the final tally

A record: one hundred forty five kids for Halloween, and we didn't run out. Of candy. And Dolly didn't run out either (outside, that is), and Henry slept throughout despite the cold air coming in the door.

a library cat

We've got a cat coming into the library; he lives two houses away. He began by hanging around outside the front (electric) doors, greeting everybody who approached, and I mean everybody. He is the most friendly cat I ever saw, but he never came in. One day it was lovely and warm out and I set the doors to stay open; he came inside. Apparently it was the movement of the doors which he didn't understand, but now he's got it and he's in a lot.

He is just darling, and uses the library as a napping place - we don't give him food.

As far as I can tell, his people bother with him very little -  he's on his own a lot. Most of us here enjoy seeing him, but the last two library cats both met their ends getting hit by cars on this busy street.  I wish they'd keep him inside.

m&m's and lilacs

As a lifelong chocolate lover, even as a kid, I felt certain they must serve m&m's in Heaven (and hot dogs in Hell, since I have never liked them). 


"I'm sure heaven is bounded by a white picket fence that never needs repainting, and with lilacs always in bloom hanging deep clusters over it."

                                                                 -  Gladys Taber,  Stillmeadow Daybook

more cute rocks

I was beginning to think the little painted rock thing was past, when after two weeks, a new flurry of them have appeared.

Terrible photos, cute rocks. :)

falling

A lot of wind and rain yesterday, and leaves are starting to come down.

desire for truth, need for good

"The various emperors of the world can strip the Church of every resource, discredit it in every way, make it powerless to do the works of the Gospel, but no one will ever be able to take the Gospel away, the joy of its Lord....No earthly authority will be able to possess the heart of man forever through the propaganda of lies, with masked promises and apparent democracies. The conscience can remain dazed for a long time, but sooner or later, something happens that reawakens and regenerates it, since at its root there is an indestructible core: the desire for truth and the need for good. Let no one be deceived: Christianity can be reduced to a visible minority, but it can never be eliminated, because the Lord said, Do not be afraid, I am with you until the end of the world, and because the human soul is made for God. And this is stronger than all of the persecutions and all of the lies that circulate so rapidly in the air today."

                                                 - Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco,  from Magnificat, October 2017

meatballs, improved

We get our ground beef from someone we know who has a dairy farm, and the meat is rather lean - because they're dairy cows? I don't know. Anyway, it make for dry-ish meatballs. I once tried adding olive oil but it made no difference. Then one day I thought of adding some oats, my reasoning being that oatmeal is slimy and that might be a good thing. Well, it worked!

I put in about two tablespoons per cup, with everything else the same. The only time it doesn't work is when I forget to add it.

another visit from Tootsie

If you've been reading here a while, you may remember Tootsie, previously Cindy, who used to live with us. Well, her people are currently cruising around Australia so we have her for six weeks.

yes, this is the best picture I could get

I can't believe how well things are going. This is how it was last time, and I've been dreading this visit for a year and a half because of the last time. But the best thing you can do when you dread something is to pray about it, and that's what I did. After all, we have another cat here now - I couldn't imagine how we were going to shift them around and stay sane. 

My brother announced she'd have to stay in the basement. I felt really bad, but you know what? She is more peaceful than she's been any other time we've kept her. You know how they say that children need to know there are boundaries? That dogs feel safer in a crate sometimes? Well, I realized something about this cat. She used to be so aggressive towards Dolly (and still would be if we gave her the chance) and now I get it that she feels threatened by other cats; this time she's in a space that's all her own. She doesn't see the others and they don't bother her. My brother built two wooden platforms up near each window (with bedding up there) and ramps to go up to each; on every nice day he removes the glass and she gets the fresh air and hears the sounds of the day. The pantry closet is there, a fridge, and washer and dryer, so we often go down to get things or do laundry. There's a lot of places to poke around and she has her own radio, which really seems to appeal to her and make her less restless. It's been three and a half weeks already - I can't believe it! The other day we found her sleeping in a laundry basket - so cute, but as soon as my camera appeared she started squiggling around and trying to pose. 

Anyway, thank God!

not so much red, but pretty bright

Sweetie looks like a Halloween cat in this photo, with the mostly orange swamp maple in the background.

