On the third day of Christmas

Several bloggers have already shared one of my favorite Christmas videos (here is a link to the updated version of it), so I thought I would share from a group I recently found out about. Enjoy!

Wordless Wednesday - School Spirit

Wacky-Tacky day.

A new place to visit online

Faith & Family has a new blog written by Danielle Bean, Rachel Balducci, Lisa Hendey, Arwen Mosher, and Rebecca Teti.

A little something about the blog in their words:

As we help each other along the way, we hope that our magazine and blog will affirm something that is already written on every mother’s heart: That motherhood is a privilege. That family life is a joy. And that though being a wife and mother is likely to be the single most challenging thing any of us ever do, it is also likely to be the single most important thing any of us ever do as well.

Make it a daily stop -- it will be worth your while. (And they are having a grand opening giveaway right now.)

Another must read

Here is just another reason I enjoy the Archbold brothers' blog: I'm A Wii Catholic

If you aren't regularly reading Creative Minority Report, you are missing out on some great stuff. Matthew and Patrick are insightful and humorous. Bookmark them -- you won't regret it.

Blue

by The 10 year old (brought home among his end of year papers)

Blue is the color of rain water
It's the color of a tranquil sea
Blue's the color of a bubbling spring of hope
It's a downpour of sadness
It's a frozen inlet of a boy's dreams
Blue's a crystal rapid of joy
Blue's a water lily in the early morning
It's a forest mist
It's a thousand little pieces of sea glass
It's a raging sea of anger
Blue's a harbor of defeat
It's an everlasting string of sky
Blue's a seaport of fear
It's a simple bay of reflection

Wordless Wednesday - Scouting

Last event as a Webelos before becoming a Boy Scout.

Pondering

Christi recently posted about some of her favorite authors -- which also happen to be some of my favorites. We both enjoy Madeleine L'Engle. I discovered her Time books when I was in school and enjoyed reading about Meg Murry in A Wrinkle in Time and A Wind in the Door. At some point after I finished school, I read A Swiftly Tilting Planet and Many Waters. Last week I finally got An Acceptable Time and started reading it last night. I stopped mid chapter (not an easy thing for me to do) when I read this exchange between Polly and her grandmother:

. . . "Grand, why did Mother have so many kids?"
"Would you want any of you not to have been born?"
"No, but--"
"But it doesn't answer your question. . . . If a woman is free to choose a career, she's also free to choose the care of a family as her primary vocation."

Wow. Powerful words for an idea which was not widely accepted in 1989 when the book was published -- and still is not widely accepted.

Being the research geek I am, I looked up vocation. Here is what Wikipedia says:

A vocation is an occupation for which a person is suited, trained or qualified. It is also the inclination to undertake a certain kind of work, especially a religious career; often in response to a perceived summons; a calling. This type of vocation is either professional or voluntary, that is carried out more for its altruistic benefit than for income, which might be regarded as a secondary aspect of the vocation, however beneficial.

And thinking about vocations, especially the second part of the definition, brings me to Christine, who is celebrating the 1000th post of Domestic Vocation. If you haven't visited her before, please do.

Deprivation

I bought this at a Bob Evans while we were on vacation. When I saw it I thought of Margaret. I had to share it today because of her post.

Manly, yes -- not sure I'd like it too

Mandles video

I can think of several husbands (mine included) who would rather burn Mandles than "Golden Spice Pear and Seaside Holiday." However, we are in one of the over 50 areas in which this offer is not valid :)

Hat tip: Rachel

Blogging problem?

Last week Carolina Cannonball had a post about knowing when you have a blogging problem. I commented that you also know you have a blogging problem when you tell people you will be spending your vacation halfway between Bonfire of the Vanities and Pro Ecclesia.

So guess where I am? Yep, halfway between Bonfire of the Vanities and Pro Ecclesia.

I should have some interesting pictures to post later of the drive up here. The kids had control of the camera while I was driving so I am looking forward to downloading everything that caught their interest -- especially based on some of the conversations going on at the same time as the camera clicks.

Saturday we made it to Columbus and yesterday we went to COSI with the cousins. I took pictures there and will share some of those soon -- if I can ever get them uploaded to the laptop! Today, to quote the TomTom, we have reached our destination. Tomorrow we might be here during the day but tomorrow night the kids will be glad to see their great-grandparents.

