:hurray: :hurray: :hurray: I'm not reading much as I have spring fever, want to be outside walking/running/kicking and when I'm inside, I'm flirting with every single string instrument in the house. The violin does not approve. My Bible study group just started working through Conversation Peace: The Power of Transformed Speech by Mary Kassian. This looks like a very good study and the videos remind me of Bill Nye. :leaving:

I had the same problem.

I finished "Bride of New France" by Suzanne Desrochers and enojoyed it. There are some brief but interesting historic notes in the back of the book that talk about the Salpetriere, the hospital in Paris, where women were housed and starved and the filles du roi, the women sent to New France. I'm still working on Oliver Twist and will continue the Marshall theme with Mr. Jones, Meet the Master. H. C. Branner can't get here fast enough through our library system.

I'm reading "Oliver" and "The Bride of New France" which is historical fiction and is a fun beach read. It's entertaining enough that I didn't notice that a bird had crapped on me. For some reason, most of my fiction readings these days start with someone dying and I'm starting to get annoyed with this way of hooking an audience into paying attention and continuing a story.

I finished "Olive's Ocean" which was a Newberry Honor book. I was about half way through before I began to enjoy it and this is a good book to read while watching little ones as it's not heavy and the chapters are each about three pages long. I want to read something lyrical but pickings for books are slim at the moment so we will see what comes next. And I really want to read HC Branner's "Two Minutes of Silence" or LeGuin's "Sea Road".

I finished Catherine Marshall's "To Live Again" and found an old ice cream recipe at the end of her book that I want to try. If anyone wants it, pm me and I can post it the next time I'm on the computer and not on my phone. I also finished "Their Eyes Were Watching God" and found some new favorite phrases is there. I love how Tea Cake is described as a "glance from God" and the town gossips as " meatskins is got tuh rattle tuh make out they's alive." And then there's this beautiful ending (If you haven't read the book, reading these last sentences won't ruin it for you but you decide): Here was peace. She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulder. So much of life in its meshes! She called in her soul to come and see. Y'all- I am not "liking" because I'm on my phone and it does something annoying when I like a post.

Your performances sound fun Jen. I don't perform as I get incredibly nervous and I figure, once I reach the 1000 mark, I'll no longer have an excuse to get nervous (everything will be childs play at that point!) and not perform. It is a very fulfilling piece of music to play once you get past the phase of staring at the music and thinking "What? How am I suppose to do that?" I really, really want to tackle the Earl King and tried a couple years ago but burnt out after the first two pages.

Not to be morbid but here's my thoughts from my reading this morning: In "To Live Again", Catherine Marshall has some not so nice things to say about mortuary science which I was taken back by for a moment as it is a career I seriously considered for awhile. Then I realized that her gripe with it, that the person is gone and we are investing in preserving a body, is a view I've held since I was a child. It's the walking with people through that initial blow/transition and honoring a life that attracted me to that career.

This is a great quote.

I finished Out of Africa and am rereading Their Eyes Were Watching God, Catherine Marshall's To Live Again (another reread) and am debating trying to finish Barbara Kingsolver's Lacuna. She put so much effort into this book and all of her other books I've inhaled but this one...it's a laborous read. I also want to report that I passed the 200 mark for times playing Bach's Chaconne so I get to fiddle with a new song and have only about 800 more repetitions to go to reach goal.

I'm still using bobby pins for bookmarks. :leaving:

I am still savoring Out of Africa. It remains one of my favorite books of all time. Here's a rather sad quote from it when she is leaving her beloved coffee farm: "When in the end, the day came on which I was going away, I learned the strange learning that things can happen which we ourselves cannot possibly imagine, either before-hand, or at the time when they are taking place, or afterwards when we look back on them. Circumstances can have a motive force by which they bring about events without aid of human imagination or apprehension. On such occasions you yourself keep in touch with what is going on by attentively following it from moment to moment, like a blind person who is being led, and who places one foot in front of the other cautiously but unwittingly. Things are happening to you, and you feel them happening, but except for this one fact, you have no connection with them, and no key to the cause or meaning of them......Those who have been through such events can, in a way, say that they have been through death, - a passage outside the range of imagination, but within the range of experience." It reminded me of something I once heard a somewhat wise man tell the parents of graduates. He said that "all change brings grief." Not much further down the page I had to laugh because she states that "the Norwegians are undismayed in any storm but their nervous system cannot stand a calm".

