Watching two painters

Son Gordan.
Daughter Emma.
Stripped wallpaper
and a border.
Painting together to
get the job done.
Cream Brulee.
Brick Red.

Living room is a
mess with all the books,
furniture moved out
of the back hall which
goes to the washer-dryer
and bathroom.
Order coming.
"Color coming!"

Photos coming.

Longer than Moby Dick

I read about this book recommended by Tonia.
Dittoed by Beth. She has a good blog on it.
It is 850 pages long.
Moby Dick can be somewhere around 500
or more , depending on size of the book.

I just passed page 600.
Excellent.
Thanks girls.

King James ...poetry

TT: What is the major failure of Christian education in the modern West?

PH: Its lack of poetry. The abandonment of the great poetic text of the King James Bible (and of the Book of Common Prayer, for those to whom it once applied) has rendered Christianity banal and chilly to three generations. Much of what Christ said is communicable in poetry, which contains meanings prose is unable to express. The same could be said for the abandonment of much of the church’s classical musical tradition.

From Tabletalk, June 2011

Interview with Peter Hitchens.

any comments?

Culture: Be Generative

Lots of videos of the IAM
Encounters Conference in
NYC in March here.
Be introduced:

Poet Li-Young Lee's reading:
whose father was personal
assistant to Mao and then fled
to Indonesia and was medical
advisor to Saharto and then fled
to the U.S . He became a pastor
in a small town in western PA.
What a childhood for Li-Young
that comes out in some deeply
moving poetry.

Ian Cron, Episcopal pastor in
Nashville, gives a preview of
his book that just came out :

Jesus, My Father and the CIA



Conversation with Diani Goia:
poet and fighter for the ARTS.

Jeffrey Overstreet, novelist in
Oregon that I hope to read.
He talked on PLAY.

Where is Nigel?!! The actor
who took my imagination
out to the stars as Francis
Schaeffer said a Christian
imagination should do!

Makoto Fujimura on
BE GENERATIVE , where
he talks near the end on
Emily Dickinson.


Encounter 11: Makoto Fujimura on Being Generative

Jane Eyre appears everywhere

Emma and I sat on the couch
the other night reading. Internet
was down ( very odd ) and a storm
came through. We were reading
different books. Emma finishing up
Gary Schmidt's new book and laughing.
I was reading lines from my book
( Island of the World ...more on that )
and reading paragraphs out loud to her.
There's an Audubon painting theme to
"OKAY FOR NOW." Every chapter has one
of his BIRD paintings with a black and white
on the side page. Also the 8th graders are
reading Jane Eyre. Emma and I laughed
at the funny lines on learning poetry
( again that is for another blog)
and about Jane Eyre:


"Jane Eyre still hadn't figured
out that she was in love with
Mr. Rochester and I mean,
how may more clues do you need?"

Emma stopped reading to read out
loud to me from a book about the
Titanic that a great line about JANE
EYRE is used to describe the shipbuilder:

"Andrews clearly loved his work,
his men and most of all his ships.
Sometime in the spring of 1910,
Andrews brought his wife Helen
to the shipyard at night. They had
been married in June of 1908, and
Helen , knowing full well of her
husband's responsibilities and am-
bitions, described their life in terms
of Jane Eyre could have understood:
" I am my husband's life as fully as
he is mine."

Making great connections!
Charlotte Mason called it : The
Science of Relations. It is a series
of relationships formed by the
learner as he develops an intimacy
with a wide range of subjects.

Narration from Fearfully and Wonderfully Made

Part of the
High School
Immersion
Lesson at
the Childlight
Conference in
June was to
read two versions
of Psalm 139
and compare them,
then read the first chapter: Members.
Narrate. Start a lab book which for this
is a narration book. At the bottom, we
copied in our most beautiful writing
the first line of Psalm 139. We will
copy it all through out the bottom of
each page, carefully and spaced correctly.
This is good training for the eye. We did
learn about cells. Part of my narration:

" The white blood cells are the soldiers
protecting the body 'guarding against
invaders.' They look like amoebas but
when they sense danger they are like
beagles on the scent of a rabbit. They
home in from all directions to the point
of attack. 'They explode on the germ.'"

We , then, had a diagram of an amoeba
to label and then copy into our notebook.



Lovely to read with Psalm 139 on thesame page. Good lesson Jen!

