Sunday, October 29, 2017

Reformation Day.... and a post




 Image result for cornelia meigs, books

This is not on the 500th Anniversary of the Reformation but on a children's author: 
Cornelia Meigs. I am compiling a list for an Evening Chat at Grace to Build 
Retreat next week titled: Buried Treasures.

I found this letter on wikipedia: 

For a glimpse into her life, here are excerpts from a letter sent to an Albert Northrop, presumed husband to her niece Elizabeth (Betty):
January 29, 1950.
Dear Albert,
Your nice birthday letter should have had an answer long before this, but so many things do seem to come between me and writing even the letters that I want so much to write. The birthday was a very portentous one, my sixty-fifth, which means I am no longer eligible for Bryn Mawr after June; they have to keep me until then. By a singular chance they have given me more work to do than ever before, quite regardless of the fact that in six months I shall be considered totally unfit ...
You were so good to speak so kindly of Violent Men and Two Arrows. The former had been in hand for a very long time, quite the largest piece of work I had ever undertaken, but it has been the one that I most enjoyed. I have a real passion for history, which grows as the years go by, and was whetted ever more by my seeing some of it being made first hand while I was doing a very humble job in Washington. I realized that if I did not finish it while I was at Bryn Mawr I never would, so I finally succeeded in getting it finished and out of my hands. The Macmillan Company had it for a long time before they published it, so, since I had promised a child's book as the very next thing, I wrote that last year and they came out rather embarrassingly close together. You were a very good friend to read them both. You always give such nice detailed comments, not like the reviewers, or sometimes even the writer of the blurb on the cover who have visibly not got much farther than Chapter six or so ...
Nina (signed in her hand)

Monday, October 23, 2017

a new book out by Wendell Berry



Just in case you are collecting and reading his books like I am. he has a new book out at the age of 83. Netflix has LOOK AND SEE: A Portrait of Wendell Berry on right now. Robert Redford is one of the executive producers and financial support of this documentary. 
It was different than I thought it would be. Spend an hour watching it if you have Netflix. 








Thursday, October 12, 2017

Read slowly: The Vision by Wendell Berry


obsol:
“   ‣ nature   ”


A Vision By Wendell Berry


If we will have the wisdom to survive,
to stand like slow-growing trees
on a ruined place, renewing, enriching it,
if we make our seasons welcome here,
asking not too much of earth or heaven,
then a long time after we are dead
the lives our lives prepare will live
here, their houses strongly placed
upon the valley sides, fields and gardens
rich in the windows. The river will run
clear, as we will never know it,
and over it, birdsong like a canopy.
On the levels of the hills will be
green meadows, stock bells in noon shade.
On the steeps where greed and ignorance
            cut down
the old forest, an old forest will stand,
its rich leaf-fall drifting its roots.
The veins of forgotten springs will have
            opened..
Families will be singing in their fields.
In the voices they will hear a music
risen out of the ground. They will take
nothing from the ground they will not
            return,
whatever the grief at parting. Memory,
native to this valley, will spread over it
like a grove, and memory will grow
into a legend, legend into song, song
into sacrament. The abundance of this
            place,
the songs of its people and its birds,
will be health and wisdom and indwelling
light. This is no paradisal dream.
Its hardship is its possibilities.
                                    ─Wendell Berry

Wednesday, October 11, 2017

Hello October









Yoo-hoo!

 I can't believe I skipped September on this blog. 
I put  my daughter and her roommate on a plane early this morning bound for
school in NYC.( just dropped them off if that is what " put them on a plane" means nowadays)  It's quiet now. Not sure I like this empty nest but it is what it is and I have 
much to be thankful for. I need to remember that big word: thankful.

Updates on life:

- second grand due in Feb. 
- a girl, another granddaughter
- first granddaughter is almost 9 months old
- she is sitting up
- classes I teach are going well
- I am learning alot from teaching these kids who age from 12 - 18.
- I froze broccoli and green beans this morning 
-love my new pastor: Kevin DeYoung
- from him is this : I am not the Christ
- he makes me laugh
- Our God loves laughter
- Reading Jan Karon's new book and Saint Francis by Elizabeth Goudge
- also lots with my students: The Faerie Queene by Spencer, Plutarch, Macbeth, and Beowulf
- what else? wonderful pumpkin tarts at Amelies! ( local french bakery and cafe)