Psalm 1

 ¹Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.

 ²But his delight is in the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he meditate day and night.

 ³And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.

 ⁴The ungodly are not so: but are like the chaff which the wind driveth away.

 ⁵Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous.

 ⁶For the LORD knoweth the way of the righteous: but the way of the ungodly shall perish.

16 before 16: small goals

These lists seem to be all the rage in the   blogging world. For once, I'll hop onto the bandwagon and make one, completely ignoring the fact that my last birthday was over 4 months ago. Because I'm cool like that.

my list: 

1. Learn to drive a car.

2. Learn to shoot a gun.

YEAH!

3. Finish Algebra 1. Yuck.

3. Write a novel. 

4. Buy something from ModCloth. I love their clothes.  2/12

5. Go to Glacier National Park in Montana, and/or hike (part of) the Appalachian trail.

 two photos of Glacier Nat'l Park in Montana.

6. Get a job.

7. Learn to shear sheep! (or groom dogs)

{via}

8. Be an artist.  Do something drastic.

The Magpie by Claude Monet.

9. Witness the birth of an animal. 

10. Do a real finished painting or drawing and frame it.

11. Improve my relationship with God: stop resisting and let Him be in charge, rather than me.

12. Read an at least 600 page book.

13. Decide if I want to be a veterinarian or not.

14. Make a baked Alaska. And have it turn out right!

{via}

15. Make macarons.

{via}

16.  Stay out really late and identify constellations.

{via}    This is a close-up of Orion.

Oh yes, and I'm finally reading The Hunger Games. Pretty good so far, well-written, although part of me wonders why they don't have any guns, for Pete's sake...

I'll do a review once I finish reading it.


Adios....

forgiveness

Not my picture.

“Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool."

Isaiah 1:18 

“To err is human, to forgive, divine.”  

~ Alexander Pope

m e r r y c h r i s t m a s !

we're not beautiful (warning: long post!)

I feel compelled to debunk the saying that we're all beautiful, at least on the inside. "Be yourself." (True, you should be "yourself", but sometimes it is more important to the do the right thing.) 

What-EVER. *insert snarky teenager voice*

We aren't beautiful....

whoa, bokeh

I absolutely refuse to believe Christmas is less than a week away. 

NONE of THESE PHOTOs ARE MINE (unfortunately!)


Maybe these photos will make me feel more Christmassy.

hey look, the moon!

   I

    THE wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees,
    The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas, 
    The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
    And the highwayman came riding—
                      Riding—riding—
    The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.

List 10 things you know to be absolutely certain

Here is my list.

be grateful

The one who offers thanksgiving as his sacrifice glorifies me; to one who orders his way rightly I will show the salvation of God!


~  Psalms 50:23


I am grateful to God* for many things:


Salvation. Sheep. Family. My few but completely amazing friends. Chickens that go bawk. Labrador retrievers. Hills. My iPod touch. My country. The ocean. Mashed rutabaga. Vanilla ice cream. Church.


Be thankful! And eat lots of turkey!

*Annoying footnote: as opposed to just being thankful to whatever vague and unknown deity is out there, I profess to be thankful to God, who has never given up on humanity. EVER.

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

sunday musings

"...Wise and good men, are, in my opinion, the strength of the state; much more so than riches or arms..."
~ Benjamin Franklin, 1750


Good point there, Ben!


...I pulled the above bit from an article my mom was reading. I, being unfortunately of a very nosy disposition, took a look at it. BTW, I'm (so is she) and Aristotelian. I haven't read too much of him yet; maybe I'll start with this because I do love animals! 


HEY!!! IT'S SUNDAY!!!! WHY AM I TALKING ABOUT ARISTOTLE???
.....After all, you can be the most learned and Classically educated person in the world, and still be lost eternally.


On to a classic work of non-fiction, a historical document to some, the Word to others: the Bible!


"How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? 


As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!” But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?” So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ."
~ Romans 10:14-17 E.S.V.


The above verse was featured in the sermon today at our Church. Interesting, and humbling thought to us proud mortals.


