"Comfort Food" Movies

I've been thinking a lot about comfort food this week as I begin to make some of my favorite fall recipes. Suddenly we're cooking and baking with lots of orange, from pumpkin to sweet potatoes! Autumn is a time for squash soups, for thick, warm breads, for butter and cinnamon and apples.

Yesterday the sweet girl and I had a poetry tea party (I guess we could call these "poet-teas"?) the first of many, I hope. We'd baked our traditional pumpkin-butterscotch cookies the day before, and had some of those along with tea in thin white cups (she wanted peppermint with good dollops of milk from the little pumpkin-shaped cream pitcher, and I had decaf British Blend, my current favorite) all on an autumn-patterned cloth. We read fall-like poetry and just other poems that struck our fancy: Robert Louis Stevenson, David McCord, Christina Rossetti, William Blake.

I've been feeling extra tired this week. So last night, with D. having another late night at work and the sweet girl in bed, I crashed on the couch in front of one of my favorite "comfort food movies" -- The Sound of Music.

You know what I mean by comfort food movies -- the kind of movies that are so deliciously familiar that you feel like you're eating your mom's mashed potatoes or your favorite homemade mac and cheese. It's nourishing but not surprising to your palette -- you know just how it's going to taste, and it always feels great going down. You know it was made with love. You know other people love it too. Not twists or turns in the story recipe, which you know by heart, so it sometimes makes you sleepy (and you can probably quote from it in your sleep too). That kind of comfort food movie.

The Sound of Music is one of my favorite such movies. Besides the story, acting and singing (all of which I love) I love the feelings it evokes for me. I always remember the wonderful evening, oh so many years ago, when the film first burst onto my consciousness. I went with my dad and older sister to see it on a big screen at the Byrd Theater in Richmond. The Byrd was a majestic movie house from a bygone age of film-going, and it forever ruined me for utilitarian multiplexes. It had ornate decorations and red velvet seating, a "mighty wurlitzer" organ, and a lobby with a shimmering chandelier. I still recall how stunned I felt when we stepped back into that lobby at intermission (yes, a real intermission with an orchestral interlude). Remember what happens right before the intermission? Maria has just packed her bag so she can run away to the abbey, away from the dashing retired naval captain whose love she'd never sought but whose love she nevertheless finds herself longing for, and as she leaves she casts one last yearning look around the huge entrance-hall to the von Trapp family mansion. You know, the one with the shimmering chandelier. When we stepped out of the film world and into the lobby of the Byrd, I am pretty certain I just stood there and gawked. I was sure somehow the movie world had extended into my real nine-year-old life and I was just plain dazzled.

So every time I watch The Sound of Music, that memory watches with me. But so many other memories come along for the ride too. After seeing it on the big screen, I watched it for many years in its choppily edited version on network television. I still know all the places where the t.v. version made cuts, because I still find myself startled when the actors and actresses move into those bits of speech or song, as though they snuck them in as extras when I wasn't looking. After all these years, it still feels like bonus material.

And of course, I know the songs by heart. My sister and I used to sing along with the record album...yes, I did say album...and I know Julie Andrews' inflections and phrasings so well I tend to note the places where she pauses for breath. I also know all the places where she soars on the high notes, so I can adjust the volume on the remote control accordingly (since we're spread out on one floor, late-night movies tend to keep other people in the house awake, like tired seven year olds who should be sleeping, so I'm careful with volume).

Did I mention that Christopher Plummer was my first "movie crush"? I still melt into a puddle over the love scene in the gazebo, even though I've long since read and heard the things Andrews and Plummer have said about the hilariousness of that shot, their unprofessional bout of giggles, and how Robert Wise basically gave in and shot it in semi-darkness in an attempt to calm things down. He liked the silhouette so well he decided to keep it.

And I'm amazed that I still find things to notice in the movie that I've never really noticed before, like the shot that pans upward at the wedding, focusing in on the beautiful church altar, then swings to the bell-towers as we note the passing of time, then seems to hover in mid-air as we find our focus on a nazi flag and a square full of goose-stepping soldiers. I got shivers last night seeing that, noting how quickly and powerfully our attention was moved from the altar to the flag, and how that seemed to symbolize, in just a few seconds, exactly how Germany had swallowed up Austria. Only of course, not swallowed it up entirely, as we see in subsequent scenes of quiet courage.

What a great movie. What a great week for comfort food.

Multitude Monday (Counting One Thousand Gifts)

The weekend provided some good time to rest and catch-up on things here at home. The weather was beautiful too, even though it got a tad chillier again. At least not as cold as the week before! I think our leaves are at their peak...

I'm trying to be better at counting my blessings, and am trying to remember to share some of them each Monday (or at least some Mondays!) on my blog. This is an ongoing project; I got the idea from the Gratitude Community at Holy Experience. So far it's been a good exercise, helping to keep me more conscious of the many people and things I have to be grateful for.

Today I'm feeling especially grateful for:

5. Time spent in the little gazebo park yesterday with the sweet girl. There are several lovely trees there, truly at the peak of their colors (I'll try to post some photos later on). While she piled leaves high and played, first alone and then with some thoughtful older kids from the neighborhood (kids we'd never met before) I had the chance to just sit nearby and rest and write some snippets of poetry.

6. Old movies. Sometimes there's just nothing better than popping in an old movie and snuggling down under a fleece blanket to watch it. Last night I watched most of the first half of The Sound of Music, and it brought back such lovely memories from my childhood, especially the time I saw it on the big screen with my Dad and sister.

7. Good sermons. I am feeling so thankful for the quality of preaching in our church right now. Our pastor has been preaching a particularly rich sermon series on 2nd Corinthians, and I almost always leave with so much to ponder. Yesterday was especially thought-provoking, all about authentic discipleship; lots there for the Lord to work deeper into my heart.

8. Far-away friends who continue to love us and partner with us in ministry. So, so thankful for these folks.

9. A husband who prays for me, learns and grows with me, encourages me, and makes me laugh. I wish I could remember what we got the giggles about late last night, when we were both feeling extra silly and tired. I'm sure it will come back to me sometime!

10. Beautiful music. This week, especially Bach, and especially the Well-Tempered Clavier. I've been listening to a wonderful 2-CD set from our public library, with the songs played by a pianist named Vladimir Feltsman. I love that the sweet girl is really responding to Bach too. She's been asking for him by name...that is, when she isn't asking for doo-wop (which has recently become one of her favorite types of music...yes, another library CD getting a lot of play!).

Lovely Links

Two blessings to my weekend...too lovely not to share.

One is this wonderful blog post by Karen Edmisten. I'm very thankful she "dipped into her archives" to re-post "When They're Older..." a reflection on parenting and "living in the moment" that moved me to tears (even while I grinned wryly at how much I saw myself and our family in it). Every once in a while, I read something that's so moving, so right, so much something I need to hear at this precise moment that I think, "Well, Lord, that was for me, wasn't it?" Of course I know it's not *just* for me! Which is just one reason I decided to share it.

The other is a beautiful ballad that my friend Erin posted on YouTube. It's called Lucy's Lament, and is inspired, as so many of Erin's creations are, by her love for a particular story or character, in this case Lucy Pevensie of Narnia. Erin is a marvelous poet. In fact, I first got to know her (and I'm so thankful I did) after she posted this poem a few years ago on Epinions. I found it so moving that I wrote her an email about it, and the rest, as they say, is history. A handful of years, much correspondence, a couple of re-reading blogs, and two real-life visits later, she and I are still friends -- and I still love this poem. I'm so glad she has now set it to music.

It Turns Out She's Tib

The sweet girl and I have both had a difficult week, individually and together. This isn't a place I've designated for whining (I save that for my precious & patient husband, or my journal, and sometimes my prayers -- I'm SO thankful God is patient and really wants to hear what's on my heart!) so I'll just say that it's been a week full of learnings for us both. And a week to try my patience on.

In the midst of the hard stuff, some of which is just mundane, tiring stuff, one bright spot has been our daily read-aloud time. For S. is absolutely loving -- nay, adoring -- the first Betsy-Tacy books. We read the first three around the time she was five, and she seemed to enjoy them then, but I guess it was a bit early. She claimed not to remember them very well. But judging from her delighted response now, she is definitely ready for them!

We zipped through Betsy-Tacy and moved right on in to Betsy-Tacy and Tib. "Could we ready just ONE more chapter please?" has been the week's mantra. And yes, I'm a sucker, especially when it comes to reading books I love so much. Despite not getting nearly enough done this week on a number of writing, teaching and household projects, I find myself saying "sure! yes! you bet!" and we read another chapter.

The most eye-opening thing for me has been to see her response to Tib. I've always related most to Betsy (the imaginative story-teller) and in some respects to Tacy (I was just about that desperately shy in my very earliest years) but the sweet girl, with her strongly literal streak, really "gets" Tib. When Betsy plans something outrageous and Tib looks admiring but politely skeptical...well, let's just say the sweet girl understands that look. After all, jumping off things really ISN'T flying, though it sure is fun to do it, and OK, Betsy, we'll humor you and call it flying. And hey, by the way, mixing everything you can find in the kitchen in one big pan really ISN'T cooking, and probably is going to taste pretty bad. But OK, Betsy, we know it will be fun if we do it together, especially if you make up a song about it.

