Quothe Spuddy Buddy:
"Y'know, animals that eat animals could be called annibals."
October 28, 2008
October 22, 2008
A Psalm of Life
"If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
but make allowance for their doubting too..."
My high school friends had warned me that while loopily winding one's way out of anaesthesia from getting one's wisdom teeth removed, one is at risk of telling one's mother things one didn't mean to. You know, things. Apparently I didn't have a lot of things to tell, because there I was in that purportedly risky moment quoting to my rather astonished mother every single line of the marvellous poem If by Rudyard Kipling. Mother was even more surprised to learn that it had been laying dormant in the dark corners of my brain since fourth grade.
Mrs. Presley, my fourth grade teacher, was an old timer who firmly believed in the virtues of memory work. It was a constant in her classroom. Incredibly, I still remember almost everything I memorized at her behest, including the 100th Psalm and Noche de Paz (Silent Night in Spanish).
Just goes to show that what you feed to a young mind really does matter.
Spuddy Buddy is now in fourth grade, and we have been doing a lot of recitation work together this fall. In addition to some carefully selected poems, we are also memorizing the first chapter of John together over this school year. And we'll soon be getting that beloved 100th Psalm ready for reciting with the family at Thanksgiving dinner.
It was the legendary teacher Jack Cody -- Texas State Teacher of the Year in 2000 and my very dear lifelong friend and mentor -- who handed me an intoxicatingly aromatic mimeographed copy of A Psalm of Life by Longfellow for memorization. He gave our high school literature class such a stirring recitation of it that it is still his voice I hear in my head when I read it or even just think of the stanzas. This poem has been a fixture in my thought world ever since, and as such it has served me well. Different stanzas have floated to the top of my thoughts at different times, granting wisdom proper to the moment.
For instance, Mr. Cody could not have foreseen that the seventeen year old girl in the second row would someday lean into that second stanza while battling cancer thirty years later, would pause over this phrase and that one while grinding through the rugged detox from the pain meds, would huff through the last stanza over and over during the frustrating months of physical rehab that followed.
And therein lies the virtue of memorization: it allows you to meditate on a feast of ideas and beauty at will, to chew on a great thought many times over the course of a lifetime -- a lifetime so busy that you might never come across that poem on a page again, but once it becomes part of the furniture of your mind it is always available to you at any moment. Memorization populates your thought life with wise voices that will speak to you in both moments of need and moments of abundance.
I see now that it was a gift. When my father sat there with the Psalms open in his lap and had me recite whole chapters, when Mrs. Presley has us stand and chant Kipling together each morning till we had it down cold, when Mr. Cody took the time to read Longfellow and Dickinson aloud to us during precious class time... it was a gift. It was definitely something they could have just skipped. At the time, to me, it just looked like work. But can you see? It was really an act of love.
A Psalm of Life
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)
Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.
Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.
Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.
In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!
Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act, act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o'erhead!
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;
Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.
Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.
.
October 21, 2008
dying to be a cheerleader?
According to the Dallas Morning News, cheerleading is the leading cause of fatal injuries to high school and college age women.
Whoa. Let that sink in.
But wait, there's more. Cheerleading is also the leading cause of non-fatal injuries to those girls. Let's think about that for a minute, shall we? Think about the cheerleader-to-non-cheerleader ratio lurking behind that statistic... that means a very small percentage of the total female student population is sustaining the majority of the injuries in that whole population.
For the sake of cheerleading.
Does anyone out there hear the clue phone ringing?
Do these girls have fathers?
Is cheerleading becoming our new Roman arena sport? (Hey, look over there! They didn't catch her! Is she dead or what? Dude!")
October 14, 2008
October 12, 2008
fa the bride
It's hard to believe it's already been two months since the wedding. We're still waiting for the photographer to deliver the wedding album, but as soon as it arrives, I'll post some pictures from the big day.
In the meantime here are Fa's bridal portraits...
Little girls do grow up.
(Sigh.)
October 6, 2008
a song for Gigi
q. shenaynay
My grandmother has been a widow for fifteen years, after over 60 happy years with my grandfather. One Sunday morning at her church, I guess it was about ten years ago, I paused in the middle of a hymn to ask her why she didn't sing in church anymore. I so missed her warm, full soprano with the ever-so-slightly trilled rrr's.
