Thursday, March 26, 2015

best email subject


in my box today:

Who Needs Spring Cleaning When You Can Read Instead?

making me dizzy


The girl and the guy never make it to the Eiffel Tower!
Makes me dizzy and also makes me smile every time
I look at that funny still life video below.

Spring Break is here. 

I keep thinking about beauty and possessing it.
The trees are so beautiful in white blooms. 
Doesn't it make you want to freeze Spring like the
girl and guy driving towards the Eiffel Tower?

Rereading The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge.
A good fairytale is good for the heart.
( which reminds me to go see the new Cinderella, have you?)

The Little White Horse

It was under the white moon that I saw him,
The little white horse, with neck arched high in pride.
Lovely his pride, delicate, no taint of self
Staining the unconscious innocence denied
Knowledge of good and evil, burden of days
Of shame crouched beneath the flail of memory.
No past for you, little white horse, no regret,
No future of fear in this silver forest---
Only the perfect now in the white moon-dappled ride.

A flower-like body fashioned all of light,
For the speed of light, yet momently at rest,
Balanced on the sheer knife-edge of perfection;
Perfection of grass silver upon the crest
Of the hill, before the scythe falls, snow in sun,
Of the shaken human spirit when God speaks
In His still small voice and for a breath of time
All is hushed; gone in a sigh, that perfection,
Leaving the sharp knife-edge turning slowly in the breast.

The raised hoof, the proud poised head, the flowing mane,
The supreme moment of stillness before the flight,
The moment of farewell, of wordless pleading
For remembrance of things lost to earthly sight---
Then the half-turn under the trees, a motion
Fluid as the movement of light on water . . .
Stay, oh stay in the forest, little white horse! . . .
He is lost and gone and now I do not know
If it was a little white horse that I saw,
Or only a moonbeam astray in the silver night.

Here is a map of Moonacre:

image






Tuesday, March 24, 2015

just saw this


the wind blows


“All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.” 


JRRT

( very good to think upon and to dig deep into the words)

revolution tumblr

Friday, March 20, 2015

been thinking upon joy


A friend picked her word for the year: Joy.

When a friend or you have a WORD for the year and it 
pops up, you send whatever the sentence or page or 
book to her. 

Is it a hope that JOY will arrive this year? 
In what ways?  

In this post on The Rabbit Room by Lanier Ivester,
she writes, 

“Joy cannot be domesticated,”


This means joy cannot be tamed or made fit for cultivation
or to overcome the wildness. 

She continues, 

Joy isn’t a spiritual discipline. Thanksgiving, praise, a cultivated gratitude, yes, absolutely—but joy is a gift, a fruit of the Spirit. We can’t summon, capture or tame it.

and.... 

 But we can’t make joy, or find it.
Joy finds us—in the way of faith, and even when, benumbed with grief or fear or shame or weariness, we stumble out of it.

Today is the first day of Spring. 
May joy find you because as CS Lewis said beauty compels us to possess it.  





                                            a very young daughter , up in her favorite tree
                                                                 10 years ago


Tuesday, March 17, 2015

wearing green


What a fine St. Patrick's day!
The afternoon warmed up to the 80's.

My students wrote limericks today. 
They thought they couldn't do it .
They started and burst into laughter.
Belly laughter.
Hysterics. 
Then they wrote another.

My favorite Irish poet: Seamus Heaney





Monday, March 16, 2015

is there such a thing



Too many books in a stack?
Or maybe the question is time?
I have too many I want to read.

Spring arrived. 
Two loads of laundry dried outside on the line.

The last  two lines of this poem rise up in my mind
as I think of today: 

Sabbaths 1998
IV.

The woods and pastures are joyous
in their abundance now
in a season of warmth and much rain.
We walk amidst foliage, amidst
song. The sheep and cattle graze
like souls in bliss (except for flies)
and lie down satisfied. Who now 
can believe in winter? In winter
who could have hoped for this? 


 ( from Given, 2005)
Wendell Berry



Saturday, March 14, 2015

struck by The Theory of Everything


Been hoping to find someone who has seen this movie
and now reading Jane Hawkings' memoir: Travelling to Infinity.
I knew it would be well written. She was a literature major
and finishes her PHD during the early years of marriage.
Stephen and Jane Hawkings' marriage was strong. 
Their community was  strong.
 There was always a neighbor in Cambridge who came to the rescue,
mostly without being called. Cell phones would have been wonderful!

Their active 2 year old son, Robert, climbed up to read the medicine
and  drank it! He was  energetic and " the living personification of all that was 
good and positive in our world and our relationship." As he 
lay in the hospital, Jane wrote that he looked " as beatific
as a Bellini cherub." 



She prayed this  mantra : "Please God, don't let him die"

She writes: 
"That day Robert survived , but a little bit of me died. Some, 
though not all, of that extravagant youthful optimism which had 
fired me with so much enthusiasm now lay buried beneath a 
heavy burden of anxiety, that dull care in its ravelled sleave,
which once it infects the mind is never banished." 

" I became neurotically protective."



I think I still can be " neurotically protective" of my grown children
and when  anxiety weighs heavy so I have a similar " mantra prayer":
Please Lord help him/ her. Don't let them ....

Thursday, March 12, 2015

watercolor poems


I don't have any photos to post yet of the watercolor
Emily Dickinson poetry project we did today. 
I will next week. 

Here is one of two poems that a student had found 
but didn't use.The bold line makes me see differently
 as Spring arrives: 

The mountain sat upon the plain
In his eternal chair,
His observation omnifold,
His inquest everywhere.
The seasons prayed around his knees,
Like children round a sire:
Grandfather of the days is he,
Of dawn the ancestor.

