Go look it up
Anderson, Chris
joy and suffering, of bright promise and budding hopes, yet withal of keen blasts, and cold showers, and storms." He was not discouraged, however, by this somber prospect. To the con- trary,...
...They'rejust"astronauts," not the five- star heroes I remember from the '63 set...
...Is there any affliction now endured by mankind that was not endured by our fathers before us...
...Elevator--Elf--Sir Edward Elgar--T.S...
...And yet you hear people complaining about this present day and age because things were so much better in former times...
...A woman turns on a stove...
...of shapes and forms and sensations, nothing more important But orderliness is only the first level, and it's finally illuso- than anything else, an array of objects all ends in themselves...
...I wonder what would happen if they could be taken back to the days of their ancestors-would we not still hear them complaining...
...You go to the World Book to put ideas growing as a roadside weed in parts of the United States and back where they belong, back in perspective, "Existentialism" Canada...
...There's an exquisite tenuousness, a thin- ness, about the quality of your attention...
...Just the world...
...Commonweal 'WORLD BOOK' AT SEVENTY-FIVE GO LOOK IT UP THRUSH, TITMOUSE & PAUL TILLICH / 've been engrossed in the World Books since they ar- rived UPS last week, though more out of nostalgia than a need for information...
...Ellis seldom if ever concluded an address or a homily with- out quoting his beloved Newman...
...Change is im- tricts in order to give representation to in this Congress, more Hispanics, more minent for several reasons...
...You can go elsewhere for literary history, and you can sim- VII of France and later of King Henry II of England...
...For the next ten years we want to be able to say "go look it up" and have the kids rac- ing to the shelves, grabbing a volume, and falling on the liv- ing room carpet, maps and transparencies cracked open...
...It was original- change is in the mak- and women from the Northeast and from ly meant to reflect population change, to ing which may affect the Plains states, for example, than from make sure that all citizens had equal many people more the South and the Southwest...
...Thrush and Titmouse merit as ent vision of the world, undiscriminating, democratic, and de- much space as Paul Tillich and Dylan Thomas, though not nearlighting...
...But so far I've been reading for memories, and the past I'm recalling is my own...
...and that) it is one great advantage of an age in which unbelief speaks out, that faith can speak out too...
...There will be fewer congressmen First, fifty-two congressman have retired, always been a certain amount of juggling Commonweal 6 November 1992:9...
...There's more information now, more scientific advances and wars to include...
...The truest world of the World Book is the one you ly as much as Tire or Tin or Texas...
...Mostly I just wanted to sound cal or personal...
...GEORGE G. HIGGINS Msgr...
...A man drives a car...
...There has women...
...Most of the astronauts in the pictures are captioned without name...
...But it's all more or less still there: the glossy pages and the color drawings, the calm, detached, sixth-grade, social-stud- ies-teacher voice patiently describing the hierarchy of dogs, or the evolution of engines, and the structure of bicameral legis- latures...
...Hours pass before you look up and notice it's lunch time...
...The American Elm, spreading out like an umbrella against volvements and needs...
...Its prefer- it, in the juxtapositions the alphabet requires, is a very differ- ence is clearly for the physical...
...You can pull out any entry and subordinate the inside black and doing some research on the capacity of it to any argument, use any fact for any larger purpose, politi- rocks and of water to retain heat...
...But on a level deeper than that, and finally at odds with Even here the encyclopedia is biased, of course...
...I recall, in this connection, Ellis' s telling me a few years ago that, despite his anxious concern about the future of the church and the future of our society, he fully agreed with Saint Augustine who cautioned the faithful of his own time, fifteen hundred years ago, not to indulge in pessimism or romantic nostalgia: So we must not grumble, for as the Apostle says: "Some of them murmured and were destroyed by serpents...
...More women are men- tioned, more blacks...
...It's silent...
...the required number of people...
...It won because I was immersed in the world of the equally interesting, worthy of attention, and you keep turning WorldBook and could speak in its confident rhythms...
...Intrinsically a blue sky...
...Individual names and the assigning of species, just rocks and trees and articles make claims of synthesis, and the set as a whole as- birds and things, seen with a child's detached and thoughtless pires to the presentation of general knowledge, a pretty big am- pleasure...
...CHRIS ANDERSON or God...
...We thank God that Ellis has found that holy rest and that ev- erlasting peace...
...With the Pilgrims...
...Knowing the length of the Spirit of St...
...He was a man of exquisite courtesy, the quintessential but relaxed and affable gentleman, a good listener, a delightful con- versationalist and raconteur, an ecumenist before his time, a strong supporter of women's rights and of lay initiative and lead- ership in the church, and, last but not least, a man of profound and persevering prayer...
...Only 23 feet, 8 inches long...
...The ele- ply look into your own head for a record of the chaos and campane is a coarse perennial plant closely related to asters, complexity of ideas...
...The of excess heat by flapping their ears or spraying water on them- world we're all finally nostalgic for is the world prior to our selves...
...Or not so much my past as my past image of the world, of knowledge, and of things...
...Louis...
...The facts come in handy for grown-ups like me, too, since I tend to be a little fuzzy and intuitive...
...What sufferings of ours even bear comparison with what we know of their sufferings...