It makes me chuckle to see how much my daughter relates to Tib, and it also gives me insight into some of the ways in which she and I relate to one another. I guess good story-telling does that: holds up mirrors for us, mirrors we can look into and see reflections of ourselves and others, or at least reflections that remind us of different parts of who we are. And yes, it's true, there really ISN'T a palace inside the mirror, and beautiful Aunt Dolly really lives in Milwaukee anyway, not a palace. But OK, Betsy, we'll all get mirrors and pretend we're walking on the ceiling because it sure is fun to imagine. Especially when we can do it together.

Poem

I just found out that a very dear man passed away last night. He turned 98 years old yesterday, and he is one of my sister's closest friends (more like family than friend). He was active and vibrant until almost the end. I had the privilege of getting to know him and his beautiful wife many years ago.

Thinking about him today, and about precious friendships and how quickly life passes, even when we're given a longer-than-usual allotment of years. I found myself trying to remember a certain poem about autumn and loss, but I couldn't recall precisely what it was. So I wrote this instead. It's still a rough draft, but from the heart.

******

A poem is on the tip of my tongue.
A friend has died, and it is October,
the season of loss and deepening cold,
rich orange and red, old brown, bright gold.
A poem is on the tip of my tongue,
but images hover, words escape me.
I can’t even recall if it was one I wrote
or one I discovered late one night
in a pool of yellow lamplight
when I couldn’t sleep
because poetry beckoned.
It called to me then, it calls to me still,
a small gem, a careful bit of art,
a tiny but defiant act of will,
a bit of beauty in the midst of grief,
planted in a book, or loose in sheaf.
What did it say? I’m no pretender.
A poem is on the tip of my tongue,
a friend has died, and I can’t remember
what the poem once said.
I only sense that the words were right,
important, precious, the ones
needed now in this time of grief.
The words drifting past like
a red and orange leaf.
Strange how close they seem,
wind-blown, and with a purpose.

~EMP 10/18/09

Take Two of These and Call Me in the Morning

"Betsy-Tacy and ginger-ale. That sounds like a really good idea."

I think those were the sweet girl's exact words to me earlier today, and I heartily concurred. She sipped bubbly gingery soda and I read the first three chapters of the first Betsy-Tacy book. We decided to go back to the beginning, since she doesn't remember the first couple of books very well. Oh, how I love those opening chapters of B-T! "You needn't call names!" The little glass pitcher with the gold rim. The gift of a friend. Tacy's mother's unfrosted cake. The supper bench. Betsy's first story. Floating away on pink feather clouds.

We had a bit of a "lost day" today. I was up incredibly late working on an editing project so was exhausted from the moment the alarm went off. Then the sweet girl felt sick at breakfast and seems to have been battling a stomach bug or some sort of virus all day (no fever, but not appetite or energy either). I spent an hour plus in a dental chair this afternoon, having a tooth rebuilt by my amazing dentist (but nevertheless returning home with a splitting headache). D. had to work all day (still there) except for the hour or so he was home while I was at the dentist.

Did I mention it's in the 30s outside and pouring rain? In mid-October? So we gave in and turned on the heat. The apartment has been sooooo cold, but we were trying to hold out turning on the heat till November because we know how awful our heating bills will be this winter. I wasn't expecting snow showers in the forecast this early in October though. (I laughed and told D. that you know you're tired when you almost fall asleep while the dentist is drilling and rebuilding your tooth...but hey, it was cozy and warm in that office!)

S. and I cuddled late this afternoon and read each other books. Well, I tried to read, through a still-numb mouth, and she actually did read. She read aloud to me, some of her old picture book favorites (Old Bear, We're Going on a Leaf Hunt, Everywhere Babies) and I dozed, curled up in my bathrobe, and tried to pretend I hadn't been sleeping when she would stop to ask "Mommy, are you asleep?" Fortunately I know Old Bear by heart, so I could instantly cotton on to wherever we were in the plot.

So...just a weird, bleary day in many ways...but a good one in many ways too. And hopefully we'll all get to bed early tonight and wake up refreshed in the morning.

An Attitude of Gratitude

When I was a little girl, one of my favorite hymns was Count Your Blessings. You may remember it:

When upon life’s billows you are tempest tossed,
When you are discouraged, thinking all is lost,
Count your many blessings, name them one by one,
And it will surprise you what the Lord hath done.

Count your blessings,
name them one by one, Count your blessings,
see what God hath done! Count your blessings,
name them one by one,
Count your many blessings see what God has done.

One reason I loved it so much was because my big sister Martha used to sing it with me, and she always made the chorus so much fun. When she got to the second "name them one by one" she would slow down dramatically and then add "two, three, four," as a melodic aside. Although this isn't a song I hear sung much in churches nowadays, I still sometimes sing it and I always add my sister's creative flourish.

I've been thinking for a while of joining the "Gratitude Community" over at the blog Holy Experience. It's a wonderful blog (which should have long ago made it into the sidebar of my favorites) written by Ann Voskamp, the author of the geography/earth science text I'm using with the sweet girl in our grammar 2 year. She's encouraging people to cultivate gratitude, and her "Gratitude Community" is a place where people join in by choosing to consciously list things they're grateful for, either in a private journal and/or via blogs. The idea as I see it is not to fixate on the counting itself or the number (though she suggests members strive to eventually list 1000 things they're grateful for) but to let the exercise itself nourish one's inner attitude of praise and thanksgiving.

I often find myself journaling about the things I'm most thankful for, but in these busy and way-too-full days, I think I need the added encouragement of walking beside others who are doing it regularly. I want it to become a habit. So I'll be trying to cultivate more times of thanksgiving in my prayers and private journaling, and on Mondays, I will try to share some of those things I'm thankful for here.

So here's the first handful of things I'm thankful for:

1. Our church is out of the basement. After years of worshiping in our temporary space downstairs, our small church family moved to our newly-renovated-but-still-in-process sanctuary late this summer. On Saturday, our bishop/archbishop came to bless the space, and to install our interim pastor as our rector. It was a joyous celebration with the space filled to the brim with friends old and new. I just kept thinking "how beautiful is the body of Christ."

2. The sweet girl played drums at the offertory. Yes, my precious seven year old, once such a shy toddler she burst into tears and ran away from a ballet recital, played drums with several of her musical classmates at the worship service. (Our music minister has been teaching world drums at a weekly class.) She was the youngest one playing, and she did great, which blessed her parents' hearts on all kinds of levels. Perhaps the deepest level was the song they played ("Nothing But the Blood of Jesus," long a favorite) and realizing she was actually part of the worship team. A close second was how many members of the congregation came up and said something encouraging to her or to us later. This is the community she's spent her whole life in, was baptized in, spoke some of her first words in on a miraculous Easter Sunday in 2005. Some of these folks have prayed for her since before she was born.

3. The annual family tradition of going to Ohio for an October craft & music festival. We went on Sunday (after the late evening at worship on Saturday) and it was just a gorgeous autumn day. We watched the clog dancers (the sweet girl's favorite), wandered around looking at beautiful handcrafted arts, sat under yellowing trees and listened to our favorite bluegrass band (we hear them every year)...and I ate sweet potato fries.

4. My mom and sister Mary's recent trip to Asheville. They got to go together to the annual play about the life of Thomas Wolfe. My paternal grandparents (long passed on) are characters in the play, and M & M said it was so amazing to see them depicted on stage. They got to have dinner with the playwright, producer and the actor playing our grandfather. I'm thankful for people who care about writing (and acting) good stories that honor the lives of real people. I'm thankful my mom and sister had this precious time together.

"How to Talk to Children About Art": A Book I'm "Reading At"

I've been realizing that I tend to categorize books I'm reading into two major categories: books I read, and books I "read at."

"Read at" is a funny expression, I suppose (does it come from my southern roots?) but it seems to capture what I mean by the way I read certain books. Although many books have narratives that inspire me to read from cover to cover, others are books that I only dip into periodically, or read for a spell and then go back to later.

Some of my "read at" books would best be classified as reference books, while others are longer books that I find myself taking breaks from but going back to. For me, those are most often history books. History tends to hum, like a giant refrigerator, in the background of whatever else I'm reading. I have favorite periods of history I go back to especially often.

"Read at" books sometimes get a bit shortchanged: they can't always be added to a neat little list of "books read this month" or even "books read this season" (like my quarterly reading round-ups). Sometimes I "read at" a book for a long enough period of time that I do eventually finish it, but even then, I find reviewing it more challenging.

So every once in a while, I plan to do a post where I talk about some of the books I'm "reading at" -- the ones humming in the background while I'm busy reading other things.

One such "at" book for me right now is How to Talk to Children About Art by Francoise Barbe-Gall. I found this book by accident when I was looking for another book about art for children: it was one of those eye-grabbers in our county library system. I placed it on hold and then forgot about it until it came in.

But it's a terrific little book. Just the right size to tuck into a bag and take to a museum, if you're so inclined, and it would be very useful there. In addition to a large section of discussions of actual paintings, under the heading "How to Look at a Picture," the book also contains two other sections. One is called "A Good Start" and offers practical guidance on how to help a child develop an interest in paintings, ways to get the most out of museum trips with children, and what kinds of paintings are best to show children, depending on their ages.

