Uff Da!
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Posts posted by Uff Da!
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Just dropping in quick to give an update on what I've read:
Chocolat- Sadly, I prefer the movie to the book. The polarization of Vivianne and the priest is cute in the movie. In the book, their polarizing views irked me and I found myself skimming the priest's inclusions as rapidly as possible. I do think this author does well with imagery.
I finished listening to "Surprised by Joy" and listened to the last couple of chapters over and over and over again....
"The Lost World of Genesis" presents an interpretation of Genesis 1 as an establishment of functions and examines/refutes other interpretations. It's well written and very dry. Beth Moore's "The Patriarchs" is a workbookish Bible study for Genesis that was loaned to me and is not dry. I had fun with it. I hadn't read anything by Beth Moore before.
I also read the Epic of Gilgamesh..... I like the kid's version better.... :leaving:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Revenge-Ishtar-Gilgamesh-Trilogy/dp/0887764363/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_y
http://www.amazon.com/The-Last-Quest-Gilgamesh-Trilogy/dp/0887763804/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_y
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Happy Belated Birthday Stacia!
I'm almost through C.S. Lewis's Surprised by Joy and I think it may be one that I have to read again later. The audio doesn't let me ponder when I want to ponder and there are some parts I probably would have skimmed through.
Because of my friends, I have "The Lost World of Genesis One" and another Genesis book to go through. Once done with those, I think I might take a break and read something light and fairytale like...reading chocolate. I haven't decided what yet.
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Winter Wonderland, what did you think about the teacher's curriculum suggestion?
Her suggestions were great but DD had already done some of them. Once we had figured out what we were going to do next for afterschooling, I let her teacher know the curriculum that we planned to use.
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Busy week, and haven't had much time for reading, but I wanted to check in. I decided that Coursera class isn't going to work right now. I was supposed to read Books 1-8 of The Odyssey and I'm done with 3, plus I haven't even went on the website to view the video lectures yet. Plenty of time for that stuff later on.
So, I have to tell you guys - my kids saw me writing out and sending all the postcards for our postcard exchange and so they've been writing postcards back and forth to my mom. It is so cute and I love that they're doing this! On the not-so-cute side - we went to the grocery store this morning and intended to buy some postcards for their Nana. Well, they thought they were being funny and put them under the flap in the cart (where the babies sit) and not only did we not pay for them, but they forgot about them until we got home. So, somewhere there are postcards rolling around, hiding in a grocery cart. :001_rolleyes:
Shukriyya - have you made progress on Longitude? I am about 30% into it. I think it's really interesting, but it is making me feel a little dumb as some of those people in the past - even the ones who didn't get the right answers - were SO smart! So much that we take for granted today.
Mumto2 - glad your car was found, I hope that it comes back without damage!
FYI- I can see every lecture from every class I've taken on my phone app. so you could just move slower at your own pace if the access to lectures stays the same.
What does that mean?
I wondered the same thing Rosie as the term seems broad to me but I never really pondered it before (and I was left to wonder what in the world he meant until I could start up the audio again). When I looked up occult, this is what wikipedia had: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occult and I noticed Kabbalah under the occult domain. When I started the audio up again, CS Lewis was talking about Wagner, The Ride of the Valkyries and an obsession with them. I'm not sure what C.S. Lewis experienced and what Wiesel experienced are comparable beyond that neither thought that what they experienced was healthy. Obsession maybe is the key word for both. I am struggling a bit with his memoir as an audio simply because what he says flies past before I can really process it. Perhaps the telling of a life needs to be taken more slowly than what an audio book allows.
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This year, DD's teacher told us to afterschool and suggested curriculum.
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I hope you are feeling better Stacia!
And mumto2- That is horrible. :grouphug:
I think I'm surrendering T.S. Eliot for the time being. The reading I want to do for the prehistory class is a lot and, while I didn't plan to do an intense Bible study, it is what it is. I was speaking with a friend about it today and she piled more materials on me and she's sending me links to more academic lectures.
I had to pause C.S. Lewis today just when he said he dabbled in the occult. It surprised me, partially because Eli Wiesel spoke so much about the kabbalah in his memoir and it's ill effects on his friends. It's an interesting parallel and I didn't get to hear anything beyond that statement from C.S. Lewis.
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A bit off topic but I am wondering if anyone else has this issue. Whenever I "like" a post, my phone reloads to the beginning of the thread. It is incredibly annoying.
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Mumto2-
I am very jealous that you are in Snowdon tomorrow. I have wanted to hike there for over a decade and, alas, when I was close and able to hike, it was deemed unsafe. Have fun!
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So I'm thinking, So late in the day, and Robin hasn't posted the new thread yet? And then I thought, Oh right.
