August 2020

August can be such a transitional month here.  It began with a week-long heatwave, temperatures hovering around 100 degrees Fahrenheit and is ending with a cool front, highs in the 60s, and outside my window tinges of red are beginning to show around the edges of the leaves.  

So August brought summer fun AND the return of school.  It brought an unexpected quick trip to England and rising COVID-19 numbers.  It brought the reminder that comes every August that teaching the kids is a full-time job for me, even though they can do a lot on their own.  It's brought the reminder that investing in learning with my kids is good and fruitful work, and I love it.  And so here we are entering the last quarter of 2020.  K.J. shared this with me last week, and it made me laugh:

May we all learn good lessons and not act like spoiled children. 😀

August 2 - Summer BBQ with Friends

August 3 - Church in the Park, Amazing Grace to the Ukulele 

August 4 - Last Bike Ride of Summer Vacation

August 5 - Sunny, Summer Day

August 6 - Homemade Dipped Fudge-cicle

August 7 - Falling Leaves Drying Out in the Heat

August 8 - Ripening Pears

August 9 - Hottest Church in the Park

August 10 - The Dawn of the First Day of School

August 11 - Science Experiment

August 12 - Mid-August Outside our Window

August 13 - Spontaneous Trip Across the Channel

August 14 - A Nation of Pun-makers

This deserves one more picture.

August 15 - The Old Bank Bookshop

August 16 - I can't even with those trees.

August 17 - An Atmospheric Spot to Take Shelter from the Rain

August 18 - Farewell, little island.

August 19 - Unpacking

August 20 - The garden is still lovely.

August 21 - Beautiful Start to Dinner

August 22 - Saturday LEGO-Building

August 23 - "When pressed, I say she is elegant."

August 24 - A Good C.S. Lewis Quote from Jonathan Rogers' Newsletter

August 25 - Moved J's Desk Downstairs

August 26 - Evening Sky

August 27 - Morning Sky

August 28 - Workout

August 29 - A Favorite Street in Our Town

August 30 - Church on Zoom 

August 31 - First of E's Literature Course Books

Five Quotes, vol. xvii

 

Mural in Oxfam, Deal, England

I have been fully immersed in managing school this week, and my reading life reflects that.  Some of my quotes come from the kids' reading for school with Wodehouse for a little levity and a rather long passage from Dickens that felt very prescient to the way so many people--with varied and opposing opinions--feel pressured to do good these days.  Even when human nature is bad, I am oddly comforted in its sameness through the centuries.  We are capable of great good and great evil, and it has always been thus.  And thus I'll end with some Thomas Aquinas I read alongside E this week that struck me as the most challenging belief for people through the ages, yet if we believe that God planned for the murder of His own son to pay for all our badness, then we know this must be true.

"Captain Kelly pulled a chair back and lowered himself into it with a tight-trousered man's slow caution."

- Big Money, P.G. Wodehouse

"God is constantly changing the Earth He made.  He carves rocky precipices with wind, pounds beaches with ocean waves, and softens soil with showers."

- Creation to Cathedrals, Ray and Charlene Notgrass

"...his philanthropy was of that gunpowderous sort that the difference between it and animosity was hard to determine.  You were to abolish military force, but you were first to bring all commanding officers who had done their duty, to trial by court-martial for that offense, and shoot them.  You were to abolish war, but were to make converts by making war upon them, and charging them with loving war as the apple of their eye.  You were to have no capital punishment, but were first to sweep off the face of the earth all legislators, jurists, and judges, who were of the contrary opinion.  You were to have universal concord, and were to get it by eliminating all the people who wouldn't, or conscientiously couldn't, be concordant.  You were to love your brother as yourself, but after an indefinite interval of maligning him (very much as if you hated him), and calling him all manner of names.  Above all things, you were to do nothing in private, or on your own account.  You were to go to the offices of the Haven of Philanthropy, and put your name down as a Member and a Professing Philanthropist.  Then, you were to pay up your subscription, get your card of membership and your riband and medal, and were evermore to live upon a platform, and evermore to say what Mr. Honeythunder said...in short, the baseness of all those who do not belong to it, and pledges itself to make as many obnoxious statements as possible about them, without being at all particular as to facts."

- The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Charles Dickens

"...there must exist something the existence of which is necessary."

- Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica

"This is part of the infinite goodness of God, that He should allow evil to exist, and out of it produce good."

- Thomas Aquinas

Feed the Birds

The first morning we wake up in England is at the tail-end of the recent heatwave on this side of the Atlantic, and it feels stuffy inside.  J and I go out to eat breakfast on a bench overlooking the harbor.  It's cool and overcast now, and it's such a relief after the constant sweating of the past week.  The sound of squawking seagulls interrupts the morning peace.  I look just to my left and point out to J that the seagulls must be hoping for a few droppings as the bins are emptied.