The ages the author addresses are 5-7, 8-10, and 11-13 year olds. The book doesn't tackle the topic of art with adolescents, but my guess is, if your child is good and hooked on art by the time he or she is a teenager, then further exploration will unfold naturally. Because it only goes up through 13, the ages don't quite equate to the "trivium" stages of learning, but the suggestions for each of the age groups did seem to roughly correspond to learning styles and methods most classical homeschoolers will be familiar with from their understanding of the grammar/logic/rhetoric phases. In other words, the focus of learning moves from concrete to more analytical.

Th middle section, entitled "It's OK Not to Know," includes questions and answers about museums, art and art history. I've learned a lot myself from perusing this part.

The final section offers 30 paintings (produced here in small color reproductions) with more questions and answers, sort of discussion starters/prompts, if you will, about each of the paintings. The author has colored coded the pages so you know which Q&As will help you most when talking with children in the aforementioned age groups.

The organization reminds me of a field guide! But instead of color codes for bird plumage, there are color codes for kids. So the "red" sections provide prompts where the goals are straightforward: "identity what you see in the painting...identify the various elements of a painting" (not always easy even for adults, the author says). Then the "yellow" section provides "slightly more searching questions" to help understand the painting, questions that "require some thought and additional time". Finally, the "blue" section helps you find ways to "consider the painting in relation to the outside world" which includes thoughts about the painter and the work's historical importance.

Some of the practical advice in this book seems so obvious, but I found myself thinking about it a lot when we went to the Carnegie Museum of Art this past Sunday (it was a free day!) with our seven year old. I remembered the author's suggestion that I get down on her eye-level and see what she was seeing (and that's eye-opening!) and also the suggestion that I let her tell me what she liked in a particular room full of art (rather than dragging her over to the things I consider most noteworthy) and then spend time looking at it and talking about it together. We also took the sweet girl's "I'm tired" and "my feet hurt" a lot more to heart, and cut the wandering-through-gallery part of the afternoon a little shorter than we might have normally. I agree that it's much better to have her leave with good memories of really looking at a few things than to drag her around till the whole family's exhausted in some effort to cram in more than she's really ready to see.

I've not read all the notes on all the paintings yet (that's part of what makes this book a "read at") but every time I pick it up, I enjoy it more and learn something else new. I like it so much, I'm considering adding it to our permanent library.

100 Species Challege #9: Jewelweed

I'm so far behind on posting pictures/notes for our 100 Species Challenge that I'd blush except for the fact that I'm enjoying crawling along at turtle-pace. The pace seems to fit the way I find myself looking at the world these days: longer, more slowly, with real attention. At the rate I'm going, I may finish this project in time for my 50th birthday (that gives me about 8 1/2 more years...)

And I'm going to have to fudge this entry a bit because I don't have an original picture of the plant. I promise you that I did see it, back in September when we picked wildflowers at a nearby park.

Unfortunately I didn't have my camera with me, and though I dutifully picked a small, fragile jewelweed (or to be honest, had Dana pick it, as he was wearing long pants and sneakers and could traipse into the undergrowth to get it for me) it had faded completely by the time we got home. I guess there's a reason these flowers are sometimes called "Spotted Touch-Me-Nots" (Impatiens capensis).

But you can see a lovely close-up photo here. It reminds me of a cross between a miniature tiger lily and an elongated violet.

I found this picture -- and the identification of the flower -- at the terrific website mywildflowers.com. It specifically tracks wildflowers in my region (western PA) and I love the search engine, where you can look things up by color, leaf or petal shape, month sighted, region, common name, scientific name, and many other ways (sometimes in combination). I found the jewelweed's orange color and delicate spots quite striking, so this was easy: I entered orange for color and September for month sighted, and was able to ID the flower in a matter of seconds. I hope other areas of the country have websites like this one!

Miss Summer and Mr. Autumn

This past week it turned downright chilly. After a mild and warm-sometimes-hot September, the move into October seemed to prod our little part of the world into settling down to some seriously cooler weather.

It's been overcast here for a few days (a reminder of the gray winter to come) and sometimes quite rainy and windy. The sweet girl's had some congestion and a croupy cough. We've had to go digging for sweaters and I'm discovering just how few pants and long-sleeved shirts she has that actually fit...she seems to have lots of things she's either just grown out of or hasn't yet grown into!

Yesterday we were walking briskly down the sidewalk and feeling buffeted by a chill wind. S. leaned into it, pretending the wind was even stronger than it was -- "look, I'm in a hurricane!" she exclaimed, flailing with her arms as though swimming. We remembered how hot it was just a week or so ago, and suddenly she chuckled. "Mommy, summer and autumn are neighbors."

Next door neighbors, we agreed.

And ever since then, I can't get images out of my head: Miss Summer is tall, slender, dressed in a bright green and yellow sundress and sandals, her toenails painted bright colors, while Mr. Autumn is a bit older, wearing jeans and a rumpled orange sweater and smoking a musky pipe. I think they do sometimes sit on each other's porches, sipping sweet tea and exchanging quips about the weather. Miss Summer collects seashells; Mr. Autumn collects leaves. They both love those blue sky days filled with puffs and streaks of white clouds.

High School is Just "Heaven to Betsy"!

That's the name of my review of Maud Hart Lovelace's Heaven to Betsy, which I posted at Epinions the other day in honor of the Harper Betsy-Tacy reissues.

I had a lovely time re-reading and then reviewing HTB. And of course, I found myself wanting to keep going, so I'm now re-reading Betsy in Spite of Herself. Hopefully a review forthcoming in October!

I also got my copy of the reissue of Heaven to Betsy/Betsy in Spite of Herself (they've been bound as one volume) for giveaway! That's right, it's Betsy-Tacy convert week. I found a book-loving family at our church that had never heard of the series. They have two girls, somewhere around the ages of 10 and 12, and I passed the book on to them along with a letter telling them about my own lifelong love of the series.

All the folks participating in the B-T Convert Week have been assigned a society. I'm a Zetamathian, just like Betsy. Go Zets! Though darn, I hear that cute new boy Joe Willard is a Philo...

All this Lovelace reading has me in a very Betsy-Tacy frame of mind, so I've also spent time this week revisiting a B-T writing project I started last year. I'm tentatively calling it "The Betsy-Tacy Guide to Americana." More on this soon, if I'm able to continue working on it.

For Your Listening Pleasure

We've been enjoying two audio books around our house these past few weeks.

The first is the James Herriot Treasury for Children, as read by Jim Dale of Harry Potter audio book fame. The James Herriot treasury is truly beloved by our family...we read it at least annually, and I tend to bring it out in the autumn.

I was delighted to find this delightful audio version at the library, and the sweet girl enjoyed it at rest time for two weeks running. Dale does a very fine job of reading Herriot's tender Yorkshire tales about cows, sheep, horses, dogs and cats. And isn't it fitting that a man with the last name of Dale would read stories that made the Yorkshire dales so beloved to so many readers?

The other audio book is one that my husband and I have been enjoying during our occasional lunchtimes together. It's The Book of Three, the first book in Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain. I just finished reading the whole five-book series a few weeks ago, and I enjoyed them so much I told D. that I hoped I could read them aloud to him (a common practice around here). But the more I contemplated reading them aloud, the more I wished that I could hear someone else pronounce some of the Welsh names first!

So I went looking for an audio version of the first book in the series, and now that we've started, I wonder if we won't just keeping going this way. That's because I'm completely in love with narrator James Langton's interpretation of these characters. I confess I'm not always a huge audio book fan, often because I think the reader doesn't do the work justice (or read it the way I've been hearing it in my head, or the way I would read it aloud...I love to read aloud!) but Langton's narration is amazing. He's created incredibly distinctive voices for each of the characters, most of which feel "just right." I'm especially impressed with his reading of Eilonwy (and yes, I can say her name correctly now!) and of Fflewddur Fflam, the courageous and funny bard with the truth-telling harp.

Listening to The Book of Three after finishing the whole series has also been a pleasure because I'm realizing anew what an excellent job Alexander did of setting up so many of the important events and moments in the series right here at the start. So much of The High King, the fifth and final book, rings more powerfully when you go full-circle back to the beginning. I'm also realizing anew just how funny the books are. Langton's reading makes the humorous parts, even the small and subtle ones, shine through. I highly recommend this audio version, but I hope that you can find it at the library as it appears to be out of print. (I just noted that the only copy available on Amazon is selling for over $100!)

Blogging Betsy-Tacy

In honor of the reissues of the last six books in the Betsy-Tacy series by Maud Hart Lovelace (Heaven to Betsy, Betsy in Spite of Herself, Betsy Was a Junior, Betsy and Joe, Betsy and the Great World and Betsy's Wedding are being reissued this month as Harper Perennial Classics) a number of writers will be posting on their blogs about the Betsy-Tacy books for the next couple of weeks. The tour is already in progress: today's stop is at Here in the Bonny Glen, where one of my favorite bloggers, Melissa Wiley, weighs in with delightful ruminations on Betsy and Tacy Go Over the Big Hill, the third book in the series.