Retrieved from Middle Girl, and finished on the train from Edinburgh last night, Mauriac's Life of Jesus. The "Life of Christ" genre has always been popular among Catholics, and they generally range from the treacly pious to the disturbingly overwrought (*cough*Emmerich*cough*). Mauriac, a Nobel Prize-winning novelist, contributed a fresh and deeply human account to the genre. Apparently he got a lot of flack for it, too.
I was interested also to learn that Mauriac encouraged Elie Wiesel to publish Night, and wrote the introduction to it. I am very much looking forward to reading Thérèse Desqueyroux now.
Meanwhile, getting in some Boccaccio. Reading The Decameron was a lot like eating through a box of tiny, exquisite chocolates. It's very hard to stop; even the trifling ones are small enough to be forgiven their fluffiness; and they're all enjoyably different. Re-reading Boccaccio is like getting the same box again from a friend. "Oh yes, I enjoyed that one very much last time, too!"
Elie writes about Mauriac a bit in his memoir. I finished it today and, while I enjoyed it thoroughly, I think if I had read more of the authors he spoke of I would have enjoyed it more. It's a book that I could come back to after reading some of those authors and get more out of it. Interestingly, Dh needed to add on to an Amazon order so my Klezmer violin book arrived a couple months early and I started a free Hebrew class online (just for fun!). Seems to be a theme here...
I carried T.S. Elliot about with me today but didn't delve into the plays- just carried the book around. I also finished Chronicles and I'm not sure what is next to read on the Bible list. In the wee morning hours, I am listening to "Surprised by Joy" while flopping around on the floor pretending to exercise and stretch.
As for birds: There is a barred owl that sits outside our windows. The moment he sees me, he turns his back to me and then spins his head around to stare at me as if to say, "What are you looking at?"
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Which course is this? I looked into Coursera after you mentioned it last week and I joined the Greek and Roman mythology class. Oy. My first quiz I got a 17 out of 20! :( When I retook it, however, I did get a 20 out of 20 and there were some different questions. I haven't taken a test in 14 years. And they want me to do an essay?!? I don't know if I'll be able to keep up with it, especially the reading. This is the book list to be covered in 10 weeks:
It's "The Bible's Prehistory, Purpose and Political Future". I just listen to the lectures and read what I want as I don't have time to participate in the forums or write essays. There is a lot of information packed into this course.
"The Ancient Greeks" was a fun course too and I highly recommend it.
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Adding a Four Quartets excerpt:
Exceprt from Four Quartets:
Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
The world becomse stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living. Not the intense moment
Isolated, with nobefore and after,
But a lifetime burning in every moment
And not the lifetime of one man only
But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.
There is a time for the evening under starlight,
A time for the evening under lamplight
(The evening with the photograph album).
Love is most nearly itself
Where here and now cease to matter.
Old men ought to be explorers
Here and there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.
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I am so sorry loesje.
And congratulations Eliana.
Summer is officially here and I am running ragged in the best of all possible ways. I finished T.S. Eliot's poems and am looking at the plays...maybe I'll read them, maybe not. Weisel's All Rivers Run to the Sea has captured me and I am happy carrying it from park to park. I also finished 2 Kings, 1 Chronicles and am working through 2 Chronicles for the Coursera class. I don't have enough time to read the Bible references while keeping up with the lectures from week to week. I've started a list of what I want to read for that course and am not trying to match the readings to the lectures.
Hopefully, I'll get some down time to catch up this thread. My best to all of you.
Winter
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Eliot's Four Quartets have been my guiding compass since I was a teenager.
I have always said that one of these days I'd spend some time with The Waste Land. Winter, maybe you'll inspire me!
I just made it to The Quartets. Between Eli Wiesel, Eliot's choruses for "The Rock", 2 Kings and finishing Psalms, I've been immersed in theology, religious texts, and such. Eliot asked, "Who is this that cometh from Edom?" and for a brief moment I thought "Oh good more on the Edom thing" But then he went on to say "He has trodden the wine-press alone." That was it and I was left empty handed. I like Wiesel's statement that "The victims alone were worthy of my devotion." when explaining why he never became a Nazi hunter and his imagery of God weeping and asking "What have you done with my work?"
Quartets are next and for you Jane, I will do my best to attend to them when I read them. :thumbup1:
shukriyyaHive Mind Level 5 Worker: Forager Bee
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Posted Today, 01:02 PM
Our heroine has just been granted her first wish which she made with alarming rapidity and impressive confidence and conviction. Earlier and just moments before the djinn manifested she had emerged from her bath, swathed in Turkish towels, white as white and...
