libri

Well, I am alive.
*insert cheering and canned laughter*


My life is changing. 


My dad is in the hospital recovering from a serious back operation. He is in excruciating pain, so please put him in your prayers. 
I have spent the last several days at home (as usual; hermits hate going to new places) watching my siblings while my mother spent the majority of the day at the hospital. We watched Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, 

The Joneses.

which was the perfect action-adventure movie: I loved it. So awesome! And we watched, on a whim, UHF, which is a little known comedy spoof with Weird Al Yankovic in it, which is why we watched it, because we're Weird Al fans. Hilarious movie, but very off kilter and weird. 

So that is life. 

I'm reading some books on education, Benjamin Franklin's autobiography, and rereading Jurassic Park.I just read The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton, and The Giver by Lois Lowry.

The Andromeda Strain was pretty good. I liked it.

It was written in a very dry, scientific,  and in some spots slow manner.The end was a bit of a letdown. It is about a germ that comes to Earth from space (hitching a ride on a space capsule) and kills off an entire town. Five men are sent to an underground secret location and they have to figure out how this germ (the Andromeda strain) works, and how to kill it.

The Giver....ugh, it was awful.

 Set in a dystopic futuristic society, where there are no emotions and everything is colorless, it tells about how one boy escapes. The Sameness of the society is intriguing, but not well fleshed out enough to be plausible. I suppose the author thought she was making a case how individuality and being able to make choices keep us human, but it came off as rather uninteresting and depressing. A very bleak book, written simply and sparsely (the writing is better than in The Hunger Games), this book goes on my Depressing Books I hated List, where it can share the space with Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton, which was fantastically written but completely non-relatable to a teenager and absolutely tragic.

Oh, and The Hunger Games? After reading/suffering through all three books in the trilogy I feel entitled to state my opinions.

1. THG should have been a stand-alone book.

2. Catching Fire was the worst. I was confused and annoyed while reading it. 

3. Fangirling over Peeta and Gale misses the entire point of the series.

4. They're very violent. Don't read the second and third book if you are squeamish. However the first book wasn't too bad.

5. Suzanne Collin's characterizations weren't terrific. All three of her main characters could have been fleshed out a lot more, because they came across as flat in some places.

6. This series really shows the sadness and tragedy of war to its victims. In a society that glorifies violence we need to remember this, yet also remember that evil must be stamped out, and we can start in our own souls.

7. The movie looks like it is going to be good. Maybe they can fix the problems the book had.

There's a lot more one could say about THG, but I'm just going to leave it at that. There are many good, in-depth reviews out there. This is not going to be one of them.

Also I recently re-read A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline l'Engle. I love that book! So weird and amazing.

A blog post you should check out:

Hi, I'm Socially Awkward by Jedi~Chick

Spot on.

Bye for now!

~ Diana

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!

screenshots are dangerous things...

 ...In the wrong hands.

my day

What a lovely Katahdin.

The wide, wide world is so full of so many, many things (yes, I feel it is necessary to repeat myself) and yet I haven't been able to think of a subject on which to blog.

I don't want to merely tell my readers about my life, and opinions, but would like to stimulate their minds. I also want to exorcise any discussion of 

smiley faces, crushes, "boys" in general (OMG!!!) or country music from ever be-dewing these beautiful pure white pixels.

Today for school I read a biography on George Fox, who founded the Society of Friends, known to most laymen as the Quakers.

He was in himself, judging from this short bio, a peculiar and interesting man. Obviously stubborn, and probably also blessed with that capacity some people have of being so strongly embedded in their principles they can't see anyone else's. Yet this can also be a good thing.

I also looked up modern day Quakerism and found this and this. Interesting indeed!

Excitement excepting unpleasant ones such as finding that the sheep refuse to enter their fence has been served up in limited quantities here. Several members of this household, namely my brother and mother, are ill, thus rendering them grouchy, tired and sick and altogether unfit for human consumption! Yet we shoulder on....

I have been doing a bunch of reading on my Kindle. I am reading the Emily trilogy by L.M. Montgomery, and am finding them more enjoyable than Anne of Green Gables. The Emily books are more sophisticated, darker, and Emily is interesting herself. I loved Ilse, her b.f.f., and her hilarious epithets in the first book. Lastly, I completely agree with Emily as regards to poetry: Keats is indeed TOO sweet (I found him mostly incomprehensible, excepting this poem which is great) and as for Idylls of the King by Tennyson, Arthur is too perfect, and Guinevere is stupid as "Lancelot is odious." I agree with J.R.R. Tolkien who though the King Arthur tales were immoral and Frenchified. I do like some of Tennyson's other work though, "Crossing the Bar" is a fine example.

And as for music, I have been stuck in a rut listening to Beethoven's piano concertos 4 + 5 over and over--I already knew them well, and their beauty is comforting. And you should read this essay about classical  music. Taking a cue from the list at the end of it, I listened to part of Mozart's 40th symphony on Youtube the other day--it was great!

Us classical music enthusiasts have a hard time out there in the 'real' world. If we are adult we are treated like high-society snobs, and if we are younger like myself we are just "weird". Oh well!

There is nothing particularly wonderful about being "weird (unquote) but if the weirdness is a fine, upstanding thing and nothing to be ashamed of, who cares? 

Anyway, remember Life is a Gift, so enjoy it, use it, and do not be ashamed of what other people think!!!

