Free Republic

In honor of debtors' prisons and other Dickensian revivials: Chapter 1 -- [snip] "Are there no prisons?" asked Scrooge. "Plenty of prisons," said the gentleman, laying down the pen again. "And the Union workhouses?" demanded Scrooge. "Are they still in operation?" "They are. Still," returned the gentleman, "I wish I could say they were not." "The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?" said Scrooge. "Both very busy, sir." ":Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course," said Scrooge. "I'm very glad to hear...

Ebenezer Scrooge begins the Christmas holiday with his usual miserly contempt, barking at his faithful clerk and his cheery nephew. But when the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come take him on an eye-opening journey revealing truths Old Scrooge is reluctant to face, he must open his heart to undo years of ill will before it's too late.

Poverty levels in parts of Britain mirror "the times of Dickens", leaving schools struggling to cope with increasing numbers of children lacking the most basic personal skills, according to a teachers’ leader. Some pupils from the poorest areas arrive at school unable to dress themselves or use a knife and fork, with some even unable to use a toilet properly, she said. Lesley Ward, president of the 160,000-strong Association of Teachers and Lecturers, warned that many children were also being relied upon to raise younger brothers and sisters and lacked stable father figures in the home. “Children who get themselves,...

Writer Andrew Davies applied his quill pen to adapting a number of Jane Austen novels before tackling Charles Dickens' "Bleak House," and he's back with another sprawling, impeccably cast PBS miniseries, "Little Dorrit." This Dickens tale includes mystery, romance and dramatically shifting financial fortunes...Slow going at first and rushed near the end, it's nevertheless an absorbing piece of work, reminding us that there are certain things the Brits simply do better...the story exposes harsh class distinctions in the early 19th century, as well as shadowy financial doings, blackmail and even a big heartless bureaucracy,,,, Driving the action is Arthur Clennam...

That phrase--surplus population--is what first tipped me off to Dickens' philosophical agenda. He's taking aim at the father of the zero-growth philosophy, Thomas Malthus. Malthus' ideas were still current in British intellectual life at the time A Christmas Carol was written. Malthus, himself, had joined the surplus generation only nine years before. But his ideas have proved more durable.~snip~Hitler's hard eugenics and Sanger's (founder of Planned Parenthood) softer one, both owed a great debt of gratitude to Thomas Malthus. So do the zero-growth, sustainable-growth, right-to-die, duty-to-die, life boat bio-ethicists who dominate so much of our intellectual discussion. Malthus turned...

While Americans are forced to use cheap ballpoint pens, Scrooge & Marley executives use bailout money for fancy-schmancy feather quills. Officials from the Bush administration and members of president-elect Barack Obama's economic team are finishing up a proposal to bail out the world's biggest counting house, Scrooge & Marley. Once a financial powerhouse with a sterling balance sheet, the firm has reportedly fallen into wasteful spending practices, heaping money on extra lumps of coal for the employee's personal heater and providing a luxurious medical plan for the family of Scrooge & Marley's number two man, Bob Cratchit. Scrooge &...

Americans numbed by the daily barrage of politics-as-usual are about to be awakened by some new fireworks — Hollywood-style. Imagine documentary filmmaker Michael Moore and director David Zucker (Airplane! and The Naked Gun) in the center ring and you begin to get the idea. Zucker’s new movie, An American Carol (due in theaters Oct. 3), is a shot across Hollywood’s bow, aimed directly at Moore. No slouch in self-defense — or self-promotion — Moore will release his own online movie, Slacker Uprising, a few days before Zucker’s to reap the benefit of the backhanded buzz. The release of both films...

1. "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" (Late 14th century).Full of make-believe and festivity, this wonderful narrative poem possesses a Mozartean lightness and wit. Luckily, several modern versions, particularly those by W.S. Merwin and Simon Armitage, deftly replicate much of the feel and rhythm of the Middle English original. 2. "The Pickwick Papers," by Charles Dickens (1837). No Victorian novel re-creates the cheery holiday spirit better than these bustling misadventures of kindly Mr. Pickwick, his Cockney valet, Sam Weller, and their friends (including the "fat boy" who famously whispers: "I wants to make your flesh creep"). 3. "The Adventure of...

SAGINAW, Mich. -- Tightening budgets have forced Mt. Pleasant to take Christ out of their Christmas.The traditional Dickens Christmas Festival has been re-named the Dickens Holiday Festival so the city can advertise in local schools.In order to get more bang for their buck out of a thinning advertisement budget, the organization wants to put fliers in schools. For that to happen, the word “Christmas” had to be removed.Downtown Development Coordinator Michelle Sponseller said many people are unhappy with the change. “We changed the name this year for the schools because we wanted to advertise in the school brochures and the...

