Happy Cinco de Mayo! My, my, can you believe it is already May 5? The wee twins only have a few weeks left of school. This Sunday they “graduate” from kindergarten and receive their first Bibles at church. A big day.
Meanwhile Katie is reading her own Bible…
In other news, the kitchen-window Robin has laid another egg. Interestingly, I ran across this chapter of a book by Amy Carmichael in which she worries about a sunbird who has built a nest outside her window.
Outside my room in Dohnavur a sunbird has hung her nest from a spray of valaris. The spray is as light as a spray of honeysuckle and grows in much the same careless way. The nest is attached to the spray by a few threads of cobweb, but so delicately that the touch of a child would detach it; a cupful of water thrown at it would sweep it down. It is a mere nothing of a nest. But it took a week of patient mothercraft to make it. It is roofed, it has a porch,and set deep within is a bed of silky down.
Exactly where no rain could hurt it, that nest hung; and the little mother sat calmly through those floods, her dainty head resting on the threshold of the porch which she had made onthe south side – the sheltered side. If a drop of water fell on her long, curved beak, she sucked it up as though it had been honey. And always, somehow, she was fed.
I think to more than one of us the Father spoke then. There is something very precious about a little bird and her nest, but “Ye are of more value than many sparrows” – than many sunbirds.
Have you watched Bluey? Me neither–maybe I should check it out.
The OM is celebrating his high school 50th reunion this weekend. Can you imagine? Time flies. I hope he enjoys himself, but count me out. I’ll wait til next year. Is my heritage to me like a hyena’s lair? Are the birds of prey against her all around? Go, assemble all the wild beasts; bring them to devour. (Jeremiah 12:9)
On Tuesday when the boy came over for our weekly gabfest, a deer ran across our neighbor’s lawn into another neighbor’s back yard. In the middle of the day! What is with the wildlife around here? Deer, coyotes, foxes, BEARS?!
Speaking of wildlife, a Robin built a nest on our kitchen windowsill.
Later we noticed that there is one solitary blue egg.
I hadn’t seen the Robin in awhile and I was afraid the egg has been abandoned. I could have told the Robin that this is not a good place to build a nest, but would she have listened? I doubt it. Nature is red in tooth and claw and of this we are constantly reminded.
O life as futile, then, as frail! O for thy voice to soothe and bless! What hope of answer, or redress? Behind the veil, behind the veil.
I thought, well, c’est la vie. But then the Robin was back on the nest.
The bird also has found a house, And the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, Even Your altars, O Lord of hosts, My King and my God.
(Psalm 84:3)
In other news, in a miraculous turn, my English Ivy has come back. It was dead, dead, dead a month ago, as was my neighbor’s ivy. I should have taken a picture if it, but it was too depressing. Don told me to be patient and wait and see, but I really thought some scourge had taken it out. However, in the last two weeks it has greened up and filled in.
Now it needs trimming!
Well, have a good day.
[*You can read all of Tennyson’s very long poem “In Memoriam A.H.H.” here.]
Well, now we have the sad news that the great Gordon Lightfoot has died at 84. Rolling Stone called him “a genius-level Canadian singer-songwriter whose most enduring works include “If You Could Read My Mind,” “Sundown,” “Carefree Highway,” “Early Morning Rain,” and “Rainy Day People”.” Indeed, his songs have been covered by everyone from Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash to the Grateful Dead, Barbra Streisand, Jerry Lee Lewis, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Buffett, and the Replacements.
This article gives a good overview of his career (with videos).
My DP was a huge fan of Gordon in the 1970s and she and her best friend Laurie obsessed over him in typical middle school fashion. Laurie’s parents were also big fans and so they went to a lot of concerts. Truthfully, our mother also liked Gordon and so did I. We wiled away many an hour listening to his albums on our record player in the dining room. My DP and I even had a dance routine worked out for his tour de force Canadian Railroad Trilogy.