This man's partner walks toward us to empty another bin and stops to shoot the breeze.

"We feed the baby seagulls every morning."

So they're not just hoping for accidental droppings; they're flying in for a breakfast buffet they know to expect.

"Seagulls are smarter than you think.  Sometimes people put bags on the top of the bins to keep them from getting in, and we've seen them go flying straight into them to knock them off the top."

"Sometimes we have to break up fights between the seagulls and the crows."

My mind conjures up a picture of rival gangs in West Side Story, and I'm reminded that every life and every job has something interesting to lighten the load.  It makes me happy that these men spend their mornings feeding the birds while they keep the harbor clean.

Five Quotes vol. xvi

Baggins Book Bazaar in Rochester, England

I spent several days this past week doing one of my favorite things:  adding to my book collection by visiting second-hand bookshops like the one pictured above.  K.J. booked our typical off-season September trip to England back in July, but as the UK began adding various European countries back to a list of places requiring a two-week quarantine we began to feel the September trip might not happen.  We decided very spur-of-the-moment to just go for a shorter, unplanned trip, feeling that would be better than no trip at all.  

We felt pretty safe doing it as we take the ferry and can stay in the open air whilst traveling, and we knew we could enjoy a lot in a socially-distanced way.  All the other elements that needed to line up worked, so we did it, and we're glad we did.  And now I have a huge new stack of books to form my TBR for the rest of 2020.

"Sidney hated the phrase 'with respect.'  It always meant the opposite.

- Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death, James Runcie

"Undergraduates, especially those in their first year, are not, of course, quite sane or quite adult.  It is sometimes considered that they are not quite human."

- Death on the Cherwell, Mavis Doriel Hay

"In a world so full of beautiful things, it seems a pity that one has got to talk about Mr. Frisby's gastric juices, but it is the duty of the historian to see life steadily and see it whole."

- Big Money, P.G. Wodehouse

"It was, he perceived, a day for joy and adventure and romance."

- Big Money, P.G. Wodehouse

"Really, Paterson, I am at my wit's end about Anne."

Mr. Frisby grunted again, this time to indicate the opinion that she had not had to travel far."

- Big Money, P.G. Wodehouse

My Back-to-School Struggle

My back-to-school struggle is one I'm sure a lot of people with kids have struggled with during the pandemic when work moved to the home office and school went virtual.

I'm super-jealous of E's 9th grade reading list.

Someone please assign me books and essays again.

At this point in my homeschooling career my kids don't need me for every little thing.  They are learning to be self-starters.  They know what they need to do each day, but even so, I'm still needed as organizer, conversation-starter, helper-with-math-problems, giver-of-essay-ideas, grader-of-answers, and recorder-of-grades and lessons, not to mention my duties of lunch-lady and janitor.

The struggle that comes with being needed but not needed every moment is the struggle I've always had being home with my kids:  the times I'm needed for intensive help are scattered throughout the day, and the times I'm ready to be an engaged helper, nobody needs me.  This is not dissimilar to the phenomenon of siblings fighting when you have nothing for them to do and playing together having the time of their lives when it's time to start school.  Or the baby never napping well but deciding to take the best nap of his life the one day you made plans that week.  

At the times they need/want me, I've usually just started working on my own project, and I struggle shifting my brain from one line of thought to another quickly.  The mood can so swiftly shift from nobody needing me to people needing me to make decisions and give directions immediately.  This makes it hard to plan.

I always have a long list of things to do, and when the interruption comes, I have to choose again, and all the constant choices and changes of direction make my brain tired.  This can come out as resentment at my family needing me, but the truth is it's the constant decision-making that wears me down.

Interruptions are inevitable, and they are a great way to practice patience, self-denial, and kindness, but I'm also thinking it would help if we decide on a time I can count on being uninterrupted.  Doing that might help with all the inevitable interruptions the rest of the time.  That's the beauty of older kids:  they'll happily cooperate if I just take the time to sit down and decide.  For younger kids, there's always screen time for when you just need thirty minutes to an hour.  For the inexplicable nap schedules of infants, there is only praying for more grace to keep laying your life down for that helpless babe.  One day they'll be able to fend for themselves longer.

What's your back-to-school struggle?  Is it completely different this year because of COVID-19?  

Five Quotes, vol. xv

I took my copy of The Little Prince to Saint Exupery's

memorial at the Pantheon in February.  I love that being a 

novelist makes him a "romancier" in French.

"How we love determines how we live," he thought.

- Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death, James Runcie

"Sidney was tired, but contented, after the exertions of Christmas and was on the train to London.  He had seen the festival season through with a careful balance of geniality and theology and he was looking forward to a few days off with his family and friends."

- Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death, James Runcie

"He decided to unwind by reading some poetry and picked out a volume of George Herbert from his bookshelf.  He began to read from 'The Temple', a poem in which Father Time pays the narrator a visit.

In the poem, the old man's scythe is dull and his role in human life has changed.  Since the coming of Christ, and the promise of eternal life, he is no longer an executioner but a gardener:

                                An usher to convey our souls

                                Beyond the utmost starres and poles

Sidney remembered how strikingly original the poem was.  For George Herbert, the time we spend on earth is not all too brief and transient but too long:  because it detains human beings from a life outside time and with God."

- Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death, James Runcie

"Oh! He would have thee daily more free,

Knowing the might of thy royal degree,

Ever in waiting, glad for His call,

Tranquil in chastening, trusting through all.

Comings and goings no turmoil need bring;

His, all the future:  do the next thing."

- from the poem, Do the Next Thing by Mrs. George A. Paull, quoted in The Next Right Thing, Emily P. Freeman

"The story arc can be one of hope even though each part of the story may have had its share of hopelessness.  The story arc can be one of faith even though the characters may have shaken fists and asked hard questions and yelled at the top of their lungs.  The story arc is joyful even when the people are broken." 

- The Next Right Thing, Emily P. Freeman

Five Quotes, vol. xiv

from my month of reading Fantasy in January

This has been a little bit of a slower reading week for me because I stopped reading-at-whim (my July reading theme) and started reading a book I borrowed that I need to return.  I've also started reading Ron Chernow's, Alexander Hamilton, aloud to K.J., but not every night is a read-aloud night.  Some nights you need to watch television.  But here's what caught my eye this week, because it either rang true, made me think, or seemed beautiful.

"There was nothing impetuous or disorderly about this action [adopting the Declaration of Independence at the Continental Congress].  Even amid a state of open warfare, these law-abiding men felt obligated to issue a formal document, giving a dispassionate list of their reasons for secession.  This solemn, courageous act flew in the face of historical precedent.  No colony had ever succeeded in breaking away from the mother country to set up a self-governing state, and the declaration signers knew that the historical odds were heavily stacked against them.  They further knew that treason was a crime punishable by death, a threat that scarcely seemed abstract as reports trickled into Philadelphia of the formidable fleet bearing down on New York."

- Alexander Hamilton, Ron Chernow

"In times of such commotion as the present, while the passions of men are worked up to an uncommon pitch, there is great danger of fatal extremes.  The same state of the passions which fits the multitude, who have not a sufficient stock of reason and knowledge to guide them, for opposition to tyranny and oppression, very naturally leads them to a contempt and disregard of all authority.  The due medium is hardly to be found among the more intelligent.  It is almost impossible among the unthinking populace.  When the minds of these are loosened from their attachment to ancient establishments and courses, they seem to grow giddy and are apt more or less to run into anarchy."

- letter to John Jay from Alexander Hamilton, quoted in Alexander Hamilton, Ron Chernow

"Of all the incidents in Hamilton's early life in America, his spontaneous defense of Myles Cooper was probably the most telling.  It showed that he could separate personal honor from political convictions and presaged a recurring theme of his career:  the superiority of forgiveness over revolutionary vengeance."

- Alexander Hamilton, Ron Chernow

"There were moments, usually on a sunny Easter morning, when she wished that she could with sincerity call herself a Christian; but for the rest of the year she knew herself to be what she was--incurably agnostic but prone to unpredictable relapses into faith."

- An Unsuitable Job for a Woman, P.D. James

"To do justice is no doubt a very fine thing, but an act of grace is sometimes a much finer one."

- Love and Liberty, Alexandre Dumas

Five Quotes, vol. xiii

The Chaucer Bookshop

Canterbury, England

This week I finished reading Chesterton's short English history and read a lot of mysteries set in Yorkshire, very apropos since today is Yorkshire Day.  In honor of the day I included two Yorkshire sayings I used to see printed on tea towels, greeting cards, and the like.  

"...it's hard to distinguish between the irrational and the possible at almost two o'clock in the morning."

- The Red Notebook, Anthony Lourain

"Everyone who carries a lot of cares in their head should have one day a month in their nightdress."

- Murder in the Afternoon, Frances Brody

"There is something very typical of an English revolution in having the tumbril without the guillotine."

- A Short History of England, G.K. Chesterton

"See all, hear all, say nowt."

- a Yorkshire saying quoted in Murder in the Afternoon, Frances Brody

"You can allus tell a Yorkshireman--but you can't tell him much."

- traditional Yorkshire saying quoted in Murder in the Afternoon, Frances Brody