Wednesday, January 30, 2013

The Four Quartets



I will write on the evening at Duke Chapel on THE FOUR QUARTETS 
as soon as I check some things off my TO DO list. 
It was a sacred evening.
It stilled my soul.

At the Still point....

Here is a poem( not of TS Eliot) for this morning:


Matins
It is morning. A finch startles
the maple leaves. Everything’s clear
in this first light before all thins
to a locust harping on the heat.
While day clutches at my pulse
to inject the usual anesthetic,
now, Christ, stimulate my heart,
transfuse your blood to fortify my own.
Let no light upon these sheets
diminish, Lord, before I feel you
burst inward like a finch
to nest and sing within this tree of bones.
by Robert Siegel ( just passed away near Christmas)

Saturday, January 26, 2013

I was on the edge of my seat


Watching Island at War.
It is war. I am waiting for the main German general 
to find out he is love with a Jewish girl. 
Knitted a washcloth during the first 3 episodes.


Friday, January 25, 2013

Really winter ice


You can't take a walk outside. Ice.
 Our cat did stand up at the window and look out!
Wish I had taken a picture. I just chuckled! We had a winter storm come through

with icy rain. No snow. No Winter Wonderland. 

Yes, we did get another call from the public school system in English. 
School was out 2 hours early. I'm sure the system is not by registration. 
Must be because we have the last here: 10th grader. She did have school.

Fire in the fireplace. 
Hunkered down.
Going to watch Episode 2 of Island at War. 
All the islands are  featured as  fictional St. Gregory. 
Filmed on the Isle of Wight. 
If you have read The Guernsey Literary and Potato Pie Peel Society, 
you will be in the same time of history: WWII. 
Based on historical invasion: 


On Sunday evening, 30th June 1940, Guernsey was occupied by the German Forces. At 6 a.m. on the following day they landed in Jersey. There was no opposition. No one who experienced it will ever forget the feeling of depression with which we awoke... Our beloved Islands in the hands of the enemy, dreading what the future might hold, conscious of our complete isolation, we realised with sinking hearts that life would be totally different, but how different none could guess.
     -- Rev. S. E. Beaugie, M.A.


Island at War is set against the fascinating historical events of the German occupation of the Channel Islands - Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney, Herm and Sark -- between 1940 and 1945.



We watched Episode 1 this afternoon. 
Anna, (In Downton Abbey) Mary's maid, Bates' wife, is in it.
Billie Piper's husband is in this next episode for
Dr. Who  and Inspector Lewis fans .  
Thanks, Podso!


                                     Billie Piper and Laurence Fox who now have a newborn son 



                                     Joanne Froggatt and James Cannon , recent newlyweds

Thursday, January 24, 2013

Story lovers


Really good podcast The Art of Spiritual Subtext,”   by Sarah Clarkson 
and Lanier Invester.
( Part 2 here)

 I've read Elizabeth Goudge and only part of Brideshead Revisited by 
Evelyn Waugh. You know when you reread a book at another time in your 
life, you see with new glasses. These old eyes see anew. 

Almost finished with The Four Quartets. I read half of it  tonight. 
Quartet 1 and 2.  Burnt Norton and East Coker. 

Snow or ice  on its way tomorrow. 
Schools already anticipating closing. 
We got a public school call tonight  all in Spanish. 
( what was that about?!!)

Cold tonight. 
Snuggle up. 
Get a cup.






Wednesday, January 23, 2013

hearthside



It is quite cold. 
It was a "stay inside day" and by the hearth...........so hearthside.

I finished The Thirty Nine Steps by John Buchan. 
Reread it for my class. If you haven't read it, do.
Fast paced spy novel and skip the movies!

My only winter vegetable in the garden are a few broccoli.
They are under cover: kitchen towels!

Stay warm. 
Winter is here. 
No snow here. 

just.....

The Cold
by Wendell Berry
How exactly good it is
to know myself
in the solitude of winter,

my body containing its own
warmth, divided from all
by the cold; and to go

separate and sure
among the trees cleanly
divided, thinking of you

perfect too in your solitude,
your life withdrawn into
your own keeping

--to be clear, poised
in perfect self-suspension
toward you, as though frozen.

And having known fully the
goodness of that, it will be
good also to melt.








Monday, January 21, 2013

Sister time



Time seems to be still and moves at the same time when my sister comes
to my house or vice versa.  When time is still , it is full.  So I am full of 
 still time from a  visit with my sister. We even pushed carts down 
an escalator at Whole Foods! Yes, an escalator.






I am reading The Four Quartets ( T.S. Eliot)  to go see THE FOUR QUARTETS 

T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets as Poetry, Music, Art


The centerpiece of the celebration will be a grand exhibition of paintings (QU4RTETS) by artists Makoto Fujimura and Bruce Herman mounted in Duke Chapel. The opening night of the exhibition will feature a performance of Christopher Theofanidis’s quintet, "At the Still Point," a piece commissioned in collaboration with the visual artists’ work.

at  Duke Chapel in a week.  

video here

At the still point of the turning world.

Midwinter spring is its own season


Thursday, January 17, 2013

BOOK I saw at the Art Museum



Have you heard of this or read it? Is it good?