Big Hill is also one of my favorite books in the series. I reviewed it at Epinions back in 2006, under the title "Hills Were Higher Then." As I wrote in that review:

The older I get, and the more times I read these delightful stories, the more impressed I grow with their narrative artistry. Having recently re-visited these first three books, and knowing so well all that's still to come in the final seven, I'm especially moved by the way Lovelace used the landscape of Deep Valley's hills to portray both the concrete, physical community the girls grew up in, and the symbolic, more poetic image of the "wide world" that surrounded them. In each book, the girls find a way of pushing the boundaries of those hills a little further: from longing to climb the big hill near their homes, to actually doing it, to finally climbing all the way over it (in this installment) and finding a completely different community of people on the other side. Though this is the only book to reference the hills in its title, Lovelace will continue throughout the series to push at the notion of how the ever expanding boundaries of the world shape Betsy -- how the hills that surround her hometown confer familiarity and comfort and yet how they beckon her to step out, confident and curious, into a much wider space.

I just finished my umpteenth re-read of Heaven to Betsy (the first of the high school books) and plan to post a review at Epinions in the coming week, which I'll link here. I also want to do a post about how I first came to love the books, and the long journey to find and read them all!

I was delighted to hear about the blog tour. Although I'm not officially part of it, I hope at least some Betsy-Tacy fans will meander off the main drag and find my little path here, as I plan to post more about these beloved books in the coming couple of weeks. They've been such a huge part of my life for so many years -- what joy to be able to talk about them with other people who love them too!

Astronomy Picture of the Day

A friend recently told me about the Astronomy Picture of the Day website, and it's become one of my favorite online stops. The photos are usually fascinating and beautiful, sometimes taken of planets, stars, nebulas and galaxies but sometimes taken of things in the nightsky as seen over lands and seas here on earth. As much as I love the mysterious space photos (definitely the sweet girl's favorites) I'm partial to the ones taken from the surface of our own beloved planet.

Yesterday's photo, of gorgeous green auroras over the Northwest Territories in Canada, just about took my breath away. Something about the juxtaposition of the green lights in the blue skies, and that bright round white moon shining over the water, just filled my jar of beauty to overflowing. The heavens are telling the glory of God!

You can see yesterday's photo here.

The Inner Life of Atticus Finch

Last night I finished reading To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. It's not the first time I've read it, but it had been a few years.

What amazes me about some books is their ability to pull you back in so completely, even if you've read them before. That happened to me this time around: though I remembered much of the story, I felt absolutely compelled to keep going. I literally couldn't put it down for about three hours (and three straight hours of reading is unfortunately not something I can often allow myself these days, unless I have the excuse of not feeling well, which I had last evening).

I was also unprepared for how incredibly moving I would find the ending still. You would think that, minus the "surprise" element, the impact would lessen. Not so. The near perfect-pitch of the writing in those final pages grabbed me all over again. I chuckled over barefooted Scout in her "ham" costume, falling asleep and then running onto the stage late, to the consternation of the school-teacher who had poured so much heartfelt sincerity into the Maycomb County pageant. And then as soon as we left the comfort of the school carnival, I felt my heart clutch with fear as Jem and Scout walked home on that dark, shadowy Halloween night, stalked by the shuffling footsteps of...well, they don't know who (though the reader has a pretty good idea, which only ups the fright). I felt myself almost faint with relief when their unlikely rescuer appeared. And I dissolved into tears, lots and lots of tears, as I always do whenever I get to those two precious, whispered words "Hey, Boo," spoken later by Scout, in the warm lamplight of Jem's room.

Truly this is a brilliant novel. Just brilliant. I think I finally had a glimpse of understanding last night, as I closed its pages again, as to why Harper never wrote another one. If you could write one book this powerful, this beautiful, this profound, would you feel a strong need to write another one? Maybe. I don't know.

Part of its brilliance, I'm coming to see, is the way it counterbalances the two major story-elements: the children's obsession with their reclusive neighbor Boo Radley, and Atticus' defense of Tom Robinson, wrongfully accused of heinous crimes. How those stories weave together, through Scout's eyes and in Scout's voice, is just amazing story-telling.

And then there's Atticus. Oh, how I love Atticus Finch. I've been realizing lately how often my favorite fictional characters are like Atticus: the ones where still waters run very, very deep. The ones we get to know only obliquely, through someone else's eyes, thus primarily through their actions. We feel like we know Atticus through and through when this story is over, having seen him through the respectful and loving eyes of his daughter (herself a grown woman looking back and telling the story of her childhood, which adds another layer of complexity) and we really do know almost everything important, or at least important to the tale. We know him for his courtesy to everyone, his firm but open and easy discipline of his children, his respect for their housekeeper/nurse Calpurnia. We know him for what he doesn't do, as well as what he does: he doesn't ever carry a gun, even when it would seem expedient, but as it turns out and we discover on the day a mad dog wanders into the neighborhood, he's one of the best shots in the county. The fact that this is news to his wondering children also speaks volumes.

There's so much about Atticus we'd love to know, but never find out. What does he think about in the evenings as he reads that newspaper, or reads books in his office? How much grief does he feel over his departed wife? Does he doubt his own wisdom in raising his children? (We get hints that he does.) Does he fear for his life more than he lets on, when so many people are angry at him for defending Tom? Why has he chosen to distance himself (but only so much) from his distinguished family? Where did he get his integrity, his honesty, his desire to be the same person in one place that he is in another? Who instilled in him those exquisite, authentic manners, and the vision to see other people the way he sees them? What are his prayers like? His favorite portions of the Bible? The novels he goes back to time and time again?

I love asking the questions. I love that Harper Lee has given us a character so richly layered, so real, that I feel like there must be answers somewhere, even if only in stories and books that never got written.

New Books From Some Favorite Writers

At bedtime the other evening we read Mr. Putter & Tabby Spill the Beans, a new reader from the winning team of author Cynthia Rylant and illustrator Arthur Howard. Thank you to Erin, who put me on to the fact that there was a new one out this fall! Of course we loved it. My favorite part of any Mr. P & T is the almost-surefire moment when the adventure reaches its sweet but often hysterically funny heights, and the sweet girl dissolves into chortles or gives a shout of appreciative laughter. This book did not fail us!

While I'm on the subject of new books from favorite writers, I thought I'd mention a few more I'm looking forward to this autumn.

Children's poet laureate Mary Ann Hoberman, one of my favorite poets for children OR adults, has just come out with her debut novel, Strawberry Hill. It's so bizarre to use the word "debut" in connection with Hoberman, who has been publishing amazing poetry for over fifty years. I'm inspired to see her trying her hand at a new genre. As an added bit of excitement, it's illustrated by Wendy Anderson Halperin, an illustrator whose work I especially love. Halperin illustrated the "Cobble Street Cousins" books, and also the wonderful picture book Homeplace, a library staple we've checked out numerous times over the years.

I just started Strawberry Hill and am already taken by its lovely simplicity. It's the story of a little girl growing up in Connecticut during the Great Depression, and is apparently based on Hoberman's own childhood.

Newbery winner Kate DiCamillo has an intriguing looking new book out (just released this week) called The Magician's Elephant. It sounds like a fascinating fable; since it's by DiCamillo, you know it will be well told.

Sarah Beth Durst, author of Into the Wild and Out of the Wild, has a new YA fantasy arriving in October. It's simply called Ice, and the cover is certainly compelling. I wasn't too sure about my ultimate verdict on Out of the Wild, but the polar bear on that cover really makes me want to pick this one up and give this author another try.

Hunting around to see what some of my favorite children's authors were up to, I discovered that we missed the release of new Alfie book by Shirley Hughes in 2008. It's called Alfie and the Big Boys, and I've already put a request through with our library! While on the subject of Hughes, here's a a fascinating interview with her done just this past spring for the Guardian. There's a wonderful photograph of her too.

And of course, no posting about fall releases would be complete without a big Betsy Ray shout out ("Yoo-hoo! Betsy!") regarding the reissues of the Betsy high school books by Maud Hart Lovelace. I posted about this earlier this year but am getting really excited as the time draws near. I'm one of the Betsy-Tacy fanatics who will be receiving a free copy of the first two books (bound as one) Heaven to Betsy and Betsy in Spite of Herself, on the stipulation that I will share it with someone who doesn't know the series. (They're calling this Betsy-Tacy Convert week...I first heard about it via Facebook, where I'm part of the B-T fan group.) I've already decided to pass it on to two sisters at our church, ages about 9 and 12, who have never read the books. Their mom is delighted...and she's never read them either, so I may actually make three Lovelace converts all at once.

I'm also readying my review of Heaven to Betsy for Epinions, hoping to post it on or very near the release date at the end of the month. I reviewed the first four books in the series a couple of years ago, but for some reason held off on doing the older Betsy books. Now I'm glad I did!

Sparrow Conversation

I've still not gotten used to the newly paved sidewalk that's replaced the grass that used to be across the road from us. I'm pretty sure the local wildlife hasn't gotten used to it either.

