New cookbooks

I am making cocoa brownies.
New cookbooks from the library: 

FUN website that brings you right into the city :  Fat Witch Bakery
( name is because the brownies are wicked)
New York's Legendary Brownies :  Chelsea Market. 75 Ninth Avenue. 

I came across the cookbook in the library: 

Organic and Chic : Cakes, Cookies , and other Sweets that taste as good as they look
by sarah magid: ( she lives in Brooklyn )  

Her is her website: Organic Cakes 
Sarah has a blog called Thoughts and Ideas

Brownies just came out of the oven and need to cool for ONE HOUR.
I'm going to ice them and decorate them for celebrating the WHITE COAT CEREMONY
of my daughter in law. 

 The brownie cookbook has so many recipes for the various ways you keep chocolate on hand! 
Plus variations. You start wanting chocolate looking at the photos. 
You want to go to NY and walk in the door!

Smells so good. 
Am I making you hungry?!!

All is bright

Now digging into Advent poetry myself.
Reading slowly through these books  for this line that struck me deeply:

I am layered in Advent.

 Will move to Elizabeth Goudge and Miss Read soon for Advent stories.

All is calm

A hush is upon the house this late at night. 
The hustle and bustle of today's comings and goings have ended.
It was the last day of class with Poetry Recitations and Christmas Poem Readings.
Book of Centuries were displayed. Thesis paper topics brainstormed as we 
look ahead to January. Until then, Christmas is upon us in two weeks. 
We hummed Handel's Messiah all day Monday. Two performances this past weekend~
I am very intrigued to read John Newton's sermons  ( 50) on Handel's masterpiece.


I wish I had a book instead of a screen to read them.
Must see about that......

The AMEN chorus still rings and sings and lifts and brings tears to my eyes.. 
I am sort of jealous of my husband and daughter singing the parts.
I could hear the Amens in Revelation. It will be that glorious one day.

Writers

Thinking upon the change in writing as we daily compose  with texting, Facebook, blogs, 
and where else do we as a community write?  There is a great community of writers
at the Rabbit Room. This photo was posted today. It captured my imagination and 
I wanted to be Lucy. 

  

 Last of all he said, “Lucy, Eve’s Daughter,” and Lucy came forward. He gave her a little bottle of what looked like glass (but people said afterwards that it was made of diamond) and a small dagger. “In this bottle,” he said, “there is a cordial made of the juice of one of the fire-flowers that grow in the mountains of the sun. If you or any of your friends are hurt, a few drops of this will restore you. And the dagger is to defend yourself at great need.

                                                   For you also are not to be in the battle.”  

    “Why, Sir,” said Lucy. “I think—I don’t know—but I think I could be brave enough.” 

    “That is not the point,” he said. “But battles are ugly when women fight. And now”—here he suddenly looked less grave—”here is something for the moment for you all!” and he brought out (I suppose from the big bag at his back, hut nobody quite saw him do it) a large tray containing five cups and saucers, a bowl of lump sugar, a jug of cream, and a great big teapot all sizzling and piping hot. Then he cried out “A Merry Christmas! Long live the true King!” and cracked his whip and he and the reindeer and the sledge and all were out of sight before anyone realised that they had started.

Midterm tomorrow

Just finished printing off my English Midterm: 6 pages.

I really love reading the answers too. 
I hate grading. 
Does that make sense?
I love when a student digests the readings we have done and starts to intertwine the ideas as they write.
Sometimes they don't know what they really know until they do a term exam.
Sometimes they don't know alot.
Sometimes the exam sings.

Tuesday is Poetry Recitation plus a Christmas Reading of a poem of their choice.
I can't wait. 

Then holidays begin. 
Sort of. 

It is something.....

THE GREAT MINIMUM  by G.K.Chesterton

It is something to have wept as we have wept,
It is something to have done as we have done,
It is something to have watched when all men slept,
And seen the stars which never see the sun.

It is something to have smelt the mystic rose,
Although it break and leave the thorny rods,
It is something to have hungered once as those
Must hunger who have ate the bread of gods.

To have seen you and your unforgotten face,
Brave as a blast of trumpets for the fray.
Pure as white lilies in a watery space,
It were something, though you went from me to-day.

To have known the things that from the weak are furled,
Perilous ancient passions, strange and high;
It is something to be wiser than the world,
It is something to be older than the sky.

In a time of skeptic moths and cynic rusts,
And fatted lives that of their sweetness tire,
In a world of flying loves and fading lusts,
It is something to be sure of a desire.

Lo, blessed are our ears for they have heard;
Yea, blessed are our eyes for they have seen:
Let thunder break on man and beast and bird
And the lightning. It is something to have been.

YOU can read Bryana Johnson's poem she wrote after reading Chesterton's poem here.

A passing

Leslie, of Wisteria and Sunshine, Small Meadow Press, and The Bower, has cared for 
her mother so long that we readers have felt we knew her. We read about her days and 
now her passing. Leslie writes in Under My Wing: a caregiving blog :

It is tradition. And I am learning on a whole new level how much tradition and ritual and ceremonials, large and small, take us into the heart of Things...and will lead us out the other side.

Heart is full this morning like the moon these past days. Light pouring out . Luci Shaw writes: Light has the particular quality of transforming what it touches, like gold foil over the wood.

Missing my mom this morning. Here are my parents with my oldest brother , way back during WWII, right here where I live now. They go to Long Island , NY, after the war, to have and  raise 7 more children:

Growing up in the first picture. I am the first girl with my twin on the laps of my parents. This is before my sister and youngest brother are born.
 Second phtoto is for my grandparent's 50th anniversary.
Third photos is for my mother's 70th surprise birthday party. I had just had # 4 son.