...Oh, and I was absolutely APPALLED to read that the average 8-18 year old American spends an average of 6.5 hours every day on some sort of electronic device. "Oh. My. Freaking. Gosh." ~ Evelyn (from her blog, Defeating Dragons.)


WHAT??????????? How are those kids EVER going to ACCOMPLISH anything if they're always on some device?!?!  The teenagers who "make a difference" and accomplish big things, (be it simply serving your family quietly, writing a book, getting a real job and performing it faithfully, or anything else REAL that requires dedication, finesse and skill) will always be the ones who spend less time distracting themselves and "goofing off" (as rudely put by my D.M.). 


Facebook, texting, and computer games aren't really the problem, after all. The problem is the kids themselves, their parents, and the society that produced them.   Double GAH!!!! Which even then hardly begins to express my "amazement and surprise, which you may judge from the expression of my eyes." Oops, sorry. Die hard Gilbert and Sullivan fan here. 

....And with that final depressing and sobering thought, I must leave you, dear readers.
Have a nice and at least reasonably happy Sabbath day. BTW, I find the word Sabbath to be infinitely more beautiful and musical a word than than Sunday, so I shall use it.


~ Diana 


Less depressing paintings:


Children in the Sea 1909 by Joaquin Sorolla y Bastida

I really like summer-y, beachy paintings. They instantly transport me to the ocean shore.......

Or to the rocks of "Rocky Point at Port-Goulphor".....by Claude Monet.

God's creation is indeed varied! 

the ignored sin

Sometimes I really hate the computer.
It can be such a distraction, evil in its very insidiousness. Suddenly you realize you just spent an hour on it when you "just went on" to check your email.
It can steal your time, and take your time away from the REAL physical world, and its people and needs. I just feel like I'm wasting my life, sometimes, when I go on the computer without an aim to accomplish.


The birds sing. Evil men plot. The chicken coop needs to be cleaned. A whole host of heathen nations need to hear the Word of God. There are real mountains to climb. Whole worlds to discover! And yet...
Here you are. Sitting on your computer aimlessly browsing your favorite sites/forums/games waiting for the screen to refresh. Playing a game. Cyber-giggling with your friends on Facebook. While time passes.....on and on....


This, my friends, is a serious sin. Wasting time. I'm not going to blatantly say we should NEVER play games, never go on the computer, or chat on Facebook, but I would like to point out that much of the things we do in our lives might simply be "filler": taking up our time while we never get anything back from it.


I'm not going into the content of what you might be doing on the computer; I'm going to focus on the time-wasting aspect. 


The computer, like much of technology, is completely neutral. Its content can be evil or good, and anything in between. The decision lies with us--and how we use it. The internet and the computer were developed to be tools, and extremely helpful ones at that. 


(Also, I'm not decrying people who play games or chat on Facebook or a forum to relax from their stressful, hardworking lives, or it helps them to get away from difficult times.)


It is about us. Are we living our lives in focused way? Are we skillfully sailing our ships through the rough ocean of life or are we aimlessing skidding along on every wave with our sails down? 


After all, America may have many problems that need to be dealt with if our country is to survive, but if our own lives and hearts aren't right, how can we set a good example? And being focused, and having a purpose in life, will certainly help. 
It is something I certainly struggle with! But sail on: their HAS to be a purpose in all of this. A bunch of small good decisions, the decision I can make today to not waste time, or to not commit a sin, will add up to something BIG tomorrow.


Finis.


Two Summery sailboat paintings:

Colorful Regatta by Lisa Lorenz.

The Greatest Race by Montague Dawson.


Auf Weidersehn.


~ Diana

punctuation lesson: apostrophe + sermon!!!

*Sometimes I wonder.....why do I even bother with this?  It seems like everyone (well, almost everyone!) doesn't care about spelling, and is vapid, silly, worried over things which don't matter,and foolish. Why bother?

Two points to make. (It helps me organize my thoughts to put them in points)

[Yeah, yeah. I know. Super-corny....a spear, point no. 1. Hey, we're into corny here!]

