace whatever I have thought or acted acceptable to Thee has been inspired and directed, grant, O Lord, that in reviewing my past life, I may recollect Thy mercies to my preservation, in whatever state Thou preparest for me, that in affliction I may remember how often I have been succoured, and in Prosperity may know and confess from whose hand the blessing is received. Let me, O Lord, so remember my sins, that I may abolish them by true repentance, and so improve the Year to which Thou hast graciously extended my life, and all the years which Thou shalt yet allow me, that I may hourly become purer in Thy sight; so that I may live in Thy fear, and die in Thy favour, and find mercy at the last day, for the sake of Jesus Christ. Amen.

"On eagles' wings"

I had always assumed we already had a national bird. Apparently, I was wrong:

President Biden last week signed a unanimously approved bill that officially names the bald eagle America’s national bird. Few have paused to reflect on the deeper meaning of this iconic creature.

When the Founding Fathers considered designs for a national emblem after the Declaration of Independence, they considered depictions of Moses parting the Red Sea and the children of Israel in the desert. In 1782 they chose a bald eagle, clutching in its talons an olive branch and arrows—biblical symbols of peace and war.

In the media coverage surrounding the eagle last week, our national bird’s religious significance was overlooked. The Bible mentions the eagle at least 30 times, including in Exodus, Deuteronomy, Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Isaiah, Hosea, Jeremiah, Obadiah, Samuel and Revelations. Isaiah 40:31 declares: “But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles.” Exodus 19:4 describes God carrying the Israelites “on eagles’ wings.” .... (more)

Eli Federman, "The Bald Eagle Is Heaven-Sent," The Wall Street Journal, Dec. 31, 2024.

"I heard laughter"

I retired from teaching before the cell phone took hold with high school students but I live among today's college students. On the elevator in my building, walking on the street, in a restaurant, wherever, their eyes are down and they are watching something, texting, or talking on the phone. I read that is also true in the high school classroom. That is changing. From "How Jonathan Haidt Won the Fight Against Smartphones in Schools":

This fall, when Suzanna Kruger walked into her biology classroom, she noticed something strange: Two dozen students were staring back at her.

“They were willing to make eye contact,” Kruger, a 55-year-old high school teacher in Seaside, Oregon, told me. “They even said hello.”

It was something she hadn’t seen since before the pandemic. “If a kid had their phone in class, I could just simply walk up to them, and they would hand it over,” Kruger said. But by the fall of 2021, when students returned from a year of distance learning, she said she had started feeling like the teacher from Charlie Brown.

“They looked at me like I was just going ‘wah, wah, wah,’ ” Kruger said...

This past fall, the Seaside School District became one of the first in Oregon to ban cell phones for both middle and high schoolers, forcing kids to lock their devices in pouches near the school entrance until the end of the day. Seaside has joined thousands of schools nationwide in recently banning smartphones, as a growing body of evidence shows they’re linked to falling test scores and rising rates of teen mental illness. ....

Haidt spells out four “foundational rules” to inspire a “Great Rewiring of Childhood.” They are: no smartphones before high school, no social media before age 16, no phones at school, and more unsupervised play and independence for kids. ....

For nearly a decade, Seaside High School principal Jeff Roberts said he’d been “dancing around” a phone ban. There was no question phones were causing “constant turmoil” at his school. But after he read Haidt’s book, he went to the school board to propose a ban from “bell to bell”—throughout the entire school day.

It’s been only one semester since the ban has taken effect, but Roberts says the school’s failure rate has fallen by 30 percent, meaning a full third of students who would have likely flunked a class are now on track to pass. Just as important, he says, is a sound he’s lately been hearing in the school cafeteria, which overlooks the Pacific Ocean. It’s a sound he says he’d almost forgotten.

“I heard laughter,” he said. “And I mean laughter. And there wasn’t a single phone in sight.” (more)

Olivia Reingold, "How Jonathan Haidt Won the Fight Against Smartphones in Schools," The Free Press, Dec. 30, 2024.

