December Daily: favorite thing

[resonant]

marginaliana asked, "what is your favorite physical non-living thing? Not a person or a pet, but it could be something you own or a piece of art, etc."

This was surprisingly difficult to answer, and in the end, I can't really say this is my favorite thing -- it's just my newest favorite thing.



When I was at Mom's at Thanksgiving, she gave me the little prayer book that my father got from the priest of his Episcopal church when he joined the Navy in 1951. It's a little bigger than an index card.



My father never went to war (Mom told me he used to say he served on "the Good Ship Never-Sail"), so I don't know how it got so battered.

It has Bible excerpts (heavy on the psalms calling for help in times of trouble), and the lyrics to hymns, and bits of the Book of Common Prayer, including a full Communion service. I'd like to know how the publishers imagined that being used -- it's not as though some random sailor who wasn't ordained could just decide he wanted to offer Communion to his shipmates.



1 -- goss, "VENOM! Why do you think it's been such an instant hit with Fandom, and what are some of your favourite fanworks so far?" and nestra, "Any Venom recs?"
2 -- anitac588, "How do you relate to different fandoms? Do you revisit them? Sometimes I find it difficult to go back to reading stories in 'old' fandoms after discovering new OTP."
3 -- marginaliana, "what is your favorite physical non-living thing? Not a person or a pet, but it could be something you own or a piece of art, etc."
4 -- cesperanza, "I'll ask an HP question, actually, because I wasn't really ever in it and I'm interested in the reactions of people who were. It seems to me from the outside so spectacularly meh now; like, it was the fictional equiv of Lost (which I also didn't watch) where it was fascinating as a piece of serialized fiction but where the execution simply couldn't live up to the collective imagination. Am I wrong?"
5 -- teigh_corvus, "Your thoughts on James Joyce and Ulysses."
6 -- kass, "If the you of 10 years ago could see you now, what would surprise her most?"
7 --
8 -- mific, "Sounds like you commute to and fro still. How do you pass the time traveling? Music? Audiobooks? Something else? Any reccs? :)"
9 -- torch, "favorite advent songs!"
10 -- princessofgeeks, "How did you go about changing fandoms? Was it, historically, something you did or something that just happened? Did friends lure you? Did you find new shows to watch?"
11 -- reginagiraffe, "(It's MrGiraffe's birthday so...) Have you ever written a birthday themed story? If not, what couple would have the best/funnest/easiest birthday story to write and why?"
12 -- laurenthemself, "What are your thoughts on Thor: Ragnarok? I know ya boy Steve wasn't in it but did you have any shippy feelings?"
13 --
14 --
15 -- china_shop, "What hooks you into a fanfic? Is it banter, characterisation, tropes, or...? Is it different from what hooks you into original fic?"
16 -- muccamukk, "Describe a long fic you always wanted to write, but never have and likely never will."
17 --schneefink, "Dec 17, how about your field of study/work/specialization/hobby and how a book/movie/series/canon got it terribly/hilariously wrong?"
18 -- kass, "What have you read recently that you've enjoyed?
19 --
20 --
21 --
22 -- mekare, What would Ben Fraser do in 2018?
23 -- marina, "What was the last book you read that wasn't fanfic and that you intensely loved, and why."
24 -- wychwood, "Something about SGA! What's the one fic you're sorry you never wrote? What was your favourite episode? Do you still love John/Rodney? How gay WAS John Sheppard? Where in Atlantis would you live if you could pick any room you liked? Pick one or a topic of your choice."
25 --
26 --
27 --destina, "how has your relationship to fandom changed over the years? By which I mean not just participation in it, but your level of tolerance/interest for the cyclical things about it, the way old arguments never really stop or die, etc, but also the ways fandom changes and new ways of doing fandom evolve. (And old ways evolve out, and terms evolve, etc.)"
28 -- kass, "What do you like best about where you live?"
29 --
30 -- china_shop, "Your favourite book you read this year."
31 -- wolfshark, "what is your favorite story to reread of your own stuff? what was your favorite story to write?"

Comments

[teigh_corvus]

This is fantastic! I can easily see why it's your favorite.

[resonant]

It fits neatly into the small zipper section of my small purse, where it can sit there and anybody who finds me unconscious after a car accident may conclude that I'm a lot more religious than I actually am. (Or maybe not; I am religious, I just don't think of myself as book-carryin' religious.)

[marginaliana]

Wow, fascinating. I love that it shows both family history and broader history at the same time.

[resonant]

I wish I had known about it while he was alive and could have asked him questions about it. I wonder if he ever even opened it while he was fueling jets on an aircraft carrier?

[anelith]

That's a really wonderful memento. I have a book my great-aunt gave my mom in 1947 (it's the Lives and Times of Archie and Mehitabel by Don Marquis, a fantastic book). In all the recent news about people forced to evacuate in CA, losing their homes to fire, I think if I ever have to flee I'd take that book above all others.

[resonant]

Oh, I love those poems!

My aunt and uncle lost their house to a flood, years ago, and there was a second heartbreak because apparently floodwater contains a lot of raw sewage, so there were books and photo albums and things in the house, more or less intact, that they couldn't safely retrieve. I suspect that when things like carpet burn, they create similar issues -- what survives the fire is still not safe to handle.

[anelith]

Oh that's so sad -- I didn't know that could happen!

[azurelunatic]

I wonder if the rationale was "if they're going to sail into some Really Bad Stuff, any communion is better than none"? Or perhaps there was only the one Navy version, because why print two different types?

Such a wonderful object.

[resonant]

Hm -- so maybe if you were an ordained Episcopal priest in the Korean war, you were carrying that same book with you? It's plausible. Not like they could really be hauling a full-size prayer book around.

[allheadybooks]

Hmm--maybe handy to have the communion text around in case the chaplain (or whatever they call them in the Navy) drops his library overboard?

13. What's your least favorite thing about splitting your time between two houses? (My wife and I are also in a commuter marriage at the moment, and I get so frustrated every weekend when I have to go grocery shopping AGAIN because I thought I had eggs but that was at the other apartment!)