watching the storm

While reading Frankenstein!
Seemed to be a horror story , yes, Mary Shelley was given a dare.

Finished AMAZING GRACE by Eric Metaxas and yearning for a Clapham Circle.
DO you have one?

Reading Margie Haack's book for Book Club:

I do recommend her memoir.
I don't live in northern Minnesota but she has brought me to the land.
Margie has dug deep into her childhood and strikes my heart deeply as she yearns
for unconditional love. We who love Ransom Fellowship and Critique and Margie's 
TOAD HALL, have been waiting for her published book.

Autumn : giving thanks

It has been one of the most beautiful weeks with Autumn colors and the cool mornings 
changing to warm afternoons. Two of my days have been full. Up to the top. 
You know like drinking off the overflow before it spills over. Somehow joy  is brought
when we give out even when we feel like a day is pressed. Somehow the  sparkles seep through the cracks and light shows us the place we are in. I'm at the end of such a day and am surprised by timing. 

 I was told to look for an old book in a thrift store and I saw it Tuesday.  I didn't buy it.
But I thought yesterday  about who the author was. Wilberforce called her witty. He knew her.
She was one of the Clapham Society. Her name kept running through my mind and I 
wondered why I didn't buy her book for 12.00. Who would pass up a book by someone who knew Wilberforce and fought alongside against slavery? Was I stupid?!! Most paperbacks today are way over 12.00. This was a first edition. Old. Yellowed but readable. 

 So today , I ran into the shop while Emma was at piano lesson.The book was still on the shelf: Hints towards Forming Character or a Young Princess by Hannah More  ( 1818) and next to Caesar's Gallic Wars. ( which I also got for 3.00. Published in 1886). Then I looked around  to find a wide crinoline for 1.00! We went from piano to a Costume Check  for Little Women musical (next Feb) Emma is in. She   has  my sister's wedding dress crinoline but this one poofed out much larger to make her post Civil War ballroom dancing dress almost hooped!

I feel blessed. 

Autumn with two poets

Wish I lived closer to hear these two poets:
 ( you can hear two readings if you click on poets)

Billy Collins and Mary Oliver Presented by Strathmore Sunday, October 28, 2012 at 3:00 PM Music Center at Strathmore

 I  lived near here 25 years ago!

What is Strathmore?
Located one-half mile outside the Capital Beltway in North Bethesda, Maryland, Strathmore provides affordable, accessible, multi-disciplinary arts programming in the Mansion at Strathmore, the Music Center at Strathmore, and on its scenic 11-acre site.

early voting

I got to the library  this morning after trying to find out who the conservative judges 
are to vote for. THEN, a lady in the parking lot hands me a whole sheet with the same ones. I could have saved a dear friend time if I had known it. She texted me for about 30 mins with names!

 As I was in line outside , an older man was telling friends about his first vote for Adelaide Stevenson! ( against Eisenhower!) Then he said his mother told him he saw FDR 
when he was 4 ( 1930"s) in a carriage coming down Tryon Street in Charlotte! I wish I had been closer to hear more of history that he had seen!

As I turned the corner inside, there about 12 people ahead of me was my oldest son! 
( his lunch hour) His head towers above crowds! ( 6'5") 

Total time: 65 minutes.

Done. 
ON Election Day, I teach and then monitor the teen choir. 

Watched Makoto Fujimura tonight LIVE from NYC speak on Culture Care. 
The same principles of environmental care need to be applied to culture.
I love his questions: Why are we still looking at STARRY NIGHT? listening to Bach?

Mako ended with TS Eliot and The Four Quartets which guided him the dark 
winter of post 9/11 living near Ground Zero. Words to give hope. 

Needed these word after voting today.

tuesday

I still like that gal on my headliner who is pondering while reading a book.
She  will stay awhile.

Today, my students did Poetry Presentations of poems they wrote of what we have lost in Modernity. I love how they knew to ask the Lord to help us. It was like hearing Psalms being read. It keeps me going. Fruit from their labors. 

Having Fall Break this week. Just one day off from teaching.  Sleeping in on Thursday!!

A former student who is in college came today to class.
What a welcome sight and she  is a hugger. She told us of her Arts & Letters class and her music class which sounded like Charlotte Mason on the college level. 

Blessings today.
How about you?

Opera

The 25th Anniversary of The Phantom of the Opera at 
the Royal Albert Hall in London , last year, is on 
Netflix. Watching it now. I know this song will stick in
my head:

With 5 Phantoms:

thoughts today

Thinking and praying today after the week:

~ praising God for the beauty of the earth, mainly the skies here in NC. It is a blue that is clear and pristine. 
~ bad news: Jonathan Dailey's body found in the river in Boston. He is my daughter's choir director's nephew.
It has darkened the blue skies. God is good are the words
strengthening the family.
~thinking about FB during this election season. I read some words in unbelief that someone can believe the way they do. 
This is people I know. Maybe I shouldn't be surprised, for without God , I would think that way. 
~ thanking God for my students this year. We are almost to Fall Break. This guy is back from Sabbatical and we have the most amazing lectures on Modernity.  What GKC said is most important: The most extraordinary thing is a ordinary man and his ordinary wife and his ordinary children. 
The way to change the world. 
~friends. SO thankful.
~ worship. Looking forward to that tomorrow. Heard this guy two weeks ago and this lady last week. Should be normal tomorrow!