Archive | September 2005

Friday Blogamundi

Sep30

Fulla, the Muslim Barbie doll? It comes complete with hijab and prayer rug.

High School student Karen Kovaka blogs at Rhetorical Response, and the interesting thing for me is that she seems to be reading from MY British Literature class syllabus. She just finished discussing Canterbury Tales and Sir Gawain, and now she’s on to Elizabethan poetry. I just discussed Elizabethan poetry with my students this morning, and we’re going to spend the week reading Macbeth. I got the tip on Karen’s blog from another great “teen blog,” The Rebelution by homeschooled twins Alex and Brett Harris. Whoa, I’m slow. I just figured out that Alex and Brett are related to Joshua Harris (I Kissed Dating Goodbye) and Gregg Harris (homeschooling pioneer).

Doug at Stones Cry Out on polygamy in the Netherlands. Yes, it seems that for all practical purposes polygamy is already in fact legal and condoned in the Netherlands, on the the first countries in the world to give full “marriage rights” to homosexuals. If two men or two women can call their relationship “marriage,” why not one man and two women? Or three? Or five?

In which I find out that “counting” is the newest litblog fad. I don’t have time right now (too busy cataloging), but maybe someday.

Fun with Macbeth

Sep29

Macbeth, in a manner most flighty,
Aspired to the high and the mighty.
Urged on by his wife,
He stuck in his knife,
And the blood got all over his nightie!
— Author Unknown

My British Literature class is reading Macbeth this week and next. In addition to discussing serious themes such sin, death, ambition, and murder, I thought we’d also have some fun with a play that is Shakespeare’s shortest tragedy because it has almost no comedic elements in it. After all that blood and gore, we’re going to need some comic relief. So I gave my students these links. Any other suggestions?

Enjoying Macbeth

Macbeth Trivia and Quizzes

Painting of the Three Witches from Macbeth by Alexandre-Marie Colin

Shakespearean Insults Example: “Thou saucy onion-eyed younker!” OR “Thou yeasty white-livered clot pole!” Try those on the Macbeth in your life!

If anyone has a copy of the book Twisted Tales from Shakespeare by Richard Armour or knows where I can get one (cheap), I’d love to have it. Armour has a great take on Macbeth that I would like to share with the class–if I can find it anywhere.

Uh Oh, That’s MY Congressman

Sep28

We regret the people of Texas will once again have their taxpayer dollars wasted on Ronnie Earle’s pursuit of headlines and political paybacks. Ronnie Earle began this investigation in 2002, after the Democrat Party lost the Texas state legislature to Republicans. For three years and through numerous grand juries, Ronnie Earle has tried to manufacture charges against Republicans involved in winning those elections using arcane statutes never before utilized in a case in the state. This indictment is nothing more than prosecutorial retribution by a partisan Democrat.–Statement from Tom Delay’s office after his indictment by a Travis County (Austin) grand jury on charges of campaign finance violations.

Yes, Tom DeLay represents my district in the US House of Representatives, and I proudly voted for him. I doubt these charges will hold up in court, but I do wish he’d been a little more careful about crossing his t’s and dotting his i’s. We need all conservative voices at full strength these days, not weakened by the Democratic Earle virus. (How do you like the mixed metaphor? Yeah, I was rather fond of it myself–which probably means it should be excised immediately.)

Born September 28th

Sep27

Kate Douglas Wiggin, b. 1856, author and educator. She wrote Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and The Birds’ Christmas Carol. Eldest Daughter always thought Rebecca compared rather unfavorably to L.M. Mongomery’s Anne of Green Gables, but I remember enjoying both books and both heroines.
Read Rebecca online. Or better yet, read this story, A Cathedral Courtship, by KDW that I happened upon while googling about the web. Sample quotes from the story of a young American girl and her Aunt Celia who are touring the cathedrals of Europe:

Aunt Celia is one of those persons who are born to command, and when they are thrown in contact with those who are born to be commanded all goes as merry as a marriage bell; otherwise not. Oh, aren’t you thinking of someone just like Aunt Celia right now?

Aunt Celia says we shall have no worthy architecture until every building is made an exquisitely sincere representation of its deepest purpose,–a symbol, as it were, of its indwelling meaning. I should think it would be very difficult to design a lunatic asylum on that basis, but I didn’t dare say so, as Mr. Copley seemed to think it all right. Perhaps a maze? Or a building full of cubicles?

Wiggin also wrote an autobiography, My Garden of Memories, and an adult novel, The Village Watchtower. I may add both to The List.

Edith Mary Pargeter, b. 1913. She wrote several fine historical fiction novels, including The Heaven Tree Trilogy about a thirteenth century family of British stonecarvers. Of course, Pargeter’s more famous series of books takes place a century before the Heaven Tree books in the 1300’s, and she wrote them under a different name. Any guesses? If you’ve never read these and if you have a morbid taste for bones, you should go immediately to your nearest library and check one out. An excellent mystery.