In fact, just the other morning, I was looking out the window and noticed two small, brown birds sitting on a building ledge overlooking that concrete slab of a sidewalk. They were nodding their heads in sideways fashion, looking very wise (as little birds tend to do) and apparently deep in conversation. It didn't take much imagination to figure out what they were saying. I strained my ears and caught just a little of it.

Sparrow 1: Wasn't there grass here? Just a couple days ago? I swear there was grass.

Sparrow 2: (a trifle more anxious personality) Well, I thought so. But I do tend to lose my bearings a bit in the city.

Sparrow 1: (snorting a bit derisively) Not I. I was raised in a nest just down the road in the churchyard and I know this place like the back of my wing. There's the sycamore trees, there are those scrubby pine trees, and there are those grape vines by the fence they've stuck vicious barbed wire all over. Yep, yep, yep. I'm sure. I tell you, the GRASS WAS RIGHT THERE. Green as can be.

Sparrow 2: (timidly) It's not green now. Just that awful gray-white. Looks like dirty snow in the middle of August, doesn't it?

Sparrow 1: It's September.

Sparrow 2: ALREADY?

Sparrow 1: Haven't you noticed the school buses? And the orange glow to the moon? And how chilly your feathers feel in the morning?

Sparrow 2: Now that you mention it...

Sparrow 1: What I want to know is where they think we'll go for eats now. I mean, this was the best all you could eat buffet place within blocks. I just faint with hunger thinking of those sweet, juicy little earthworms below-ground, trying to push their heads up through the dark, moist earth, only to bonk their wormy little heads on a big ol' patch of concrete.

Sparrow 2: (tenderly) Almost makes you feel sorry for the poor dears, doesn't it?

Sparrow 1: In a way. I mean, if you think you lose YOUR bearings, think how they must feel. They're probably digging new tunnels like crazy trying to locate the nearest exit.

Sparrow 2: (with a half-cheep, half-sympathetic cluck) And think of the poor little seeds! I was quite looking forward to seeing the new dandelions and clover push their heads up through the soil next spring.

Sparrow 1: You and the rabbits!

(Both sparrows look for a moment at the concrete sidewalk where the lovely green grass used to be. Sparrow 2 sighs.)

Sparrow 1: Kind of makes you want to migrate early, doesn't it?

Those Unexpected Answers

One of the things I love most about teaching is the unexpected answer you sometimes get to a question.

This morning the sweet girl and I were talking about the earth: how big it is, how many people live on it, its shape, what it's made of, who made it.

When we got to the "who made it," she answered "God." And I asked: "And how did God make the earth?"

The answer I was expecting was some variation on "He created it" or "He spoke words" or "He made it out of nothing" (all things we've talked about before).

What she said, after a thoughtful pause was: "Special. And just for us."

Good answer!

Literary Influences

I've been thinking a lot about literary influences lately. Partly this stems from all the reading I've been doing, especially in the fantasy genre, where more and more I see things bubbling in the giant "cauldron of story" that J.R.R. Tolkien talked about. Sometimes it's difficult to know just who put what in the pot first, or when and how an author added his or her own special ingredients or gave it a unique stir.

I find it fascinating to wonder how certain stories grew, especially when elements jump out as being so similar in tone or atmosphere to another (often earlier) work. Did the author borrow directly? Did the author perhaps read that other work once at a crucial place in their own formation and development as a person or writer? Did they read it over and over and perhaps soak the story in so deeply that they no longer know where that story finishes and their own starts?

Or are the similarities "coincidental" or unconscious? Could it be that author A has never read author B, but they both share a love of author C (or even art or music or poetry D) and that influence has permeated their work in similar ways, giving their very different stories a similar flavor or scent?

Or is it that there really are only so many stories that can be told in this world, despite the huge variety of people who live them and tell them? Could it be that our shared humanity runs so deep that our memories/experiences are more kin than we usually acknowledge?

And how much does shared genre shape an author's choice? If a writer knows that he or she is plowing familiar territory in a certain kind work, do they perhaps choose to draw (or find themselves drawing naturally) on certain images, character types, symbols, and even narrative rhythms?

I find this whole topic fascinating, but I also find myself welcoming the opportunity to widen the discussion of literary influence beyond mere echoes and similarities of content and style. I recently finished a book that does just that: Diana Pavlac Glyer's The Company They Keep: C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien as Writers in Community.

Although it's not just about Lewis, Glyer's book has joined what I'm coming to think of as my canon of personal favorite books about C.S. Lewis. It's a painstaking and highly readable work of scholarship. More than the meticulous research that went into it, however, and the many new facts I learned about some of my favorite authors, I enjoyed it for its fresh approach to the topic of the Inklings. Glyer asks readers to consider the question of literary influence in much broader perspective than we usually consider it (the context I laid out in the earlier part of this post). She looks at the way community fosters influence, assessing mutual influence by looking not just at similar writing style or writing interest, but by looking at the ways writers in community affect one another as "resonators, opponents/critics, editors, collaborators, and referents." She then proceeds to look at the interaction of the Inklings in light of those categories.

The book gave me much to think about as a reader and a writer, and as someone who appreciates the writing friends and community I have (and longs for more). What role do our writing friends, our resonators, play in our creativity? A far larger role than we might guess, I think.

All of which leads me back to the thoughts that fascinate me about the "echoes" I hear in certain stories. We may never know what lies behind a certain turn of phrase, a choice of image, a decision about a character. But we can be sure that such writerly choices are not made in isolation, even if a writer thinks they're working completely "on their own." There's really no such thing as "on you're own" when you join in the long conversation of creativity that flows down through the ages. When you step up to the pot to create your "own" recipe, you never really start from scratch.

School Tomorrow

The sweet girl is in bed, and the first day of school muffins* are in the oven. The living room and dining room (our main school spaces) have been cleaned. The white board has been scrubbed, a lovely blank space awaiting the three-pack of new white board pens I've been saving up for just this occasion (the sweet girl loves to draw on the white board, so we go through those faster than you'd believe!).

Yes, first day of school tomorrow!

And we're so excited. Our third year of schooling together -- well, our third official year. We've been learning/teaching since the day she was born.

I am such a creature of habit and routine. Rituals are important to me at a deep heart level. I considered writing about that, but then I came across this blog post at Holy Experience that said it all better than I could. I resonated with this post at deep heart levels, and I joyed to the fact that the writer quotes from one of my favorite G.K. Chesterton passages of all time, a passage I fell in love with about twenty years ago when I first came across it in college.

Happy ceremony; happy firsts and repeated firsts. Happy start of the school year to all.

&&&&&&&&&
*A virtual gold star to anyone who can guess how our first day of school muffin tradition started. Clue: it came from literary inspiration.

Summer Blessings

We finally got our mini-vacation in Erie: two nights and most of three days of wonderful outdoor time. How grateful we were for the gift that enabled us to go.

We stayed in a very small, rustic cabin in a campground in a rural area about 20 minutes from the peninsula. I laughed at the memories that cabin brought back of my years as a camper and especially as a camp counselor. The sweet girl saw her first granddaddy longlegs, tasted her first toasted marshmallows (well, the first ones not toasted over the blue gas flame on our oven burner) and saw thousands of stars.

That late night of incredible stars was perhaps the highlight of the trip for her Dad and me...after a long day on the shore by Lake Erie, to come back to the cabin and find the sky above us dark and cloudless and just awash with more stars than either of us had seen in years, more stars than we'd ever been able to show our little girl before. You could even see the slight, silvery band of the Milky Way. We wrapped the sweet girl up in her Daddy's sweatshirt (it was much colder than we anticipated in the evenings!) which looked like a long dress on her, and we all just marveled over those stars, while listening to the peeping of frogs across the field. D. and I saw two shooting stars, which S. just missed.

I knew I was green-hungry, but hadn't realized how star-starved I was. Even the lights of a small city really drown them out. It's comforting to remember anew that they're there, bright and glittering tokens of God's splendor and goodness.

The shore was just lovely. So much stress and tension we've had this year, and somehow, in God's goodness, we were able to lay it all aside for those two days and just soak up the sounds of wind and waves. The first evening on the beach was misty and gray, the first full day there was cloudy and a bit chilly, a lovely mix of blue and gray (see photo above!) and the final day was hot and clear, with an almost cloudless blue sky, D's favorite kind of beach day. We loved the variety.

And the afternoon we arrived, we were able to meet up with Erin (dear friend and faithful blog reader!) and her parents, who treated us to an afternoon at the Erie zoo. The sweet girl loved the huge tortoise, her dad loved the red pandas, and I felt especially fond of the two very lovey-dovey giraffes who kept hugging each other with their slender necks. Thank you, Erin and family, for a terrific afternoon!

Giver of the Green

My mourning for our little bit of grass got to swirling around in my mind last evening. It collided with some words from C.S. Lewis that I had happened to read yesterday morning.

Lewis was writing (in A Grief Observed) about the "right ordering" of our praise. So many good things we love are deserving of praise, but our highest praise is reserved for the Giver of those good things.

"Praise in due order...up from the garden to the Gardener, from the sword to the Smith. To the life-giving Life and the Beauty that makes beautiful."

