In the sweetness of life, there is still a yearning...
a longing...
I'm a poor wayfaring stranger
While traveling thru this world of woe
Yet there's no sickness, toil, or danger
In that bright world to which I go
I'm going there to see my Father
I'm going there no more to roam
I'm only going over Jordan
I'm only going over home
Kiyo Sato tells her family's remarkable story of endurance and perseverance in Dandelion Through the Crack. Sato's father and mother emigrated from Japan to the Sacramento area, grew strawberries on a twenty acre farm, and raised nine children. Ordered to evacuate, in May, 1942 the family, carrying what they could, were sent to the Poston internment camp.
Kiyo was allowed to leave internment in the fall to go to Hillsdale College. Every free space in her schedule is filled with a job to help pay her tuition. After the war is over, the family returns to their farm, beginning the arduous process of rebuilding and replanting.
It's been a while since I've stayed up into the single digit hours reading a book I Could Not Put Down. The writing is good, but not cracking good. The graphics and layout of the book have a feel of self-publishing. The cover doesn't call out, "Read me. Read me. Read me." But the story carries all the baggage and propels you through the pages.
Sato family
I can't help but love Tochan (Japanese for father) and Mama, the strong, hard-working, long-suffering parents whose daily graces and passions infuse their family with love and devotion. Tochan loved books, plants, music (he began violin lessons while he was interned), his children. Mama loved cleanliness, working, making food for her family, nurturing her children. Kiyo, a youthful 85 year old, writes with the fidelity and love of a very thankful daughter. Her words remind me of George Dawson in Life is So Good who remarked that if he could give anyone in the world this gift, he would give him the experience of having his (George's) father as his own.
If you want more first-hand accounts of the Japanese internment, you can find them here. You can also watch fourteen short video clips of Kiyo Sato talking about her experiences.
I find homesteading stories fascinating. The challenge of housing, feeding and clothing a family, working the land, tending animals, and nurturing souls continually captures my imagination. There is grace in the stories of daily life. The first book I ever owned was Little House in the Big Woods. Each birthday and Christmas my parents gave me the next book in the series until I had my first collection of books. I thrilled in the details: a pig's bladder for a balloon, homemade bullets, Pa's fiddle, trips to town, maple syrup. When I read the stories to my sons, I was shocked to realize that Laura's family subsisted an entire year (!) on the fish from the creek. Looking at the stories through adult eyes gave me a clear-eyed view of the hardships. It is, however, the simple joys of life which linger in your thoughts after reading these.
When my boys and I started reading Ralph Moody's Little Britches series, my first thought was, "Why, these are the Little House books from a boy's point of view." Set in a Colorado town, the Moody family eked out a living however they could. They heated their house from coal picked up by three miles of railroad tracks, sold chicken droppings to the neighbors for their gardens, grew and canned vegetables, delivered their mother's home-baked goods to folks around town. Life was a series of problems to be solved. Everyone worked hard, doing what they could to contribute to the family.
While this book is primarily about the internment of Japanese in relocation camps, the first third of the book recounts the Sato family's life building a berry farm near Sacramento. They would harvest wild spinach leaves, cut shoe bottoms from old tires, buy two thousand pounds of rice (stored in 100 pound sacks) after the check from the strawberry growers arrived. The mother kept the clothes mended; the father kept the tools repaired and engineered ingenious solutions from the raw materials in the barn.
When I read that Susanna Moodie's 1852 book, Roughing It in the Bush, was as well known to Canadian children as the Little House books are to American children, I put this on my stack of "must read"s. Where it still resides, unread.
From the back cover: This frank and fascinating chronicle details her harsh --and humorous-- experiences in homesteading with her family in the woods of Upper Canada. Part documentary, part psychological parable, Roughing It in the Bush is, above all, an honest account of how one woman coped not only in a new world, but, more importantly, with herself.
Now I want to cancel my plans for today and read this book. [This title is a work in progress at Librivox..yay!]