"...looked ruefully down at what it was better not to look at, the rolls of her midriff, the sagging muscles of her stomach. She remembered, now as she reached for her towel, how perhaps ten years ago she had looked complacently at her skin on her throat, at her solid enough breasts, and had thought herself well-preserved, unexceptionable. She had tried to imagine how this nice, taut, flexible skin would crimp and wrinkle and fall and had not been able to. It was her skin, it was herself, and there was no visible reason why it should not persist. She had known intellectually that it must, it must give way, but its liveliness then had given her the lie. And now it was all going, the eyelids had soft little folds, the edges of the lips were fuzzed, if she put on lipstick it ran in little threads into the surrounding skin."
And so our heroine wishes..."for my body to be as it was when I last really liked it, if you can do that." What an astonishing wish! Of all the possible things one could have this seems both ridiculous and brilliant. And even more peculiar given the nature of our heroine whose intellect has been her gift, her conveyance. Yet what more perfect ideal, a loved and cherished palace for the soul to reside in. I love the djinn's rather phlegmatic response..."And yet...you are well enough as you are, in my opinion. Amplitude, madam, is desirable"
Let me repeat that last line for its lush and generous and embracing music..."Amplitude, madam, is desirable"
This is beautiful.
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We have Learning Latin Through Mythology hanging around, too. I'll use it along with the other things we are doing at some point. DD loves mythology. I've been eyeing Latin for the New Millennium. I thought VL and LL would be a better next step for us.
I've been thinking Latin for the New Millennium followed by LL with something else would work for us. LL would be when they are ready to wean somewhat from mom hand holding.
I second GSWL for Greenmama2.
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That scholar...I keep having to go back and listen again because he is distracting.
That scholar looks disturbingly like a fellow student I traveled with once.......... Very distracting.
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I have "All Rivers Run to the Sea" by Elie Weisel started and am so far enjoying it. I was a bit worried that the subject matter would send me lurching over the toilet but so far it's going well. The Complete Poems and Plays of T.S. Elliot came into the library and I started that as well. Dh asked how it was going and I replied, "I don't think T. S. Elliot is a good fit for me..." but then I looked at the page # and realized I had read 100 pages already. Such a relief after Herodotus. Because of the Bible Prehistory+ class, I'm booking through 2 Kings as well so I have a better idea of what that scholar is talking about.
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I finished Herodotus's Histories! :party: Artemesia and Xerxes were entertaining and Herodotus's statement about "Nothing mortal travels faster than a Persian with a message" (or something like that) cracked me up. And then it got long and I'm sure the war was longer for the Greeks and Persians than it was for me.
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Howdy! (Waving after my absence.) Please forgive any typos as I'm on a touch pad.
Spent the last week in AK with my family. :-) Got to see whales, eagles, black bears, porpoises, and sled dogs too. Am in Seattle now, visited Mt. Rainier yesterday (& was sad to learn about the climbers there -- have been woefully unaware of the news while traveling). Love Mt. Rainier -- a gorgeous, yet dangerous, beauty. I have apparently carried warm, sunny weather with me from the southern US to both AK and the Seattle area, lol.
This sounds lovely Stacia. I'm glad you had a great time.
Steampunk boots. Love them, even though I'd probably break my ankles.
Check your pm's - I'm off to get lost in hobby lobby!
I would fall over in those things. LOL So um...I don't have the best back and my hunt for ideas on how to address the issue led me to corsets on the internet which led me to lovely things like this......
http://www.corset-story.com/brown-canvas-print-corset-with-matching-jacket-cd-1380.html
OK. I can't figure out how to post an image! :gnorsi:
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I think the Coursera Bible Prehistory course is going to answer my question on why Edom had a shoe thrown at it in Psalms. If everyone was trying to expand their territory, then that would explain it.
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We love ours but we did visit one, when we were hunting around, that was frightening. The best thing you can do is to tour the school and really look at the students and see how they are doing in the school. We walked into every classroom at the school we chose and in every classroom the students were engaged and happy. Test scores can be low for some students in the early years as they are learning in one language and being tested in another. The school that was frightening had great test scores but the kids looked miserable. The responsibility for teaching kids to read in English is on the parents at our school. The parents who chose immersion schools put a high priority on education and community (at least that's been our experience).
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OOh. I'm going to check this out.
I just signed up for the Coursera course. The kids saw the horse course and asked to take that so it looks like when school lets out this week, we'll be doing that as well.
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I just finished reading about the battle of the 300 and only have two books left of Herodotus's Histories. I'm getting bored reading about war and was grateful to read about Leonidas rather than a long list of armies and such. Hopefully the next two books will be a better fit. Apparently war makes me hungry as I just downed a whole pizza by myself.
I put in a request for T.S. Elliot and C.S. Lewis at the library.
Book a Week in 2014 - BW28
in The Chat Board
Posted
I may have to check that one out. Thank you!