I love these lines. It seems to me that Lewis is saying our best loves, our deepest admiration, what we value most, should cause us to look up, even higher, to the Giver behind all those things. His capitalization of Gardener, Smith, Life and Beauty leaves no doubt that he is referring to the Giver in all those wonderful terms. It is God who makes the garden beautiful, refines the silver, gives life, and whose Beauty is reflected in all that's beautiful.

It's even more poignant when you reflect that Lewis here is thinking about his relationship with his late wife, Joy. All the good in her, all that he loved (and still loved) in her, ultimately made him look up in joy and thanksgiving to the One who made her, even in the midst of his grief.

Somehow it makes my sadness over the loss of a small patch of grass seem both less significant and more significant at the same time.

All these thoughts tumbled into this prayer-poem I wrote last night.

Giver of Green

Praise for the grass
and the tiny creatures
who shelter in the
forest of its stems

Praise for the rootlets
of wildflowers and
the clover heads thick
with tempting scent
that beckons to the bees

Praise for the morning dew
and the tracings of frost
like shining jewels
flung at our undeserving feet

But most of all

Praise to the Giver of Green
who grows my life with gladness.

~EMP 8/09

Lament For My Little Patch of Green

Long-time readers of this blog know of my ongoing struggle with the lack of green in my life. For those of you just tuning in: we're yardless apartment dwellers in a small city with lots of concrete and glass and not nearly enough grass or trees, in my humble opinion, though I am grateful for every bit we live near.

Though I've made peace with our family's call to be where we are and do what we do, that does not mean I don't still miss (sometimes greatly) green grass and trees. In fact, if you'll pardon the pun, I sometimes literally pine for green at deep heart-levels.

From our window, we can see ten sycamore trees across the road and an asphalt parking lot from where we live. Those ten trees are sometimes a real life-line for me: I'm not sure I could survive the ongoing monotony of asphalt or the onslaught of winter gray otherwise.

For years, next to the parking lot on the nearer side to our building, there has been a strip of bright green grass. Except for the even more narrow strip by the benches beneath the sycamores, this is the largest patch of grass near us for blocks. We often park right next to it, and I'm always thankful to be able to step out of the car and onto grass, even for a moment. Visitors sometimes joke with us about it being our little bit of lawn.

Well, the grass is no more. I'm not joking when I say I feel like I'm in mourning. The folks who own the building and parking lot next door apparently got tired of having to mow that bit of grass (or so I'm assuming). They brought in a big backhoe kind of vehicle (or whatever you call the vehicle that plows up sod) and stripped it bare this weekend. I held out momentary though faint hope that they planned to re-sod it, maybe even put in a bush or two. But it became quickly apparent they had no such intention.

The concrete mixer arrived about an hour ago. As I speak, workmen are smoothing a perfectly smooth layer of concrete about twenty feet long. A new sidewalk.

And I just want it to go away. Sorry to sound so bleak -- in general, I enjoy sidewalks and even feel very grateful for them as I walk a lot in a city -- but now when I look out my front window, there is no immediate relief to the gray concrete. No bright patch of green. Perhaps you think it's silly to mourn 15-20 feet of grass and dirt, but when I think of all the times we've played in it, watched bugs in it, marveled over the wasp like creatures that hatch there each summer (we always have a couple of weeks where we have to exit the car on the opposite side) picked clover from it (poor bees, poor bunnies) seen snow fall on it in the bleak winter, and just plain felt grateful for that little patch of "our lawn" I feel seriously sad.

All afternoon I've been contemplating the writing of a story where a champion named Prince Verdi saves a small town from a concrete monster.

Folks, here's the long and short of it: the world needs more green and less concrete. Trust me on this.

Second Grade Language Arts: Wishlist and Ponderings

I've been pondering what we'll be doing for language arts in our second grade homeschool this year. (By the way, we've officially named ourselves Lamplight Academy now, so if you hear me refer to Lamplight in the future, you'll know I mean our home learning!)

By language arts, I mean all the things that, combined, make up our language studies. For right now, that includes reading, handwriting/penmanship, grammar, and basic narration skills.

Under reading, our time is divided (quite unevenly at this point) between read-aloud time, which we do a lot, and independent reading, which I try to encourage the sweet girl to do for at least a few minutes per day.

Our read-aloud time goes across the disciplines. We read history, science and art books together as well as what I simply term "literary read-alouds" (stories). We work on narration skills (where I ask questions and prompt S. to "tell back" what she's heard) in all those areas. We hit it hardest in history and science, though we also do some fun "re-telling" with literature, mostly in the form of story disks.

Handwriting and penmanship time has been mostly focused on copywork. We've used the Handwriting Without Tears materials and they've been marvelous. We've also done general copywork. I've come up with some of the exercises and we've used some of the Draw Write Now materials (volume 1). I'm still exploring what resources I'll be using as I increase copywork time this year.

For grammar (and further time on narration/oral usage) we've been using Jessie Wise's First Language Lessons. We plan to use that again this year, though I plan to step up the pace a bit.

What I'm trying to decide at this point is what sort of approach I want to take to copywork/writing time. She needs more confidence in penmanship, but I also want to use our copywork time more fruitfully to help her think about sentence structure and other basic writing skills. We need to build more of this time into our schedule consistently and I need to find ways to make it more enjoyable for her. Even after all the time we spent last year (and I thought it was going so well...live and learn!) the sweet girl is still balking about writing lower case letters. All summer long, whenever it was time to write anything: a thank you note, a birthday card, etc., she would beg to write it in capitals. I asked her why, and she got all flustered and told me she wasn't as good at writing lower-case letters. When I gently encouraged her and tried to explain to her the importance of continuing to practice, she got very anxious and moved into "I don't want to! I'll just write everything in capitals my whole life."

So...any fleeting thoughts I might have had about moving onto cursive in second grade were quickly shoved aside. We need more printing practice. I decided to go on and purchase the Handwriting Without Tears Printing Power workbook for 2nd grade (she really enjoys their workbooks) and also the teacher's guide, hoping the materials will inspire us.

I'll continue to use FLL, as I mentioned above, though stepping up the pace. I very much want to use Susan Wise Bauer's Writing With Ease materials (text and workbook one) but simply can't afford them. They're on the absolute top of my wish-list of materials this year.

Since I can't use WWE, I am looking at the materials I have on hand. Since we've been blessed to be the recipients of many homeschooling resources from friends, I've got some things to choose from: I have at least some materials I could use this year from various programs: Writing Strands, Learning Language Through Literature, and IEW materials. If anyone out there has used any of these in conjunction with FLL, I'd love to hear about that. I personally think that LLATL looks like it would be an excellent complement to FLL, and am learning toward using their 2nd grade book this year.

I should mention that, as we go into our third year of schooling, I am feeling both stretched and blessed. This is the first time we're going into a new school year with what feels like the bare minimum of resources. In the past, I've used my review-writing income to purchase our yearly books, but our ongoing financial struggles mean we're always just an unexpected bill away from having to spend such income on necessities. That happened this year. Almost everything I earned from reviews went to car repairs, dentist bills, and/or food. I would honestly be in a bit of a panic if it wasn't for incredible homeschooling friends who have rallied by handing off resources to me that they either no longer need or don't need this coming year. Teacher's guides for our math program, history resources galore, even a Scripture-memorization CD (which I can't imagine schooling without...we've used CDs from this particular set for the past two years and it's colored our days so beautifully). Despite the fact that there are several things I still wish I had on my shelves, I am completely thankful for the loans and gifts from dear friends.

Even without some things I think I "need," the school year is coming. And I am so looking forward to new learning and teaching opportunities!

Quarry Speech and Kything

In the past couple of years, Shannon Hale has become one of my favorite fantasy authors for young adults. I first really fell for her work a couple of years ago when I read Princess Academy. Recently I re-read it again twice: to myself, and out-loud to my husband (who really liked it, and who was pleasantly surprised by the un-Disney nature of the story, given its title!).

I liked it even better the second and third times around, partly because I was fully prepared to enter into the world of Mt. Eskel. Since I knew the characters and the contour of the plot already, I was able to pay more attention to Hale's world-building. I'm impressed by the details she provides about life for the villagers on Mt. Eskel and how that builds a credible, substantial world for the story.

Hale tells us about the strength of the mountain itself, the beauty of the mountain views, the smell of the goats they herd, the beautifully streaked linder stone, the wild miri flowers that grow in cracks of stone, the chips and shards of rock that cut into thinning boot soles, the essential poverty of the people who must work hard to cut enough stone to trade for goods each season. She helps us understand that, while they're illiterate, they have an amazing communal memory which is showcased in festival time through the creativity of their "story-shouts." She describes their folk dances, their physical strength, their skill in mining linder, their lack of political status as members of a non-provincial territory of the kingdom of Danland, the way they care for one another. She hints at the lacks some of them feel by not having time or space in their lives for gardens or art (and their yearning to see the far-off ocean). And of course, she describes the way they communicate with one another in the quarry, using a language without words, often communicated through the sounds and rhythms of the work, tools and stone.

A huge part of Miri's coming of age, and her growing understanding of herself as a true daughter of the mountain, is her newfound ability to sing the mountain's songs even when she is cut off from many of the places and people she once thought were needed to make such speech possible. Before she left for the academy, she had never used quarry speech because she'd never been allowed inside the quarry (her father has his reasons, but he doesn't explain them to her, hence her feeling of uselessness). Her sojourn at the princess academy, along with eleven other girls from their territory, is not precisely an exile, but it functions as one, or at least a time away in a very different place where new thoughts and ideas and dreams arise (which strikes me as a notion one might come across in a Shakespearean comedy). While Miri is there, out of necessity she learns the music of the quarry, and unexpectedly discovers that she can speak/sing it outside of the quarry itself, as long as she is physically touching any stone that can be traced to a vein of linder. That unseen network of linder veins becomes a beautiful, unconscious scaffolding as Miri learns the secret of the speech is built on shared memories/community.

I guess the first time I read the book, I was so involved in the excitement of a first read-through that parallels didn't come to me, but this time through I found myself reading the descriptions of quarry speech and thinking about kything.

Kything is the form of unspoken communication that Madeleine L'Engle developed in her fantasy novels for young adults many years ago, particularly in A Wrinkle in Time, A Wind in the Door and A Swiftly Tilting Planet. Meg Murry, her brother Charles Wallace, and their friend Calvin O'Keefe learn to communicate with one another and with other people/creatures across vast distances and without words. The concept is developed throughout the books -- it's not actually named as kything until Wind, when Meg is tutored in the practice by Proginoskes, the singular cheribum who partners with her against the evil, unnaming Echthroi. What intrigues me is that, in that first instance where it's named, Progo works with Meg to help her remember a memory that she didn't realize she had stored in her brain. She heard a conversation (not realizing its full import) and thought she'd forgotten it, but Progo, in communicating/communing with her, is able to pull the memory forth so that she can see it and hear it clearly again. Meg becomes a particularly adept kyther, especially with Charles Wallace in A Swiftly Tilting Planet. While he's off riding a unicorn on the wind to save the planet from nuclear peril, she's in her attic bedroom, keeping her hand on a dog (whom we're led to believe just might be part guardian angel) since the act of touching the warm fur of the living creature seems to connect her more closely to her little brother's mind and heart. Shades of linder lines.

Meg also kythes deeply with Calvin, the young man who will grow up to be her husband. Their intimacy of communication is similar to what she shares with others, but also different, tinged with eros as well as philos, I guess you might say (and all of it bathed somehow in agape). The nuances are hard to describe, but definitely there, reminding me of Miri's ability to quarry-speak most clearly, especially when in peril, with the young man closest to her own heart, Peder. Although their feelings for one another have not been fully acknowledged or recognized even by themselves, the feelings are there (which Hale makes beautifully clear from their awkwardness around one another).

More than Meg and Calvin, however, Peder and Miri's ability to communicate reminded me forcefully of Vicky Austin and Adam Eddington in A Ring of Endless Light. If absolutely forced to choose a favorite L'Engle novel, I would probably choose Ring, which I read over and over again between the ages of 15-25. I don't know why it never dawned on me with any forcefulness (until now!) that the unspoken communication developed in Ring looks an awful lot like kything. Vicky experiences an ability to communicate without words (and to receive communications, often in the form of wordless images) first with dolphins (animals are always very important in Madeleine's work) and then with Adam, the young man who introduces her to the dolphins.

Maybe one reason I never made an explicit connection is because distinctions used to be often made between Madeleine's "chronos" books and her "kairos" books. In her so-called kairos books, characters were not bound by the normal nature of time, while characters in the chronos books never time-traveled. That's a useful enough distinction in some regards, but it's not so easy to break her books down into categories of "fantasy" and "realism" with the kairos books neatly falling into one and the chronos books into the other. Even in her more realistic books, where the characters don't fly with unicorns, there are mystical elements. Vicky, after all, flies with dolphins.

I've wandered far afield. My main observation is that Miri's unspoken message to Peder felt familiar, not in a derivative way, but in a lovely, shared tradition way. Peder's response in her time of peril mirrors Adam's. Vicky and Adam's wondering exchange (once the peril is past) is so sweet and simple: "I called you --" "And I came," he said. Words that could have been quarry-sung in another book, time and place.

10 Things I Missed in the Half-Blood Prince Movie

Due to budget and time constraints, I knew I was going to have to wait for this summer's newest Harry Potter film installment to wend its way to the family theater in our little town. It finally did that this weekend, and I was at last able to sit back and enjoy Half-Blood Prince.

I've been exercising considerable restraint by not reading many reviews beforehand! I did give in and read a couple, but even as I read them, I felt like I was trying to skim while keeping my fingers crossed behind my back. I really wanted to see what surprised, delighted or disappointed me on my own terms. I'm looking forward to going back and really reading some reviews in-depth now!

I plan to write a full review at Epinions, but some initial observations started spinning in my head on the walk home from the theater Saturday. Despite the title, please don't think this is just a list of nit-picks. I weave in thoughts about things I enjoyed as well. HP purist that I am, some changes and omissions bothered me more than others, because they felt like missed opportunities.

Still I found I was able to enter the movie on its own terms more easily than usual. The film world of Harry Potter is so different than the book world that in some ways that's getting easier...with each installment, I feel like we're returning to a world that feels more consistently familiar, even if it still doesn't feel like the landscape of the books.

Without further ado, here were 10 things I especially missed:

1. Color. I expected this film to be emotionally dark, but even the trailers didn't prepare me for this film's visual darkness. Sometimes it wasn't even so much darkness as plain lack of color in key places. The cave scene where Dumbledore drinks the awful potion guarding the fake horcrux is one case in point. The whole scene felt washed out, full of blacks, whites, grays...there was almost an ice sculpture feel to the inferi-surrounded island with the basin, and certainly no green glow. That poisonous Slytherinesque green always felt central to me.

I liked the bright green serpentine hourglass in Slughorn's office, which provided an arresting visual link between the Slughorn-Riddle memory sequences. But I just missed color: the brighter gold I'd always imagined for liquid luck, the more lurid colors of Dumbledore's plum colored suit in the memory sequence where he first meets young Riddle. The memory sequences themselves felt purposefully infused with a washed-out/bad-print old movie feel, made murkier by that inkblot-in-water pensieve effect the filmmakers clearly loved. Cool effect, but it made the whole memory sequences feel less substantial somehow, more dream-like than something Harry actually bodily fell into and experienced.

And speaking of the pensieve memories, kudos to the set designers for that odd medieval castle-like cabinet where Dumbledore kept all the little vials of Voldemort memories, each of them dated and sorted. More than anything that actually got said (Kloves in his usual "exposition be scorned" mode) the shots of that cabinet gave us a real understanding of how long and hard Dumbledore had worked to catalog and understand Voldemort's past.

2. "You are with me/I am not worried, Harry…I am with you." The key Dumbledore quotes of the book, and the ones that so brilliantly bookend the narrative action and emphasize the turning of the tide. I had been prepared for this glaring omission by Janet and Erin, but I still felt stupefied by their exclusion. I know the whole Dumbledore/Harry relationship has been played quite differently in the films than within the books, but even so, the inclusion of these lines would have felt like a no-brainer for me had I been writing that screenplay!

3. "Blocked again and again and again until you learn to keep your mouth shut and your mind closed, Potter!" Was anyone else as excited as I was about hearing Alan Rickman deliver those lines, with all their venom and hidden meaning? I guess I shouldn't have been surprised by their absence. The films are famous for not giving Rickman enough screen time, and though he squeezes every ounce from every scene (I especially thought he did well with the unbreakable vow) I was disappointed in his final scenes. The whole climax was disappointing but the lack of anguish in Snape when confronted by Harry was especially disappointing.

I may not be playing fair: the anguish was there, I guess, just not at all at the level of intensity as I'd imagined it -- and that goes for Harry's anger too. Hardly anyone seemed to notice, for instance, that Hagrid's house had just burst into flames. Where was Fang's howling (which could have served to heighten the tension and also remind legions of faithful HP readers that Snape's pain was described in terms of the dog in the burning house)? Where was Harry's fear over the possible loss of Hagrid (for that matter, where was Hagrid in this film? Hardly around.) The fact that we'd also already seen the Burrow (the Burrow?!?) set on fire also lessened the impact here. My goodness, but they gave a lot of screen time to Bellatrix, who seemed to get her kicks from destroying or torching anything in reach.

4. Neville. I know he doesn't do much in this book, but they preserved almost no role for him at all. I guess Draco's increased role (very well-played by Tom Felton) squeezed out any possibility, but I missed Neville. They did a better job of giving Luna some moments and she's not prominent in this storyline either.

5. The Battle at Hogwarts. I was prepared for this to be missing too, but I still couldn't fathom why. The film does a terrific job of showing us Draco's tortured obsession with his "mission" and the mounting tension of his plans...clearly something, something BIG! is supposed to happen with that spooky vanishing cabinet in the Room of Requirement. (Another bravo for the visuals of the cabinets...I could somehow never quite picture what those things should look like when I read about them, and the cruelly pointed angles and antique look were great.)