She whispered back, "Oh, honey, I don't have a song anymore."
"But Gigi, you have a beautiful voice. Won't you sing?" I asked, not yet grasping her meaning.
"No, dear," she said with the sweetest smile you ever saw. "Ever since I lost George Emmett, my song is gone. You sing now."
Granddaddy lived to be a few months shy of 100; Gigi is now almost 97. She has outlived all of her own generation, all of her many siblings (of whom she was the oldest), and two of her own children. And now I wonder, considering the whole of her life's staggering griefs, how can one heart be so broken and yet so merry? Grace is amazing.
Gigi Louise's homegoing is hastening on. Her mind, so weary of dwelling upon earthly things, has these past few days fully retreated from all that's mortal. Her heart is tired and lumbering, her breath rattles... her body is ready to release her from the surly bonds of earth.
Back before this long grey fog began to gather over her mind, Gigi could call hundreds of plants, flowers, trees and birds by name, and with contagious delight. A self-taught naturalist, she never felt a minute of guilt for going easy on housework so she could get outside, and her yard was always a world of wonders.
And so while visiting her last week, my mother wheeled Gigi outside to enjoy the beautiful trees, hoping for one last pleasant afternoon just to be a daughter with her mother. They sat a while, remarking a little about the beautiful trees. Gigi was mostly quiet, her conversation now gone as well as her song. Before Mother took her back inside, though, she slowly and gently asked Gigi a question.
"Mama, who was George Emmett?"
Gigi Louise pulled hard at her shadowy, fleeing thoughts for a few moments. And then, like a small child full of wonders, she answered in her soft, lyrical southern drawl,
"He's mine."
She paused and looked at the trees.
"I wonder where he is."
"Mama," Mother said, "he's with Jesus."
Ever since then, it looks like Gigi's been trying to get there as fast as she can.
And then, my sweet Gigi, you'll have a song again.
My grandmother has been a widow for fifteen years, after over 60 happy years with my grandfather. One Sunday morning at her church, I guess it was about ten years ago, I paused in the middle of a hymn to ask her why she didn't sing in church anymore. I so missed her warm, full soprano with the ever-so-slightly trilled rrr's.
She whispered back, "Oh, honey, I don't have a song anymore."
"But Gigi, you have a beautiful voice. Won't you sing?" I asked, not yet grasping her meaning.
"No, dear," she said with the sweetest smile you ever saw. "Ever since I lost George Emmett, my song is gone. You sing now."
Granddaddy lived to be a few months shy of 100; Gigi is now almost 97. She has outlived all of her own generation, all of her many siblings (of whom she was the oldest), and two of her own children. And now I wonder, considering the whole of her life's staggering griefs, how can one heart be so broken and yet so merry? Grace is amazing.
Gigi Louise's homegoing is hastening on. Her mind, so weary of dwelling upon earthly things, has these past few days fully retreated from all that's mortal. Her heart is tired and lumbering, her breath rattles... her body is ready to release her from the surly bonds of earth.
Back before this long grey fog began to gather over her mind, Gigi could call hundreds of plants, flowers, trees and birds by name, and with contagious delight. A self-taught naturalist, she never felt a minute of guilt for going easy on housework so she could get outside, and her yard was always a world of wonders.
And so while visiting her last week, my mother wheeled Gigi outside to enjoy the beautiful trees, hoping for one last pleasant afternoon just to be a daughter with her mother. They sat a while, remarking a little about the beautiful trees. Gigi was mostly quiet, her conversation now gone as well as her song. Before Mother took her back inside, though, she slowly and gently asked Gigi a question.
"Mama, who was George Emmett?"
Gigi Louise pulled hard at her shadowy, fleeing thoughts for a few moments. And then, like a small child full of wonders, she answered in her soft, lyrical southern drawl,
"He's mine."
She paused and looked at the trees.
"I wonder where he is."
"Mama," Mother said, "he's with Jesus."
Ever since then, it looks like Gigi's been trying to get there as fast as she can.
And then, my sweet Gigi, you'll have a song again.
