God does not deprive us of his love, we deprive God of our cooperation.
~St Francis de Sales
Category: Life
The Prophet speaks.
“You pray in your distress and in your need; would that you might pray also in the fullness of your joy.” Kahlil Gibran
“A bulb planted in fall is a letter sent to spring.”
This simple truth came to me after planting nearly 300 bulbs in rocky countryside conditions last weekend. Where was there anything to show for my aching back and knees? As fatigue and discouragement set in, the garden gave me one of its secrets. Now sleep tight daffodils!
Mark reviews (and lives), ‘We Wanted A Farm’ by M.G. Kains
A first hand account of a couple starting a garden in the city, then renting a home in the suburbs, and finally taking the plunge to buy their own farm. Originally published in 1941, some of the prices obviously seem quite dated.
Kaines has good recommendations for seed varieties which should be heirloom quality in the present day, as well as good tips on how to prepare your soil and how not to buy manure from a local farmer! Good tips on pruning perennial fruits and vegetables for max yield, how to mail order and store plants for the coming season.
His food was so fresh and of high quality that visitors from the city became a problem which was solved by a well placed sign on his driveway.
Intro on how to use dynamite – I’m not going there even if we could buy it today!
Funny comments on his hired help which were the cause for more work than help!
After reading this I now see that farming is a year round activity with plenty of hard work, but the bounty of fresh food brings pleasure year round.
I’m going on a trip, and in my suitcase I need to pack a book. What should I bring?
Here we are finally in full summer and that means we are all hopefully digging into some good “summer reads”. Time for a “What are you reading?” post to pull all sorts of good recommendations out of you epr followers.
So? New? or not new but a favorite? Or, just share your favorite summer reading memories! Mine might have to be reading a creepy book called The Other by Thomas Tyrone or maybe The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough.
Stories from Shakespeare – or how to follow the Bard
If you have watched a Shakespeare play and said to yourself, “What are they saying?” or “What’s going on?” or “Why don’t they speak English?”, you are not alone, and should not have high school flashbacks either. The play is the thing! Just prepare for it. I did my research back when we first subscribed to Chicago Shakespeare Theater all those years ago. The hands-down best resource to prep for the play is ‘Stories from Shakespeare’ by Marchette Chute. The title of Marchette’s work says it all in the word “Stories”. These are great stories and we want to hear the words, watch the action and learn to tell them again and again.
Most people can probably share a common High School English class experience of reading an assigned Shakespeare play. Mine was ‘The Merchant of Venice.’ I’ve since come to believe that these richly layered, intensely crafted plays were not meant to be read, and that is why the torturous memories of my first exposure to Shakespeare still linger. That said, I am thankful to have found that at 15 years old, I was able find real truth and a peak at the genius that Sir Will shared with the world in the eloquence and cunning of Portia v. Shylock.
After many years as subscribers to Chicago Shakespeare Theater, we are down to only one or two of the histories before we can say we’ve seen the entire canon. This is not like saying, “Shakespeare Bucket List – Check!” The guy’s works are enduring and wouldn’t still be staged all over the world every day and night if he was a one hit wonder. Seeing a Shakespeare play more than once is like looking at a bright object through a prism. It is every changing and beautifully fascinating. Proof of that can be found as the 450th anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth brings a celebration of Hamlet to be performed in every nation on earth within 2 years. http://www.shakespearesglobe.com/theatre/whats-on/globe-theatre/hamlet-globe-to-globe
But back to the plays, because, the play is the thing. Hamlet: “I’ll have grounds, more relative than this—the play’s the thing. Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King.”
Hamlet Act 2, scene 2, 603–605
Worshipping our Sun
http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/paganism/holydays/summersolstice.shtml
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.
(Sonnet 18) Wm. Shakespeare
Mark Twain is still speaking…
When I’m need of a little bit of inspiration, I can always count on Mr. Samuel L. Clemens.
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.
&
Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.
but never one to remain too pious for too long,
Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.
and so,
All generalizations are false, including this one.
Amen.