So what about you? How would you complete the sentence?

You might have a blogging problem if . . .

The Lord is risen

From the bulletin of Saints Peter and Paul Catholic Church:

On Easter, the holiest day of the entire year, and for the entire Octave of Easter, Latin Catholics greet each other with the words of Luke 24:34, “Surrexit Dominus vere, alleluia!” (The Lord is risen indeed!”). The person so greeted responds, “Et apparuit Simoni, alleluia!” (“And hath appeared unto Simon!”). Catholics may even answer their telephones with this greeting. An old Ukrainian legend relates that, after His Resurrection, Christ threw Satan into a deep pit, chaining him with twelve iron chains. When Satan has chewed through each of the twelve chains, the end of the world will come. All year long, the Evil One gnaws at the iron, getting to the last link in the last chain -- but too late, for it is Easter, and when the people cry “Christ is risen!” all of Satan’s efforts are reversed. When the faithful stop saying the Easter acclamation, the end of time has come...

Reminiscing

The message board at a site started by a couple of my high school alumni has been running a Name that Song thread. It originally started with someone trying to remember a song for which she could only recall a line or two. The thread has since become a competition.

This morning the hint was "Once you told me long ago, to the prom that you would go.." As soon as I read it I could hear Marty Robbins singing it. Think about it and then watch the video.




And then I watched another Marty Robbins video.




Marty Robbins was one of my parents' favorite singers. And A White Sport Coat (and a Pink Carnation) was one of the songs my father liked to sing. Daddy's been gone 20 years now and he quit playing the guitar and singing at least ten years before he died, but he is alive and playing in my memory right now thanks to Luanne's Name that Song hint.

Some favorite photographs

I'm not sure why I'm still awake at 2:31 a.m., but I thought since I was awake, I would share two more images from the Library of Congress collection on Flickr.

Unidentified shelf of kitchen utensils and jars of spices



Unidentified stacks of home-canned food

How I have been spending my winter, part 1

Midsummer Day, Bronx Park

I have really enjoyed looking through the Library of Congress photosets on Flickr.

From The Commons description:

The key goals of this pilot project are to firstly give you a taste of the hidden treasures in the huge Library of Congress collection, and secondly to show how your input of a tag or two can make the collection even richer.

There are two sets of photographs: News in the 1910s and 1930s-40s in Color.

Over the course of two or three weeks, I managed to see all 1500 photos in the News in the 1910s photoset. If you are a baseball fan, you will find photos of Cy Young, Germany Schaefer, Russ Ford, James Mullen, John Titus, and many, many more. If boxing is your sport, there are pictures of Jack Johnson, Kid Sullivan, and Mrs. Edwards and Fraulein Kussin to name a few. Interested in politics? How about some pictures from the 1912 Democratic and Republican National Conventions? There are even pictures of the Titanic survivors reaching New York.

There are 1,615 pictures in the 1930s-40s in Color set. I have barely made my way into those, but I am looking forward to finding a lot of great treasures there, too.

By the way, the Library of Congress also has a blog.

I am?

I saw this at Red Cardigan's and thought I would try it.

You Are a Semi-Colon

You are elegant, understated, and subtle in your communication. You're very smart (and you know it), but you don't often showcase your brilliance. Instead, you carefully construct your arguments, ideas, and theories until they are bulletproof. You see your words as an expression of yourself, and you are careful not to waste them. You friends see you as enlightened, logical, and shrewd. (But what you're saying often goes right over their heads.) You excel in: The Arts You get along best with: The Colon

What Punctuation Mark Are You?

Semicolons are a dying breed of punctuation; maligned, misused, and misunderstood, they are fast disappearing.

I think I rather like being a semicolon. I agree with Red Cardigan when she expresses her admiration for those writers of the eighteenth and nineteenth century and their incredibly constructed sentences. I feel a need to reread some of those great authors.

The view over the fence this morning

If you were an IRL neighbor chatting over the back fence this morning, this is some of what you would have seen:


















And it would be unthinkable for me to be outside by myself.



And after such a cold, wet morning, there is nothing like a nice hot cup of tea.



Thanks for dropping in!