How To Write

Sep27

how to write bookWhile I was gone on the Texodus, I received in my email a copy of the book How To Write by Herbert and Jill Meyer. Yes, in my email. I got this ebook for free in return for my review (which I’ll write using the tips in the book just as soon as I get it read), but you can buy it here for only $1.99. What do you have to lose?

Go here for an excerpt from the introduction to the book. I’ll let you know what I think when I’ve finished the book, and you can see for yourself if there’s any improvement in my writing.

Return from the Texodus

Sep26

I’m too tired to post much, but the trip back went well. We didn’t encounter too much heavy traffic, although it was clear that lots of people are returning to Houston. And we had no trouble at all getting gas. So, back to normal, I hope. Oh, yes, we did find this reminder of Rita’s visit in our next door neighbor’s yard–from our tree.

Rita's tree

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Refugees Return

Sep25

I woke up this morning and read the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. There I was informed that Governor Rick Perry had announced an evacuation return plan for going back to Houston in stages to avoid the traffic jams that occured on the way out. Unfortunately, nowhere in that newspaper did I find a story that told what the evacuation plan was, who was supposed to return when. I did, however, read about how no one is following the plan anyway. Could that be not only because Texans are independent and tend to want to make up their own minds about these things (which is true), but also because the major newspaper in the Fort Worth/Dallas area didn’t even bother to print the plan? I finally found Gov. Perry’s plan here.

NOTE: I cannot verify that the Star-Telegram does not have the evacuation return plan available somewhere at its website because registration is required to access the website, and I won’t register. However, I searched my Sunday paper fairly thoroughly before leaving for church this morning, and I don’t believe it was there.

According to the WSJ, we’re not supposed to go back until Tuesday. I’m mostly concerned about having gasoline available along the way. I just heard a rumor that gasoline supplies are low to nonexistent as far away as Brownwood in west/central Texas. We’ll see . . .

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Friday Blogamundi

Sep23

A wonderful, inspirational post from Three Pennies about filling your home with Scripture. Also check this post, with pictures, from the same blog.

And maybe Charlotte, as in Charlotte’s Web by EB White, can inspire us to become better writers whether we write on webs or walls or computer screens. Spinning a Web: The Unobtrusive Perfection of Charlotte’s Web by Lauren F. Winner (Thanks to Kevin at Collected Miscellany for pointing me to this appreciation of Charlotte’s writing technique.)

George Grant on Reading Aloud “Silent reading is actually a fairly modern innovation. As late as the eighteenth century, it was thought that the best way to truly appreciate the classics was to read them aloud–all the better to relish the beauty of the words, the music of the composition, and the architecture of the ideas.”
And on the same note, the nanny at Poppins Classical Academy writes about how she and her children are enjoying not only reading aloud, but also reading in small snippets, a chapter or a few pages a day.

Patry Francis says the Rich have better cupcakes than the hoi-polloi. Who would have guessed it?

James M. Kushiner at Mere Comments blogs about tunes of lament for homes lost, not in New Orleans although the thoughts apply to that situation, but in many other places and other times. “I have bee(n) thinking of late, because readings, family history, and current events, about the fragility of even the places that we take for granted as our homes. The world is full of lost homes and lost homelands, and history is partly an itinerary of families moving to new homes and homelands for a host of reasons: war, famine, gold, persecution, family feuds, and so on.”

Shakespeare on Hurricanes and Storms

Sep23

Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren ground.
The Tempest, 1. 1

I would fain die a dry death.
The Tempest, 1. 1

Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
Till you have drenched our steeples, drowned the cocks!
You sulphurous and thought-executing fires,
Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder,
Smite flat the thick rotundity o’ the world!
Crack nature’s moulds, all germens spill at once,
That make ingrateful man!

Rumble thy bellyful! Spit, fire! spout, rain!
Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters:
I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness.
King Lear, 3. 2

Poor naked wretches, wheresoe’er you are,
That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,
How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,
Your looped and windowed raggedness, defend you
From seasons such as these?
King Lear, 3. 4

Why, now blow wind, swell billow, and swim bark! The storm is up, and all is on the hazard.
Julius Caesar, 5.1

O Cicero, I have seen tempests when the scolding winds
Have rived the knotty oaks, and I have seen
Th’ ambitious ocean swell and rage and foam
To be exalted with the threat’ning clouds;
But never till to-night, never till now,
Did I go through a tempest dropping fire.
Julius Caesar, 1.3

(My deepest sympathies to those who lost loved ones in the bus fire on I-45 this morning.)