I look forward to the spectacle every year when this tree turns color and positively glows, even on overcast days, but usually with lots of red in it. They're warning us to expect more subdued colors this fall; so far, this orange is looking pretty wild to me.

little handmaid (with a tail)

Sweetie sleeps with me every night. Way back I learned to keep a small container of her dry food nearby, because she will appear before me, purring loudly and trying to get onto the pillow above my head, kneading and pulling my hair, tail flicking around my face. Miraculously, I figured out that if I give her some food, she'll eat and either go away, or move to the foot of my bed. She's very cute, and very dear, and as my brother said - a barnacle. She sits there, waiting and hoping, and rather dependent on my response.

And when I see her like this, the passage from Psalm 123 *always* comes to my mind:

"...as the eyes of servants are on the hands of their masters, as the eyes of the handmaid are on the hands of their mistress, so are our eyes unto the Lord our God."

Funny little thing.

an event

"Christianity is not an intellectual system, a packet of dogmas, a moralism; Christianity is rather an encounter, a love story; it is an event."

                                               - Joseph Ratzinger

my second favorite color

It's funny that on the same plant, you have green peppers, and then these, so thoroughly orange.  Why?

Anyway, they're always expensive at the store, so this is a treat. Tomorrow, into the skillet, my little pretties!

"even the sandwich tray"

After watching a film version of Mansfield Park, I decided to read the book again.

"A young woman, pretty, lively, with a harp as elegant as herself, and both placed near a window, cut down to the ground, and opening on a little lawn, surrounded by shrubs in the rich foliage of summer, was enough to catch any man's heart. The season, the scene, the air, were all favourable to tenderness and sentiment. ... it was all in harmony; and as every thing will turn to account when love is once set going, even the sandwich tray..."

                                                   -  Jane Austen,  Mansfield Park


"I would almost cut off one of my hands if it would enable me to write like Jane Austen with the other."

                                                   - Mary Russell Mitford

on curtained window panes

It is the Harvest Moon! On gilded vanes

and roofs of villages, on woodland crests

and their aerial neighborhoods of nests

deserted, on the curtained window-panes,

of rooms where children sleep, on country lanes

and harvest-fields, its mystic splendor rests!

Gone are the birds that were our summer guests,

with the last sheaves return the laboring wains!

All things are symbols: the external shows

of Nature have their image in the mind,

as flowers and fruits and falling of the leaves;

the song-birds leave us at the summer's close,

only the empty nests are left behind,

and pipings of the quail among the sheaves.

-  The Harvest Moon

  by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 

Sweetie with apples

Many things have been conspiring against my cooking up our apples, so they sit in a bag on the kitchen floor.

 But today Sweetie discovered what a nice rumbling sound an apple makes when you roll it.

the life of heaven

"Anne walked home very slowly in the moonlight. The evening had changed something for her. Life held a different meaning, a deeper purpose. On the surface it would go on just the same; but the deeps had been stirred. It must not be with her as with poor butterfly Ruby. When she came to the end of one life it must not be to face the next with with the shrinking terror of something wholly different - something for which accustomed thought and ideal and aspiration had unfitted her. The little things of life, sweet and excellent in their place, must not be the things lived for; the highest must be sought and followed; the life of heaven must be begun here on earth."

                                                        - Anne of the Island,  L. M. Montgomery

going beyond

"A person does not pray primarily to find himself, but to give himself, to enter into a plan of salvation that goes beyond himself."
                                     
                                                                  - Fr. Bernard Bro, from Magnificat, October 2017
                                                           

the Church Mice

As much as I enjoy looking at the new picture books when they come into the library, it often seems they are written to show off the cleverness of the author, rather than delight and instruct the children. It wasn't always that way.

But recently I've been interlibrary loaning every Church Mice book I can get, by Graham Oakley. We used to have those where I work but they stopped circulating and had to be removed. He began the series in the seventies and they are dated, but since I remember that era (well!) I can relate, and they. are. so. hilarious. If you need a good laugh, and are of a "certain age" they would do the trick.

They're more wordy than the average picture book and the illustrations have lots going on. It may be that Mr. Oakley was also writing for the adults' amusement, but I'm pretty sure that kids would enjoy these stories, too.

"things that belong together are sure to come together"

"I thought you'd come today. Things that belong together are sure to come together. What a lot of trouble that would save some people if they only knew it. But they don't... and so they waste beautiful energy moving heaven and earth to bring things together that don't belong."

