Month: November 2008

  • Simple Pleasures in November

    ~ Political signage is down…well, 95% is!

    ~  James Taylor has a new album called Covers.
    Here’s the cool part:
    There is a free full album preview here.
    We’ve listened to it at least a dozen times.

    ~  It’s candle season.  I’ve been enjoying
    a grouping of votives from IKEA.

    ~ Soup/Stew/Chowder/Bisque season!
    Last night we had Potato Corn Cheese Chowder.
    I added chunks of chicken to please my meat-eating guys.

    ~ Sun and wind dried our lawn enough to mow up the leaves,
    which transformed a four hour job into a twenty minute chore.

    ~ The slanting light of November has entranced me.
    Right around 4:00 p.m.

    Your turn!
    What simple pleasures are you enjoying?
    Do you have a favorite soup?
    Favorite scent of candle?

    Oops!  I forgot one of my favorite simple pleasures:
    Organizing and cleaning bookshelves.
    Here is the “after” shot of my little kitchen cart.

  • Something New

    I took my own bags to the grocery store today.  I have a ginormous IKEA bag made out of the blue tarp material. 

    When I was in Maine, I was impressed that the majority of shoppers brought their own bags. “I could do this,” I thought. I don’t like waste anymore than the next person, and those flimsy plastic bags often don’t even make it home unbroken.

    The key, I’ve learned, is keeping the bags in the car. 

    I actually felt shy about giving the checker my bag; I needed to explain that this was something new for me.  “Cool!” was her response.  Perhaps the next time I can just smile and hand the checker my bag. 

  • Learning Purringly

    Honestly?  I think my job-teaching myself and my children-is the cat’s meow. 

    I love learning something new, connecting it to what I already know, asking more questions, reviewing new information, tossing it out for discussion.  It is a glorious cycle that doesn’t seem to have an end. 

    The “aha!” moments are pure sizzle. 

    We are studying the 20th century and I am simultaneously appalled at what little I knew and delighted to start figuring out the back story of the years of my life.  The flow of history and culture fascinates as never before. As I am reading about the collision between Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholics and Muslims in Bosnia, Serbia, Croatia and the Yugo (= south) slavs, early in the 20th century, I receive an email with a photo, asking for prayer for a refugee Serbian family searching for a country where they can live and work in peace.  That puts a face on the long struggles in the Balkan Peninsula.

    This morning I found a word which I’ve read several times before and realized I didn’t know the meaning of it.
    Sartorial (of or relating to a tailor or tailored clothes) from sartorius (muscle that crosses the front of the thigh obliquely and helps one to sit like a tailor).  Curt and I had a fun little debate about how tailors sit.  Any guesses?

    Here is the context of the word sartorial, from the essay Why I am Hopeful by Andy Crouch, written about the present economic afflictions.

    I am not hopeful because I think we are well prepared for what is ahead of us.  We are not.

    We are a terrifyingly unserious people, our heads buzzing with trivia and noise.  This is more true, if anything, of American Christians than the rest of our country [world?].  The stark contrast between what I experience among Christians anywhere else in the world–and not just the “Third World,” because Canada and Germany and Britain and Singapore come to mind as quickly as Uganda and India–and American Christians is astonishing.  We are preoccupied with fads intellectual, theological, technological, and sartorial.  Vanishingly few of us have any serious discipline of silence, solitude, study, and fasting.  We have, in the short run, very little to offer our culture, because we live in the short run.      

    Any learning sizzles in your life lately?

    Here’s a mug in my sister-in-law’s collection in Maine.

     

  • Rejoice!

    Rejoice, the Lord is King!  Your Lord and King adore;
    Mortals give thanks and sing, and triumph evermore;
    Life up your heart, life up your voice,
    Rejoice, again I say, Rejoice!
    ~ Charles Wesley

    I love this next quote by the mysterious Tristan Gylberd.  The real drama of everyday banalities.  The affairs of ordinary people.  It’s time – isn’t it? – to focus on our daily work, our personal relationships, doing all to the glory of God.

    Politics is important.
    But it is not all-important.

    That is not just a modern phenomenon.
    It has always been a fact of life.

