ACT & College Preparation Course for the Christian Student

You should see what is under our queen-size, cherry-stained bed with bent metal stays that are quiet testimony to the fact that this old boy weighed 148 in 1977 but — well, anyway, don’t tell my wife I shared this.

Stashed in disheveled piles are my World War II history books and other treasures.

Inevitably, Karen (my wife) will spend eons of time preparing for bed. While she is brushing her teeth, washing her face, and performing other necessary hygienic penultimate mysteries, I grab a book from my under-the-bed library and I read about the German U-boat campaign in the North Atlantic.

I have several libraries in other places in the house. There is the academic library — full of Bible commentaries and useless graduate school books I never read but I cannot do without. That one is stashed in the basement next to my desktop computer — the one with Windows 98, the last Microsoft software program I fully comprehended. Next, there is the classical library in the family room. This is the library that is full of “pretty books.” No one touches that library; it is there for show. But across the room is the “grandchildren library,” full of children’s classics that Karen reads to our cherubic grandchildren, ample evidence that we were exemplary parents if our children could produce such offspring.

But my favorite library is the library under my bed.

Under my bed, safe and clear, are my treasured reading books. Their diverse title names are appropriate metaphors for my anachronistic, never-ending education.

I have perennial classics — Run Silent, Run Deep. Occasionally other favorites sneak in. Milton’s Paradise Lost — which I re-read bi-annually — is propped up next to Operation Barbarossa. John Keegan’s World War II is a great read and can keep me awake through Karen’s most extensive diurnal, twilight, pre-sleep preparations.

I hope you have things you treasure and that you keep them close at hand.

I keep one special book under the bed: my dad’s Bible. It is an old leather black Bible, expensive leather, worn now, with the edges exhibiting light brown cow leather intruding out of the faded black. The cover has “Holy Bible” and “Billy Stobaugh” written in fractured gold letters.

Inside the Bible in my Mammaw’s handwriting is “1939. To Billy from Mother and Daddy, 8 years.” My dad was born in 1932 and apparently this was his 8th birthday present. When my dad died on Father’s Day in 1982, when he was only 49, my mom gave me this Bible.

I imagine Dad got other things for his birthday. Toy soldiers? A pop gun? I will never know. But I know he got this Bible. If you found your deceased dad’s Bible, what would you do? I immediately looked for evidence that he read it. I looked for a mark, any mark, that would evidence that he read it, studied it, applied it to his life. Nothing.

Nothing. Nothing in the family register. Nothing next to John 3:16. I know my dad knew God loved him. I heard him say it a few hours before he died. But there were no marks in his Bible.

I know I have lots of marks in my Bible. I can’t keep up with Karen though. She is the “master marker.” Her Bible is full of underlines. Her Bible underlines are straight and neat. I can’t do it. My lines inevitably invade other verses. I gave up drawing straight lines under verses — I now put squiggly lines. I once asked Karen to show me how she made straight lines under her Bible verses — sometimes without even a straight edge. She ignored my question.

I don’t have my dad anymore but I have his Bible. And there is nothing written in it.

I wish my dad wrote in his Bible, the Bible I keep under my bed. I would like something — anything — that reminds me of him. I am 58 now and it is 30 years since he died. I can hardly remember what he looks like now.

Paul says in 2 Corinthians 3:1–3, “Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, like some people, letters of recommendation to you or from you? You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everybody. You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.” My dad’s life is written on my heart. It gives me pleasure still to read his Bible.

Parents, write in your Bible! Even if you use squiggly lines. Your kids will thank you someday! But more important, write your lives on their hearts, that someday, perhaps one cold night, as they wait to go to sleep, they will read your Bible, see your marks, and, more importantly, remember that day, long ago, when you wrote your life on their lives.

And who knows, they might stash it under their beds.

OCABULARY

Little Women1

Louisa Alcott

Little Women has delighted readers for generations. It combines superb characterization with an inspiring story to make this a timeless classic. Meet the March sisters: the inimical Jo, the beautiful Meg, the frail Beth, and the spoiled younger daughter Amy. Watch as they mature into young women.

Suggested Vocabulary Words

Amy rebelled outright, and passionately declared that she had rather have the fever than go to Aunt March. Meg reasoned, pleaded, and commanded, all in vain. Amy protested that she would not go, and Meg left her in despair to ask Hannah what should be done. Before she came back, Laurie walked into the parlor to find Amy sobbing, with her head in the sofa cushions. She told her story, expecting to be consoled, but Laurie only put his hands in his pockets and walked about the room, whistling softly, as he knit his brows in deep thought. Presently he sat down beside her, and said, in his most wheedlesome tone, “Now be a sensible little woman, and do as they say. No, don’t cry, but hear what a jolly plan I’ve got. You go to Aunt March’s, and I’ll come and take you out every day, driving or walking, and we’ll have capital times. Won’t that be better than moping here?” (chapter 17)
Jo’s face was a study next day, for the secret rather weighed upon her, and she found it hard not to look mysterious and important. Meg observed it, but did not trouble herself to make inquiries, for she had learned that the best way to manage Jo was by the law of contraries, so she felt sure of being told everything if she did not ask. She was rather surprised, therefore, when the silence remained unbroken, and Jo assumed a patronizing air, which decidedly aggravated Meg, who in turn assumed an air of dignified reserve and devoted herself to her mother. This left Jo to her own devices, for Mrs. March had taken her place as nurse, and bade her rest, exercise, and amuse herself after her long confinement. Amy being gone, Laurie was her only refuge, and much as she enjoyed his society, she rather dreaded him just then, for he was an incorrigible tease, and she feared he would coax the secret from her. (chapter 21)
There were to be no ceremonious performances, everything was to be as natural and homelike as possible, so when Aunt March arrived, she was scandalized to see the bride come running to welcome and lead her in, to find the bridegroom fastening up a garland that had fallen down, and to catch a glimpse of the paternal minister marching upstairs with a grave countenance and a wine bottle under each arm. (chapter 25)
“You look like the effigy of a young knight asleep on his tomb,” she said, carefully tracing the well-cut profile defined against the dark stone. (chapter 39)
Yes, Jo was a very happy woman there, in spite of hard work, much anxiety, and a perpetual racket. She enjoyed it heartily and found the applause of her boys more satisfying than any praise of the world, for now she told no stories except to her flock of enthusiastic believers and admirers. As the years went on, two little lads of her own came to increase her happiness — Rob, named for Grandpa, and Teddy, a happy-go-lucky baby, who seemed to have inherited his papa’s sunshiny temper as well as his mother’s lively spirit. How they ever grew up alive in that whirlpool of boys was a mystery to their grandma and aunts, but they flourished like dandelions in spring, and their rough nurses loved and served them well. (chapter 47)

