Month: August 2007

  • Friday's Stuff

    Snap the Whip   ~ Winslow Homer
    Winslow Homer is a wonderful go-to artist for Fine Art Friday.

    It is better to keep quiet and be real,
    than to chatter and be unreal.
    It is a good thing to teach if, that is,
    the teacher practices what he preaches.
    ~  Ignatius of Antioch
    (ouch!)

    Magistra's Dictionary:

    i • ro • ny:  deer (pl) frolicking in our front yard
    while men pack for hunting trip this weekend.

    con • viv • i • al • i • ty: a girlfriend weekend with Mel

    I'm headed to Boise to collect her from the airport. 
    And shop. And talk.  But our chatter will be *real*. <grin>
    Y'all have a great weekend. 
    (In heaven I'm going to be a southern girl.)

  • The Pearl


     "In the town they tell the story of the great pearl, how it was found, and how it was lost again.  They tell of Kino the fisherman and of his wife Juana, and of the boy Coyotito.  And because the story has been told so often, it has taken root in every man's mind."

    This short novella by Steinbeck immediately brought to mind The Pearl of Great Price, the parable of the man who sells everything to get the pearl. When Kino  finds the mother of all pearls he sees it as the end of poverty and the beginning of opportunity for his family.   In the end it costs him what is most dear to him.  The Pearl is a portrait of greed; no one is immue.  Steinbeck began this story after The Grapes of Wrath had won the Pulitzer Prize, while he was pondering the impact of personal prosperity.

    In discussions of the lottery (which I think of as a voluntary tax) this would be good reading.  Studies have concluded that many lottery winners eventually end up miserable. No profanity in this one, just great writing and  much to discuss.  I highly recommend it.

  • Morning Routine

    Cindy calls it Morning Time.  She has 20 Morning Time posts: you will be inspired to read them all.  We call it Morning Routine.  This is the time we begin together at the table.  I am remodeling our Morning Routine this week.  Exercise, brekkers and shower come first on both plans.

    Before:

    Read chapter of Bible   from what we were studying at the time
    Sing Psalm     mix learning new ones with reviewing familiar ones
    Pray   don't ask me why, but this has always followed the singing
    Read Psalm from the Vulgate    One verse in English, one in Latin
    Read Catechism question    Currently WLC
    Read a poem   reading through different anthologies

    Remodeled:

    Pray   We will begin with the daily prayer from the Lutheran Book of Prayer.  It has four weeks of daily prayers.  I would like our prayer life to grow in maturity; I like the tone and posture of these prayers.  On a tired Friday morning I want us to pray, "Send me, O Lord, into the tasks of this day rejoicing."  

    Read chapter of Proverbs   This is how we began school back in 1994, our first year of home schooling.  I'm returning to my roots, at least for autumn.  I even like the idea of picking one verse and copying it in a journal.  I remember one of my former lit students told me he was working on handwriting, and he was a high school junior at the time.

    Sing Psalm    Continue on our course with more emphasis on memorization.  My husband puts me to shame with the hymns and psalms he has stored in his head.  He works on them on his lunch half hour.  Many psalms we sing are challenging musically; I have a fond hope that my son is improving in musical sight reading.

    Catechism   Continue through WLC; re-evaluate when we are completed.  This makes me laugh, though.  When I was growing up catechism is what the poor kids in the Catholic church did.

    Poetry    Continue through The Top 500 Poems for three weeks of the month. [Oh - Oh - and when we complete that the next anthology is The Oxford Book of English Verse.  Yippee!! ] One week during the month we will focus on one poet (Frost, Service, Cowper, Bradstreet, Kipling, etc.).  My greatest aid in sustaining any interest in poetry in my son has been Jeeves and Wooster.  More than once, Collin has read or listened to a story that referenced a poem the same week that we had read it.  The glow of recognition keeps us going.

    Art   This is an addition which requires more thought and planning on my part.  We have several books to work from.  I like the drip, drip of daily exposure with a concentrated focus on one artist, one week a month.  I plan to watch Sister Wendy's art films to educate myself.  

    When I get to this point, I always want to add more.  One year we read through Grant & Wilbur's Christian Almanac.  I'd love to do that again.  I'd love to read the Proverbs in the Vulgate.  I'd love to work through our set of People and Places and pray for the nations, learning a microbit about them each day.  I'd love to incorporate prayer for those being martyred, to raise our awareness of our brothers and sisters in chains. 

    This is where my husband shines.  He has such a skill at estimating the time it takes and making priorities.  He's always subscribed to the philosophy of Do A Few Things Well. 

  • Looking Over the Edge

    You must be sure of two things: you must love your work, and not be always looking over the edge of it, wanting your play to begin. 