October 4, 2008
350
q. shenaynay
Feeding people nourishing and pleasant meals is an act of beauty, but somehow that beauty has escaped any sort of expression in the state of my unsightly, disheveled recipe collection. That collection is actually a very precious thing to me -- those recipes are the hooks on which my memory hangs tales of family history and memories of our best times. But from the looks of it, you would never guess that it's something I treasure.
I've wanted to do something about that for a long time, but hadn't quite figured out what. I fiddled around with personal cookbook software, but the printouts looked so impersonal and all the same-same-same. This annoyed me. The metal index card box didn't jive with my penchant for ripping pages out of magazines and printing recipes online. Finally, I tried a 3-ring binder with plastic page protectors and dividers and all that jazz, and I had high hopes for a while. But good grief, the beast has so run amok that you can barely tell it's a binder anymore and we're all afraid to open it for fear of a recipe blizzard.
And now comes the kicker: Fa the Newlywed is suddenly cooking every day. And suddenly she wants my recipes and she wants them often and she wants them fast, because she's a busy busy college student taking 18 hours with a high GPA requirement to maintain her full scholarship... and a husband who is hungry every 2.5 hours.
All of which converged to point me to the solution: 350.
At first this was going to be just an easily accessible place for me to deposit some favorite family recipes for Fa and Beatrice and myself. But as I began typing them up, the project began to take on a personality. It didn't want to just be measurements and directions. It said it needed to be relational, because that's how I came by those recipes in the first place: through my relationships. I told it to hush, I only had time for measurements and directions. It said fine, but it had to wonder if I really believed all that stuff I say about all of life being about the science of relations. Said it thought I knew that nourishment and provision and serving others are all very covenantal and relational sorts of things. That the dinner table is the guardian of family history. That there are stories in my ugly three ring binder that my children really ought to know, stories of ordinary people doing endearing, remarkable, covenantal things with bread knives and grape vines and chicken soup and birthday cakes and dill pickles, stories that I could pass on if I had a mind to. Or, it said, I could just let them fade and be forgotten. Your choice, it said.
So please go check out the beginnings of my quirky, covenantal, relational recipe collection.
I'll be adding to it often, if for no other reason than Fa's husband is usually hungry.
Feeding people nourishing and pleasant meals is an act of beauty, but somehow that beauty has escaped any sort of expression in the state of my unsightly, disheveled recipe collection. That collection is actually a very precious thing to me -- those recipes are the hooks on which my memory hangs tales of family history and memories of our best times. But from the looks of it, you would never guess that it's something I treasure.
I've wanted to do something about that for a long time, but hadn't quite figured out what. I fiddled around with personal cookbook software, but the printouts looked so impersonal and all the same-same-same. This annoyed me. The metal index card box didn't jive with my penchant for ripping pages out of magazines and printing recipes online. Finally, I tried a 3-ring binder with plastic page protectors and dividers and all that jazz, and I had high hopes for a while. But good grief, the beast has so run amok that you can barely tell it's a binder anymore and we're all afraid to open it for fear of a recipe blizzard.
And now comes the kicker: Fa the Newlywed is suddenly cooking every day. And suddenly she wants my recipes and she wants them often and she wants them fast, because she's a busy busy college student taking 18 hours with a high GPA requirement to maintain her full scholarship... and a husband who is hungry every 2.5 hours.
All of which converged to point me to the solution: 350.
At first this was going to be just an easily accessible place for me to deposit some favorite family recipes for Fa and Beatrice and myself. But as I began typing them up, the project began to take on a personality. It didn't want to just be measurements and directions. It said it needed to be relational, because that's how I came by those recipes in the first place: through my relationships. I told it to hush, I only had time for measurements and directions. It said fine, but it had to wonder if I really believed all that stuff I say about all of life being about the science of relations. Said it thought I knew that nourishment and provision and serving others are all very covenantal and relational sorts of things. That the dinner table is the guardian of family history. That there are stories in my ugly three ring binder that my children really ought to know, stories of ordinary people doing endearing, remarkable, covenantal things with bread knives and grape vines and chicken soup and birthday cakes and dill pickles, stories that I could pass on if I had a mind to. Or, it said, I could just let them fade and be forgotten. Your choice, it said.
So please go check out the beginnings of my quirky, covenantal, relational recipe collection.
I'll be adding to it often, if for no other reason than Fa's husband is usually hungry.
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