Story-telling is a strong motif in each of these books. The father or mother picked up some hand work in the evening and told stories, quoted poems, and read books aloud. I think these authors write so well because they grew up in an atmosphere saturated with the spoken word. The Bible, Shakespeare, Longfellow were companions during the dark nights. The authors marinated in turns of phrase, rotating them over the fire of their imaginations, eating them bit by bit.
I am always inspired by the hard work. I can work hard in a spurt of energy (then collapse the next day), but these people worked with daily diligence over the long haul. When the children rose, their parents were at work, and when they went to bed their parents were working. Reading these stories revs up my engines, makes me long for the ache of sore muscles after a good day's work.
What books or movies about homesteading do you recommend? Have you read any books above?
[The learning life is a happy life: After I wrote about homesteading, I found this video of urban homesteaders.]
A day of delighting in Gavin: planting, laughing, reading, feeding.
I've been hoarding Anthony Trollope and Wendell Berry for special reading treats. They are my secret stash of Mocha Almond Fudge ice cream.
I've been waiting for Hannah Coulter to become available to me at . I checked it out from our library, but took it back unread, because reading it without being able to interact by marking it up wouldn't be a pleasure.
Then I read my friend's blog. The time for holding back had past. I used a B & N gift card and ordered the book. (ordering a new book is still a thrill!)
Now, this is a small thing. But, when I ordered it, I expected it to look like this. And it came, looking like this:
I adore, I exult, I am gladdened by matching sets of books. They make me very happy. Isn't this stack just one of the purtiest things you've seen?
If you are new to Wendell Berry, I suggest you start at That Distant Land, a collection of Berry's "Port William" short stories. It is one of my favorite books to give away.
Like a newly engaged girl, I am, ahem, practicing restraint. I want to read it all in one large gulp. Instead, I'm reading one chapter at a time. Soaking. Enjoying. Playing footsie.
I'm tired of making calls. I've run out of small talk and I'm overflowing with coffee and cakes. My stop today was with an extravagant hypochondriac, who took me on a tour of her liver, her pancreas and her upper intestinal tract. I was spared her bowels, thanks be to God, but we left her bladder reluctantly as time was running out, and we still had to cover her allergies. At least I wasn't forced to contribute to the conversation.
~ Elizabeth Shannon in Up In the Park, The Diary of the Wife of the American Ambassador to Ireland
Keep my mind free from the recital of enless details; give me wings to get to the point. Seal my lips on my aches and pains. They are increasing, and the love of rehearsing them is becoming sweeter as the years go by. I dare not ask for grace enough to enjoy the tales of others' pains, but help me to endure them with patience.
...full of thanksgiving for answers to prayer: baby girl born, Myanmar orphanage saved, prisoner safe, new family with four adorable girls moved here
...full of magnificent teaching on the furniture of the tabernacle ...full of resounding singing, robust words, glorious music ...full of a sermon on the apostles and Judas--the leaks in his life ...full of communion, a nourishing meal ...full of Apostles' Creed, Thanks Be to God, Doxology ...full of a scrumptious feast shared by the entire congregation ...full of multi-layered, multi-textured conversations throughout the day ...full of the ride home with 100 Cupboards
Now let my soul arise And tread the tempter down; My Captain leads me forth To conquest and a crown: A feeble saint shall win the day, Tho death and hell obstruct the way.
We're back from watching Prince Caspian. Lucy (Georgie Henley), as always, steals the show. When I see Lucy, I am reminded of Donna's Katie. Lucy's transparent faith, her playful grin, her devoted love, her tender heart, are all too wonderful. Lucy holds nothing back. Casting Georgie Henley as Lucy was the most brilliant decision in the making of the Narnia movies. I just couldn't have born it if they had gotten Lucy wrong.
Peter Dinklage plays a might fine Trumpkin. His sad-looking face works perfectly for both the skeptical dwarf and the believing dwarf. And we all loved Reepicheep. Who can resist the chivalrous charm of a brave mouse? Caspian isn't at all how I pictured him, but we all see things differently, eh?
