unexciting update

So I went ahead and changed the layout. Don't worry, I'm leaving the poll up so you can still vote  on your favorite header. I enjoy designing them, but always struggle with getting Blogger with cooperate and not make the post titles a dumb color..... *teenage eye roll* I'm a novice at this.

But not this type of novice!

Any thoughts on blog designing? Do you like the newest format? Is it too busy? I don't blog for my readers, or for money (how I wish), but I'm open to suggestions and advice!





School started today.  I read a-bunch-of-stuff. I have to ease into math and science slowly. *insert another eyeroll*


“Hope humbly then; with trembling pinions soar;
Wait the great teacher Death, and God adore.
What future bliss He gives not thee to know,
But gives that hope to be thy blessing now.
Hope springs eternal in the human breast:
Man never is, but always to be, blest.
The soul, uneasy and confin’d from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.”

—	Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man

“That we should establish ourselves in a sense of GOD’s Presence, by continually conversing with Him. That it was a shameful thing to quit His conversation, to think of trifles and fooleries.”

—

Brother Lawrence And I helped stack wood.  Exciting, I know.  <---- I resisted the urge to write "third eyeroll" there.Sorry, for a lame, unexciting post......next time, I will be blogging about {CENSORED}. Ya'll (I'm not really Southern, sorry) should go check out my little sister's blog, a puppy's bone. She writes about our Lab's various escapades. With photos, even. :) *radio voice* And so, blog readers, I leave you, but not without a GIF of Yoda, in all his The Empire Strikes Back glory, and a neat WW2 poster. Yoda is so awesome. Luke: eh....not so much.

Lol!

our need for music

Been busy here, fellow carbon-based life forms. Will try to post one *good* post a week during the school year.
So many things I could post about: my upcoming birthday, the ban on DDT and malaria, the decay of popular culture, music, what love really is, or I could post a recipe for chocolate milk which will make you die. (In a good way, that is, not a bad way!)
Well, I think I shall have to pick......music.


                                               ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 
(being rather a perfectionist, I HAD to make the divider another color!)


Music: It can feed your soul or kill it. It can change hearts or harden them. It can get your adrenaline pumping, or bore you half to death.*


Why does the human mind seem to need music? It isn't essential for life, and neither can we eat it. The answer may lie in the fact that men (and here I mean the entire race of man, not only the male portion of it) do not consist of merely their physical bodies. We are the (proud) possessors of immortal souls as well, created by a higher being as was the body.  And this soul needs food as much as our bodies do. No, we can't feed our brains cheeseburgers. In fact, the brain exercising and soul growing is in fact the hardest part of being human. It is much easier to change our physical bodies then to change our hearts. Thus, it would stand to reason that feeding our souls nourishing meat and drink would also require more mental work than not feeding it, and staying the way you are now for eternity.


But I digress...to return the subject at hand (and not wander off into a theological and metaphysical** quandary), my hypothesis of why we need (and, to assuage that need, create and perform) music, is that "real" music feeds our souls. And by "real" music, I mean hard music. Classical music,*** generally, or any true or beautiful music which may not appeal to you at first, depending on your level of education, peers, or family.


Forgive me for using a cliched example, but this could be compared to....food.**** You could think of classical (or difficult) music as the meat, or in a vegan's case, soy protein, of the diet. And the more vapid, less deep music, or "music" as the case may be, as dessert, candy bar, marshmallow, poison, or everything else.


Or think of it this way: If you can train your ears to enjoy deeper things: good literature (as opposed to light-n-fluffy reading, Dick and Jane, or romance novels*****), great music (hey, there has to be a reason it has survived so long!), healthier food (your body needs to eat sometimes too) or harder things in general, you can still enjoy the less fluffy stuff (sometimes).
 But if you are only trained to the fluffy (sometimes in the complimentary sense)) stuff, you will have a hard time understanding the deeper stuff. 


Which will you choose?


And as a final note, your soul's worth lies in your own hands. It is your own choice what you make of yourself; whether you feed your soul with the good stuff, the meat and drink, the soy protein****** which will enlarge you mind, or keep on stuffing the junk food into your mind, the effects of which may not be visible right away, but will eventually accumulate in something far worse than a sick body: moral and mental decay!


Finis.


FOOTNOTES:


*For instance, country or pop music.
**What a fun word to say: metaphysical! I <3 long words.
***Classical music hasn't actually been proven to make  you smarter, but it can't hurt IMHO. And it doesn't distract you from your work with silly lyrics.
****.....Always a good thing. Especially with chocolate or frosting. 


***** "Oh George, marry me, darling, or I shall throw myself off this cliff!"
******Yuck. Save soybeans, eat more cow. ;-) 


(These footnotes were fun to write!)


OKAY. Now that I have attempted to convince you of the importance of "real" music in the grand scheme of things, I feel liberated to jabber on about my personal music preferences.


Never having been much exposed to more popular and recent music as a young child, I grew up thankfully old-fashioned in my music tastes. Now that I am older, the more I see of popular music  today (2011) the less I am impressed with few exceptions. Some of it seems to be a sort of opiate of the masses, keeping them distracted from bigger issues, and some of it is just obscene, and some of it is just dumb, at least to me.