EADING

Reading for Detail

In confining himself exclusively to the Piano, Chopin has, in our opinion, given proof of one of the most essential qualities of a composer — a just appreciation of the form in which he possessed the power to excel; yet this very fact, to which we attach so much importance, has been injurious to the extent of his fame. It would have been most difficult for any other writer, gifted with such high harmonic and melodic powers, to have resisted the temptation of the singing of the bow, the liquid sweetness of the flute, or the deafening swells of the trumpet, which we still persist in believing the only fore-runner of the antique goddess from whom we woo the sudden favors. What strong conviction, based upon reflection, must have been requisite to have induced him to restrict himself to a circle apparently so much more barren; what warmth of creative genius must have been necessary to have forced from its apparent aridity a fresh growth of luxuriant bloom, unhoped for in such a soil! What intuitive penetration is repealed by this exclusive choice, which, wresting the different effects of the various instruments from their habitual domain, where the whole foam of sound would have broken at their feet, transported them into a sphere, more limited, indeed, but far more idealized! What confident perception of the future powers of his instrument must have presided over his voluntary renunciation of an empiricism, so widely spread, that another would have thought it a mistake, a folly, to have wrested such great thoughts from their ordinary interpreters! How sincerely should we revere him for this devotion to the Beautiful for its own sake, which induced him not to yield to the general propensity to scatter each light spray of melody over a hundred orchestral desks, and enabled him to augment the resources of art, in teaching how they may be concentrated in a more limited space, elaborated at less expense of means, and condensed in time!

Far from being ambitious of the uproar of an orchestra, Chopin was satisfied to see his thought integrally produced upon the ivory of the key-board; succeeding in his aim of losing nothing in power, without pretending to orchestral effects, or to the brush of the scene-painter. Oh! we have not yet studied with sufficient earnestness and attention the designs of his delicate pencil, habituated as we are, in these days, to consider only those composers worthy of a great name, who have written at least half-a-dozen Operas, as many Oratorios, and various Symphonies: vainly requiring

every musician to do every thing, nay, a little more than every thing. However widely diffused this idea may be, its justice is, to say the least, highly problematical. We are far from contesting the glory more difficult of attainment, or the real superiority of the Epic poets, who display their splendid creations upon so large a plan; but we desire that material proportion in music should be estimated by the same measure which is applied to dimension in other branches of the fine arts; as, for example, in painting, where a canvas of twenty inches square, as the Vision of Ezekiel, or Le Cimetiere by Ruysdael, is placed among the chefs d’oeuvre, and is more highly valued than pictures of a far larger size, even though they might be from the hands of a Rubens or a Tintoret. In literature, is Beranger less a great poet, because he has condensed his thoughts within the narrow limits of his songs? Does not Petrarch owe his fame to his Sonnets? and among those who most frequently repeat their soothing rhymes, how many know any thing of the existence of his long poem on Africa? We cannot doubt that the prejudice which would deny the superiority of an artist — though he should have produced nothing but such Sonatas as Franz Schubert has given us — over one who has portioned out the insipid melodies of many Operas, which it were useless to cite, will disappear; and that in music, also, we will yet take into account the eloquence and ability with which the thoughts and feelings are expressed, whatever may be the size of the composition in which they are developed, or the means employed to interpret them.2 (Franz Litszt, Life of Chopin)

The main concept of this passage is:

The genius of Chopin.
Chopin, against all convention, ignoring all other instruments in the orchestra, chose to compose exclusively for the piano.
Chopin, while admiring the piano most of all, chose, instead, to write compositions for other music instruments.
Chopin loved writing intricate, complicated piano pieces.

CIENCE

Calculations/Data

In the early to mid 1950s, DDT became one of the most widely used pesticides. It had an immediate laudable effect on human life. Malaria, for instance, nearly disappeared from the planet. Eventually, we realized that some DDT was staying in our bodies. DDT was being used in the environment, on agricultural products, and on livestock. In the 1960s, concern arose about the widespread use of DDT and its effects on humans. A study in 1968 showed that Americans were consuming an average of 0.025 milligrams of DDT per day! At concentration above 236 mg DDT per kg of body weight, people will die. One kilogram equals approximately 2 pounds. How much DDT will kill a hundred pound boy?4

Some words sound like what they mean — such as “buzz.” These words are called onomatopoeia. Other words also, though, feel like they sound. “Alone,” for instance feels like “lonely” would feel. How do these made-up words feel?

Manicottalopa

Silliapagos

Lambicottacy

UpaUpaUpa

Write words that have feelings! Aristotle called it “pathos.”