We may have been induced to perform this at her wedding reception. Do I remember that correctly? Well, if not, we should have.
So over the mountains and over the plains Into the muskeg and into the rain Up the St. Lawrence all the way to Gaspé Swingin’ our hammers and drawin’ our pay
Into paradise may the angels lead thee, Gordon, and at thy coming may the martyrs receive thee, and bring thee into the holy city Jerusalem.
Here in flyover country we also noted the passing of Mike Shannon, who having played third base/right field for ten years with the Cardinals, then spent 50 years in the broadcast booth calling games alongside Jack Buck and numerous others. He retired in 2021. This news caused a wave of nostalgia and over-drinking in this town, as you can imagine.
Fun fact: Mike hit the final home run in Sportsman’s Park and the first Cardinal home run in Busch Stadium. How about that?
Well, adios, amigos. Here’s Bob covering “In the Early Morning Rain”.
Still working on getting my house back in ship shape after having daughter #1 and Mr. Smith staying with us for four months. But you know how it is–I’m sure I will be finding their stuff for weeks to come.
Well, that’s okay.
Here’s what happens when you’re about to sink the ball two under par but an angry swarm of bees has different plans for you.
Here’s a list of books everyone should read. I already have most of these, but you can bet I am ordering Precious Remedies Against Satan’sDevises by Thomas Brooks.
“For a close, remember this, that your life is short, your duties many, your assistance great, and your reward sure; therefore faint not, hold on and hold up, in ways of well-doing, and heaven shall make amends for all.”
Daughter #2 is checking in to ask: What are you reading? Or rather, to answer that question.
When Ida was born, I was thrown back into the newborn nursing stage — an activity that requires at least one arm but not much brainpower. If anything, you need a distraction to keep you awake, especially in those early days. As you might imagine, I found myself aimlessly scrolling Instagram for hours per day (and night). It was honestly disturbing: the “algorithm” kept feeding me modern mom content to which I didn’t relate, or information that I didn’t want. The more you know, the more you stress. This second time around, I’ve gotten much better at trusting my instincts! At a certain point, I realized I needed to do something else with all that time.
Well I charged up my Kindle, which I had acquired during a particularly bad bout of insomnia during my first pregnancy. Yes, I am staunchly pro-book, but a Kindle can be read in the dark, and importantly, with one hand. Once I finally downloaded the Libby app, which connects your public library card to your Kindle, I could access endless eBooks for free. Hello!!
Without further ado, a round-up.
I went through an Ann Patchett phase, despite having largely disliked The Dutch House (2019) when I read it last year. Commonwealth (2016) and Bel Canto (2001) were better novels, I thought — at least, I was more invested in finishing them, and in the case of Bel Canto, I actually liked the characters. Too many characters in The Dutch House were actively terrible, and I just really don’t stand for “a mother leaves her children for selfish reasons” as a narrative basis. But Commonwealth begins with what I thought was a truly unreasonable act (read: plot device) of infidelity with consequences that I basically couldn’t get past.
Bel Canto, based on the true story of a hostage crisis in Lima, Peru, drew me in. It reminded me of the concept that appealed to me when I was a middle school-aged aspiring author: all your characters are stuck in the same place. For my part, I wanted to write a novel set in a retirement community. (Yes, I was special.) But Bel Canto had a bizarrely abrupt ending and an epilogue that, again, felt truly unreasonable. I don’t know why I kept reading Ann Patchett novels except that the sentences are well written, which is hard to come by in contemporary fiction?
Elizabeth Strout, I think, is a far better contemporary woman writer focusing on somewhat similar domestic themes. My sister gave me My Name is Lucy Barton (2016) last year, and in the past few months, I “binged” the rest of the series: Anything is Possible (2017), Oh William! (2021), and Lucy By the Sea (2022). The last in the series took me total surprise from the first page, when I realized it was set in 2020. Are we reading pandemic novels now?! Authors have already managed to pen and publish novels* about COVID?! I found that jarring, but I thought Strout lived up to her own standard and her characters meaningfully developed in that new “setting,” even if I hardly needed to relive quarantine dynamics.