Maybe if you hum a few bars

One of my new favorite bloggers (that's you, Soutenus!) recently posted about an upcoming total lunar eclipse on 20 February. To celebrate, she and her students are having a moon song contest. They want to know:

"How many songs can you think of that have the word "moon" in them (not just the title but in any part of the lyrics)?"

I've come up with a couple and have some more trying to work their way out of my subconscious. If you know of any, head over and suggest them.

She's moved

Not Found

The requested URL /sys/main was not found on this server.

Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

That's what I have been getting the past few days when I clicked on my bookmarked link to Danielle Bean. If you like her blog and have been getting the same thing I was, don't worry -- here she is.

A question of privilege

I saw this at Entropy's site and thought I would take part. Having backtracked it through a few linked blogs, it is interesting to note that some -- me included -- are saying this isn't what matters. I knew I was loved. Even though we didn't have a lot, we had what we truly needed: a home and family.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

An interesting privilege meme from What Privileges Do You Have?, based on an exercise about class and privilege developed by Will Barratt, Meagan Cahill, Angie Carlen, Minnette Huck, Drew Lurker, Stacy Ploskonka at Illinois State University. If you participate in this blog game, they ask that you PLEASE acknowledge their copyright.

Bold the true statements.

1. Father went to college
2. Father finished college
3. Mother went to college
4. Mother finished college
5. Have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor
6. Were the same or higher class than your high school teachers
7. Had more than 50 books in your childhood home -- most of them were mine :)
8. Had more than 500 books in your childhood home.
9. Were read children's books by a parent
10. Had lessons of any kind before you turned 18
11. Had more than two kinds of lessons before you turned 18
12. The people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively -- maybe the now me, but not the me of childhood
13. Had a credit card with your name on it before you turned 18
14. Your parents (or a trust) paid for the majority of your college costs
15. Your parents (or a trust) paid for all of your college costs -- Grants, scholarships, student loans and work study
16. Went to a private high school
17. Went to summer camp
18. Had a private tutor before you turned 18
19. Family vacations involved staying at hotels -- What's a vacation? We did go visit my grandmother in Ohio when I was in ninth grade and had to stay at a Holiday Inn. Does that count?
20. Your clothing was all bought new before you turned 18
21. Your parents bought you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them
22. There was original art in your house when you were a child
23. You and your family lived in a single-family house
24. Your parent(s) owned their own house or apartment before you left home
25. You had your own room as a child -- maybe for one year after one of my sisters moved out and before she moved back :)
26. You had a phone in your room before you turned 18
27. Participated in a SAT/ACT prep course
28. Had your own TV in your room in high school -- for that one year of my own room, I had a small black and white TV in my room that wasn't for my use only; mine was the only room it could go in so whoever wanted to watch something different from the rest of the family could
29. Owned a mutual fund or IRA in high school or college
30. Flew anywhere on a commercial airline before you turned 16
31. Went on a cruise with your family
32. Went on more than one cruise with your family
33. Your parents took you to museums and art galleries as you grew up
34. You were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family


It doesn't look like much -- two definites and two partials -- but I don't feel underprivileged now, nor did I then. I was loved (check number 7 for proof of that!) and somehow we always had a roof overhead, food on the table, and clothes on our back. Anything else is gravy -- and too much gravy isn't good for you :)

~ ~ ~ ~ Because I had to find out more, I tracked down Dr. Barratt's web page about the privilege meme.

My new alarm clock

Or The son also rises . . .

My day started with the four year old jumping on the bed at 5:30 trying to wake me up because "the sun is up!" It appears we have a slightly different opinion of what constitutes sun up because it was pitch black when I opened my eyes. Just in time for him to cut on my bedside lamp. Ouch.

But it was okay anyway because it was the four year old. Perhaps I should let you in on the fact that yesterday he was the three year old. He's a little excited.

He was also nice enough to go wake up his brother and sisters so they were ready for school with plenty of time.

What's going on here

This is what the kitchen table looked like in November when the products sold by the family's Webelos scout (popcorn and peanuts) and Brownie (candy and nuts) came in for delivery.

Webelos end of the table

Brownie end of the table

I was thinking about this because it is Girl Scout cookie time and I am wondering what the table will look like next month when the first orders come in -- especially since Marie set a goal of selling 250 boxes.