Tut, Tut , It Looks Like Rain

My children always said this from Winnie the Pooh when it rained.
We marvelled today, almost forgetting what rain is like.
God answered prayers! It's steady and good.

He thought for a moment and said: "I shall try to look like a small black cloud. That will deceive them." ..........

What do I look like?"
"You look like a Bear holding on to a balloon," you said.
"Not," said Pooh anxiously, "--not like a small black cloud in a blue sky?"

Well, now, if you walk up and down with your umbrella, saying, 'Tut-tut, it looks like rain,' I shall do what I can by singing a little Cloud Song, such as a cloud might sing. . . . Go!"
So, while you walked up and down and wondered if it would rain, Winnie-the-Pooh sang this song:

How sweet to be a Cloud
Floating in the Blue!


Childe Hassam:
Rain Storm, Union Square, 1890, Museum of the City of New York.

IT'S RAINING!!!!!

GOD ANSWERS PRAYERS!! We have RAIN!! Not a downpour but enough
to get wet!

John Sloan, Spring Rain

Look What came in the Mail Today

The Back Door Mail on Saturday

Light for the piano

Emma and I saw a piano on Saturday at an Open House of a historical Victorian
house in Matthews. It had candle holders on it like this:




You never know how something is connected to something else. Never think what you are looking at is for nothing. Tonight we read this in Little Women, when Beth gets a piano from Mr. Laurence:

"See the cunning brackets to hold candles, and the nice green silk , puckered up , with a gold rose in the middle, and the pretty rack and stool, all complete," added Meg , opening the instrument and displaying its beauties.

We had just seen one on Saturday! Our eyes sparkled and Emma said "OH ~~!" as we read it. I said on Saturday that I wondered why the Jane Austen movies didn't have these kind of "lighted pianos" but here we know that the Alcott's had one!

IN the Midst of a Drought

I saw these driving to a friend's house on Friday:



Angel Trumpets ! What a glorious name for this tall bush. The flowers dangle down
and I think of a trumpeter holding his instrument on his knee when I see them! I got a cutting!

From A Solemn Music by John Milton ( 1633-1634)

That undisturbed Song of pure concent,
Ay sung before that saphire-colour'd throne
To Him that sits thereon
With Saintly shout and solemn Jubilee,
Where the bright Seraphim in burning row
Their loud up-lifted Angel trumpets blow,
And the Cherubic host in thousand choirs
Touch their immortal Harps of golden wires,
With those just Spirits that wear victorious Palms,
Hymns devout and holy Psalms
Singing everlastingly;

A Back Door Letter

While I was on the phone out on the back deck, Emma sat right at the table and
wrote me a letter! She put it in a decoration we have that is by the door and can
hold flowers or a letter. She addressed it to:

MOM
Backdoor
Buckingham House

She is giving one of these to a very good friend and neighbor for a birthday present so they can send letters without the post like in Little Women!

THAT just sent me on a search for Little Women's Letters. Here's a link where you can open the book and the computer flips the page for you! Now that is progress for out of print books and so much easier to read!

http://www.openlibrary.org/details/littlewomenlette00bons

A quick, bright smile went round like a streak of sunshine. Beth clapped her hands, regardless of the biscuit she held, and Jo tossed up her napkin, crying, "A letter! A letter! Three cheers for Father!"

"Yes, a nice long letter. He is well, and thinks he shall get through the cold season better than we feared. He sends all sorts of loving wishes for Christmas, and an especial message to you girls," said Mrs. March, patting her pocket as if she had got a treasure there.

Red Letter Day

Thanks so much for all the letters. Receiving one can truly improve the overall quality of a day.

Emma and I each received a letter today from Evan, son-brother- freshman in college. He wrote the above quote about our letters! We got SO excited to get two letters and we giggled at
his page notes to us! Hope you have some RED Letter Days soon. Mine also included the new Victoria Magazine!

A red letter day (sometimes hyphenated as red-letter day) is any day of special significance.

Origin

This comes from the practise of marking the dates of church festivals on calendars in red.

The first explicit reference to the term in print that we have comes from America. This is a simple use of the term "Red letter day" in the diary of Sarah Knight - The journals of Madam Knight, and Rev. Mr. Buckingham ... written in 1704 & 1710, which was published in American Speech in 1940.

The practice is much earlier than that though. William Caxton, referred to it in The boke of Eneydos, translated and printed in 1490:

"We wryte yet in oure kalenders the hyghe festes wyth rede lettres of coloure of purpre."

The term came into wider use in 1549 when the first Book of Common Prayer included a calendar with holy days marked in red ink. For example, Annunciation (Lady Day), 25th March, was designated in the book as a red-letter day.

The term is sometimes written without the hyphen - 'red letter day'.

DID you catch Rev. Mr. Buckingham!
hmmm.........wonder if there's a relation?!

Sprinkled with Fairy Dust

We're back from the SCHOOL DAY at the Renaissance Festival~~ packed with loads of bused children from all over the state! It was quite warm , but as we left we heard a double wooden pipe of a fairy sending us notes of farewell and then at the gate was another one to sprinkle checks with dust! We found a lost little girl on the way to the car , out in the huge farm's field. I left her with the head Security Guard to get her to her bus and said to her : The Lord will take care of you! The guard smiled at me!


Cecily M. Barker , the fairy illustrator , has a wonderful site:

http://www.flowerfairies.com/UK/start.htm

"Tread lightly there might be a fairy afoot!"