*Please note that I also tried to read Ann Patchett’s recent book of essays, but didn’t get past the introduction, when she basically said “Haha! I have pandemic brain and can’t write novels. I’m going to write essays instead. Haha!”
No, the baby isn’t reading yet! Here is Katie showing her “high-contrast images”
I also read a buzzy novel, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow (2022) by Gabrielle Zevin. It revolves around characters who play and design video games, so I was surprised to like it. It is smartly written (see: Macbeth reference, which was deftly woven in) and had some depth to it. The characters, for the most part, loved one another more than they hated one another. Not a given, these days.
That said, I described to DN recently how all fiction now seems so needlessly tragic. Car accidents, gun violence, fatal bee stings (I’m serious), and so much mental trauma. Am I a deeply sheltered and privileged person to have evaded such hardships? Probably. But as DN said, contemporary authors seem to think literature has to be dark to be deep.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Shakespeare, from Macbeth, spoken by Macbeth
And how’s this for a deftly-woven Shakespeare reference? “Out, damned spot!”
*from Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout
The painting is The Orchard Window by Daniel Garber (1918)
Well, Don’s Iris are blooming! Mine are still buds, but I can tell it’s going to be a good year for the Iris. The peonies are budding as well. Truly, this a glorious season in the flyover garden to be relished and enjoyed.
Let us not forget that today is the birthday of Ulysses S. Grant. It might be a good time to take down his Personal Memoirs from off the shelf and read: “My family is American, and has been for generations, in all its branches, direct and collateral.”
Thanks be to God.
So check out the Iris in your yard, open up your Grant Memoirs, and praise God from whom all blessings flow.
*John Knox, inscribed on the Reformation Wall in Geneva, Switzerland
Today we toast Kevin James and Channing Tatum on their birthdays!
In case you were wondering, they did actually make a movie together. The Dilemma (2011) directed by Ron Howard is not a great movie, but you might want to give it a whirl. I am always in the mood for these two.
Today is also the anniversary of the day in 1865 when John Wilkes Booth was surrounded in a barn in Maryland and killed. And, hey, Mary Chapin Carpenter wrote a song about it.
Greetings from the land of Still Recovering from that same virus/whatever that got me down last November. Ugh. Nevertheless, I started the slow process of cleaning my empty nest.
Clearly this was a bad idea, since in the process of doing this, I broke the glass tabletop in my Florida Room.
Oh me! Oh life! of the questions of these recurring,
Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish,
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d,
Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me,
Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined,
The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?
Answer.
That you are here—that life exists and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.
Well, the weekend was quite a whirlwind of activity. Finally daughter #1 is all moved in to her own new (100-year old) house.
I have been in a Dayquil-induced fog for days and will probably remember very little of it in the days to come. Mostly I remember six giant mid-MO dudes who were like refugees from the Sons of Anarchy arriving from Jeff City with two trailers pulled by pickup trucks and hefting everything around like it was doll furniture. I met them at the house and was assigned to tell them which rooms to put everything in since daughter #1 did not arrive for an hour and a half after that. They were polite, amenable, patient, and cheerful. My kind of people. I wish I had taken pictures, but, alas, I did not. But this works…
They were intrigued with the balcony to nowhere.
As we all are.
I will let daughter #1 tell you all about the house herself. Suffice it to say, we all think it is swell and are very happy for her. It all worked out in God’s good time.
On Sunday afternoon everyone came over to celebrate my birthday. The OM barbecued. There was cake.
Bless and sanctify with your peace, O God, this home and those who live in it, that within these walls they may know the blessings of this life and to know the promise of the life to come in that heavenly home where with saints and angels you live and reign, one God forever and ever. Amen.
dual personalities 