Living books

Great illustration and here's a link to Valerie's Living Books

who I think is Elizabeth Elliot's daughter.

Also Emily Cottrill and her mother have a lending library but also a wonderful site with great book titles at Living Books Library in VA. Emily has produced the beautiful Picture Study Packets at Simply Charlotte Mason. Gorgeous reproductions.

Has anyone read any biographies by Margaret Vance or Manuel Komroff?

Back to Van Gogh's room

Jules Dupre, Evening

Maris ( very small copy but there is a woman washing right at the river at the bottom of the castle)

A Washerwoman

Maris, the Christening


Millet, The Four Hours of the Day, woodcuts, 4 proofs



Van Der Maarten, Funeral in a Cornfield

Daubigny

The Dawn (Cock crowing)

Charlet, Hospitality

Eduoard Frere, Seamstresses

Plus another called A Copper
that couldn't be traced.

Well, old boy, keep well, you know it, longsuffering and meek, as much as possible. Let us remain good friends.

Adieu

Vincent

Van Gogh writes his brother Theo

Paris , 6 July 1875

"I'm renting a little room
in Montmartre I'm sure you'd
like. It's small , but it looks out
over a little garden full of ivy &
Virginia creeper. I'll tell you the
prints I have on the wall:

Ruysadel, Le buisson



Bleaching Fields, Van Ruysadael

Haarlem, with the Bleaching Fields.” c. 1670-75.

Rembrandt's Lecture de la bible....which I can't find

Portrait of a Lady, Ph. de Champaigne

Corot's Evening

Fountainebleau, Bodmer

A Road, Bonington

Tryon, Morning

STAY tuned.....he had more!

Sequel to The Wednesday Wars

Gary Schmidt has written a sequel
about Doug Sweiteck. Should be
funny. The Wednesday Wars is
a favorite of Emma's. Mine too.

A favorite poem

Marie Reading in the Garden by Peder Severin Kroyer

Do you have a favorite
poem you learn by heart
when you were IN SCHOOL?



Sophia Kramskaya Reading
by Ivan Nikolaevich Kramskoy




Girl Reading by Corot

Window Poems by Wendell Berry

The poems were birthed while Berry looked out of the multi-paned window of his writing studio which he called "The Long-Legged House."

“Window Poem” 15.

The sycamore gathers

out of the sky, white

in the glance that looks up to it

through the black crisscross

of the window. But it is not a glance

that it offers itself to.

It is no lightning stroke

caught in the eye. It stays,

an old holding in place.

And its white is not so pure

as a glance would have it,

but emerges partially,

the tree’s renewal of itself,

among the mottled browns

and olives of the old bark.

Its dazzling comes into the sun

a little at a time

as though a god in it

is slowly revealing himself.

How often the man of the window

has studied its motley trunk,

the out-starting of its branches,

its smooth crotches,

its revelations of whiteness,

hoping to see beyond his glances,

the distorting geometry

of preconceptions and habit,

to know it beyond words.

All he has learned of it

does not add up to it.

There is a bird who nests in it

in the summer and seems to sing of it-

the quick lights among its leaves

-better than he can.

It is not by him imagining

its whiteness comes.

The world is greater than its words.

To speak of it the mind must bend.

Start at the window

Waiting at the Window

These are my two drops of rain
Waiting at the window-pane.

I am waiting here to see
Which the winning one will be.

Both of them have different names.
One is John and one is James.

All the best and all the worst
Comes from which of them is first.

James has just begun to ooze.
He's the one I want to lose.

John is waiting to begin.
He's the one I want to win.

James is going slowly on.
Something sort of sticks to John.

John is moving off at last.
James is going pretty fast.

John is rushing down the pane.
James is going slow again.

James has met a sort of smear.
John is getting very near.

Is he going fast enough?
(James has found a piece of fluff.)

John has hurried quickly by.
(James is talking to a fly.)

John is there, and John has won!
Look! I told you! Here's the sun!

~ A A Milne, Now We Are Six 1927

*****

Poem

Any tips for teaching poetry?

Introduction to Poetry

By Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poem

and hold it up to the light

like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem

and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem’s room

and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski

across the surface of a poem

waving at the author’s name on the shore.

But all they want to do

is tie the poem to a chair with rope

and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose

to find out what it really means.

Billy Collins, “Introduction to Poetry” from The Apple that Astonished Paris. Copyright 1988, 1996 by Billy Collins.