A Complete Unknown

I may wait until it is streaming, but I will see A Complete Unknown. From a Wall Street Journal review of the film:

Among the many music greats who’ve gotten the biopic treatment, Bob Dylan presents an especially tough multiple choice problem. He’s an artistic deity whose output made a real mark on history. He’s also a living cartoon character with a rasp and patter that has inspired countless bad impressions. And he’s a shapeshifter with many musical phases and a habit of tweaking his own mythology. ....

“[Timothée Chalamet] was really excited to be the one to be able to introduce this music and these lyrics to a new generation.” Chalamet, who has said he knew little about Dylan before landing the part, got good enough with the material to do some 35 songs live on camera, including guitar and harmonica work, and for those on-set performances to make the final cut, the filmmakers say. ....

He’d been practicing the music since 2018, when he was cast in the role, and had extra time to get better thanks to pandemic and Hollywood strike delays. Along the way, he became the movie-star equivalent of that dude in your college dorm who was always noodling on a guitar. His “Dune” co-star Oscar Isaac has said that Chalamet demonstrated his stuff by playing “Girl From the North Country” for cast-mates. ....

“When someone does an impersonation of Dylan, what they’re often missing is the sincerity with which he sings those lyrics,” Vetro says. “He was getting a message across, and that’s what people gravitated to, not because they were like, ‘Oh, I love that nasal voice.’”

Chalamet studied Dylan’s vintage performance footage as well as his body language and his attitude in press conferences. “We’d be watching an interview and Timmy would start speaking the lines just like Bob did. So then he would go into singing it like Bob, but the Bob of that specific time period” ....

...“A Complete Unknown” focuses on four precipitous years. The story starts with a 19-year-old Dylan’s arrival in New York City and ends with the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, where he rocked out with a band and blew up his image as a lone prophet with an acoustic guitar. ....

Dylan, who is now 83, never got involved in Chalamet’s performance, Mangold says, but the singer reviewed the screenplay. He circled instances of people calling him “Bob” in the script, and changed that to “Bobby” for most characters. Dylan also crossed out a section of lyrics to “Masters of War” that he would skip when singing it live, the director recalls. “He was like, ‘Oh man, I never did this verse.’”

When they met (in a Santa Monica coffee shop that was closed to the public during the pandemic), Dylan said the decision to go electric at Newport had been less about shaking up the music scene than his craving for the camaraderie of playing in a rock band. .... (more)

John Jurgensen, "How Timothée Chalamet Learned to Sound Like Bob Dylan," The Wall Street Journal, Dec. 24, 2024.

"Mem’s of 7th day B’pt Church"

For some reason, this came to mind today. Matthew Bracewell and his wife may have been Stonefort Seventh Day Baptist Church members. Pope County is the southernmost county in Illinois, across the Ohio from Kentucky. Reposted:

Dissenting took more political courage in the days before the secret ballot. In "Abraham Lincoln and Pope County" C.A. Crisp, who has a "hobby of finding cemeteries" in Pope County in southernmost Illinois, notes reference to an 1860 voter who was distinctly in the minority — and proud of it.

"…The 1860 election records show that Abraham Lincoln received only 127 votes in Pope County, while Stephen A. Douglas, received 1,202 votes…Opposition to Lincoln’s election in 1860 was so strong that one farmer in the northwestern section of the county was assaulted physically at the polls when he showed up to vote for the 'Rail Splitter.' Matthew Bracewell lived to a ripe old age and never regretted the way he cast his vote…" Pope County History and Families, Vol. 2, page 16, ‘The Civil War in Pope County’ - submitted by Ricky T. Allen.

The small cemetery where Matthew Bracewell and Irenne, his wife, were buried is located almost 4 miles west of Delwood. It is in a small grove of trees surrounded by a field. On his tombstone it reads:

"Mem’s of 7th day B’pt Church" ....

Matthew’s ripe old age was 81 years 1 month and 5 days.

