snowflake bentley: a spectacular gift

This simple picturebook book tells the true story of a man who was so enamored by Nature's intricate details that he couldn't stop sketching, photographing, sharing, and journaling his observations of snowflakes, dew, grasshoppers, and other fine details.

Wilson A. Bentley is the man who photographed the first image of a magnified snowflake.

This book-- seemingly written for children-- tells his story of success. It is a unique story of success, since it doesn't involve the acquisition of a perfect romance or grand fortune. The success is one of heart and mind-- of tenaciously pursuing the most natural thing in life: the thing that rivets and fulfills you most, no matter the cost. For Bentley, it just happened to be snowflakes.

Snowflake Bentley's story would be an ideal gift for anyone.

In fact, it was recently given to me by a dear friend and mentor in honor of finishing my Fall semester of graduate school, and it has left an impression on me which I cannot convey in mere words on a blog...

Plus, the illustrations are by the very talented Mary Azarian.

snow white in new york

Fiona French's vibrant, creative rendition of the classic tale Snow White,

in which Snow White plays the "poor little rich girl," the evil stepmother is an attention monger, the seven dwarves are seven jazz players, the "Mirror, Mirror on the Wall" is the society section of the newspaper, the poison is a cocktail cherry, and prince charming is a reporter.

Not to mention the illustrations are fresh, lively, witty, and riveting.

two seemingly unrelated strands of thought merge...

I've been eyeing the classy-rugged Fall looks over at the Lands' End Canvas collection...

Don't they look comfortable? Don't they look smart?

I also love that girl's wild red hair. I tried to dye my hair red once. It made Husband quite angry, so I don't think I'll be going there again. Better to have a happy husband than wild red hair (which I think they should add to the ancient proverbs, don't you?).

Anyway, considering my Fall wardrobe also makes me consider how all our money is going to Penn State for the next few years! (Which, don't get me wrong, is a true honor and I'm not complaining.)

So, I've shifted my focus to:

Have any of you ever read Atlas Shrugged? I'm planning to read it and give this scholarship contest a whirl. I'd love your thoughts if you've read it or any of Rand's philosophy,

which in my humble opinion is pretty humanistic (in the godless sense).

If you're wondering how these two topics fit together, it goes like this:

As I was brushing up on my foundations of philosophy in order to embark on this journey of the mind, I was reminded of

the five main branches of philosophy:

1. Epistemology

2. Metaphysics

3. Politics

4. Aesthetics (this is where my Fall wardrobe fits in :)

5. And at the center of those points is: ETHICS

(which is where Ayn Rand fits in)

the immortal soul...

From the perspective of the classic Children's novel The Secret Garden:

"I shall get well! I shall get well!" he cried out."Mary! Dickon! I shall get well! And I shall live forever and ever and ever!"

One of the strange things about living in the world is that it is only now and then one is quite sure one is going to live forever and ever and ever. One knows it sometimes when one gets up at the tender solemn dawn-time and goes out and stands alone and throws one's head far back and looks up and up and watches the pale sky slowly changing and flushing and marvelous unknown things happening until the East almost makes one cry out and one's heart stands still at the strange unchanging majesty of the rising of the sun-- which has been happening every morning for thousands and thousands and thousands of years. One knows it then for a moment or so. And one knows it sometimes when one stands by oneself in a wood at sunset and the mysterious deep gold stillness slanting through and under the branches seems to be saying slowly again and again something one cannot quite hear, however much one tries. Then sometimes the immense quiet of the dark blue at night with millions of stars waiting and watching makes one sure; and sometimes a sound of far-off music makes it true; and sometimes a look in some one's eyes.

-Francis Hodgson Burnett

an overdue check in

I've been absent from Blogland.

My summer graduate courses began this week, and I've been busy organizing notebooks and calendars, reading about some amazing teachers and how they make learning fun, searching library archives for articles from research journals and reading some pretty amazing classic children's literature, including:

Pippi Longstocking, the classic lovable, hilarious little Swedish train wreck of a child, who constantly seems to be drinking coffee of all things.