                                                                               -   Anne of Avonlea

fancy

An eggplant stem?

or a leprechaun's cap?

a surprise find

In an unfamiliar supermarket the other day, and this was on clearance. I didn't know you could even buy sprouted wheat flour! Thought you had to sprout it yourself. I look forward to using it.

round and round we go

"Everything that needs to be said has already been said", counseled Andre Gide, "but since no one was listening, everything must be said again."
                                          
                                      -    Philip Pilkington, in American Affairs 

pretty with pink

Could it be that our Dolly is secretly a little homebody?

Or is it just the color scheme?

charming acts of randomness

It's a thing, I guess. On Facebook, so I didn't know about it, since I'm not there. But people are taking smooth rocks and painting on them. Then they leave them randomly about for others to find, and hopefully be delighted, amused or something else pleasant. In the past week, five of them have turned up at the library.

Here are the two from yesterday, although later I saw a third as we were leaving, sitting on the copier. But this one was found in the young adult section

and Katie came across this one on the stairs going up to the children's department

So cute! A week ago a patron saw one on her way in, among the flowers in the big planter - it was a charming little cottage. And there was one on the bench outside that was painted to look like a cheeseburger! They all have the name of your town and the word "rocks" on the back, like "New York Rocks", for example.  Are they doing this where you live?

They're not for us; I guess you're supposed to take it and put it someplace where you think somebody else would enjoy seeing it. We left them, feeling this was up to the patrons to do.

It's nice to think that when somebody wants to drop off one of these, the library comes to mind.

unexpected vegetable

At the beginning of summer, my brother was given a vegetable plant. He put the medium-sized pot in the garden near the house amongst the other things, and they grew up around it and he never actually put it in the ground. It got tall.

Last week I wondered about a pretty purplish flower on it, but he couldn't remember what type of plant it was.

Now we know. And there are two, growing out of a not-very-big pot. A nice surprise!

duty

"...Anne went herself to the east gable and sat down by her window in the darkness alone with her tears and her heaviness of heart. How sadly things had changed since she had sat there the night after coming home! Then she had been full of hope and joy and the future had looked rosy with promise. Anne felt as if she had lived years since then, but before she went to bed there was a smile on her lips and peace in her heart. She had looked her duty courageously in the face and found it a friend - as duty ever is when we meet it frankly."

                                                                  -   Anne of Green Gables, L. M. Montgomery

time for applesauce

We're picking the apples now; they are quite small, but clear. The first batch of applesauce was bland - how strange! These apples made delicious applesauce last time. But anyway, I flavored the next batch and it was good. Lots of cooking ahead.

for strength, not ease

Father, hear the prayer we offer:

Not for ease that prayer shall be,

But for strength that we may ever

Live our lives courageously.

Not for ever in green pastures

Do we ask our way to be;

But the steep and rugged pathway

May we tread rejoicingly.

Not for ever by still waters

Would we idly rest and stay;

But would smite the living fountains

From the rocks along the way.

Be our strength in hours of weakness

In our wand'rings be our guide;

Through endeavor, failure, danger,

Father, be there at our side.

-   from Magnificat, September 2017

little buddy

She sleeps with me every night; she was just on my lap as I was typing.

Last night my brother referred to her as "the barnacle". 

just a little blue cheese

I've discovered how delicious a garden tomato salad can be with a bit of crumbled blue cheese and vinaigrette.

feral cats in Rome

I've been reading a new and very, very interesting book, The Inner Life of Cats, by Thomas McNamee. One chapter treats the feral cat issue, particularly in Rome, with more than 100 cat colonies; in one colony called Largo Argentina the population density was equivalent to 38,000 cats per square mile. 

"But studies have shown that where food is abundant, cats develop completely new systems of sociality that can allow for high density. Picture how New Yorkers and Parisians preserve their dignity on a crowded subway car."

In 1988 the Roman authorities forbade euthanasia of any cat or dog except those incurably ill or fatally injured, and in 1991 the Italian Parliament proclaimed that feral cats had a right to live free and couldn't be moved from their colony. 

There is a metro station in the city called Piramide (pyramid)  and "Adjacent to the Pyramid is their nighttime prowling ground, the leafy, cool Protestant Cemetery, where John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley are buried...Many of the monuments are fancifully ornate examples of the gravestone-maker's art, and the whole place is impeccably kept. Somebody, doubtless from the gattare (local cat lovers who leave food, and watch out for them, etc.), evidently picks up the cat poop, because there's none to be seen... Someone - the city of Rome? the volunteers? - has hidden audio somewhere in the ruins, so that at night the cats have classical music playing for them." (emphasis mine)