I know a woman who, on her first day in Nottingham, walked into a pub and told the bartender, "Just wait one minute while I get my money out of my fanny pack." The entire pub went silent. I made the mistake of walking into a outdoor gear store and asking for "waterproof pants". Oops.... :leaving: No bladder control problems here. Promise.

Maybe I'm imagining it wrong but I can't get the image of winnowing out of my head. A breath, a wind, and all the chaff is removed exposing what's worth keeping. Even under bus tires, there's something poetic about it- maybe even more so under bus tires.

Just dropping in quick with an update. I'm still rereading "Out of Africa", am breezing through "The Business of Heaven" much faster than its meant to be read and am doing Kelly Minter's "What Love Is" with a group. Shukriyya- I thought of you this morning as I've been rewriting the psalms in my own words for months. Is the Psalm 23 the one you rewrote? I came to it today and just ended up copying it word for word. It is perfect as is (for me at least). My best to all of you.

Love to you Rosie.

Happy Birthday Mel! I'm still reading Rabbi Eilberg's "Enemy to Friend" book and enjoying it. I keep wanting to stop and copy her quotes down but I think owning the book is probably enough. One of the early quotes talks about conflict being a pulling back of the light which leaving an empty space to create something new. In other news, Dh said he would support me looking for a new church as it's been almost a year now since I accidentally flushed out my online stalker and I am still dealing with fallout. I've learned and grown from this experience so it has been a blessing but I think the "empty space" in our case will be filled with community somewhere else.

The quilt is lovely shukriyya. I am always impressed how bits and pieces can come together to form something unified. A line skirts are worth the effort. I made a bunch from high school until I was married and they are still stylish a decade or two later but, of course, the waists now rests up by my ribs......

Dh plopped Rabbi Amy Eilberg's "From Enemy to Friend" in my lap yesterday. He saw that I had followed links to amazon to look at it and thought to buy for me. I'm enjoying it so far. I also woke with this beautiful quote from Out of Africa running through my head and so pulled Isak Dinesen off the shelf: "The friends of the farm came to the house, and went away again. They were not the kind of people who stay for a long time in the same place. They were not the kind of people either who grow old, they died and never came back. But they had sat contented by the fire, and when the house closing round them, said: "I will not let you go except you bless me," they laughed and blessed it and it let them go. An old lady sat in a party and talked of her life. She declared that she would like to live it all over again and held this fact to prove that she had lived wisely. I thought: Yes, her life has been the sort of life that should really be taken twice befre you can say that you have had it. An arietta you can take da capo, but not a whole piece of music, -not a symphony and not a five-act tragedy either. If it is taken over again it is because it has not gone as it ought to have gone. My life, I will not let you go except you bless me, but then I will let you go."

I do the same thing Pam. This week of running on the treadmill instead of resting seems a bit better.

Happy Birthday Rosie!

One of the characters in Five Red Herrings said something that I thought was hilarious. It went along the lines of "I was running. By God, I do remember that. Bounding across the field and the stars bounding with me." I can just imagine a man clutzily bouncing over heather and thinking he's something amazing and fast while being in awe of the world above him. I renewed my affair with Bach and am having trouble reading anything because of it. I think I might try listening to Ulysses while driving instead of reading it.

I love audio books and learn very well from them. Perhaps it's all the Suzuki training from my youth? I need to scrounge up a new exciting audio book to listen to on the treadmill as I'm trying to trade my mid-day nap/collapse (it seems so essential!) for movement. I finished "Like Water for Chocolate" last night and enjoyed the story thouroughly. Now, I want to write a story that spills all of our family heritage recipes- lefse, lutefisk, rullepolse and so forth. Can someone remind me of this next fall when Nanowrimo comes back around? Despite enjoying the story, I could not see why any woman would spend a lifetime pining for Pedro. Perhaps my audio book needs to be a fluffy romance to make up for him. I have 1Q84 to start next and Ulysses. I never did get to my Acts historical book prior to the New Year so may buck up and do that. Or maybe not....

I tried insisting that my kids argue well and teaching them to argue but that only works when there's energy to spare on all sides. One of my friends mentioned the idea of teaching kids to say "Yes, Mom" or "Yes, Dad" as a habitual response. I do think argueing can be a habitual response. Hugs.