The movie isn't flawless; there are many add-ons and annoying nods to egalitarian nonsense which never existed in the book. Classics students: have you ever heard of female centaurs? Isn't that a contradiction to the essential character of centaurs?
Lucy, Trumpkin and Reepicheep are all positives which overruled the negatives. Not to mention Aslan!
Not since Sweet Land have I been so captured by a movie. I Am David, based on the book North to Freedom, tells the story of a twelve year old boy who escapes from a Communist labor camp in Bulgaria with instructions to deliver a mysterious sealed envelope to Denmark.
After leaving a gray, grim and grimy life of picking up rocks, David is introduced to brilliant colors, freshly baked bread, rich music, family, prayer, fields of sunflowers...a beautiful life. He hardly has the capability of understanding truth, beauty and goodness. He has to learn how to smile. Read that sentence again. He doesn't know how to smile.
The slow transformation of David follows a series of cleansings. Washing up plays an important role in this film. I saw in David what I've seen in the lives of several friends who have come out of toxic and abusive marriages. It has taken a series of cleansings to wash the grime and grit and dirt and lies out of their souls.
It is a process to learn to trust again. A series of encounters help David trust someone enough to open himself and tell his story. The women who does the most to convince David to trust her is aptly named Sophie (Sophia is Greek for wisdom).
Ben Tibber plays this role to perfection. His serious face will stay with me for weeks. Stewart Copeland's soundtrack captures both the bleakness of life behind wires with ethereal vocals and the movement of the open road with some dynamic harp and orchestra. You can hear soundtrack snippets and see the trailer here.
My son, a junior in high school, just left the house for his part-time job. He started work on Monday, doing odd jobs, yard work, and maintenance for a small farmer who is starting a microbrewery in our town. This is his second year with his employer. So the challenge is to fit his remaining schoolwork, paper route, and our yard work into the second half of his day. Two things encouraged me this morning.
Part of Collin's morning routine is to check his emails and read the news headlines. Walking into the kitchen, I saw him on the computer and asked what he was reading.
"I'm reading about epi, Mom."
"Epi?" is she a contestant on American Idol? Perhaps a missionary who started an orphanage?
"Epi-, Mom: epigram, epigraph, episode, epitaph."
"Ah. Yes, I know epi-. Around, right?"
"On or over."
What Collin was reading was Daily Writing Tips. I started receiving the daily email to help my writing. When I realized how word-oriented it was, I instructed Collin to sign up for it. While he wouldn't like admitting that he enjoys the email, he reads it faithfully. Daily Writing Tips gives a clean daily dose of grammar, punctuation, spelling, words misused, and writing basics. I recommend it for you and yours.
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Our favorite and most time-consuming subject is history/literature/theology via Omnibus III published by Veritas Press. For one year there are twenty primary books (including Of Plymouth Plantation, Tale of Two Cities, Rousseau, Mein Kampf and 1984) and sixteen secondary books (including The Old Man and The Sea, Gulliver's Travels, Tom Sawyer, The Killer Angels). We manage to get through all the primary books, but have never made it through all the secondary books. [That will be a delicious chunk of my "retirement" - reading through the stuff we missed.]
Last night Collin was dinkin' on the computer and I asked him, optimistically, what he was working on. He was downloading all the books he hadn't read in the Omnibus Secondary section that were on Librivox. Collin's employer asked him if he had an ipod or mp3-player yesterday and gave permission, nay, encouraged him to listen to it while he worked. Little does he suspect that Collin is listening to The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, Pride and Prejudice, and Gulliver's Travels this summer.
. Sato's father and mother emigrated from Japan to the Sacramento area, grew strawberries on a twenty acre farm, and raised nine children. Ordered to evacuate, in May, 1942 the family, carrying what they could, were sent to the Poston internment camp.
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