...The population of the closely than a change as this change is, most of the voting pub- country as a whole is divided by 435 to in the presidency...
...Chris'Anderson, a frequent Commonweal contributor, teach-Fact follows fact, object follows object, each entry unashamed es at Oregon State University in Corvallis...
...Even this new seventy-fifth an- niversary edition reads like a wonderful old scrapbook, something I've come across in an attic somewhere...
...This is the world undifferentiated, prior to spefrom one paragraph to another, appropriate phrases in bold- cialization and use...
...I quoted Newman above as having said that in our age "truth can assail falsehood...
...Just taking a volume down and paging through it, as I used to as a kid, reading what interests me, has that soothing effect of walking through a museum or gallery...
...but when you read a volume as a book, assume as if I knew something, play that part, and my charts and re- the sequence as a structure, a deeper, more innocent whole- ports were first-class, lots of flat arrows branching out in stages ness emerges...
...This is things the way they are, a jumble face...
...joy and suffering, of bright promise and budding hopes, yet withal of keen blasts, and cold showers, and storms...
...What's even more pleasing and profound about the World This is the world as a child first knows it, despite the Latin Book, I think, is that it's organized alphabetically...
...Your interest in any one thing is never passionate--nothing registers fully or loud6 November 1992:7 ly work...
...space than Montana...
...When I quoted this text to Ellis, not too long before he died, he emphatically--and not with great good cheer--seconded Augustine...
...There will be more blacks ists seem willing to study it...
...The Who (one of I had built a little triangular box, a half square, with a window the most popular British rock groups in history) is followed by on the flat open side and two thermometers, one inside and one Wichita (the largest city in Kansas) is followed by Wild Carrot, out, the idea being to capture the sun, make it bounce around Wilson Cloud Chamber, Winch, Wind Surfing, Women's inside the house--the Greenhouse effect harnessed...
...only lobby- then establish the boundaries of the dis- Representatives...
...Eliot--Elk-- own persistent, tiresome ideas of it, prior to our own urgent in- Ellipse...
...Dad and the pages, absorbed, humming to yourself...
...Important representation...
...The print today is smaller than in the 1963 edition we had when I was growing up--a white and blue set, in the hallway by the bathroom, the only books in the house...
...That lic knows little about it--how it came determine the number of people that is the forthcoming change in the Con- about, how it will affect them...
...You're wandering along quietly, stopping to look at this and at that, light reflecting off the glass cases, voices murmuring in the dis- tance, the echo of footsteps...
...There...
...Even the platypuses and sweet peas look posed and stiff...
...Montaigne takes up far less glimpse reading a volume front to back...
...The word "assail," as used in this con- text, would be too aggressive if applied to a man of Ellis's del- icate sensibilities...
...Why it didn't Movements, Stevie Wonder, Wood, the names and labels like work I'm still not sure, though I remember frantically painting accidental poetry...
...Everybody should constitute a district...
...He is the author of and unapologetic, without irony, everything safe and available, Free/Style: A Direct Approach to Writing (Houghton Milflin ). some because of age, some out of sheer frustration, and a few out of fear of voter backlash...
...Louis makes me feel solider...
...An odor of dusty libraries and chemistry labs and sci- ence fairs and high-school health assemblies comes off the books, and even of the green cut lawns and neat curbs of suburban America...
...bition...
...Elohim, the Hebrew word that means gods, a god, interesting...
...You may think past ages were good, but it is only because you are not living in them...
...To the contrary, he would undoubtedly have agreed with Newman that "unbelief is in some shape unavoidable in an age of intellect and in a world like this...
...Elephants have no sweat glands, ridding their bodies no bigger than "Eggplant," much smaller than "Electricity...
...He was not discouraged, however, by this somber prospect...
...But that's part of the point, and the pleasEleanor of Aquitaine (1122-1204) was the wife of King Louis ure...
...And how big was the Spirit of St...
...Even now, all the photographs of people and places and processes look as if they were taken in the fifties some- where in Ohio...
...Then in his mercy, may he give us a safe lodging and a holy rest and peace at the last...
...Present...
...As we fondly bid him farewell, then, it will be fitting to say with Newman: "May God support us all the day long 'till shadows lengthen and the evening comes and the busy world is hushed and the fever of life is over and our work is done...
...Redistricting mandated by the Constitution occurs every ten years as a result of the census...
...Whatever of that, we honor him as a priestly scholar who, in the spirit of Newman, spent his entire priest- hood not assailing, but irenically countering unbelief with faith and falsehood with truth or, in the words of Saint Paul, "Doing the truth in charity...
...George G. Higgins of The Catholic University of America was a personal friend of John Tracy Ellis for more than fifty years...
...The states gress--especially that in the House of is willing to bash Congress...
...A student lifts up a petrie dish---everyone has just had a hair- cut, everyone is wearing new clothes...
...Second, the House, once fond- ly dubbed "The People's Branch" by the A SCHOOL FOR THE ELECTED famed, late Speaker of the House Sam Ray- GOVERNANCE 101 burn, will have representatives from nine- teen new districts...
...that, if falsehood assails truth, truth can assail falsehood...
...Twice already they' ve answered the kind of dinner table ques- tions we got them for: How and when did house cats come to America...
Vol. 119 • November 1992 • No. 19
