I found this book Armidale. It's a collection of Dorothy Day's correspondence with many many different people from the 1920's until 1980. There is even a letter to Heini Arnold, who life is recounted in Homage to a Broken Man, by Peter Mommsen. There is something special about reading personal correspondence. It has an immediacy that is not found in wiring aimed at a general audience. I look forward to reading it.

Here's part of a 2011 review from Project Muse

All those who care about Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker movement owe a profound debt of gratitude to Robert Ellsberg, the editor of these letters. Ellsberg came to the Worker from Harvard as a teenager, knew Dorothy in her last years, became the editor of The Catholic Worker, and went on to a distinguished career as an editor and publisher. This volume completes a massive and crucial project begun soon after her death in 1980 with the 1983 publication of her selected writings. Miss Day's letters and journals were sealed for twenty-five years. Since they became available in 2005 Ellsberg has edited, with great care and remarkable speed, her diaries (2008), and now her letters. The book is handsome and readable, the notes helpful and unobtrusive. With the publication of the diaries and letters, Dorothy Day comes into clear focus. We can say with reasonable certainty that there are not likely to be any major revelations of her character in the future. The tone and preoccupations of her published writings and her more private writing are identical. Her voice is real, thoroughly unfalse, utterly genuine...

In the meatime, I'm working on Heat, by Bill Buford

I've lent this book to a friend who saw it on the living room bookshelf and asked to borrow it. In the meantime, I'm halfway through The Imitation of Christ, by Thomas A. Kempis . It's always fascinating to me to read something so old (14th century), but so often still relevant, as this blog post illustrates.

This book appeared on my living room table again today. I'm glad it has passed through several hands and been enjoyed. I do plan to read it, but have only just embarked on True History of the Kelly Gang, by Peter Carey

In the meantime, here's an article called ‘Lord Teach Me to Pray’, by Dorothy Day, I quote some of it below:

“How to lift the heart to God, our first beginning and last end, except to say with the soldier about to go into battle – “Lord, I’ll have no time to think of thee, but do thou think of me.” Of course, there is grace at meals, a hasty grace, what with Sue trying to climb out of her high chair on the table. Becky used to fold her hands and look holy at the age of eighteen months, but now she does nothing. If you invite her participation, she says, “I won’t.” If you catch Sue in a quiet, un-hungry mood, she will be docile and fold her hands. But rarely. She is usually hungry, and when she starts to eat she starts to hum, which is thanks too.

But there is that lull in the morning before the mailman comes when I can take out the missal and read the epistle and gospel for the day.... That is refreshment always.

“The language of the Gospels, the style used by our Lord, leads us more directly to contemplation than the technical language of the surest and loftiest theology,” Garrigou-Lagrange says. So this reading, directly from the Gospels and the epistles of Saint Paul, is the best I can have. The author of The Cloud of the Unknowing talks of the conscious stretching out of the soul to God. So I must try harder to pause even for a fraction of a minute over and over again throughout the day, to reach toward God.”

I have finished this collection of letters finally. They exude such warmth. I learned much about Dorothy Day, both as a person, and a public figure. The most interesting parts for me were when she wrote of Peter Maurin's vision of personalism, distributism, and of our personal responsibility to each other (as opposed to government interventions). This is one reason her philosophy is so fascinating; she unsettles both the political left and right with a completely different vision of how society could be. Long may her ideas live!

Now, I am reading Plough Quarterly No. 20

After that, I will read A Man Called Ove, by Frederik Backman