Amazing

The prayers of a righteous man availeth much!
Yesterday ended with a voice mail for a job offer while that son was taking his tax code exam! He went in with a countenance of despair and walked out to see God magnify His power ! God will never leave us nor forsake us is true~ we always need a story to believe that deep down! Here is his!
In what looks like all is going well from the outside to everyone else, this son in Graduate School and had interviews through the Career Center started to crumble under the stress of performance. He's 6'5", loves the Lord ( but not yesterday!) and the prayers of dear friends availeth much! What is amazing to me is God's answer came in the middle of the hard exam! He pulled him out of the miry clay and set him on a Rock!


Rembrandt ~~ Apostle Paul, 1657
National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

New Mercies

My life verse is Hebrews 13:5 ~~ I will never leave you nor forsake you.
I needed to know that today. Wescott, Amy Carmichael says in Edges of His Ways,
interprets this verse as " I will in no wise desert you or leave you alone in the field of contest, or in a position of suffering , I will in no wise let go~~loose hold ~~my sustaning grasp." Fuel for prayer now for one of my children.

For the Men in My Life......

GREAT Quote, especially for my husband :

Winslow Homer:



"If you observe a really happy man you will find him building a boat, writing a symphony,

"If you observe a really happy man you will find him building a boat, writing a symphony, educating his son, growing double dahlias in his garden. He will not be searching for happiness as if it were a collar button that has rolled under the radiator."

W. Beran Wolfe

as if it were a collar button that has rolled under the radiator."-W. Beran Wolfe

Jo's ambition

We remembered that Meg is 17, Jo is 16, Beth is 13 and Amy is 12 in today's reading
on Burdens. Jo is reading to Aunt March everyday to help the family.

"Jo's ambition was to something very splendid; what it was she had no idea as yet, but left for time to tell her....."

Emma burst out, " She's going to write a book!"

The Wisdom of Little Women

Little Women was first published in October 1868. Louisa's publisher, Mr. Niles, had urged her to write a book for girls. She wrote:

“I plod away, through I don't enjoy this sort of thing. Never liked girls, or knew many, except my sisters, but our queer plays and experiences may prove interesting, though I doubt it. ... Sent twelve chapters to Mr. N. He thought it dull; so do I. But I work away and mean to try the experiment; for lively, simple books are very much needed for girls, and perhaps I can supply the need.”

~Journals of Louisa May Alcott, 1868

Seventeen years later, Louisa was able to write:
“The copyright made her fortune, and the “dull book” was the first golden egg of the ugly duckling.”

She beat me!

In Scrabble! "With a little help from her friend" ( MOM)
Emma is 10 and Gordan at 11 ( 5 years ago) could beat me. I don't let them, really!
It helped with some grumpiness this morning in getting schoolwork done to say "Let's play Scrabble when we finish this work" We sat outside listening to two crows make strange calls to each other before flying off. She and I could read all day if we had our way! Wish I had had this kind of education. She had 208 and I had 168.

Evan comes home today for Fall Break. It's still dry and warm. The house will fill up again. It will be good to have eye contact instead of voice contact or emails or letters. He got that comparision paper on Letters vs Emails. Surely he was the only freshman who choose those to compare! His older brothers have all visited him since he's in the mountains. Warms my heart. Their break is over and his starts. That's the way life is at times, isn't it.

Wolf Kahn

On Another note

My husband played a Press Agent in the movie "Leatherheads" for 8 days while
George Clooney was in town in April. It was to be released on December 7th, but
now is postponed to April! One year to wait to see if he was cut in any scenes or
is part of the opening scene in the football stadium. What a thrill for all of us and now
we have to wait.

Finishing is a theme

The kids finished the second coverlet for the orpanage in Haiti today ~~ love knots!
They did a work of art with their hands, worked together and did some missions work!
All at the age of 9 and 10! It felt so good to be "fait complis!" Almost done with our artist Jamie Wyeth , not Carl Larsson. He'll be in the picture one day!
Glad it's Friday since I thought yesterday was Friday! A bit of rain yesterday which was an answer to prayer. We need more Lord!

She finished

Emma finished The Two Towers this afternoon!
She's watching the movie and I love her : " It's so different than the book!"
The trees are moving and alive! Shades of the new heavens and new earth!
That's my favorite scene in that book!


'One felt as if there was an enormous well behind them, filled up with ages of memory and long, slow, steady thinking; but their surface was sparkling with the present: like sun shimmering on the outer leaves of a vast tree, or the ripples of a very deep lake.'"
Pippin describing Fangorn's eyes, The Two Towers (1954), Treebeard

The cover of the 1st edition of The Two Towers.

Reading with Emma

After 4 sons, I finally get to read Little Women with Emma!
We visited Louisa May Alcott's home this summer which sparked the excitement to come back home and read it together out loud. We are only into the first 3 chapters:
I am Jo and Beth; Emma is Meg and Amy! We take turns with Marmee and Laurie!
We keep thinking of the movie and her bedroom where she wrote the book.
It's on these kind of days that I feel so deeply blessed to be reading outside on a "Block Island" day with my daughter while the whole world is running around or sitting in school!

She's also reading The Two Towers. Her oldest brother couldn't believe she was reading Tolkien ! She has 50 more pages to finish and then she can watch the movie!
I was studying Revelation while she was reading about Sam and Frodo tonight!
I marvel that those moments of all your desires are right before you. God's goodness and grace!

LOUISA'S CHAMBER: A room of her own had always been a priority for Louisa. With her often turbulent emotions, her vivid, romantic imagination, and her constant preoccupation with her family's welfare, she needed a haven in which to escape, where she could find solitude and where she could write. Louisa's father built her a half-moon desk between two windows and a bookcase to hold her favorite books. May painted a panel of Calla lilies beside the desk and an owl on the fireplace.

Finished On the Road with the Archangel

Wonderful book that made me laugh, marvel and wonder!
Here's another painting but different than the cover of the book:

Jean-Charles Cazin

Tobias and the Archangel Raphael