a peek at book club

over here at my friend's  blog:

What is all this juice and all this joy?

- good talk by Marilyn Chandler McEntyre on " What's Next" or she said

her first title was " Literature: Equipment for Living." I will have more to say

as I am pondering much that she said about the cultural shift coming and 

where universities are going : STEM, etc...

- the NC mts. are in early Spring and it was such good nourishment 

to see the many shades of green! 

- had time with the Living Books Library friends: Liz and Emily and here.  and

here.  ( last is my favorite on Living Books)

- Book Club was yesterday on Eric Metaxas' Bonhoeffer. Hoping my dear friend

who hosted will post photos soon. The length of the book was challenging and 

the subject of a life of a pastor during the Nazi regime was challenging to ourselves 

too. What do we learn from such an obedience to the will of God?

- favorite poem these Spring days:

Spring

BY GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS

Nothing is so beautiful as Spring –         

   When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;         

   Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush         

Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring         

The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;

   The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush         

   The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush         

With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.         

What is all this juice and all this joy?         

   A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning

In Eden garden. – Have, get, before it cloy,         

   Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,         

Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,         

   Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning. 

going to hear

Heading with a couple of students and another Mom 
to hear Marilyn Chandler McEntyre speak in Bristol, Tenn. 
tomorrow night. 


Here are her books:

penderwicks back

New book out and got out of the library
and my Emma ( 17) is still thrilled by 
a good book and the series continuing with this book. 
She is reading to me the first chapter!

gladden

This word came to me as my heart felt 
a bit gladdened.

from the 1828 dictionary which includes a sentence: 

GLAD'DEN, v.t. glad'n. To make glad; to cheer; to please; to exhilarate. The news of peace gladdens our hearts.
Churches will every where gladden his eye, and hymns of praise vibrate upon his ear.

GLAD'DEN, v.i. glad'n. To become glad; to rejoice.
So shall your country ever gladden at the sound of your voice.

from the Etymology dictionary: c. 1300, "to be glad;"

There is your English lesson! 
It is raining outside. All afternoon there has been a hum of rain falling.
I can't remember when the world was brown. Totally green now. 
Thinking upon the word : gladden


 owls and elderberries tumblr

Spring

BY GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS

Nothing is so beautiful as Spring –         

   When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;         

   Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush         

Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring         

The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;

   The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush         

   The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush         

With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.         

What is all this juice and all this joy?         

   A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning

In Eden garden. – Have, get, before it cloy,         

   Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,         

Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,         

   Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning.         

finished ...

I wrapped up reading and editing and thus grading
19 thesis papers this morning. Well done except
a few who should do better next year. Atttention to 
technical guidelines takes great attention. See the word
Attention twice. Yes. A good teacher does not go over
and over something. A good students learns attention
the first time. I started having some students tell me 
back ( narrate) instructions. Then they heard themselves.
I am thankful to this friend who helped me: here. 

Read about Liz's famous visitor to her library.
I am the friend who came back from NYC.

Enjoy finishing up and wrapping up things as the week begins.

finished

 I have read Dietrich Bonhoeffer's books 
and just finished Eric Metaxas' long biography
on him. I have lots of questions and eager
to have Book Club in a few weeks to hear
the discussion.

I looked up his fiance Maria. He was 36 when 
he proposed and she was 18. She went on 
to study Mathmatics in Germany and the US.
She married twice and had two sons by the first
marriage. Lived in Boston. She died in 1977.

the weekend

Our cat has been practicing some hissing and 
is always UP on top of the table or a chair or 
the sofa. ( Lady rolls over when she hisses , totally
submissive! ) When we call our cat's  name, she softly
meows. " I am here and that dog is here , don't
you see her?" She has behaved remarkably well,
I think. I told her this morning she would have 
a friend if she tried. Cats don't try. 

Have a good weekend!

( not my cat but this cat is asking the same questions)
from the murmuring cottage tumblr

almost the weekend

Lady is here for the weekend!
( son's dog and here as a puppy)

Good day!
How about you? 

Very good devotion started the day and this part especially gave me some wisdom: 

Exhaustion is a heavy filter. Extended times of stress and sorrow wreck havoc upon our whole being. Molecular biologists will tell you that the human brain was not designed to function well during sustained exhaustion or stress. With this increased anxiety, blood flow to the brain becomes limited, causing negative and confusing conversations. Communication scholars note that when we are living in long-term exhaustion, we tend to experience withdrawal, reduced awareness, and tension. Our ability to see and interpret relevant information becomes blocked. We are pelted with wave after wave of confusion and anxiety, self-focused tendencies, and cognitive overload.