Point number 1. Not everyone is foolish/vapid/swept along by the demoralizing influences of our time. Notice I'm not saying every modern influence is demoralizing....we have so much wonderful technology, live healthier lives, still have freedom in this country at least, and maybe not *gasp, gurgle* of the *gasp* popular *gurgle* music is awful. Wow, that was hard for me to say. I can't stand most popular music.

Yet, in spite of all the bad influences, and evil that goes on, there are still good people. Kind, helpful people. Smart people who aren't borne away in the herd. People who stand up for what is right, good, and pure. People who through moral struggles still do the right thing no matter what the cost. Are you one of those people? I'm trying to be.

Point number 2. Even if people do do wrong, evil, and are vapid and silly, as a culture, have we really any right to abandon them because we are so much *better* than they? [Pride rears it's ugly head...dun dun dun....]

How much *better* are we, really? Even if we don't do evil on the outside, we think it inside. We're all sinners. Even if you aren't a Christian, you have to admit it's the truth. 

God didn't abandon us, even though our hearts were black with sin. Hey, this is starting to sounds like like a sermon......Anyway, I hope you can take something from my lecture. And I didn't start this blog to chat vapidly about myself....I want to discuss serious topics as well, providing they're PG rated. 

AND NOW, ONWARD GRAMMAR SOLDIERS!!!!!

Have a seat, please, ladies, and any stray gentlemen who may be lurking around. Side note: I don't want this to be a purely feminine-targeted blog, but one that any intelligent person, M or F, can read, enjoy, and will make them think. Hopefully. 

Today's lesson will be on the most fascinating subject of...Apostrophes. 

This is a apostrophe: ' . Strange how such a little mark can be the cause of so much heartbreak. Okay, maybe it is only heartbreak to me, since I hate to see the innocent little apostrophe abused. How sad.

Correct uses of apostrophes:

Example A.  "Kerry's bananas were the bane of Maud's existence."

                 "No, those aren't Artemis's arrows; they are Apollo's spears."

                 "Bill's cats are fat."

                 "The 1990s' were a great decade."

Incorrect use of apostrophes:

                "Kerry's banana's were the bane of Mauds' existence."

                "How many chocolate's do you want?"

                "Bills' cat's are fat."

                "I love the 1960's!"

Why are they incorrect? Because apostrophes are meant to show possession. Thus, Kerry's bananas. (We're assuming she owns the bananas and didn't shoplift them) Not banana's Kerry. And Maud's existence. 

So, I am assuming you are have absorbed that information.....on to a particular peeve of mine. YOUR. 

If the it is YOURS, it should be YOUR. If it is referring to someone else, i.e. "You're invited to a vandalism party!" it should be YOU'RE. Why? I don't pretend to know; refer to here for a more in-depth explanation of the finicky rules of grammar.

Lesson dismissed.  BTW, if you find a mistake, spelling error, or something similar on this 'ere blog, please let me know in a comment. 

Here is a Monet painting: click on it to make it larger, please.

I do like sailboats, and I'm also a fan of Impressionist paintings.

Auf Weidersehn, das Leser.

~ Diana

shakespeare! whee!

"To be, or not to be, that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them?"                 ~ Hamlet Is it better to die and end all the misery or to live and "suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune"?  Good question! Now for a bit of Gilbert and Sullivan wittiness:

BUNTHORNE: "Did you ever yearn?"

                                   PATIENCE: "I yearn my living, sir."

Yeah. So, that is life.........I wish I knew how to surf, man! 

"Some went down to the sea in ships, doing business on the great waters; they saw the deeds of the Lord, His wondrous works in the deep. For He commanded and raised the stormy wind, which lifted up the waves of the sea."

Psalm 107:23-25 

A quick pet peeve: Bible versions which don't capitalize the He and His. If it is pertaining to God it should be capitalized. Period. It just shows respect, even if you aren't a believer. I personally prefer the Thee and Thou, because it is more beautiful. However, I do think newer, more accessible versions of the Word do have their places, mainly for helping less-literate people understand it, and read it. Jesus didn't come to help the well-read people (only)--he came for the illiterate, the slobs, the poor, the destitute. 

Adios, my dear readers, for now! I trust all of you are having at least a reasonably tolerably fun summer 2011.....

~ Diana