Saturday, April 30, 2016

reading this tonight


The Love Of God and Affliction by Simone Weil

which I got from here by Tim Keller.

You know how that goes and then you are somewhere else from 
where you began. Good reading. 

Trying to understand. 

rusticmeetsvintage:

by namolio via Flickr
from the murmuring cottage

Sunday, April 24, 2016

roommates


My daughter's roommates this year: 





Next year on the left:

Saturday, April 23, 2016

the weekend


The weekend arrived with stellar weather.

 I started off friday night  with a cello & piano recital of one of my students. 

Then met with a mom of a Middle School student this morning.

Then read an essay of my daughters: editor. 

Worked cleaning out part of the garage and throwing out stuff.

You know about stuff. ( I hope I am not the only one with stuff)

Got much done by finding a list of character traits in Latin for my class.

Relieved  to have found the list. 

Read some chapters in "Till We Have Faces" by Lewis which I am teaching now. 

Hoping I have caught up on this reading.

Daughter going to the school dance tonight. 

I wish I had a picture of the dress she is wearing which we got on sale on New Year's Day. 

The Sabbath tomorrow--- Rest. Retreat. Worship.




from the murmuring cottage

Wednesday, April 20, 2016

emily dickinson-





PINK, small, and punctual.
Aromatic, low,
Covert in April,
Candid in May,
  
Dear to the moss,        5
Known by the knoll,
Next to the robin
In every human soul.
  
Bold little beauty,
Bedecked with thee,        10
Nature forswears
Antiquity.

(With the first Arbutus.)

Monday, April 11, 2016

and then there is Lewis on writing



“Always try to use the language so as to make quite clear what you mean, and make sure your sentence couldn’t mean anything else.”

“Always prefer the plain direct word to the long, vague one. Don’t say implement promises, but keep them.”

Never use abstract nouns when concrete ones will do. If you mean ‘more people died,’ don’t say ‘mortality rose.’

“Don’t use adjectives which merely tell us how you want us to feel about the thing you are describing.” Under this heading, Lewis goes on to say that the writing should delight readers, not just label an event delightful; or it should make them feel terror, not just to learn that an event was terrifying. He says that emotional labeling is really just a way of asking readers, ‘Please, will you do my job for me?’

“Don’t use words that are too big for the subject.” Lewis illustrates this point by saying if you use infinitely as an intensifier instead of the simple word very, you won’t have any word left when you need to describe something that is truly infinite.


CS Lewis

there and back again


Back from the UK and a conference about Charlotte Mason ( still absorbing all the people's conversations and sessions and the place where I do believe people get to live... you know those picturesque places do have inhabitants...you know... where beauty expands the sky every day and the landscape pulls you outside.. people actually get to live there!) and 
meeting relatives in Scotland and seeing where my grandfather lived before leaving on the first ship in Glasgow to go out and it turned out to be to America. Seeing Cambridge and a walking tour with Christian Heritage at the Round Church which is the second oldest church which means St. Columba. Seeing lambs rambling behind their mamas was a sight I am sure I have never seen. So I am back and trying to get into the saddle before the horse takes off!






The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Cambridge, is an Anglican church in the city of Cambridge, England, and is known locally as The Round Church.The church was built around 1130, its shape being inspired by the rotunda in the church of the Holy SepulchreJerusalem