All Purls. No Swine.
When I am an old woman I shall wear purple With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me. And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter. I shall sit down on the pavement when I’m tired And gobble up… Continue reading Quote of the Day: For the “Specially” Enabled, When it Comes to Growing Old
Beloved stepdaughter is leaving shortly for the trek south-and-west to Chateau Right, where she should arrive mid-afternoon. It's just the two of us (so far) today, but you never know. Angels have a habit of showing up unexpectedly here, and we never turn them away: QOTD: Entertaining Angels Entertaining Angles: Four-legged one's mostly Entertaining Angels:… Continue reading Happy Thanksgiving!
Fifty-eight years ago today (November 22, 1963) Clive Staples Lewis departed this earth, within only a few hours of the man whose death owns this day. (Same same Aldous Huxley.) And yet. When asked some years before that fateful date, what might be Christianity's unique contribution amongst the religions of the world, Lewis had (to… Continue reading Musical Mondays: Amazing Grace
We read Aesop’s Fables as children or re-read them aloud to our children. Their lessons resonate today. But how accurate are the depictions of the animals in the fables? Can crows add pebbles to a pitcher to raise the water level? Are wolves cruel and rapacious, foxes wily, or donkeys stubborn and stupid? Could a… Continue reading Book Review by Seawriter: Zoology as Seen Through Fable
I subscribe (in the sense of paying) to only one news source on the Internet, and that is The Telegraph. It's the only newspaper my family read throughout the latter half of the 20th century (after the servants had ironed it, of course*) I do so because their coverage is (relatively speaking, these days) rational,… Continue reading Quote of the Day: Weed! Weed! (No. Not that kind of weed.)
I vote: Envy. (Justification to follow at some point.) You? For clarification, and a starting point, from an old edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica--not so much (like the King James Bible) "the actual words Christ spoke" but close, and as described by Pope Gregory the Great in the 6th Century AD, your choices are: vainglory,… Continue reading Headscratcher: What’s the Greatest “Deadly Sin?”
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We… Continue reading Quote of the day–“for us the living”
Regard it as just as desirable to build a chicken house as to build a cathedral--Frank Lloyd Wright. I do like a man who has his priorities straight. Even if I’m not one of them. Frank Lloyd Wright was, while not exactly a Southwest Pennsylvanian, often claimed as one of ours on account of Fallingwater, a… Continue reading From the Chicken House to the Cathedral
I think this is (at least) the fifth post on this theme that I've written on this site. I take the original injunction (Hebrews 13:2) very seriously: Be not forgetful to entertain strangers; for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. As usual, I'm quoting the KJV, mostly in memory of an elderly Canadian fisherman (deep… Continue reading Entertaining Angels: The Gift from God Edition
My subject is War and the pity of War. The poetry is in the pity"--Wilfred Owen Wilfred Edward Salter Owen, beloved son, accomplished poet, and soldier of The Great War, was born 128 years ago, on March 18, 1893 in Oswestry, a Welsh border town, in the county of Shropshire. Readers of Ellis Peters's Brother… Continue reading ‘Sweet and Fitting,’ or ‘Unworthy’ and ‘Distasteful?’ Wilfred Owen vs William Butler Yeats