Abraham Lincoln and Pope County | Pope County, Illinois Cemeteries

In the bleak midwinter

In the bleak midwinter,      frosty wind made moan, Earth stood hard as iron,     water like a stone; Snow had fallen, snow on snow,     snow on snow, In the bleak midwinter, long ago.	Angels and archangels may     have gathered there, Cherubim and seraphim     thronged the air; But His mother only,     in her maiden bliss, Worshiped the beloved with a kiss.
Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him,     nor earth sustain; Heaven and earth shall flee away     when He comes to reign. In the bleak midwinter     a stable place sufficed The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.	What can I give Him, poor as I am? If I were a shepherd,     I would bring a lamb; If I were a Wise Man,     I would do my part; Yet what I can I give Him:     give my heart.
Enough for Him, whom cherubim,     worship night and day, Breastful of milk,     and a mangerful of hay; Enough for Him,     whom angels fall before, The ox and ass and camel which adore.

 Christina Rossetti, 1872

The Truth sent from Above

Ralph Vaughan Williams, "Herefordshire Carol":

This is the truth sent from above, The truth of God, the God of love; Therefore don’t turn me from your door,    But hearken all both rich and poor.	And at that season of the year Our blest Redeemer did appear; He here did live, and here did preach, And may thousands he did teach.
The first thing which I do relate Is that God did man create; The next thing which to you I’ll tell Woman was made with man to dwell.	Thus He in love to us behaved, To show us how we must be saved; And if you want to know the way, Be pleased to hear what He did say.
And we were heirs to endless woes, Till God the Lord did interpose; And so a promise soon did run That He would redeem us by his Son.

There are more verses, including:

"Go preach the Gospel," now He said,
"To all the nations that are made!
And he that does believe on me,
From all his sins I'll set him free."

O seek! O seek of God above
That saving faith that works by love!
And, if He's pleased to grant thee this,
Thou'rt sure to have eternal bliss.

God grant to all within this place
True saving faith, that special grace
Which to His people doth belong:
And thus I close my Christmas song.

A love of reading

Lamenting the decline in reading for pleasure by the young, this Telegraph column explains why "Reading is vital for our children":

One of the greatest gifts my grandad ever gave me was a love of reading. From an early age he handed me book after book. Beatrix Potter, Sherlock Holmes, Treasure Island – I couldn’t get enough.

But my favourite was the Chronicles of Narnia. I stumbled through the back of the wardrobe with Lucy Pevensie, into the world of Aslan the lion, Maugrim the wolf, Mr Tumnus and the White Witch. I was hooked from the first page.

Books hold a special power to light up children’s imaginations. Generations have flown off to Neverland and leapt down the rabbit hole to Wonderland. They’ve run through the hundred-acre wood and snuck into the secret garden. From tea with tigers, to picnics with hungry caterpillars – the magic of children’s books can cast a spell on us all. ....

Reading is vital for a child’s language and cognitive development. And it brings a raft of emotional and social benefits. Reading carries children into different worlds and transports them into the minds of others. They can experience different perspectives, helping them to build empathy and connect with people unlike them. All told, these benefits bode well for a child’s future – from employability to earnings. ....

The books we read as children become part of who we are as adults. From the days I spent in the land of Narnia I learned about friendship, loyalty, forgiveness – and the dangers of accepting Turkish Delight from strangers. But it was the magic of children’s stories that gave me a lifelong love of reading. My grandad understood the value of that. He understood that reading could set me on the path to success. And now it’s our duty to make sure the next generation of young readers don’t miss out on that wonderful gift. (more)

Bridget Phillipson, "Reading is vital for our children," The Telegraph, Dec. 20,2024.

More Dickens Christmas

Christmastide at 600 College St. when I was young: candles in every street-facing window, a wreath on the front door and a festooned evergreen in the front window (first real, then later, artificial), large-format Christmas Ideals on the coffee table, Christmas cards taped to the kitchen wall by Mom, and more. Records came out, too. We had a recording of A Child's Christmas in Wales read by Dylan Thomas himself. The record I remember best was a 45rpm of Lionel Barrymore as Scrooge in Dickens' Christmas Carol. He had performed that role year after year on the radio in the 40s and 50s. Listening to the record was one of our family Christmas traditions. I transferred the recording to CD years ago and just found it among my collection of Christmas music. The original record sleeve:

 And this, provided by YouTube, is the recording:

The rightful king has landed...