Then reading with my students that left us all thinking: 
- dictation on the brow ( chapter 79: The Prairie in Moby Dick)

In thought a fine human brow is like the east when troubled with the morning. In the repose of the pasture, the curled brow of the bull has a touch of the grand in it. Pushing heavy cannon up mountain defiles, the elephant's brow is majestic. Human or animal, the mystical brow is as that great golden seal affixed by the German emperors to their decrees. It signifies "God: done this day by my hand". But in most creatures, nay in man himself, very often the brow is but a mere strip of alpine land lying along the snow line. Few are the foreheads which like Shakespeare's orMelancthon's rise so high, and descend so low, that the eyes themselves seem clear, eternal, tideless mountain lakes; and all above them in the forehead's wrinkles, you seem to track the antlered thoughts descending there to drink, as the Highland hunters track the snow prints of the deer. 


- Emily Dickson's two poems on fame ( drew illustrations and made synonyms for the second poem of song, sting , and wing) 
( Fame is a fickle food) ( Fame is a bee)

- Chesterton's essay On  Abraham Lincoln
We read half out loud and narrated which turned into a different perspective
on Lincoln. One student said , " This makes me think."

For this great man had one secret vice far more unpopular among his followers than the habit of drinking. He had the habit of thinking. We might almost call it the habit of secret thinking, a dark consolation like that of secret drinking; for during his early days he must have practiced it unappreciated, and it has been said that he worked out the propositions of Euclid as a relief after having been nagged by his wife. This habit of thinking was not the thoughtless thing commonly called free-thinking, though he may have picked up a little of that in his less enlightened days. It was real thinking, which means knowing exactly where to draw the line-- a logic which is often mistaken for compromise.

The great glory of Lincoln is that, almost alone among politicians, he really knew what he thought about politics. He really thought slavery was bad, but he really thought the disruption of America was worse. It is perfectly possible for an intelligent person to disagree with him on either or both of these points. But he was an intelligent person when he stated them in that way, and put them in that order. In short, he had a native love of Truth; and, like every man with such a love, he had a natural hatred of mere Tendency. He had no use for progress, for evolution, for going with the stream, for letting the spirit of the age lead him onward. He knew exactly what he thought, not only about the perfection, but the proportion of truth; not only about the direction, but the distance. He was not always right; but he always tried to be reasonable, and that in exactly the sense which his special admirers have never understood from that day to this. He tried to be reasonable. It is not surprising that his life was a martyrdom, and that he died murdered.

Tuesday

- woke up thinking about Wendell Berry's Jefferson Lecture in 2011. 
Listened and used half of it for class today. Students started short stories
to learn the power of STORY and the imagination. Berry defines imagination.
We looked up three words in an etymology dictionary: create, imagine, think.

- Looked up a wonderful old book that Chesterton wrote about in an essay:
On America. We had read it before Break. It opens with the bells tolling 
for Lincoln's death in Washington. Close your eyes and imagine.

- started to teach my students about living books and the power of Story

- found some wonderful hardbacks of children's books at a thrift store

- rain while dusk arrives to darken the world is ablaze with color
- I love this time of day
- getting lighter later

Monday

Back in the saddle:

- grading End of the Term exam on Millet
 this one made me smile:

Jeans' father sent him to study art with a master and from there Jean was hooked.

Millet's paintings never sugar coated the characters. The paintings always brought out the smell of the earth, the feel of calloused hands, and the sounds of busy hands. All his paintings were centered around the common man working hard.)

- grading a paraphrase of OF REVENGE by Francis Bacon. 

- laundry hung out in this glorious Monday after Easter

- wrote more letters

- read Bonhoeffer by Eric Metaxas yesterday and have 200 more pages for Book Club
in late April

- catching up on reading Moby Dick via audio from Plymouth Univ in the UK

- caught up in the Psalms as I read through them with my sister and oldest brother

- here is a good blog on my trip by Nancy

Tuesday, March 31st from the Staten Island Ferry ( free ride)

have courage and be kind

a must see: Cinderella

the fairy godmother

wicked step-mother

Cinderella and the Prince

and the director

the world is turning green

and the dogwoods opened overnight....
and azaleas...

For Easter:


Royalty

He was a plain man
and learned no latin.

Having left all gold behind
he dealt out peace
to all us wild men
and the weather

He ate fish, bread,
country wine and God’s will

Dust sandalled his feet

He wore purple only once
and that was an irony

(A Widening Light: Poems of the Incarnation, edited by Luci Shaw [1984], 91)

Spring Break

sore feet and soul is nourished ...

friends meeting up in NYC: Sage Parnassus
from Minnesota 
and my friend from Tenn.