Last Day of 2011

Warm outside.
Sunny.
Carolina blue sky.

I finished the very British Wodehouse book: Right Ho, Jeeves. There were many words to ask my husband!
He is almost like a walking dictionary but a few stumped him. Skijoring; buckedness ( in looking this word up , the lines in the book came up on Google! Must be a Wodehouse word); others and of course:
What ho and Right ho! 

Quiet evening ahead after a few weeks of preparations
and travel. 


How about you?

last Friday in 2011

We are back in town from Atlanta , well, the outskirt 
of that southern city. Back from Grandma's new house.

I read while two of my children, Grandma and my husband  played Scrabble for the last two nights. 
I always keep a Commonplace Book. Nancy has a 
blog on keeping one. I always put the date and what I am doing and the weather! Maybe my grands will love that part of reading it when it is passed down. 

The Week After Christmas

Celebrations. 
Christ's birth.
Food.
Son's Christmas Eve birthday.
Food.
Engagements.
Food.
Family gatherings.
Food.
Delicious.

Best quote  in Steve Job's biography: 


"I always thought of myself as a humanities person as a kid, but I liked electronics," he said, " Then I read something that one of my heroes , Edwin Land of Polaroid, said about the importance of people who could stand at the intersection of the humanities and sciences, and I decided that is what I wanted to do."

This Week

                                                Upper: Evan and Brandie
                                                Lower: Brad and Kara

This week is full of joy for the  next year will be the Year of Weddings:   Brad is getting married in March.Evan proposed friday night.  My nephew proposed Saturday. There's a run on weddings!
Praising God!


We are settling into games , movies, books , and food!
How about you?

Facebook or Blog

The tree is up!
We watched in the background "Little Women"
while eating pizza and salad and putting the ornaments on the tree. 

The Christmas Tree at the MET in NYC with the nativity scene surrounding the bottom. 

The Thirteen Days of Christmas

 I have this book on my Christmas shelf that I must have ordered last year. It is delightful. 

" St. Stephen's Day was the only day of the year on which all the boys in the town were up well before seven. It was still dark when the streets rang with their shrill hopeful whistling for snow. A snowball fight was the best of all St. Stephen's Day battles...."

Romance, a wealthy man woes his love  with the Twelve Days of Christmas , all set to the  Twelve Days of Christmas. I won't tell you about how he got 3 French hens  or 3 turtledoves! Maybe it is in your library. I highly recommend it. You will chuckle. 
 

Advent Poem

By one of my favorite living poets:

"The Whip of Advent" by Tristan Gylberd

 The pitch of the stall was glorious

Though the straw was dusty and old

Though it blew bitter and cold

The wind sang with orchestral beauty

The night was mysteriously gleaming

Though the earth was fallen, forlorn

For under the eaves of splendor

A child-The Child-was born

Oxen Sheep and doves

Crowded round Nativity's scene

Though the world still failed to grasp

T’was here that peace had been

Cast out into a cave

When no room was found for Him

His coming was a scourge

That cleansed a robber's den

While the Temple's become a cattle stall

Where beasts and such are sold

The Child's turned Manger into Temple

And changed the base to gold

Tis the paradox of the ages:

Worldly wisdom will ne're relent

To notice signs of visitation

Nor the cords of the whip of Advent

The Lord sparkles the morning

I am walking around a m a z e d.
Glitter is in the air.
Angels.
I think of these lines from Richard Wilbur's poem 

'Love Calls Us to the Things of This World' which comes from St. Augustine :

                     Outside the open window   

The morning air is all awash with angels.

I have been  praying for 2 who have cancer every morning since diagnoses earlier this Fall. Now from  writing a letter to one on Tuesday , getting a call last night: they know each other. One sells eyeglasses and the other works for an eye doctor. WHO would have known? I didn't. They didn't until my letter this week to say " I am praying for you." 



No kidding God moment!
His beauty. 
His amazing love.
Pouring in. 

You know when you happen upon something on the internet

You look up an image and you find a very  beautiful blog. Here's where I ended up from the Morgan Library in NYC to Bibliodyssey: 

Books~~Illustrations~~Science~~History~~Visual Materia Obscura~~Eclectic Bookart

Baby Songbook

The Royal Anjou Bible

"By any definition, it is one of the supreme Bibles of the gothic period"
[Christopher de Hamel*, Cambridge]

The Vallard Atlas

North America, East Coast

It amazing that you get as much done as you do.......quote by a former student to me right now!

 

Preparation

Only a few decorations are up in our house.
Preparation also means finishing. You have to end
something to start something!
Class tomorrow will be the last one at my house.  Winding up Rasselas of the dictionary author: Samuel Johnson. H. E. Marshall has a lovely narrative of this author in English Literature for Boys and Girls which we have been reading out loud. Or look at this lovely Google Book with illustrations. 
Midterm is on Thursday. Charlotte Mason style.

From Samuel Johnson's Dictionary: 1755 

Chrístmas. n.s. [from Christ and mass.] The day on which the nativity of our blessed Saviour is celebrated, by the particular service of the church.

Séraphim. n.s. [This is properly the plural of seraph, and therefore cannot have s added; yet, in compliance with our language, seraphims is sometimes written.] Angels of one of the heavenly orders.
To thee cherubim and seraphim continually do cry. Com. Pr.
Then flew one of the seraphims unto me, having a live coal in his hand. Is. vi. 6.
Of seraphim another row. Milton.

To Loll. v.a. To put out: used of the tongue exerted.
All authors to their own defects are blind;
Hadst thou but, Janus-like, a face behind,
To see the people, when splay mouths they make,
To mark their fingers pointed at thy back,
Their tongues loll’d out a foot. Dryden’s Persius.
By Strymon’s freezing streams he sat alone,
Trees bent their heads to hear him sing his wrongs,
Fierce tygers couch’d around, and loll’d their fawning tongues. Dryden’s Virgil.
By the wolf were laid the martial twins;
Intrepid on her swelling dugs they hung,
The foster-dam loll’d out her fawning tongue. Dryden.

Remembering this line from Hamlet  this Advent:

So hallow'd and so gracious is the time.

First Saturday...

The week was full.
Full of students and projects.Wonderful ones on engineering in Antiquity. Emma did a replica of the Temple of Dundur which is at the MET which we saw in September.  Caesar Augustus had it built on the Nile. The heiroglyphics picture a Pharoah with Augustus' face! She built the temple which is the building with columns.

Christmas Concert on Thursday night! Aren't live voices better than a recording?!!

We ordered the bridesmaid dress for Emma yesterday. March wedding for her policeman brother. 


Saturday. I love Saturdays. Last week seemed like everyday from Weds. to Sunday was Saturday. 
Almost done with the leftovers.


 

Virtual Eric Whitacre

Lux Aurunque