C.S. Lewis on the Incarnation:

• 
  …the Christian story is precisely the story of one grand miracle, the Christian assertion being that what is beyond all space and time, what is uncreated, eternal, came into nature, into human nature, descended into His own universe, and rose again, bringing nature up with Him. It is precisely one great miracle. If you take that away there is nothing specifically Christian left. (God in the Dock)
• The central miracle asserted by Christians is the Incarnation. They say that God became Man. Every other miracle prepares for this, or exhibits this, or results from this. (Miracles)
• In the Christian story God descends to reascend. He comes down;…down to the very roots and sea-bed of the Nature he has created. But He goes down to come up again and bring the whole ruined world up with Him. (Miracles)
• The Incarnation…illuminates and orders all other phenomena, explains both our laughter and our logic, our fear of the dead and our knowledge that it is somehow good to die, and which at one stroke covers what multitudes of separate theories will hardly cover for us if this is rejected. (Miracles)
• But supposing God became man—suppose our human nature which can suffer and die was amalgamated with God’s nature in one person—then that person could help us. He could surrender His will, and suffer and die, because He was man; and He could do it perfectly because He was God…. But we cannot share God’s dying unless God dies; and He cannot die except by being a man, That is the sense in which He pays our debt, and suffers for us what He Himself need not suffer at all. (Mere Christianity)
• Enemy-occupied territory—that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of sabotage.” (Mere Christianity)

"Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childish days"

From Dickens' Pickwick Papers.

...[N]umerous indeed are the hearts to which Christmas brings a brief season of happiness and enjoyment. How many families, whose members have been dispersed and scattered far and wide, in the restless struggles of life, are then reunited, and meet once again in that happy state of companionship and mutual goodwill, which is a source of such pure and unalloyed delight; and one so incompatible with the cares and sorrows of the world, that the religious belief of the most civilised nations, and the rude traditions of the roughest savages, alike number it among the first joys of a future condition of existence, provided for the blessed and happy! How many old recollections, and how many dormant sympathies, does Christmas time awaken!

We write these words now, many miles distant from the spot at which, year after year, we met on that day, a merry and joyous circle. Many of the hearts that throbbed so gaily then, have ceased to beat; many of the looks that shone so brightly then, have ceased to glow; the hands we grasped, have grown cold; the eyes we sought, have hid their lustre in the grave; and yet the old house, the room, the merry voices and smiling faces, the jest, the laugh, the most minute and trivial circumstances connected with those happy meetings, crowd upon our mind at each recurrence of the season, as if the last assemblage had been but yesterday! Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childish days; that can recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth; that can transport the sailor and the traveler, thousands of miles away, back to his own fireside and his quiet home! ....

Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers, Chapter 28.

Heaven

Joni Eareckson Tada reflecting on the hymn "When We All Get to Heaven":

.... Shining in brilliant beauty, with no more pain or sorrow, dementia, or disability. We will shed these travails as we would a heavy coat slipping from our shoulders, and we'll finally comprehend that the whole plan of redemption—all the suffering—was the Father's way of securing for his Son a wonderful gift: a radiant bride. And to think we can brighten that radiance, for it will be made plain how our suffering prepared us for such shining glory! Charles Spurgeon writes:

We make too much of this poor life, for the trials that now weigh us down will soon vanish like morning dew. We are only here long enough to feel an April shower of pain, then we are gone among the unfading flowers of the endless May. So, put things in order. Allot to this brief life its brief consideration, and to everlasting glory, its weight of happy meditations.

Now picture it. You and I among great multitudes of the redeemed, pulsing with joy and infused with light. We are surrounded by the angelic host, and we happily press in line with the great procession of the saved, streaming through gates of pearl, an infinite cavalcade from earth's wide bounds and the oceans' farthest coasts, all in one joyous parade countless generations, all lifting our diadems before God. ....

Joni Eareckson Tada, Songs of Suffering: 25 Hymns and Devotions for Weary Souls, Crossway, 2022.