This weekend husband and I plan to explore, read, relax and create, so hopefully I will have more to share next week. I am thinking now would be a good time to get back to my Julia Child cooking...

this post weighs a ton!

I started coming down with something awful on Friday night while on a downtown date with Husband. Naturally, I assumed it was Cholera, Scarlett Fever, or the Bubonic Plague, but it turned out to be only a nasty throat infection which brought a high fever with it. Amazing how quickly antibiotics, rest and H2O can work together and heal the body.

Husband was the best caretaker. I am constantly edified the more and more days we spend together that I chose the right one (and daily stunned that he chose me!). In addition to refueling me on meds and water, he kept cold rags on my head, regulated my body temp, took all his phone calls outside of the house, and brought me a de-pollinated bouquet that he arranged himself from outside.

I just had to brag on him for a few paragraphs :)

From my morning reading, I felt compelled to share this. If you're wondering where all the "worry" stuff is coming from, it's because I've started reading Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World because I wanted an "easy" devotional read to take a break from my hefty EfM readings. Goes to show my snobby self, huh? This "easy" read has made a lot of sense and been very spiritually fulfilling.

The author, Joanna Weaver, says:

"It's been my experience that God usually won't take away our "friends, those things we look to for comfort-- even if those "friends" aren't good for us. We must be willing to release them ourselves. And until we do, the battle for the mind will rage on...

We must be willing to take an active role in the battle against anxiety.

[...] as I began to "take captive every thought and make it obedient to Christ" (2 Corinthians 10:5), anxiety began to lose its hold. Instead of being led astray, I took a second look at each thought as it came."

Weaver says she then asked two questions about each thought:

1. "Where did you come from?"

(i.e. What is this thought's source? Is it real or did I fabricate/imagine it?)

2. "Where is this thought going?"

(Is this thought productive? Can I do anything about it (and if so what-- (that action part))? Will this draw me closer to God/peace or will it draw me closer to anxiety?)

Pretty smart, concise questions, I thought.

If I were to add one, it would be:

3. How important is this in the grand scheme of things?

(i.e. Aren't there more important things I could actually do something about right now?)

There's so much in the Bible about our "imaginations" being wicked. Years ago, this intrigued me and I thought by "imaginations" Scripture meant creativity. By no means, as Paul would say. It means fabricating worst-case scenarios, allowing unproductive or even self-destructive (a.k.a. sinful) thoughts to rule our clarity of thought and peace of mind, to harbor bitterness and resentment rather than forgiving, to allow ourselves to think "I'm inadequate," to make our plans without seeking God's ultimate will, and to imagine that those things/habits/addictions/acts ("friends" as Weaver calls them) are comforting us or building us up when, in actuality, they are tearing us down. Imaginations are what stand in the way of our taking productive, positive action, not the brainstorming or constructive thinking which leads to productivity and/or Holy-Spirit driven genius and good work.

All of this negativity, in other words, is generated from our lack of faith in and seeking of GOD, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist (Romans 4:17)

My Most Constant, Unproductive Fears:

1. Not succeeding through grad school, even though I thoroughly feel it was God who opened those doors... how ironic that I would have anxiety over entering a door that I faithfully feel God both led me to and has opened for me.

Idiotic and definitely unproductive.

2. Losing long-cherished friendships due to moving around too much and living too far away.

Uproductive.

3. Oddly enough, car wrecks and air raids (yeah, I know. It's so bad I have stop to myself from physically cowering when I hear planes flying over head. My whole body freezes. You would have thought I'd fought in Iraq or Vietnam.)

Absolutely absurd to worry over and thoroughly unproductive.

4. That I will be inadequate in the things that I take on and in my relationships with others.

Unproductive.

5. That I will forget someone or do something that makes another feel abandoned or unloved. This fear I feel can be productive as long as it drives me to act upon not forgetting other people. It's unproductive past the point of marking calendars and setting reminders on phones.

gifts from abroad

Recently, I almost broke my neck on my way out the front door.