    And the other is, you must not be ashamed of your work, and think it would be more honourable to you to be doing something else.   You must have a pride in your own work and in learning to do it well, and not be always saying, There's this and there's that - if I had this or that to do, I might make something of it.  No matter what a man is - I wouldn't give twopence for him - here Caleb's mouth looked bitter, and he snapped his fingers - whether he was the prime minister or the rick-thatcher, if he didn't do well what he undertook to do.    

    ~ George Eliot in     Middlemarch

    This last week before school begins, this week before we celebrate those who labor by goofing off, I'm thinking about work, praying and preparing for long, hard days ahead.  I confess that I do look over the edge of my work.  Just this morning I was yearning for the opportunity to read something "just for fun" aka  self-indulgent stuff.   The summer has come and will soon be over.  I have two years left of home schooling and I would surely like to "learn to do it well" without excuses ("there's this and there's that") or whining.

  • Gearing Up to Labor
    It is not only prayer that gives God glory, but work.  Smiting on an anvil, sawing a beam, whitewashing a wall, driving horses, sweeping, scouring, everything gives God some glory if being in his grace you do it as your duty.  To go to communion worthily gives God great glory, but to take food in thankfulness and temperance gives him glory too.   To lift up hands in prayer gives God gory, but a man with a dungfork in his hand, a woman with a slop pail gives him glory too.  His is so great that all things give him glory if you mean they should.  So then, my brethren, live.
                              ~ Gerard Manley Hopkins, The Principle or Foundation

  • Simple Pleasures on a Saturday in August

    ~  The colors in my garden

    I love the deep purple of eggplant.  Aubergine.  What a delicious word.

    ~  The Railway Children DVD, based on E. Nesbit's book.
    Superb viewing for the whole family. 
    Edwardian England, Bobbie, Phil and Peter, and the Sussex countryside.
    I loved the book and it follows it quite faithfully.
    C.S. Lewis read and was influenced by Nesbit. 
    She was quite unorthodox in her personal life,
    but she wrote warm books rich in family life. 
    The Treasure Seekers and The Wouldbegoods are my two favorites.

    ~  The absence of back to school shopping. 
    Y'all enjoy the malls and box stores. 
    I'm home in the garden with my music and books.

    ~  A clear phone and DSL connection.
    After months of calls to DSL technical support,
    a friend suggested we call the regular phone company.
    They came out and the phone line had been
    chewed     almost in two by squirrels    .  Rodents!

    ~  Sunrise over the mountains.  It's opening day of archery season
    and I woke up to say goodbye to my hunters.
    I'm remembering a sunrise we experienced 23 years ago today.
    I watched that sunrise holding this bundle of a boy in my arms.


    Happy Birthday Carson!

    What simple pleasures are you enjoying this day?

  • Fine Art Friday & The Grapes of Wrath

    Dorothea Lange's Migrant Mother

    The other five images Dorothea Lange took.
    I know zip about photography, but the lesson here is clear:
    Zoom in close. Lange's famous photograph has so much
    more power than the others; you can see the wrinkled brow.
    More about the subject, Florence Owens Thompson.

    Added Later:

    “This benefit of seeing...
    can come only if you pause a while,

    extricate yourself from the maddening mob
    of quick impressions
    ceaselessly battering our lives,
    and look thoughtfully at a quiet
    image...
    the viewer must be willing to pause,
    to look again, to
    meditate.”
    ~  Dorothea Lange

    This famous picture had to accompany the Steinbeck review.
    The obvious connection was confirmed in this quote from the Wikipedia article.

    Florence remembered that "when Steinbeck wrote in The Grapes of Wrath about those people living under the bridge in Bakersfield - at one time we lived under that bridge. It was the same story. Didn't even have a tent then, just a ratty old quilt."

    The Grapes of Wrath begins with a drought and ends with a flood.  The book was disturbing, uncomfortable, and yet ... compelling.  Since most of you read this in high school English (why didn't I ???) I'll leave the plot and characters to your memory.

    I'm always comparing books.  This book reminded me in many ways of Cry, The Beloved Country.  Both deal with tragedy, injustice, greed, violence.  But more than that, they both have these incredible little essays tucked in between the chapters that move the plot along.  The commentary and descriptive prose in both are haunting; they visit your mind long after you've finished.

    Can we talk about obscenity and profanity in a book?  I don't normally swear or cuss and I never use the Lord's name casually in speech.  I inwardly cringe when someone says, "Oh God" let alone J.C. or C. Almighty.  For the most part,  my days have been insulated from a steady stream of profanity.  What I found with this audio version was the obscenity was in. your. face.  Or, rather, in my ears.  Inescapable.   I debated with myself about continuing. 

    I thought Steinbeck had a message worth listening to, an indictment on corporate business methods that starve the little farmer out of his farm.  I was sick to my stomach at the image of car loads of oranges doused with diesel and burned while people were starving, not just starving but dying, so the price of oranges stayed up.  