Today was Talk like a Pirate day. Arrghh.

the impossible dream

"To dream the impossible dream

To fight the unbeatable foe To bear with unbearable sorrow

To run where the brave dare not go

To right the unrightable wrong

To love pure and chaste from afar

To try when your arms are too weary

To reach the unreachable star

This is my quest

To follow that star

No matter how hopeless

No matter how far

To fight for the right

Without question or pause

To be willing to march into Hell

For a heavenly cause

And I know if I'll only be true

To this glorious quest

That my heart will lie peaceful and calm

When I'm laid to my rest

And the world will be better for this

That one man, scorned and covered with scars

Still strove with his last ounce of courage

To reach the unreachable star."

~ From Man of La Mancha

Some days everything goes wrong. I'll not bore my readers by describing minutely everything that went wrong for me today, and will spare them the gory details, but suffice it to say that goats are way too stubborn for their own good, and electric fences are a complicated intricacy. (And no, I prefer not to take that bit about stubbornness as discreet commentary about myself)


And the dog won't stop barking!
I refuse to be cheerful. I am aware life could be a lot worse, but it could also be lots better, and my spirits are low.

"His brow was sad; his eye beneath,
Flashed like a falchion from its sheath,
And like a silver clarion rung
The accents of that unknown tongue,
Excelsior!"

~ From this poem.

Well, I can't tell if my eye flashes like a falchion from its sheath (and I doubt it) 

but my brow is sad, I think. 

Farewell until next week, intrepid reader. 

i've got good news, bad news, and a book suggestion!

- BAD News first, to get it over with. Basically, the bad news was this. THIS. In concise wording, a flood of the general area around which my famiglia situated. We are on top of a high hill, so the only excess water affecting us was in our cellar, but the area down town, right on the Susquehanna river, was devastated. Literally. For those of you not familiar with rivers, think 14-foot high water under bridges, and entire river-facing streets were deluged under 8-feet expanses of dirt brown water. 


Hundreds of people in the area are still without electricity (thankfully we have it) and internet. We just got it this afternoon, obviously, as you are reading this.


- GOOD news. (Yes, I am in the right mind to write good news. Three days without internet or hot water have cleared my mind of the hubris and general depression my last blog post was written in)


Kayleigh May Beck******* was born on Wednesday, September 7th at approximately 7pm, to Gayle and William, my sister-in-law and brother. We are all extremely excited to welcome her!!!!



       

Anyway, as I was saying, very exciting news. Certainly smiley face worthy! I don't like to bandy them things around my blog like annoying tennis balls, but this event is worthy of a few more.  

Moving on, we come to the book suggestion. I finished Arundel by Kenneth Roberts---you should really read it. (Whoever happens to be reading this at this time, and providing you haven't read it already which I seriously doubt)
Arundel was historical fiction at its finest. Fast paced, meaty, and exciting. Solidly researched and well-written. I'd recommend it to anyone 12 and up. It would make a nice thick change from the usual revolting YA novels many teens read in their spare time. (If they have any in this age of homework)
As I don't feel like writing a synopsis, go check it out yourself.


Whew. Fine weather we're having today.


Carrots I planted in the spring:

 Silkie cockerels I'm trying to sell:

 A eagle-eyed EE pullet:

 And an eternal photographic theme, flowers!

Finis.

educational grouchiness

Fall is so mournful, yet so exquisitely beautiful for a short time. It always makes me feel poetic, in a pseudo-meaningful, rather aimless manner. I always feel rather tragic around the first weeks of September, because it means schoolwork, coldness, and pumpkins and mums, which aren't as showy, delicious and attractive as their summer counterparts: berries, peaches, and petunias. 
Wait. I do like apples! 


I was researching the Montessori and the Waldorf systems of education today for no legitimate reason other than I wanted to know what they were about. (I must admit I had been complaining before about the-honored-and-respected-may-she-live-forever Charlotte Mason, whose modern curriculum Ambleside Online we (meaning my honored-and-respected-may-she-live-forever female parent) use as our main schooling.


(Side note: Must I drop the fascinating and patronizing manner of using as long as possible words in every sentence, making it harder for my honored-and-respected-may-they-live-forever blog patrons to read? 


Most young female people, and indeed most males as well, write in a more Plain English, Spartan and sometimes sloppily romantic style. Nay; they can improve their vocabulary if they choose, and after all, you/they are under no obligations to read it at all. Go read something else instead--Facebook!!! Go on Facebook! Whatever!!!!)


....Returning to the obviously non-absorbing subject of education methods, I must say sometimes the starry-eyed idealism (yes, I am aware that sounds like I'm an old crank) of these individuals gets on my* frequently-easily irritated nerves. All three education methods I mentioned were written by unmarried people who produced no scions**, hence the starry-eyed-ness.


But ANYWAY, I am quickly tiring of writing from this seemingly dry and unappealing subject. No one my age ever knows what I'm talking about anyway.


*unfortunately.
**Look it up. ;)




So, saith the little (rapidly dying) optimistic portion of my brain, why don't we find a pretty picture to look at? (Actually, the optimistic portion of my brain pronounced it "pwetty pictew" but I shall over look that slur) 



SMACK to the annoying optimistic brain cells.


Now lets go look for a pretty picture and an encouraging quotation!




You have no idea what a poor opinion I have of myself and how little I deserve it. 
W.S. Gilbert 


(Not encouraging enough. Simply a bald testament to man's sickly pride.)




Nah, enough for tonight. Farewell, fellow travelers upon this carbon-based sphere!

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

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