An unexpected package with a strange stamp was on the porch, and I should have known it could only have been from one person:

My friend Merm!

(Actually, it's Miriam. But somehow it became Merm over the 15+ years I have known her.)

Merm is a rare sort of friend. She was my study abroad companion in Italy and has been my "book-and-words friend" since high school. She's been abroad in the UK for the last four years working on a Masters in Creative Writing, a Masters in Publishing, and now a PhD in Creative Writing. She's good stuff. Very generous, frank, reflective, creative, funny, adventurous and ever-striving in an inspiring way.


She's still traveling the word on weekends, living the life of academia continually...
and I must admit I am a bit envious. In the photo above, she's in Dubai with a Camel Crossing sign.

However, there's one thing I have that she doesn't: a better sense of GRAMMAR and PUNCTUATION. (NOTE: I didn't say perfect; just better by comparison!) She knows she's bad, so she sends her work (including a novel I'm in the process of proofreading) to me. It's such an honor that after all those fancy degrees she still sends her work to lil' ole me for critique!

So, what was in the package?


An old book.



But not just any old book.

A book from 1864 that smells of dust, time, ink, human hands, cozy homes and crisp, yellowed pages.



I love the marbleized cover pages. I bet it was considered very elegant in 1864.
It's such a work of art and such a fascinating, enigmatic emblem of an era and will sit on my shelf as just that: Art and History.



The stained pages, dotted and smudged with years far before me,

The cracked binding, separating from a century-and-a-half of being in existence,

The lovely, bent and torn corners,

Thank you, Merm! I consider this gift a rare treasure.

(And I will be stopping by its new nook periodically to smell the pages!)

roxaboxen, if you haven't already

This book is illustrated by Barbara Cooney, author and illustrator of this blog's namesake: Miss Rumphius The Lupine Lady.

It is a book about the power of imagination and shows how something merely imagined can become a memorable, impacting experience.

Without spoiling the book: Roxaboxen is a town.

And Marion was mayor, of course.

There were shops, bakeries, ice cream parlors, and houses of jewels.

(Adults will enjoy this one, too :)

In other news:

I loved reading all of your First Blog Experiences yesterday!

Thank you for sharing.

A few new blogs I found through you:

Inner City Observations

From the Narrows

Sweet Sassafras

Soule Mama

Jane Brocket

the first blog I ever read....

was Tollipop.

Well, technically it was the second. The first blog I ever read led me to it, making it the second.

But who's counting?

The author of Tollipop
draws these enchanting porcelain children called "Tollipops" and sells them in her etsy shop.

However,

what originally drew me

to this blog was not the Tollipop art,

but the little masterpieces of

phrases, sentences, and paragraphs woven and manipulated by the artist/author.

She is a master of language--

its richness, its movement, its beauty and scape.

She rekindles heirloom language to a blaze that leaves you poised and rosy as the little Tollipops themselves.

She currently has a project underway called the Hundred Dresses Project. Basically, she is writing 100 little stories to go with 100 different Tollipop girls in different outfits. And the stories are wonderful. She also has a collecion of Tollipop stories aside from The Hundred Dresses Project here.

This little project is based on the book by the same title. If you or a young lady in your life is unfamiliar with The Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Estes, familiarize swiftly. It's a well-loved classic that teaches a timeless lesson in a lovely way... for girls, young ladies and women of any age and era.

Oh, and if you start keeping up with the Tollipop blog, you'll soon learn that the author's daughters are amazingly accomplished musicians. She posts videos of their performances, which I usually watch more than once, green with envy and racked with regret for not devoting myself more to music in the earlier days of my life.

What was the first, most impressionable blog you remember reading?

What got you started blogging... or reading blogs?

the story tellers

They constitute a major chunk of every culture, religion, socioeconomic class, era and corner of the world.

"Story Teller" by Eunice LaFate

"Give me a subject. Everything depends on that.

Once the subject is given, it is easy to embroider."