    So I struggled with the issue of keeping myself pure and the issue of being strong enough to sift through the grit.  This sounds unconnected, but last year I served on a grand jury rape case.   It was murky, messy, and needed the wisdom of Solomon.  At the same time that I felt slimed, I was able to inject some maturity and common sense into the debate.  I reflected that I was able to deal with the situation emotionally in a way that I wouldn't have been able twenty years ago.

    Wiser folk have written about this.  It would be a good study for my son and I to work through. These are matters that require wisdom.

    "Wisdom doesn't mean that you are smarter.  It means you are living out what you know."   ~ Pastor Steve Schlissel

  • A Most Delightful Evening

    Like the tendrils of this plant our hearts are attached to a new friend.
    We met Sara(h?) with a polite handshake last night.
    She left this morning with hugs.

    Hosting friends (and friends of friends) is such a delight.
    Mark used to be a friend of a friend but after one visit
    we claimed him for our very own.  When he called to ask if
    we could house him and his friend Sara we were excited to see him again.
    When they arrived last night, I knew the instant I saw
    the book in Sara's hand, that this was a kindred spirit.

    Lingering around the table, Mark told us about his recent
    trip to Poland, his three week course in Polish
    and the idiosyncrasies of that language. 
    His mom lives four blocks from Schindler's factory in Krakow.
    Mark said that you could see bullet holes in the walls around the
    holding area where they rounded up the Jews.

    Mark gave us several recommendations of foreign films
    to watch.  We're ready to check out Robert Bresson's films
    and particularly eager to watch  Dekalog, one hour films
    inspired by each of the ten commandments.

    Have you heard of the Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz?
    I'm interested in learning more.
    Here's a short poem he wrote in 1991:


    Meaning

    When I die, I will see the lining of the world


    The other side, beyond bird, mountain, sunset


    The true meaning, ready to be decoded.

    We started talking books and authors.  Sara said, "Have you
    ever heard of Wendell Berry?" Oh my. Oh my.
    After twenty minutes of Wendell Berry adoration
    I mentioned that he and Anthony Trollope were
    my favorite discoveries this past year.  Now it was her turn to stare.
    "Anthony Trollope?  My mom, my brother, and my brother-in-law
    are all huge Anthony Trollope fans.  The last time I was home
    my mom read to me from Rachel Ray." 
    Rachel Ray?  She has a cooking show!
    Yup, there is an Anthony Trollope book entitled Rachel Ray.

    First sentence:
    There are women who cannot grow alone as standard trees;
    -for whom the
    support and warmth of some wall,
    some paling, some post, is absolutely
    necessary;
    -who, in their growth, will bend and incline themselves

    towards some such prop for their life,
    creeping with their tendrils
    along the ground
    till they reach it when the circumstances of life
    have
    brought no such prop
    within their natural and immediate reach.

  • There and Back

    Our group continues to expand like dough!
    Relax. The gun on the far left is a paintball gun.

    I had to get a profile shot of Carson, the guy who brings the kitchen sink.
    I talked to him the day before the trip and told him I wouldn't
    be able to go because I had a bum shoulder.
    "Mom, you have to come," he protested. "I will go back to the
    trail head and carry your pack in."  And he did.  Thanks, Sonny.

    The closest town is called Granite. 

    This is Saturday morning. 
    It got down to around 40° Friday/Sat night.
    Sunday morning we woke to raindrops.

    Chris bought a new Coleman chair for the trip.
    When he unpacked it at camp, it was a child's chair!

    New sights: Seven mountain goats
    New sounds: trees creaking that sounded like a baby crying
    New touch: stuffing wet bags into the carrying bag
    New thought: campfire smoke is a great organic deodorant

  • Zip Bong

    This is Cody, our crazy-in-love-with-water, aging Yellow Lab.

    My DIL taught us a new game: Zip Bong.
    It's a variation of Make You Laugh/Smile games.
    You don't need to be camping to play.

    Form an "old man" mouth,
    by covering both sets of teeth with your lips.

    The goal is to get someone to laugh, to show their teeth.

    The first player says "Zip!" in an upward glissando,
    with the lips over the teeth.  It comes out sounding like a whistle.
    [I don't care if you are in public, you must try this out loud. Now.]
    Go around the circle, each one saying, "Zip!"
    until someone says, "Bong" full of nasal resonance.

    The order reverses; the previous zipper zips again
    until someone else says bong. 
    One can never say bong two times in a roll.

    It sound sophomoric, but we sure laughed hard.
    You have to look at each other.
    It's the old man lips.
    Your mouth gets tired, if you keep from laughing.

    If Zip-Bong doesn't float your boat, try this.