    Many who live and die by the electoral sword will certainly be shocked to discover that most of the grand-glorious headline-making events in the political realm today will go down in the annals of time as mere backdrops to the real drama of everyday banalities.

    But it is so.

    As much emphasis as is placed on campaigns, primaries, caucuses, conventions, elections, statutes, administrations, surveys, polls, trends, and policies these days, most of us know full well that the import of fellow workers, next door neighbors, close friends, and family members is actually far greater. 

    Despite all the hype, hoopla, and hysteria of sensational turns-of-events, the affairs of ordinary people who tend their gardens and raise their children and perfect their trades and mind their businesses are, in the end, more important.

    Just like they always have been.

    Just like they always will be.

    ~ Tristan Gylberd, written some time before 1999, quoted in Lost Causes

  • Now Thank We All Our God

    Big game season  is officially over for our family.
    Meat is in the freezer.
    Burgers, spaghetti, chili, stew, fillet all waiting to be cooked.
     
    We still have (gulp!) a bear to butcher this week.
    I think we are going to learn  how to make sausage.

    Have I ever mentioned that I grew up in Chicago?
    I’ve learned to cook wild game,
    but I draw the line at rodents.
    I will NOT cook rodents. 
    Nor will I cook lagomorphs.
    X-Ne to squirrels and rabbits.

    I have cooked elk, deer, bear, cougar, pheasant, quail, duck, goose and grouse.
    I have eaten rattlesnake.
    (It tastes like chicken is the obligatory comment after trying new meat.)
    Nothing in my upbringing prepared me for this part of my life.
    But my mother-in-law and husband were good teachers.

    For readers unfamiliar with hunting:
    ♫ doe a deer, a female deer ♫ 
    a buck = a male deer
    a bull = a male elk
    a cow = a female elk
    a boar = a male bear
    a sow = a female bear


    Chris (son # 1) with bull elk.  Elk is a mild meat. Everybody loves elk.


    Chris with his buck


    Collin (son # 3) with his buck


    Curt (that’s my man!) with his buck


    Collin and the sow (black bear) he shot.

    An astute reader will notice the absence of Carson (son #2).
    He is hunting elk in the state of Washington.
    He has gotten some incredible animals in his youth.
    Do not weep for Carson…

  • Wedding Flowers

    Jessie, my son’s wonderful wife, is a blessing.
    She can design flowers for a budget or a blow-out.
    (One wedding had 15 dozen roses - that kind of blow-out!)
    These centerpieces for a glorious wedding reception Saturday
    are stunning, simple, and practically free.
    All the color, excepting the greenery, came from Jessie’s yard.
    Because the reception hall was so tall she wanted tall flowers.    .
    The vases were left over from Carson’s wedding.
    I’ve seen her take the stuff that grows in yards
    and make dazzling arrangements.  In every season.
    Jessie is a blessing.

      

  • Of Boys and Deer Droppings

    A treasure to a little boy,
    does not consist of money, gems, or jewelery.
    He will find far greater pleasure
    in the wonder of a rock,
    pebble, stick or beetle.
    ~ unknown author

    Yesterday, along with the busyness that defines the day before a big wedding, I needed to deliver newspapers for my son’s route. And I was on Nana duty.  And it began to rain.  And I was crunched for time. We trudged, I encouraged, and I remembered what all you moms know:  a little boy can find distractions anywhere.  The pavement.  The grass.  The sky.  Deer scat.  Fallen leaves.  Blowing leaves. Mail slots in doors. 

    My voice became yipping — a yipping, yelping, barking dog.  Come On!  Let’s Go!  This Way!  I actually heard myself! (sound like a dog) And the dog metaphor reminded me of that Gary Larson cartoon comparing what we say to dogs and what they hear. “blah, blah, blah, Ginger, blah, blah, blah.” 

    Oh!  I realized that, really, what Gavin was hearing was my tone.  And my tone was tincture of fretful mixed with essence of impatience.  Further, he was tired.  What was required was a recalibration of my attitude.  Slow down. Change the pace.  Enjoy being together.  Stop and smell the deer droppings.