Sunday Salon ~ chickens and books

First, the books

I have a stack of library books still to read, but I may set them aside to read one of the books Donna has put in my hands.  Yesterday, she handed me Room by Emma Donoghue (2010), which I could call library loot, since I picked it up for her the other day when I was at the library getting my own books.

To five-year-old-Jack, Room is the world.  It's where he was born, it's where he and his Ma eat and sleep and play and learn.  At night, his Ma shuts him safely in the wardrobe, where he is meant to be asleep when Old Nick visits.  Room is home to Jack, but to Ma it's the prison where she has been held for seven years.  Through her fierce love for her son, she has created a life for him in this eleven-by-eleven-foot space.  But with Jack's curiosity building alongside her own desperation, she knows that Room cannot contain either much longer.

The other book is The Last Week by Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan (2006), which is the March choice for her book club.  Since I'm considering joining that group, I should probably read the  book, especially since I think these writers are excellent, whether writing alone or together.

Borg and Crossan discovered that many Christians are unclear on the details of events during the week leading up to Jesus's crucifixion.  Using the gospel of Mark as their guide, Borg and Crossan present a day-by-day account of Jesus's final week of life.  They begin their story on Palm Sunday with two triumphal entries into Jerusalem.  The first entry, that of Roman governor Pontius Pilate leading Roman soldiers into the city, symbolized military strength.  The second heralded a new kind of moral hero who was praised by the people as he rode in on a humble donkey.  Jesus is this new moral hero, a more dangerous Jesus than the one enshrined in the church's traditional teachings.  The Last Week depicts Jesus giving up his life to protest power without justice and to condemn the rich who lack concern for the poor.

Have you read either of these books?  What do you think?  Should I read one of these or one of the seven I still have checked out from the library?

1. The Book Thief ~ by Markus Zusak, 2006, YA fiction (Germany) ~ due 1-31
2. Gilgamesh ~ by Joan London, 2003, fiction (Australia and Armenia) ~ due 1-31
3. The Yiddish Policemen’s Union ~ by Michael Chabon, 2007, fiction (Alaska) ~ due 1-31
4. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian ~ by Sherman Alexie, 2001, YA fiction ~ due 2-6
5. The Discovery of Jeanne Baret ~ by Glynis Ridley, 2010, biography ~ due 2-14
6. The Knife of Never Letting Go ~ by Patrick Ness, 2008, YA fiction ~ due 2-18
7. Inside Out and Back Again ~ by Thanhha Lai, 2011, children's (Alabama) ~ due 2-20

Second, the chickens

"Why did the chicken cross the road?"  Google helped me find some answers and even more humorous pictures.  One web site has a Chickens Crossing lesson plan for drawing and writing sentences, along with this video of what children have come up with:



My favorite on this video is the chicken who crossed the road "to rescue his girlfriend from Colonel Sanders."  Elsewhere online, I found out the chicken (or should it be chickens, plural?) crossed the road "to show the possum it could be done."  Captain James T. Kirk says, "To boldly go where no chicken has gone before."  A cartoon showed a hen telling a duck, "To be perfectly honest, I cross the road to get away from my husband."  Here's a link to lots of answers, from people like Darwin and Moses and Martin Luther King, Jr., who is quoted by this cartoon chicken:

By the way, you do know that a chicken crossing the road is poultry in motion, right?  Okay, it's a pun, but I like puns — because I like to play with words.  So here's a compound pun by Richard Whately that I simply must share with you:

"Why can a man never starve in the Great Desert?  Because he can eat the sand which is there.  But who brought the sand which is there?  Noah sent Ham, and his descendants mustered and bred."

Get it?  Sand-which-is?  Musterd?  Bred?  Oh, and maybe I should mention that Noah's sons are named Shem, Ham, and Japheth (see Genesis 6:10).

Third, another date

Jamey at the Pocket Wilderness near Montlake yesterday

Another view with Jamey taken yesterday

Earlier this week, Jamey called me from the University and came by my house on his way home from classes.  We talked a bit, then went to Wendy's for lunch — I love their salads and he had a burger.  I ask you, can anything be grander than taking a handsome grandson to lunch when he chose to come visit on his own?

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