One former student is home for Spring Break and 
visited just in time to be part of this project. She  did a
beautiful poem by Gerald Manley Hopkins. Her eyes
sparkled and she read some of the lines slowly to me. 

Don't you love the words: delves and elves-eyes, 
alliteration here: Flake-doves sent floating forth 
at a farmyard scare...

May-mess
March-bloom

a poem to sit in for a few days and read over 
and over again...... this days of Spring... 
and think of the Starry Night with the full moon
right now...


The Starlight Night

BY GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS
Look at the stars! look, look up at the skies!
   O look at all the fire-folk sitting in the air!
   The bright boroughs, the circle-citadels there!
Down in dim woods the diamond delves! the elves'-eyes!
The grey lawns cold where gold, where quickgold lies!
   Wind-beat whitebeam! airy abeles set on a flare!
   Flake-doves sent floating forth at a farmyard scare! 
Ah well! it is all a purchase, all is a prize.

Buy then! bid then! — What? — Prayer, patience, alms, vows.
Look, look: a May-mess, like on orchard boughs!
   Look! March-bloom, like on mealed-with-yellow sallows!
These are indeed the barn; within doors house
The shocks. This piece-bright paling shuts the spouse
   Christ home, Christ and his mother and all his hallows.

from The Murmuring Cottage

Wednesday, March 11, 2015

March poem

by simply factory

LXXXVIII


WE like March, his shoes are purple,
  He is new and high;
Makes he mud for dog and peddler,
  Makes he forest dry;
Knows the adder’s tongue his coming,        5
  And begets her spot.
Stands the sun so close and mighty
  That our minds are hot.
News is he of all the others;
  Bold it were to die        10
With the blue-birds buccaneering
  On his British sky.

Emily Dickinson


timing and emily dickinson


I just got 2 dozen of the tinest hen eggs from a new friend.
I loan her books and she gives me eggs.
Homeschoolers stick together and give and take!
The eggs are very small. So 2 dozen = 1 dozen
It take 2 to equal 1 large egg. 
I am going to make omelets tonight.

The past two days have had those times when you 
run into a friend from the past. This happened yesterday
on the way home from class. Today was in Hobby Lobby.
Each  encouraged my heart.  The Lord knows what
words need to come to us to strengthen and to give  
courage. Life is not for the faint-hearted. 

There is always in  timing a way of seeing or to 
notice  God's hand to orchestrate our days.

 It is the hyphens of Emily that are the 
pauses which make timing perfect. The pauses of 
our days to leave at a certain time and thus meet
up unawares who will be in our path. 

I did hang my laundry outside for the first time in a long time. 
Timing= Spring

This is what we are making tomorrow in class with Emily Dickinson's
poem and why I was in Hobby Lobby.  A dear friend and mom 
of two of my students will teach us this:


o celebrate the ushering in of spring. a poem by my favorite, emily dickinson.
{habiliments = clothing; seraphic = befitting a celestial being}

Tuesday, March 10, 2015

new art blog


for me: 

Trivium Art History
The Stories of Art History

                                                             Mary Cassatt


                                                        Jean Francois Millet
                                                   
                                                          Berthe Morisot


Monday, March 9, 2015

ginger?

I just got a cup of ginger tea when the 
reading of Chapter 72: The Monkey Line
came to the paragraph below! I had 
many choices for afternoon tea and here
I am with a cup of Ginger tea while this
is being read to me. 


It was like I was on the ship.


From the Annotated Moby Dick; 

"Ginger? Do I smell ginger?" suspiciously asked Stubb, coming near. " Yes, this must be ginger," peering into the as yet untasted cup. Then standing as if incredulous for a while, he calmly walked towards the astonished steward slowly saying, "Ginger? ginger? and will you have the goodness to tell me, Mr. Dough-Boy, where lies the virtue of ginger? Ginger! is ginger the sort of fuel you use, Dough-Boy, to kindle a fire in this shivering cannibal? Ginger!—what the devil is ginger?sea-coal? fire-wood?—lucifer matches?tinder?—gunpowder?—what the devil is ginger, I say, that you offer this cup to our poor Queequeg here?"



Photographs by Lucy Shupe and Jeanne Rhea.
from the beginnings of my Altered MOBY DICK
book by Penny Arrowood.






Thursday, March 5, 2015

rainy Thursday



We started out warm this morning and by the time
my class was reading A Winter Walk by Thoreau, 
it was pouring outside and the temperature had
dropped. We stopped our read aloud and looked
out to the greyness over the pond. Yes, there is 
pond where we meet for class. Thoreau's  "Walden
Pond" in our minds and our hearts cheered as we
 came to the end of the essay. 

Winter is still here with the cold returning but Spring
 flowers are up looking about

Doing this right now and thinking about my herb 
garden this summer: 




Monday, March 2, 2015

spring is coming



From  The Murmuring Cottage

pentydeval:
(via Norregård: Blått….)

It is in the air today: 63 degrees.
Front door is open to let in the light. 
The birds are chirping. 
They know. 

I am musing upon the 27 images in this prayer:

Prayer (I)

BY GEORGE HERBERT
Prayer the church's banquet, angel's age,
         God's breath in man returning to his birth,
         The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,
The Christian plummet sounding heav'n and earth
Engine against th' Almighty, sinner's tow'r,
         Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,
         The six-days world transposing in an hour,
A kind of tune, which all things hear and fear;
Softness, and peace, and joy, and love, and bliss,
         Exalted manna, gladness of the best,
         Heaven in ordinary, man well drest,
The milky way, the bird of Paradise,
         Church-bells beyond the stars heard, the soul's blood,
         The land of spices; something understood.


Thank you Malcolm Guite.