Wednesday, September 26, 2012

fun ahead

Husband home from a trip.
Heading up north with my daughter and sister : Girls Weekend in NYC.
Be back.  The American Wing is open at the MET!

Saturday, September 22, 2012

waiting for this to come in the mail........



Taproot



Taproot ::
1. the large single root of plants such as dandelion, which grows vertically downward and bears small lateral roots
2. a quarterly magazine celebrating local living through writing, photography and the arts, both fine and domestic.

Taproot is...
a collection of curated stories written by and for people living fully and digging deeper; people who are interested in deepening their connections to their families, communities, and themselves as they strive to live locally and closer to the ground.


Brookyn Sketchbook on LISTS


My theme for this year's Brooklyn Sketchbook is LISTS.

Last September , we saw an exhibit at the Morgan Library in NYC on Lists.
It turned out to be much better than we imagined.

From the weekly shopping list to the Ten Commandments, our lives are full of lists—some dashed off quickly, others beautifully illustrated, all providing insight into the personalities and habits of their makers:


Adolf Konrad, packing list, December 16, 1963. Adolf Ferdinand Konrad papers, 1962–2002. Archives of American Art. Smithsonian Institution.

SO I picked up a huge stack of books waiting for me at the library. Waiting so patiently that the stack grew! One of the books is Nigel Slater's TENDER : A Cook and his vegetable patch.
Nigel is a cook who writes.


  Tender is the story of my vegetable patch, how it came to be and what I grow in it. The book is published in two volumes, vegetables and fruit. Twelve hundred pages in length and taking five years to write, Tender is a memoir, a study of fifty of our favourite vegetables, fruits and nuts and a collection of over five hundred recipes.

He begins the book with  these words which I will copy into my Sketchbook:

I keep lists. Some copied into notebooks in neat italic script in blue-black ink, others scribbled almost illegibly in soft pencil on the back of an old envelope. Most remain in my head. There is the usual inventory of things I need to do, of course, but also less urgent lists, those of books to read or read again, music to find, plants to secure for the garden, and letters to be written (few of which will ever see the light of day). One list that has remained in my head is that of favourite scents, the catalogue of smells I find particularly evocative or uplifting. Snow (yes, I believe it has a smell), dim sum, old books, cardamom, beeswax, moss, warm flapjacks, a freshly snapped runner bean, a roasting chicken, a fleeting whiff of white narcissi on a freezing winter's day.





Friday, September 21, 2012

joining....


8:00 a.m.

We saw the line. 
We went out to breakfast.
We came back.
We got in and out of the store with the new iphone 5 in 30 minutes and that is how long it usually takes in the cell phone store.

9:00 a.m. 
Heading home. 
First Apple product in this house. 
I know all those Apple lovers are nodding their heads.



The Telephone

 "When I was just as far as I could walk
 From here today,
 There was an hour
 All still
 When leaning with my head against a flower
 I heard you talk.
 Don't say I didn't, for I heard you say--
 You spoke from that flower on the windowsill--
 Do you remember what it was you said?"

 "First tell me what it was you thought you heard."

 "Having found the flower and driven a bee away,
 I leaned my head,
 And holding by the stalk,
 I listened and I thought I caught the word--
 What was it?  Did you call me by my name?
 Or did you say--
 Someone said 'Come'--I heard it as I bowed."

 "I may have thought as much, but not aloud."

 "Well, so I came."

 [(from Mountain Interval, 1916)
 The Poetry of Robert Frost]




Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Gorgeous

The rain is gone and it is gorgeous here just like 
Melissa wrote yesterday:

Hope all is well in your world.  If you're on the east coast, you should be getting this wonderful breeze in a day or so.  Enjoy.


I am on the East Coast.
SO glad to get  heads up from Tenn!


The ground is still soggy.
Perfect for  digging in the garden soil.
Planting cool weather veggies.
My favorite kind~ veggies who love cool weather. 


This is not my garden but there are similarities.
I am not planting this much.  I do have marigolds 
still basking in the sun. May have to do some design 
work with my rows!


Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Catching up


Catching up since last week:

~got caught up with reading for my class and history
~heard several chancellors and presidents of seminaries 
on friday. 
~ was thrilled to hear these  theologians who are as Derek Thomas said are infectuous for theology! 



~Did hear and catch up with  George Grant  at the above Inauguration, who will be a Ligonier
Conference in Florida this weekend. Surprised by God is the theme. This looks good:


Saturday, September 22 2012 : 9:00 a.m. to 10:10 a.m.





Inklings of Wonder

This talk will explore the great British Christian tradition of defending the permanent things, and how this in turn has spawned God-honoring literature that explores and recovers wonder as the only appropriate response to His glory. ( George Grant)






Wednesday, September 12, 2012

wish I was doing this..........


We started this book during lunch and I wanted to go.
Go across America as Autumn starts. To travel in a single season ~~ this most colorful season. 

Teale paints the landscape , even the sounds, so you can see and hear. 

I am familar with the part of the country Teale and his wife start from: New England but not this particular island:

Monomay Island, Mass

It is right below Nantucket.

" broken pieces of summer can be found scattered into the shortening days of fall.  Only on calendars and in almanacs are the lines of division sharply defined."



photo

Monomoy National Wildlife Refuge shore





Tuesday, September 11, 2012

celebrating Autumn


My first Pumpkin Spice latte yesterday. 
Cool air at last as Autumn is booting out the heat.

Pool closed today. (It has leaks and they don't make the liner any more. Not sure what will be next summer)
(as my oldest says: first world problem. )

My students are  writing Current Event blogs this year.
Their personalities shine in the decor and the articles they find note worthy. Wouldn't our high school years have been so different with this machine instead of typewriters?!!!
( I hated typing class! I did fine but no extraordinary speed. I thought: what a boring job this would be! Who would want to be a secretary?!)


Trying to come up with a poet for the siblings of my class  to study this semester. Not sure why noone is making me sing yet. 

Update: kitchen walls almost done with new paint. Slow process now that school has started.

DNC stories still trickle in as this week starts. It is over. A 
sigh of relief is over our household and my son's! 

Friday, September 7, 2012

a few days without a computer


When the fan dies in your computer, it could melt the whole insides. Mine died Tuesday. Now on a new computer after always checking emails on other computers  but  I was  not in the blog world or FB or checking news. We did watch the DNC and RNC ....hmmmm.............. the first was in my city. Today I took a friend to the airport. The radio said to get there 3 hours early! I got her there 2 and a half. No problems. I was impressed how organized the traffic and signs were. She got to her gate in 30 minutes.

 Quieter now. Protesters should be gone too. The one that impressed me the most was a priest leading the way on the main street with 100 prolifers behind him praying. Thanks for praying for our city this week!

Monday, September 3, 2012

And of course this...



Downton Abbey Season 3:

have this book out from the library now:

 






The beginning........



I am listening to BBC-Radio  3 with Eric Whitacre while tying up ends for the beginning of Humanities Class tomorrow. 

This year Eric fits right in ~ Modernity: 1800's to the present.
My daughter's choir will be singing SLEEP this year:


Commonplace journals were started with quotes from the Jane Austen books they picked to read. Summer reading.
Notes from a Tilt A Whirl by ND Wilson is our slow read throughout the semester. It is to get us ready for Chesterton's Orthodoxy next semester. Here Eric Metaxas on both here ( 3 mins) .  Our next novel is A Tale of Two Cities by Dickens. It was the best of times , it was the worst of times......This 200th year anniversary of Dickens will be fun! It was back in Feb., then the Queens Jubilee , then the Olympics. The Brits have had quite a year of celebrations! 
 I think about  our whole country celebrating our leader like they did the Queen. Little trickles of their  celebration even arrived at my house! ( tea , napkin, and a kitchen towel of the Jubilee)

The week also begins a discussion group of Vol. 6 of Charlotte Mason's volumes. Vol 6 and a stack of books ~~ to share at the meetings. A stack of books of a favorite author: now doesn't that sound fun! Tell you who after Thursday!


So many movies coming out this year of this time period: The Hobbit, Les Miserable, Anna Karenina, what else?