-from Tolstoy's Anna Karenina

"The Boyhood of Raleigh" by Sir John Everett Millais

An excerpt from The Grapes of Wrath:

"The migrant people, scuttling for work, scrabbling to live, looked always for pleasure, and they were hungry for amusement. Sometimes amusement lay in speech, and they climbed up their their lives with jokes.

Image via here

"And it came about in the camps along the roads, on the ditch banks beside the streams, under the sycamores, that the story teller grew into being, so that the people gathered in low firelight to hear the gifted ones.

"And they listened while the tales were told, and their participation made the stories great [...] and their faces were quiet with listening. The story tellers, gathering attention into their tales, spoke in great rhythms, spoke in great words because the tales were great, and the listeners were great through them."
-John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath

"Jesus the Story Teller" from Angel Studio

I work with a little boy whose very being generates too much energy for his small body to handle. The energy has nowhere to go but out, and so he is always moving, touching, squirming, running, destroying, laughing, yelling, crying, talking and engaged in full-fledged acrobatics every possible moment.

Until a picture book is brought forth, the pages opened, and the story begun.
Then, he suddenly becomes very still and quiet like a nesting bird, chin in hands, eyes locked on the page, aware of nothing but the story unfolding before him.

The story enraptures and transforms.

Some Related Sites:

The National Storytelling Network
A listing of Storytelling Festivals, these are mostly USA festivals but there is one listing in Graz, Austria

candide and 101 ways to eat salmon

The only New Year's Resolution I made (because monthly resolutions are far better for my brain) was to eat salmon twice a month. But then Husband proved to me that we already eat salmon twice a month, so I am trying to have it weekly now. Which means I will need some new salmon recipes. Last week, we had smoked salmon sandwiches, and this week I used my salmon treaty as an excuse to buy:

Which I have long been eyeing on the spice shelves.

Also on my to-do list is/was Voltaire's Candide. Which leads me to ask,

Have you ever heard of the Pit of Despair?
Probably so.
BUT, have you ever hear of the Faux Pit of Despair?
Maybe not but no doubt you've been there before.



Doesn't that look like layers of the Earth? Geology is not my thing. It reminds me more of sand art at the Fair. Which gives me the idea of a bottled salmon rub as a Christmas gift, with the spices in pretty layers... hmmm. And call it The Salmon Rub of the Earth...

I might have had too much coffee today.

This is:

1 t Thyme

1 T Brown Sugar

1 T Smoked Paprika

1 t Orange Peel

1 2 Saigon Cinnamon
1/2 t Sea Salt

Let the salmon (about 1.5 to 2 lbs) marinate in:

1/4 cup fresh Orange Juice
2 T Olive Oil
1 t Thyme

for at least 30 minutes. And don't forget to rub on the spices on the top.

Now, back to Candide and the Faux Pit of Despair.

The Faux Pit of Despair is when a book suctions you into a deep state of melancholy, of which you are consciously unaware.

Symptoms include:

-not feeling quite like one's self

-failing to find fulfillment in daily tasks

-feeling and acting angry in general

-thinking, delusions give humanity hope

-seeing the world as a mass state of hopeless chaos, especially the surface areas and drawers in one's home

You will not realize you've had these symptoms until several weeks later, after Husband or another trusted companion has confiscated Candide and not allowed you to finish reading it until your brain re-organizes itself. You will gradually begin to come back to your senses.

Only a handful of books have done this to me before, but I feel I should know the signs by now. Some of the worst were:

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky

A Woman's Life by Maupassant

Your salmon will look like this if you marinate for only 30 minutes.

It will look like this if you allow it several hours.

And it will look like this after you cook it on 400 for about 15-20 minutes.

We had ours with a fresh spinach, poppy seed dressing, and blueberry salad.

More on Candide once Husband tells me where it is... I at least have to read the last chapter. And reading the last chapter, in my opinion, always means you have to go back and re-read the first. Because the first and the last are directly related and help to enlighten one another once the whole has been read. It's a cyclical system, reading is.