Just David

I started this book two nights ago. And so far I like The Mouse and His Child better. David is innocent, good, eager, a child of nature - and I'm finding him annoying and not very likable. I can't put my finger on why. He doesn't "get" anything. When asked to fill a woodbox, he gets distracted watching spiders and butterflies, and when asked to weed the garden that supplies the family diet, he can't understand why he should pull out all the pretty plants. Then he neglects his work because he was suddenly struck with a desire to play his violin when he sees some pansies, and he can't wait to play it because he'll "lose the song." He seems to be a high maintenance child.

And I don't like the farm couple who get stuck taking care of him any better. They have absolutely no patience for a child who just lost his father and doesn't seem to understand. Instead of helping him along, they just get irritated about the extra work he makes for them.

And I don't like the dead father who created this predicament for David and the couple. He could have taught David to think of others and be helpful. But David only seems to think about himself and his impulsive desires. It's all innocent and sweet, but it still feels self-obsessed.

And I have a sinking feeling that the author is going to make it out as if David's free-spiritedness will bring light and harmony and joy to everyone around him because they, too, will discover the fulfillment and peace of thinking of their own inner longings instead of constantly being preoccupied with their daily routine chores.

Mozart

AO's composer this term is Mozart, and, for the first time in a long time, we're taking time to really explore Mozart. We're playing Mozart music (originally using free downloads from ClassicalArchives, but more and more playing CD's as we add to our collection), we read The Wonder Boy by Opal Wheeler, and Tim and I are reading the Mozart biography by Marcia Davenport. It requires just a bit of editing for students. When we read about a piece that piques our curiosity, we go to amazon.com and buy a used copy. We bought the Six Haydn-Quartets because we read about Mozart composing them and wanted to hear them. After reading the reviews at amazon, we settled on a set recorded sixty years ago by the Budapest Quartet (a Russian group!) Tonight we read this in Davenport's biography:

" . . . the G minor quintet (K. 516) with two violas. This quintet is a glimpse into Wolfgang's soul; an epic statement; a summing up; a prophecy. The man who has been called superficial gathered all the hidden pain and passion of nine troubled years and gave them an expression that lives and will live forever in its sheer elemental truth. The piece sets and holds a keynote of intense, passionate excitement which more than accounts for the apparent absence of this in Wolfgang's visible life. It is possible to interpret the work in terms of his own misforfunes, expounded and then protested in vivid poignancy. But it is better to know that he, true artist, rose above autobiographical emotion and turned his personal passion into universal force. The tragic mood of the first four movements, culminating in the black sorrow of the last Adagio, is swept away in the supreme bliss of the final Allegro. This is no conventional happy ending, but a moment when Wolfgang opens the door to his spirit, which is clear and radiant and beautiful, and not to be extinguished by any mortal hardship. That he knew always. No biographer, no commentator, critic, or interpreter can ever reveal Wolfgang Mozart entirely. Every attempt to know him truly, to relive his life, is incomplete without his own musical revelations. Such are this quintet and his Requiem. To know them deeply is to know him."

As it turns out, that quintet is included on the Budapest Quartet CD, so Tim and I were able to hear it. I plan to listen to it once every day until it becomes familiar, and until I begin to understand what she's talking about. At first listen, I didn't think the sorrow was "black." It was just melancholy. I'd call it brown.

Finished Book 1

I finished the first book of my Stacks challenge - The Mouse and His Child by Russell Hoban.

It's about a wind-up toy mouse who turns and lifts a little mouse into the air, like a father swinging his child in the air in circles. They're in a store with other toys and a grand Victorian mansion. They're sold, and they soon break and are thrown out, and the rest of the book is about their search to recapture their glorious past when they felt like they belonged in a kind of family in the mansion. It was not bad, decently written, I thought.

I'll read Just David next.

Checking In

My best friend was here for a visit - it was too short, just a few days. The funny thing is, we met on a music message board because we both liked a particular songwriter, and now, five years later (or is it six?) we didn't even play his music. We had too many other things to listen to, and too many other things to do and talk about.

We're both starting a new exercise routine - The Bar Method. I bought the DVD so we could both check it out together and we like it, so she's getting her own copy. It's a combination of isometrics, resistance, yoga and weights. Low impact, not too boring. I did the routine for the first time this evening. They say you start to notice a difference after ten times. We'll see.

A Month of Grace

Not Works

Grace, triumphant in the throne,
Scorns a rival, reigns alone;
Come and bow beneath her sway;
Cast your idol works away!
Works of man, when made his plea,
Never shall accepted be;
Fruits of pride (vainglorious worm!)
Are the best he can perform.

Self, the god his soul adores,
Influences all his powers;
Jesus is a slighted name,
Self-advancement all his aim:
But when God the Judge shall come,
To pronounce the final doom,
Then for rocks and hills to hide
All his works and all his pride!

Still the boasting heart replies,
What the worthy and the wise,
Friends to temperance and peace,
Have not these a righteousness?
Banish every vain pretence
Built on human excellence;
Perish everything in man,
But the grace that never can.

by William Cowper

A Month of Grace

Laughter is the closes thing to the grace of God.
Karl Barth


The unthankful heart ... discovers no mercies; but let the thankful heart weep through the day and, as the magnet finds the iron, so it will find, in every hour, some heavenly blessings!
Henry Ward Beecher

A Month of Grace

For I am sure that no man asketh mercy and grace with sincerity, without mercy and grace being given to him first.
Julian of Norwich

A Month of Grace

Grace is available for each of us every day -- our spiritual daily bread -- but we've got to remember to ask for it with a grateful heart and not worry about whether there will be enough for tomorrow.
Sarah Ban Breathnach

The most perfect instrument of tyranny...

I found this excellent quote in the otherwise middling 7 Men Who Rule the World from the Grave:

"A public-school system, if it means the providing of free education for those who desire it, is a noteworthy and beneficial achievement of modern times; but when once it becomes monopolistic it is the most perfect instrument of tyranny which has yet been devised. Freedom of thought in the Middle Ages was combatted by the Inquisition, but the modern method is far more effective. Place the lives of children in their formative years, despite the convictions of their parents, under the ultimate control of experts appointed by the State, force them to attend schools where the higher aspirations of humanity are crushed out, and where the mind is filled with the materialism of the day, and it is difficult to see how even the remnants of liberty can subsist."

Christianity and Liberalism (1924) by J. Gresham Machen

A Month of Grace

Grace is free sovereign favor to the ill-deserving.
Benjamin B. Warfield


If any man ascribes anything of salvation, even the very least thing, to the free will of man, he knows nothing of grace, and he has not learned Jesus Christ rightly.
Martin Luther