For classical composers, my two hands-down favorites are Beethoven, and Mozart. (NO, I did NOT forge their signatures. I got them off Wikipedia)





For me, Beethoven portrays the most timeless passion, strong beauty and mystery in his music. His themes are always fresh and new sounding, never dated. My particular favorite of all of his works I have listened to thus far is his Piano Concerto #4. It reminds me of the power and inscrutability of the ocean. His pieces are rendered even more amazing by the fact that he was deaf when he wrote some of them! Personally, Ludwig Beethoven was said to be a strange and turbulent character, proof that God can work through all of us! 
I'm planning on listening to every single one of his symphonies. No, stupid, not all at once.





And Mozart's music is just....beautiful. His music with its often incredibly melodies reminds me of a dancer, light and airy on her feet, skipping through high soprano pieces and darker, heavier pieces with perfect ease. His music sounds like his signature looks. And I am a fan of some of his opera music (from, at least those I have listened to!) Being a kind, thoughtful person,I will post links to Voi, Che Sapete (one of my favorite pieces to sing) and L'ho perduta, me meschina (another fun piece to sing). I can't say I've listened to a ton of Mozart; will have to sometimes.


Chopin is nice for something different.


On to singers: I can't say I have a favorite singer. I do enjoy opera, which while not for everyone, is thoroughly dramatic, tragic, romantic, melodramatic (I enjoy amateurly over-acting scenes) and beautiful. 
Favorite pieces at the moment:


Una Voce Poco Fa from the Barber of Seville (Rossini) as sung by Maria Callas.
Casta Diva from Norma can't remember who composed it?!
Nessun Dorma from Turandot 
O Mio Babbino Caro 


Anyway, I also like a select few Broadway musicals: namely, My Fair Lady and Man of La Mancha.  The former because it is hilarious, and the latter because it reminds me of these goofy goats, and I like the music!


I listen to jazz with der Vater sometimes too, which is okay, but puts me to sleep, sadly.


But my absolute overall just plain FUN music HAS to be Gilbert and Sullivan. Hilarious, extremely fun to both sing and act, and witty lyrics and also alliterative agony. 


What music makes you, dear readers, the most happy?


Auf Weidersehn!


~ Diana


"Serve the LORD with gladness: come before his presence with singing."
Psalm 100:2

untitled

Happy Fourth of July, everyone-who-is-reading-this-page!
God Bless America!
And enthusiastic if insufficient gratitude to all of our troops and veterans who put their lives on the line that our way of living could be preserved. Thank you.
Not that our way of life is perfect, but it is much better than most/many countries on this earth today. It is our duty to preserve this culture, our heritage, and keep it from crumbling. Please pray for our country, that we can fulfill this duty. 


A RANT- You have been forewarned.....
Another thing: why is it that city/suburban dwellers tend to look down on farm animals and farmings in general? Not all of them (I'd prefer not to stereotype them all, as I am a former suburban dweller myself!); this is slowly changing due to the local food movement and such. (BTW: while eating locally produced food is good,  better, and delicious, I'd like to inform my readers that commerce and imported foods are not a bad thing. Walmart, Oreos, and supermarket vegetables do have their place too. Also, without industrialized farming we wouldn't be able to feed all the people we can feed!) 


Farming is important. To quote a bumper sticker popular amongst organic farmers, environmentalists, and suchlike:

 And, as the illustrious T. Jefferson wrote:
Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most independant, the most virtuous, and they are tied to their country and wedded to its liberty and interests by the most lasting bands. 


 In other words, farming connects you to this beautiful earth. A farmer's job is to steward the earth's resources, converting poorer land into grass into beef, lamb or chicken; growing vegetables and the very important cereals such as oats, wheat, and corn.
But not to romanticize it: farming is hard, sometimes heartbreaking, dangerous and dirty work. The advent of modern machinery has lifted much of the hand labor off the farmer's back, but running the dangerous  machinery can still  result in accidents. The reality, and if you raise any kind of animal you'll soon see this, is that things die. The weather fails the crops dependent on it. Many things can happen.  
...But my point is that farmers deserve more respect. Their job is hard, but someone has to do it. We all have to eat. Meat doesn't grow on Styrofoam trays.
....And my second point is that so do the animals they take care of! (deserve respect) We all love our dogs, cats, and assorted pets. They provide companionship and love, a beautiful gift from God in the form of pets. But do our dogs or cats actually produce anything real? 
Hey, those cattle died to make that cheeseburger. The milk cows produce many gallons of milk every day which goes into ice cream, cheese, or yogurt. (or whatever!)
And so do the smaller animals. Chickens, pigs, sheep, goats, ducks and many others are killed every day that you can eat. They may not be fun, may not be the smartest knives in the drawer, or even attractive, but these animals and their husbandry is one thing the world depends on for daily protein intake. It's a symbiotic relationship: we take care of the animals, and they provide us meat, milk, eggs, fur, or whatnot which we need.
So, next time you see a cow, say "Hi. Thanks, buddy!"


~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 
Rant finis.
*whew* Writing is hard work. I think I'll eat some lunch now. 


Edited:
DISCLAIMER: I'd also like to say that worse problems than prejudices against farmers are threatening our country...lest I sound like an environmentalist!