Learning From Your Mistakes

Bob Lupton is a minor celebrity these days, at least in faith-based urban ministry circles, and with good reason. Over his three plus decades in urban Atlanta -- the decidedly unhip parts of "urban Atlanta" -- he's never lost his commitment to caring for the poor, but he has kept his eyes opened and relearned age-old principles that are forgotten every few generations. It takes open-minded pioneers like Mr. Lupton to rediscover them in the field, though I also have an appreciation for the academic/historical work that has paralleled Mr. Lupton's hands-on ministry (see Marvin Olasky's "The Tragedy of American Compassion and several other works documenting the roots of the principles Mr. Lupton covers here). But for many folks, example is much more powerful than argument, and Mr. Lupton provides the example in a very convincing manner.

I will now end this review in fifth grade book report style: Want to know what these principles are that Mr. Lupton has painstakingly learned in his years in urban ministry? Then you'll have to READ THE BOOK!!! (It's only just over 100 pages and is an easy, easy read, so READ THE BOOK!!!)

A Terrific Intro to Samuel Johnson

I'd read enough about Dr. Johnson, thanks to James Boswell, so it was time to read something by Dr. Johnson. This was an ideal selection for a reader like myself who has more experience with nonfiction and struggles to keep up with poetry. Rasselas is brief (150 pages, including a 34-page introduction that is very skippable), broken up into short chapters ideal for the reader who only has a few minutes at a time, and like a good fairy tale is accessible to anyone, regardless of historical knowledge or context.

Rasselas is the story of a prince and princess who escape from a Shangri La-like existence in a secluded valley where the children of the royal family of Abissinia are kept in perpetual comfort and amusement. The prince and princess want to see the world, and Johnson gives them a pretty good tour of it. Their upbringing makes them naive about the wicked ways of the world, but they have a trustworthy guide who accompanies them with extensive knowledge of life outside the happy valley, and their idyllic training in childhood has somehow produced noble character in both of them to carry them through in their journey.

Though not parallel in structure or purpose, I kept feeling like I was reading Ecclesiastes -- something about the main characters' exposure to and sampling of all the world has to offer and seeing at last that there really isn't anything new, better and more exciting out there. Where does that leave us? Usually back where we started, but with a softer heart toward our problems and the people in our lives and their problems.

Not So Scary After All

This book was a disappointment. I'd looked forward to it ever since I'd discovered that Greg Benford, Greg Bear and David Brin had written three more Foundation novels to continue Isaac Asimov's classic series, begun with a trilogy in the 1950s and followed up by at least three more Asimov volumes in the 1980s and 90s.

The Asimov novels are fantastic -- when combined with his robot stories and galactic expansion novels, they cover ten to twenty thousand years of future human history, leading up to the collapse of an empire spanning the galaxy and the careful steps to speed a return to order and peace through the science of psychohistory.

But all that's for another review. This book continues the story, all right, and pulls in some interesting new ideas and story lines, but it's ponderous for long stretches, and the "simulated personalities" of Voltaire and Joan of Arc are simultaneously too well done for the supposed lack of historical knowledge of the era and too one dimensional to be interesting artificial intelligences.

Then there's that weird part of the story where Hari Seldon and his girlfriend get mentally implanted into apelike creatures to Benford can lecture us about evolutionary biology, a subject with fascinating internal logic but one that ultimately produces a closed system with no purpose or result.

But Benford still gets credit for trying. Writing the first Foundation novel after Asimov's death must have been a real challenge; not one I'd want to attempt.

The Starting Place for New Urbanism

Now fifteen years old but still the best starting place for getting a basic grounding in the design/architecture/urban planning/community renewal movements known as New Urbanism, this book summarizes the basic insights behind the movement and then gives dozens of illustrated examples of completed and proposed developments that show the ideas in action. Then it closes with a fabulous, aggressive essay by Vincent Scully entitled "The Architecture of Community" that skewers the complicity of government, architects, design professionals, developers and automobile manufacturers in the destruction of communities across our land. The reference to "the truly sinister Departments of Transportation everywhere" is my personal favorite.

"What was it that the young lady of quality said of me?"

At Sir Alexander Dick's, from that absence of mind to which every man is at times subject, I told, in a blundering manner, Lady Eglingtoune's complimentary adoption of Dr. Johnson as her son; for I unfortunately stated that her ladyship adopted him as her son, in consequence of her having been married the year after he was born. Dr. Johnson instantly corrected me. "Sir, don't you perceive that you are defaming the countess? For, supposing me to be her son, and that she was not married till the year after my birth, I must have been her natural son." A young lady of quality, who was present, very handsomely said, "Might not the son have justified the faults?" My friend was much flattered by this compliment, which he never forgot. When in more than ordinary spirits, and talking of his journey to Scotland, he has called to me, "Boswell, what was it that the young lady of quality said of me at Sir Alexander Dick's?" Nobody will doubt that I was happy in repeating it.

--pages 408-09

I Bet It Was Uphill Both Ways!

There are two carpenters in Col; but most of the inhabitants can do something as boat-carpenters. They can all dye. Heath is used for yellow; and for red, a moss which grows on stones. They make broad-cloth, and tartan, and linen, of their own wool and flax, sufficient for their own use; as also stockings. Their bonnets come from the main land. Hard-ware and several small articles are brought annually from Greenock, and sold in the only shop in the island, which is kept near the house, or rather hut, used for publick worship, there being no church in the island. The inhabitants of Col have increased considerably within these thirty years, as appears from the parish registers. There are but three considerable tacksmen on Col's part of the island: the rest is let to small tenants, some of whom pay so low a rent as four, three, or even two guineas. The highest is seven pounds, paid by a farmer, whose son goes yearly on foot to Aberdeen for education, and in summer returns, and acts as a school-master in Col. Dr. Johnson sad, "There is something noble in a young man's walking two hundred miles and back again, every year, for the sake of learning."

--page 343

Dr. Johnson Prefers Real Estate to the Stock Market

I would never have any man sell land, to throw money into the funds, as is often done, or to try any other species of trade. Depend upon it, this rage of trade will destroy itself. You and I shall not see it; but the time will come when there will be an end of it. Trade is like gaming. If a whole company are gamesters, play must cease; fopr there is nothing to be won. When all nations are traders, there is nothing to be gained by trade, and it will stop first where it is brought to the greatest perfection. Then the proprietors of land only will be the great men.

--page 298