An angry parent has blasted the East Penn School District for requiring its students to read books he said are "full of filthy vulgarity." Richard Jones of Upper Milford confronted the school board Monday about some of the books on his 15-year-old son's 10th-grade summer reading list at Emmaus High School, saying they're trash. Following its standard practice, the board limited Jones to three minutes and didn't respond to his criticism during the meeting. But later, board President Ann Thompson said, "We listened carefully and it is being investigated carefully."

IT WAS the night before Christmas and Ebenezer Scrooge was facing a succession of supernatural terrors; or, as the latest medical thinking would have it, he was succumbing to a brain disease so obscure that doctors would not give it a name for another 150 years.A pair of medico-literary sleuths claimed last week to have tracked down the illness that haunted Scrooge. They concluded that Charles Dickens brilliantly observed the symptoms in A Christmas Carol. Robert Chance Algar, a Californian neurologist, and his aunt Lisa Saunders, a medical writer and physician, believe that the affliction that made Scrooge a byword...

LONDON A theme park based on the life and work of the author Charles Dickens is to be built in Britain, one of the men behind ‘‘Dickensworld’’ said Thursday. . The £60 million, or $113 million, project will recreate the Victorian era, when children worked in sweatshops, Britain governed a vast empire and Dickens penned such works as ‘‘Bleak House’’

It's astounding how many people want Terri Schiavo dead and aren't afraid to say so. I got clobbered by readers who reacted to Tuesday's column about how the "culture of death" has placed its compassionate arms around Terri, the brain-damaged Florida woman who is being starved to death. E-mail and phone calls (more than 150 at last count) are running 2-1 against me. "It's nuts, this 'life at all costs' mentality," a caller said. There was general agreement: Terri should die and starvation ain't so bad. "Her parents are being very selfish by keeping her alive. Your reference to her...

NBC's Today spent much of Tuesday's show incessantly plugging an upcoming story about a book by a gay advocate which claims that President Abraham Lincoln was gay. Katie Couric, for instance, contrasted Lincoln's image of honesty with the new charge: "He's famous, of course, as 'Honest Abe,' but was former President Abraham Lincoln not completely honest when it came to his sexuality?" Ann Curry set up the eventual story: "Now to an interesting question that has surfaced about one of this country's most revered Presidents nearly 150 years later. Was Abraham Lincoln gay?" That story included those who don't buy...

Note: This commentary was delivered by Prison Fellowship President Mark Earley. When you hear the name Charles Dickens, what comes to mind? A Christmas Carol? Sentimental tales of poor but loving families, or helpless orphans saved by wealthy benefactors? All of those impressions are accurate, but there’s a lot more to Dickens than that. In fact, there’s a lot more to this great novelist than even many literary critics have been able to see. Author, editor, and critic Myron Magnet suggests that this is because so many readers and critics bring their own preconceptions to their reading of Dickens (along...

[The Rev. Roberts finished his series on "Christmas Carol Surprises", posted here earlier, part way through as it turns out, and appears now to have completed a new series of postings titled The Man Who Invented Christmas , A Christmas Carol on the Drawing Board , and Why Did Ebenezer Scrooge Change?. I recommend reading it at the source. --sionnsar]

Meridian is pleased to announce new contributors to our magazine from BYU Studies. BYU Studies is the university’s journal of LDS thought and scholarship. BYU Studies is dedicated to the premise that faith is strengthened through the intellectual pursuit of light and truth. Check back regularly to read about the latest LDS scholarship from the journal. To learn more or to subscribe to BYU Studies, go to byustudies.byu.edu Christmas wasn’t always such a massive worldwide phenomenon of merriment and conviviality. It once resembled something closer to a quiet Easter Sunday, with fathers and mothers leading children somberly to a...

The Dangers of Reading - Dickens and the Social Order BreakPoint with Chuck Colson December 28, 2004 Note: This commentary was delivered by Prison Fellowship President Mark Earley. When you hear the name Charles Dickens, what comes to mind? A Christmas Carol? Sentimental tales of poor but loving families, or helpless orphans saved by wealthy benefactors? All of those impressions are accurate, but there’s a lot more to Dickens than that. In fact, there’s a lot more to this great novelist than even many literary critics have been able to see. Author, editor, and critic Myron Magnet suggests that this...

It's Christmas time, and that means it's time to enjoy A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens' melancholy tale of a productive businessman who gets worked over by three meddling supernatural social workers one Christmas Eve, transforming him into a simpering socialist. It's almost as sad as Star Wars, really. A Christmas Carol had someone other than that crypto-commie Dickens written it. So, for your holiday enjoyment, I submit these re-imaginings of A Christmas Carol, as other authors might have depicted it: