Well, everyone's stunned by the sudden death of Charlie Kirk, assassinated by a sniper with a high-powered rifle. He must have been hired by someone - surely those with such a skill are known to the kind of people who want to force revolution on the world, who want to sidestep the order of the constitutional process.
They are cowards, and they do not love their fellow beings. Gavin Ashenden has a lovely youtube meditation with his thoughts. It's just under ten minutes.
I had just shut off the a/c, opened my side window, and was watching the pretty sparkle of the fireflies, when someone on the street behind us set off quite a colorful display of fireworks. So much for the quiet beauty of nature.
Daisy is in my back window, watching fireworks set off by another neighbor - it looks like a big sparkler, or something. Annie is on the hallway chair, which is brave for her; she isn't hiding. Our town event is scheduled for Tuesday, so this sort of nightly show may happen again. For the first time in days, I don't hear the mockingbird. Well, the creatures don't know what to make of the loud noises and I feel sorry for them.
I don't know where I've been - mentally - for the past week. I always mean to post, but something gets in the way. I am making a linen top: sleeveless and simple, and I've been researching various ways of cutting bias strips. There are many, and it's interesting! I have to bind the neck and armholes and didn't want to use the packaged stuff.
I've been experimenting with strawberry frozen yogurt, and frozen coconut milk pops, coffee-flavored. Something cold for the mouth must be kept on hand at all times in summer heat!
We've had some people leave the library for various reasons, so I've worked a few double shifts - not exactly double, but I stayed till closing, eleven hour days. But now I have a week off! Sewing and gardening are the plan.
I'm making a dress with a firefly-printed cotton. A sleeveless maxi, a-line, a pattern I've used before. I'm almost done!
I've also got a dragonfly fabric in the wings. Black, with blue, purple and gold dragonflies. No plan yet.
"We temporarily added another member to the household this week when Hollyberry Red loped onto the terrace with a very wee rabbit. No bigger than a thimble, bright-eyed, incredibly soft, the rabbit was not injured by the sudden trip. The soft mouth of an Irish setter is always a surprise, it is really truly an egg can be retrieved unbroken provided you want to play games with eggs.
Connie was home for the week end and she spent two hours at a stretch with a baby nursing bottle trying to get the tiny thing to take some nourishment. Finally she got down a few drops of warm evaporated milk via a dropper. She kept working every little while.
In four days the small one had developed personality, waggling its ears bravely, putting a paw out, giving great shiny looks when milk was in the offing. He also made small gestures toward fixing the grass up in his shoebox.
By the time we learned from my naturalist-cousin Rob that rabbits have front teeth so designed that they must nurse sideways, so to speak, the baby was doing very well. His will to live was astonishing.
He fitted inside Connie's small palm at first, and then he seemed to begin growing. And then we gave him to a little girl whose rabbit had been run over, partly because she needed a rabbit and partly because it didn't seem practical to raise a rabbit with eight lively cockers and a livelier Irish setter romping around. Jill said everybody would get complexes.
But I hated to see him go. The way this very small, very wild youngling adjusted to circumstances was amazing. Lugged from the nest by a fierce huge creature full of great teeth, dumped in the midst of people, he nevertheless gathered his small forces together and made up his mind to manage."
- Gladys Taber
I just finished the most wonderful book. Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton - do you know of it? A true account of a woman in the English countryside, during the lockdown, who finds a baby hare alone on a path. She passes by again four hours later and it's still there, so she decides to take it home.
When I think back on the books which have made a difference in my life, it's not ever just the story, but how it's told. Galileo's Daughter, The Salt Path, Under the Tuscan Sun, God's Hotel, Fort of Nine Towers - it's always in the telling of it.
This woman focuses the book on the relationship between herself and the leveret (baby hare); she has a life, but it is in the background to this compelling situation which requires much of her time and attention. It's not a tragic story! No tears at the end, although hares and other wild creatures don't live as long as we do. She opened up her life, her home, her mind and her heart to this helpless animal, and she was changed by it. When I was done with the book, I looked around at my life and thought about all the extraneous things here, things I can possibly let go of. Things that would get in the way of allowing such an event to possibly overturn parts of one's life.
Chloe Dalton was the perfect person to have this experience, not only because she writes wonderfully, but because of the way she respected this creature so entirely. If you like animal stories, consider Raising Hare.
It's been more like mid-March: cold, and snow predicted three times this past week. Neighboring towns got it when we didn't - until today. And it never reached forty today. But I was also looking at my blogposts from five years ago, and we had some snow in April then, too! It's helpful to have a way to remember these things.
Of course, it's gone now. The pansies I bought at the supermarket are cheerfully keeping company near the daffodils, but even though they're hardy, when it's threatening snow or twenty-eight degree temperatures, I take them in for the night, high up and out of Daisy's reach.
"It's worth reflecting on the idea that certain things and certain things only have been 'assigned to our brush', given us to work with, know and describe. It reminds me strongly of the Prayer Book petition that we should 'do all such good works as thou hast prepared for us to walk in'. Most of us are under pressure, external and internal, to do everything, be good at everything, be accountable to everyone for everything! It is not so. In the divine economy each of us has a particular grace, gift and devotion. Finding out what that is, and learning how to be guilt-free about not doing everything else, may be part of what our Lenten journey is for."*
- Malcolm Guite, The Word in the Wilderness, Sunday, 3rd week of Lent
*The emphasis is mine.
I saw rabbit tracks in the snow around the bird feeder; do rabbits eat sunflower seeds? I hope he found some food.
I finished reading The Bird in the Tree. It's the first in a trilogy, with the middle one being my favorite. But I had forgotten how good this was - or maybe I hadn't realized it before. I'm wanting to read the whole thing again, but it's not long ago I read the second, so I may just go right to the third, which is The Heart of the Family - I don't remember it that well, but I know I loved these three books.
"In times of storm and tempest, of indecision and desolation, a book already known and loved makes better reading than something new and untried. The meeting with remembered and well-loved passages is like the continual greeting of old friends; nothing is so warming and companionable."
- Elizabeth Goudge, The Bird in the Tree
Meanwhile, I continue with J.D. Vance's memoir of his youth in Appalachia. He's come a long way from that very unstable childhood, to the fellow who made that terrific speech in Munich the other day.
"The purpose of education, finally, is to create in a person the ability to look at the world for himself, to make his own decisions, ....But no society is really anxious to have that kind of person around. What societies really, ideally, want is a citizenry which will simply obey the rules of society. If a society succeeds in this, that society is about to perish. The obligation of anyone who thinks of himself as responsible is to examine society and try to change it and to fight it - at no matter the risk. This is the only hope society has. This is the only way societies change."
- James Baldwin, from Plough, Winter, 2025
"How Samuel Adams supported his family starting around 1769 is a mystery. With his brewery closing that year, his only steady income was his small salary as clerk of the Massachusetts House of Representatives. According to gossip, the Adamses were so poor at this time that John Hancock and other friends sent them food to keep them from starving and repaired the Purchase Street house to keep it from falling. There was even a joke around Boston about Adams's letter writing: 'Samuel Adams writes the letters and John Hancock pays the postage’.”
Dennis Fradin, the author of this biography, says that Samuel Adams never held a good job when he was younger, he was more of a thinker. And it seems that our revolution would Never have come to pass without him. He knew we needed to revolt against the oppressive British rule and he never stopped insisting on it, trying to stir up the populace.
Come to be born, to bear us to our birth,
To touch a dying world with new-made hands
And make the rags of time our swaddling bands.
- Malcolm Guite, Waiting on the Word
I had a birthday, and there was snow! That always makes it ten times better.
Winter has started early, which has been a topic of conversation around here every day, but it's going to be more temperate this week, and maybe up near sixty on Wednesday. The snow is melting, even as I type.
We sang People Look East this morning at church; I think I always mention this in December, but the melody, the lyrics, the sprightly and hopeful air it has -
People look East, the time is near
Of the crowning of the year.
I love to sing it.
I haven't done any cards yet, and it's practically two weeks away. We will what happens, and what doesn't.
From Isaiah 30: ...the Lord will make the glory of his voice heard in the joy of your heart.
I then got the idea to put it all through a sieve. Well, I've never done that before; it was a bit of work and I was tired. But on the other hand, now the seeds are out, and it's all smooth as can be from the sieving.
Time to rest.
Or, what IS a name?
I was reading in Exodus, chapter twenty-three. Verses 20 + 21: I am going to send an angel in front of you, to guard you on the way and to bring you to the place that I have prepared. Be attentive to him and listen to his voice; do not rebel against him, for he will not pardon your transgression; for my name is in him.
I find this so interesting, and puzzling. What does that mean?
Why does God say we should call upon the name of the Lord? Why doesn't he just say we should call upon him? If I see you at a distance, and call, I call you, not your name. I am calling to you, yourself. I may call out your name, or to put it differently, I may call you by your name, but I'm not calling on your name, so what does that mean?
Somebody recommended a book to me called God Has a Name, by John Mark Comer - it was somewhat helpful (although I don't remember how - guess I need to reread!), but I still have the question. And today in Exodus, there it was again, "my name is in him". I really feel that this is something we don't understand; that there is more to a name than we realize.
But I'm not the one to figure it out.
"Love leads to communion, and communion allows everyone to move forward in harmony. Communion is not a happiness passively enjoyed, but it struggles to maintain a fraternal spirit and to open the doors of this fraternity to all people. By nature, love propagates itself; it is contagious, communicates to others, and draws everyone to communion.
I must engrave this maxim within myself: 'Communion is the struggle of every moment.' A moment's neglect can destroy it; a mere trifle suffices: a single thought without charity, an obstinately maintained prejudice, a harmful attachment, a personal ambition or interest, an action done for myself and not for the Lord, returning to a bad habit already abandoned, the desire for personal satisfaction that overrides what is pleasing to the Lord.
Help me, Lord, to examine myself in this way: Who is the center of my life: you or me? If you are the center, then everyone will be gathered into unity. But if, instead, I see that people around me lose interest and disperse, that will be a sign that I have put myself at the center."
- Cardinal Francis Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan
I just found this here:
"At fixed hours time should be given to certain definite reading. Haphazard reading, constantly varied and lighted on by chance does not edify but makes the mind unstable. Taken into the memory lightly, it leaves it even more lightly. You should concentrate on certain authors and let your mind grow used to them….
Some part of your daily reading should be committed to memory every day, taken as it were into the stomach, to be more carefully digested and brought up again for frequent rumination—something in keeping with your vocation and helpful to concentration, something that will take hold of the mind and save it from distraction.
The reading should also stir your affections and give rise to prayer, which should interrupt your reading—an interruption which should not so much impede the reading as to restore to it a mind evermore purified for understanding.
For reading serves the purpose of the intention with which it is done. If a reader truly seeks God in the reading, everything he reads tends to promote that end, making the mind surrender in the course of the reading and bring all that is understood into Christ’s service."
- William of St. Thierry
When you have a garden, you always notice how much more the plants respond to a rainfall, as opposed to the water they get from the hose. After a couple of thunderstorms, I won't have to water for a couple of days, at least.
And I never put on my little wellies without feeling around inside them first - you never know.
There's a bird who seems to sing when it's getting dark. He's the only one singing, and it's nice and loud, very melodious. Tonight, it made me turn to the window and there I saw a peach sky! I knew I wouldn't be able to capture it, so I just sat there, enjoying.
I think I saw our little patient in the garden this morning - at least, it was a small rabbit; there's no way I'll ever get close enough to tell if it's him.
It's very much like summer now. We are going to have days in the nineties for the next five days; they're warning us to be careful. I made dinner early in the day, and that was the smartest thing I did. It didn't heat up the house much, and I had that work behind me.
Somebody just set off something quite loud out my window. It's nine o'clock, and dark. My brother said it sounded like a cherry bomb. It sounded to me right out my window! Well, as long as they don't do it all night.
I am putting the green dress aside - in this weather, it seems heavy. I can't stand the thought of it! I've got some pretty deep blue lawn and I'll choose a skirt pattern for it. Something nice and floaty, I hope.
I discovered a new bread cookbook, and the method is quicker and with a much wetter dough. The loaves are small but I don't care about that. This is something I won't mind doing in summer, if bread is needed.
"The meaning of the Sabbath is to celebrate time rather than space. Six days a week we live under the tyranny of things of space; on the Sabbath we try to become attuned to holiness in time. It is a day on which we are called upon to share in what is eternal in time, to turn from the results of creation to the mystery of creation; from the world of creation to the creation of the world.
He who wants to enter the holiness of the day must first lay down the profanity of clattering commerce, of being yoked to toil. He must go away from the screech of dissonant days, from the nervousness and fury of acquisitiveness and the betrayal in embezzling his own life. He must say farewell to manual work and learn to understand that the world has already been created and will survive without the help of man. Six days a week we wrestle with the world, wringing profit from the earth; on the Sabbath we especially care for the seed of eternity planted in the soul. The world has our hands, but our soul belongs to Someone Else. Six days a week we seek to dominate the world, on the seventh day we try to dominate the self."
- The Sabbath, by Abraham Joshua Heschel
Monday we went to the shore to visit a relative. I so enjoyed the ride; the trees are beginning to flower, forsythia is still brightly glowing and everyone is growing daffodils, it seems. It was delightful.
I had a quiet few days this weekend catching up on some painting in the bathroom. I also cut out fabric for a dress.
I was searching online for a linen blend to make the Nepheline blouse, but couldn't settle on anything. Meanwhile, I've had this green for years, and decided to make a dress from it. It's been hanging around too long, and I think it'll suit this pattern.
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My project today was to finally do my state income taxes. Now I can relax. I never intend to leave them till the end, but I keep putting household things first. A dumb idea, in certain circumstances.
Our weather this week has suddenly turned warmer, and the clothes in my closet are not entirely suitable for temperatures in the sixties and seventies. This has got me scrambling. I am also thinking about what I'd like to sew next. I like this Nepheline blouse.
I was starting on the soup, sauteeing onion, etc., and I saw Leo outside, or maybe it was Leon - I have never seen them together, so am never sure. He was in the driveway; I tapped on the back door and he saw me. I went back to my cooking for a while, but Daisy somehow realized he was out there, and when I returned to the door, he was on the step.
He smelled the food, I'll bet. I put the chair there for Daisy to get a better view.
He didn't stay very long - I hope he went home to Dianne. Some of her cats are true wanderers, wanting to be outside all the time. I was just about to say it was a little excitement for Daisy, but she doesn't really need anything like that for stimulation; she is submerged in cat madness lately.
Can you guess what this is?
She started pulling down my bath towel the other day. She did it twice. But I have a solution.
I just need to unpin it before I get in the shower. I mean, to remember to unpin it.
The Medieval Mind of C.S. Lewis is very interesting. The author, Jason Baxter, quotes Lewis:
"In all previous ages that I can think of the principal aim of rulers, except at rare and short intervals, was to keep their subjects quiet, to forestall or extinguish widespread excitement and persuade people to attend quietly to their several occupations. And on the whole their subjects agreed with them. They even prayed (in words that sound curiously old-fashioned) to be able to live "a peaceable life in all godliness and honesty" and "pass their time in rest and quietness." But now the organization of mass excitement seems to be almost the normal organ of political power. We live in an age of "appeal", "drives", and "campaigns." Our rulers have become like schoolmasters and are always demanding "keenness." And you notice that I am guilty of a slight archaism in calling them "rulers." "Leaders" is the modern word. I have suggested elsewhere that this is a deeply significant change of vocabulary. Our demand upon them has changed no less than theirs on us. For of a ruler one asks justice, incorruption, diligence, perhaps clemency; of a leader, dash, initiative, and (I suppose) what people call "magnetism" or "personality."