In the end, however, the fact that Draco manages to get death eaters into Hogwarts doesn't seem to make any difference at all. Why were they there? They "encourage" him in his task on the tower, they mock Dumbledore a little bit, they exult Dumbledore’s death, and then they hightail it out there in an obedient little line behind the hustling Snape, with only Bellatrix doing her manic bully-dance and destructive bit in the Great Hall. I have heard speculation that the filmmakers felt like they needed to add "menace" to the storyline, hence the weird attack on the burrow, but what more menace do you need than the school itself attacked? I've always felt that those moments with vulnerable 15 year olds fighting death eaters are some of the most perilous. This battle needn't be prolonged...it's more a prelude to the ultimate Battle of Hogwarts at the end of DH...but it should be there. Among other things, it would provide opportunity to show Ginny, Luna, Neville and various order members fighting. I know Ginny gets her moment in the burrow scene, and perhaps they wanted to highlight her, given the romantic build-up between her and Harry (which for the most part, I think they handled well).

6. Harry's invisibility cloak. A key loss. If I'm recalling correctly, we only ever see him use it on the train, when Draco discovers him eavesdropping. Dumbledore doesn't tell him to bring it along or keep it on his person for the entire year, and he certainly doesn't immobilize him beneath it for the key scene on the tower. Maybe they wanted Harry to be more complicit in the scene? His obedience to Dumbledore's orders to stay hidden/not do anything come back to haunt him already at the end of the film, and that's especially played up by the very interesting choice they made to have Snape walk right past him and put his finger to his lips, as though reminding Harry that they're on the "same side.” Ironically, of course, they are, though Harry won't know that for a long time and that moment can only serve to haunt him more in the meantime.

I was expecting to see Harry immobilized, suffering the nightmarish anguish of not being able to move while also under the protection, one last time, of his mentor, who clearly has a plan. While I didn't necessarily like the changes here, I found them interesting. One could argue that we're being set up for the moment when Harry must choose to obey/trust and have the self-control to *not act* on his natural impulses in DH (when he chooses to trust Dumbledore and go after the Horcruxes, not the Hallows). Given the inclusion of the line "trust me" from Dumbledore (which I liked) in the tower scene, I hope that's where they're going.

7. Dumbledore's weakness and gallantry. Just not enough of it here. I don't know how much of this is Gambon's interpretation and how much it comes through in the way they're writing Dumbledore, but he's just so incredibly different than book Dumbledore. We see him weakened initially by the potion in the cave (though he doesn't seem to suffer as much mental anguish) but he snaps back with that huge ring of fire and never really seems to weaken again.

In the book, one gets the feeling that his heroics from the fire-ring up until the tower cost him tremendous and amazing physical effort. The scene where he offers Draco mercy and speaks courteously to the death eaters moves me to tears every time I read it in part because he does these things as he slowly slides, inch by inch, down the wall of the tower, his life and strength almost extinguished, his time already almost poured out. It makes Snape's killing much more understandable as an act of mercy, and it also emphasizes Dumbledore's willing sacrifice of himself. I've always heard his "please" to Snape said in agonized tones. Film Dumbledore was still so calm and in control it was a bit unnerving. And I was surprised, given the fact that I have never failed to cry when reading this scene, that I was completely dry-eyed through the same scene in the film.

8. Ministry menace. One thing that director David Yates did so well in the fifth film was play up the ineptness and petty meanness of the Ministry. I know that permeates the storyline of Phoenix, so perhaps it was a given when thinking about what to emphasize. I missed feeling any sort of ministry presence in this film, beyond a couple of nods from Daily Prophet headlines and a joke in the Weasley twins' new shop (which incidentally did give the film a momentary and dizzying burst of color!). Ministry involvement wouldn't have needed to be as thick as Rowling lays it on but we miss a crucial piece of Harry's coming of age when we don't see his ongoing interaction with official ministry types. A visit from the new minister and an attempt to talk Harry into being the ministry poster boy, calmly rebuffed, would have been a welcome brief inclusion. Given Voldemort's overtaking of the ministry in the final story, and Harry's ongoing clashes with the establishment (think about Scrimgeour's unwilling surrender of the bequests from Albus' will) we could have had some valuable set-up for the final film. As it is, we've not even met Scrimgeour.

9. Exposition about the horcruxes. I bow to Janet Batchler's wisdom; she says they can still get themselves out the hole they've dug on this one in films 7 (parts A and B) and I believe it. But I will be interested to see how. The lack of explanation about horcruxes felt glaring on so many levels (and I wondered if anyone just watching the movies, without the background of the books, would have understood them at all). I missed a lot of things here, including the pensieve memories that would have given us more background on Voldemort and more understanding of his obsession with "things" and places (the ring, the cave).

I thought they took an interesting risk in the pointed way Dumbledore looked at Harry's scar (as though the idea had just come to him? that seemed odd) as they talked about the horcruxes, though Harry's cluelessness, played well by Radcliffe, rang true. I missed the litany of the horcruxes at the end, which book Harry receives and repeats from Dumbledore like marching orders, like a life-line that helps him to understand, at least a little, what he needs to do next. Whenever I read that, I always feel echoes of Aslan giving Jill the signs in the Silver Chair.

10. More time with Moms. Narcissa seemed more fragile than I expected. Without the Gaunt memories from the pensieve, we lost our introduction to Merope. The difference between Harry and Tom's mothers has always felt profound and sad. I also missed more time with the Weasley family -- we hardly see Molly at all, except to watch her mourn the inexplicable loss of her house. And while I thought Slughorn's musings about Lily incredibly moving -- Jim Broadbent turned in an amazing performance -- I still wish there had been a little more talk of Lily in terms of Harry supposedly "inheriting" her potions skill. How easy it would have been to show Snape galled because of that and all its consequent layers of meaning.

I missed other things (Dursleys being lectured by Dumbledore, Moaning Myrtle, Luna's commentary at the Quidditch match, mopey Tonks in love with Lupin) but I think these were my main 10, at least on first viewing. I was pleasantly surprised Rupert Grint's really funny performance as the lovestruck Ron, and I loved the moment where Harry still looked like the magic-struck eleven year old while he watched Dumbledore set Slughorn’s house to rights with a few waves of his wand.

At least on first listen, I found Nicholas Hooper's score disappointing. The main themes he developed in Phoenix (like the "Fireworks" theme for the Weasley twins) were back, but I was hoping to be wowed by his music for the cave or the tower scenes. I don’t remember the music much at all.

All in all, very glad I finally saw the film. I feel genuinely curious about how they’ll approach the two-part finale, especially given the challenges they’ve set themselves! Your thoughts?

The Love Song in Genesis

A few days ago, the sweet girl and I reached a milestone. We finished up a nearly year-long journey through the Bible.

Last August, right around the time we began the new school term, we began reading in Genesis for our morning Bible reading. Our morning time is the most prolonged reading/learning time we have in the Scriptures most days. Although we didn't read the entire Bible this year, we did read large portions of each book. I tried to read significant passages (with at least key verses/passages in shorter books) so she would get a taste for each book, what it said and how it was saying it.

We've been using the International Children's Bible as our version. And last week, we finished up with the final words in Revelation. (As the sweet girl likes to say, the Bible goes from "In" to "Amen"!)

Our recent time in Revelation may have something to do with her musing yesterday, which seemingly came out of nowhere, "everything has an ending." As I reminded her, everything has a beginning too! And we're back to the beginning this week, because as soon as finished up with that final "Amen" that's what she wanted to do...go back to the beginning and start all over. That made my heart sing!

I find myself almost wishing there was something beautiful we could do to mark the occasion of beginning anew with the story. I once helped rolled a Torah scroll in the synagogue to mark the beginning of a new season in their lectionary. I've always loved the beauty of Torah covers, and am thankful for the lighting of the Advent candles that mark the church's move into the new year's Bible reading too.

The sweet girl really loves the book of Genesis. I'm so delighted that she does, because it has long been one of my favorite books. I still recall hearing a sermon series preached on Genesis when I was just a few years older that S. is now, and how that series (though long and pitched to adults, not children) captured my imagination. Certain characters and stories in Genesis have always stood out to me in sharp relief, and certain passages feel huge and momentous.

I love that this is the book where everything begins, and where we're introduced to the living God. I love how we get to know God: his delight in making, his even deeper delight in saving, his ardent desire to rescue and win the world back once our disobedience takes us far from him. I love how we get to know his people, in all their messy fallenness, and how we see ourselves in them. I especially love the moments where everything seems poised, on tip-toes, for God's inbreaking, and how everything seems to paint a picture of his rescuing love: bits of songs and prophecies, God's clothing of Adam and Eve, his shutting of the door of the ark, a rainbow arched in the sky, God's voice and call suddenly sounding out loud and clear to Abram, the ram in the thicket, the window opened onto heaven and the ladder of angels in a very ordinary place as scheming Jacob sleeps, dreams dreamed, men weeping as they reconcile with brothers. I love how the Spirit broods over the face of the deep in the very first verses and continues to hover, and how the whole book, though the first of God's revelation, is already shot through with that deep vision of the triune God, God-in-community, like a gold ribbon we're going to see again and again as the story continues to unfold in the pages of Scripture.

God's love song starts in Genesis, and it's so utterly beautiful. I'm so thankful my daughter loves to hear it. I pray that her ears will become more attuned to God's love song the longer she reads his words and lives in his world.