                         A Bird In Winter: A Children's Book Inspired by Peter Breugel




In this charming children's picture book, Pieter Breugel's painting The Hunters in Snow provides the basis for a heartwarming story about a young girl and the bird she nurses back to health. Eight-year-old Mayken is a peasant girl who works in her mother's guesthouse. One wintry day she goes ice-skating with some friends and finds an injured bird. Bright watercolors help narrate Mayken's story, which concludes with a stunning reproduction of Breugel's masterpiece. Young readers will learn about Breugel and his art as they cheer Mayken on and enter a world of snow, trees, and the simple beauty of a winter's day.



snow?



There is in the mountains. 
Rain here all day.
Good day to be looking at paintings.
Snow in the mountains as two sons have travel on those roads.




                                             one of the paintings I saw today

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

winter rain


Rain today and tomorrow. Art Museums tomorrow. They are right across from each other.
The Bechtler Museum of Modern Art has an exhibit of Antonio Giacometti:


Giacometti 1
Alberto Giacometti, Femme Assise (Seated Woman), 1956. Art © Alberto Giacometti Estate/Licensed by VAGA and ARS, New York, NY








ACROSS THE STREET IS UPTOWN MINT MUSEUM FOR THE WEIR FAMILY COLLECTION:
THE EMBARKATION OF THE PILGRIMS by Robert Weir






THE EMBARKATION OF THE PILGRIMS by Robert Weir - Courtesy of the Mint MuseumGIACOMETTI:MEMORYANDPRESENCEA

Monday, January 14, 2013

my days



Over the weekend, I saw my nephew and neice baptized .
Over the weekend, my college son went back to school.
Over the weekend, I saw Les Miserable for the 3rd time.
Over the weekend, my daughter saw Les Mise for the 4th time.
Over the weekend, we saw the Golden Globe Awards to see Les Mise win.

The week is here with rain. Winter is to come back. She took her sweater off 
for a few days, didn't she. 



Thursday, January 10, 2013

a mother's heart


This mother's heart was warmed tonight with my only son who is NOT married said:
          " I have to get her flowers. It will be a few hours before she can get 
              them in water. Should I get a vase or something?"

Well, later,  I asked his sister (15) how touched I was that he knew to get his girlfriend
                            FLOWERS for their early " 4th anniversary" dinner. 
             She said : " I think he has watched all these years and all the boys say
              the guy who dates ME has got to be good at all those things. High standards!"

We laughed. 
I was touched. 
They came home from dinner out with cupcakes for us from Gigi's Cupcakes.
How did he know I wanted to taste those:



                YUM. Two on the right ( white & choc) plus hazelnut and a choc with 
                                     white icing piled high with tiny choc chips
                    

He was whistling tonight! 
Tomorrow they go to do Indoor Skydiving at the world's largest wind tunnel.

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Better


It is wonderful to wake up in the morning without congestion or a stuffy head.
I am SO much better. Back to normal. Back to life , well, I hunkered down last 
week and finished Anna Karenina and started Les Miserable.

I have a friend in NYC this week so this quote is for her: 

"It is ridiculous to set a detective story in New York City. New York City is itself a detective story."  -- Agatha Christie





Winter in Union Square by Childe Hassam, 1889-90


 Well situated at the junction of Broadway and then Bowery Road, the public square was bordered by theaters--including the Academy of Music, where the Vanderbilts, Astors and Morgans occupied boxes--by imposing town houses and by such fashionable restaurants as Lüchow's, on Fourteenth Street, where everyone who was anyone came to dine and be seen. The thirty-year-old Hassam, settling in New York after a three-year stint in Paris, rented a studio not far from the thriving square in 1889. That same year, he began painting Winter in Union Square, currently on view as part of the exhibit "Americans in Paris, 1860-1900" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. At first glance, the snow-blanketed scene appears quietly introspective, but the loose brushstrokes, elevated perspective and zigzagging composition convey a sense of exciting urban activity. Showing horse-drawn carriages and colorful trolleys traversing the square (both eventually phased out, as a cable car began running along Union Square in 1891), the work captures a poignant moment in a city in the midst of its Gilded Age--and at the brink of a new century.


Sunday, January 6, 2013

Wednesday, January 2, 2013

The New Year






I am starting the New Year with a cold.
Fighting it strong.
Airborne, tea made for colds, sleep and naps, and quiet.
It is very grey outside and wet. 
It is very much how I feel. 
I finished Anna Karenina yesterday. 
We saw Les  Mise for the second time. My daughter for the 3rd time. 
We are humming and singing songs about Grace. Fierce beauty of Grace.

“When presently the twelfth stroke of the clock shall have sounded, we stand again at the opening of a new year. For that year also God appoints the beginning. He plants it. His divine hand commits the germ of it to the life of the world. But likewise His is the knowledge of what the end of the year shall bring us. Whether for you, for one of your dear ones, it shall be the last year of life; or whether for you or for one whom your soul loveth, it will be the year of conversion and of coming into life; whether roses will be strewn upon your way, or thorns on the stalk shall smart and wound you. He knows all the trouble that this year shall burden your heart…. And therefore do not fear and neither be afraid, but now at the change of years, in childlike confidence grasp the faithful hand of that Father who is in heaven.”
Abraham Kuyper