Stacks Book Challenge

I finished Linnets and Valerians by Elizabeth Goudge. Mama Squirrel thought I might be disappointed with it, and Tim read it one day when I set it aside and said it had voodoo in it, so I decided not to read it aloud to the younger boys as I had planned.

The book was very enjoyable, you're plunged right into the story from the first page. The kids aren't perfect, but they're interesting and likeable. Tim commented that at the beginning, it seems like a Saturdays book by Elizabeth Enright, but it evolves into a Nesbit book along the way. He was right, it seems pretty straightforward at first, but subtly becomes fantastic (as in fanciful and unbelievable). But I still liked it. It reminded me of The Little White Horse in the sense that good overcame evil and all the loose ends were tied up into one blissful happy ending and everyone lives happily ever after forever and ever. I like that.

I also read More All-of-a-Kind Family and Ella of All-of-a-Kind Family. More AOAKF was a lot like the first book, light and enjoyable and ending with a wedding. Ella was disappointing. The writing seemed choppy, as if it was written in short little sentences for second graders (were the first two like that? I don't remember them being like that) but the subject matter - a girl on the verge of womanhood choosing between a glamorous career and a mundane family life with the man she loves - is suited for readers old enough for real sentences. And it lacked the charm of the first two, maybe because it wasn't about little children and their antics, but about an older girl making a big decision.

I've read my five books and then some, but I still plan to read The Iliad for Boys and Girls before my challenge is done. It was one of the books I originally listed (I listed six instead of five).

The Maid upon the Road

He:
Come with me, my pretty, and give me thy love
And I'll promise thee love and the world beside:
I'll tie up thy tresses with ribbons y-wove
And one day thou wilt be my bride.

She:
Swiftly indeed thou wouldst give me thy love,
But I'll not be so swift, and I'll not give thee mine,
For another fair maiden I've seen by the road,
Walking slow near the stream where the willows twine:

She sang: "I gave him my heart and my love,
And he promised me love and the world beside;
But I now walk alone in the willow-grove
And he seeks after another bride."

So I'll not be giving my heart or my love
To just any who ask, or who promise me fine:
For the man who desires my heart must prove
That he's worthy to keep it, ere I give him mine.

The Message of Christmas

Is joy to the world, right?

Another Birthday

Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him,
Nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away
When He comes to reign.
In the bleak mid-winter
A stable place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty
Jesus Christ.

Christmas

We had a nice Christmas, just us again - our relatives live pretty far away, too far to plan a trip without a long vacation. Mr. B baked his traditional Christmas lasagna, we listened to Christmas music, watched Christmas movies, ate Christmas cookies (except me - although I haven't kept totally to my raw diet, I did manage to stay away from all dairy, wheat and sugar!) and played Scrabble.

Miss M got a Fisher Price doctor's kit and she's been going around all day taking our temp, checking our blood pressure and listening to our hearts with her stethoscope. She also got a hardboard purse/book with all kinds of purse stuff in it, and she's been carrying it around very importantly all day.

Usually we make three different kinds of cookies each year - I make chocolate chip, and Mr B makes a cakey pumpkin breadish cookie, and a butter cookie cut into shapes and decorated with colored sugar. This year we only made one. I adapted a gingerbread cookie recipe when the boys were little and didn't like the strong flavor of gingerbread. Mostly, I just halved the spices. We decided that those taste better than the butter cookies, so we just made those this year. I'll paste the recipe below.

Our favorite Christmas CD's this year:
Handel's Messiah
Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols
The Nutcracker Ballet
Christmas Celtic Sojourn
Comfort and Joy, A Christmas Celtic Sojourn (new to us this year)
Joy to the World - Robert Shaw Chorale
Perry Como - That Christmas Feeling (another new one for us)

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Lightly Spiced Ginger Cookies

Preheat oven to 375 degrees

Mix and set aside:
5 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

Take out a half cup of the flour mixture. Add:
1/2 cup sugar. Use this mixture later to flour the board, dough and rolling pin.

Mix:
2 sticks butter, softened
1 1/2 cups sugar

Add in:
2 eggs
2 Tablespoons milk
1 teaspoon vanilla

Roll out, cut into shapes, sprinkle with colored sugar and bake 375 degrees 5-8 minutes. (These bake fast!)

Update on the War Against Homeschooling in Germany

A homeschool organization within Germany is requesting that letters be sent. More here. I'm keeping an eye on this because there are some here who are using the same logic to try to make homeschooling here difficult.

Thanks to Mama Squirrel for bringing this to my attention.

An Old Favorite and a New Discovery

I was reminded of a book I used to love as a child - Mr. Willowby's Christmas Tree by Robert Barry. I found a copy recently and read it to Miss M this evening. A man buys a Christmas tree that's too tall to fit in his house, so he cuts off the top. The top is presented to his maid, but is just a bit too tall for her room, so she cuts off the top. The top is found by the gardener . . . This one tree blesses all kinds of furry creatures, and finally a little mouse who lives in a mouse hole right in Mr. Willowby's house. The book is told in rhyme, and the rhyme works (there's nothing more annoying than rhyme that misses a syllable so that the cadence of a sentence is all out of place and you have to throw in a word to make it right.)

And a discovery - okay, it's not really new new. A few years ago, I was laying in bed with the radio on and they played this piano piece. The guy's fingers kept going and going, it was amazing, and it didn't quit! I strained to hear who the composer was. It was William Sterndale Bennett's Piano Concerto 1 in D. I wrote it down and kept it on a slip of paper on my refrigerator for years. Finally I decided to see about purchasing that piano concerto. It wasn't to be found. I did find a CD of some of his other works, out of print, but available used, so I bought it and played it and loved it. The liner notes say . . .

"I think him the promising young musician I know . . . and I am convinced that if he does not become a very great musician, it is not God's will, but his own." Mendelssohn's curiously prophetic words were written in 1836. A few months later, Schumann declared that if there were many more artists like Bennett, the future of music would be secure. The Grove's Dictionary in 1878 called Bennett the only English composer since Purcell . . . and the New Grove Dictionary of 1980 still characterizes him as "the most distinguished composer of the Romantic school."

Despite these favorable opinions of a century and a half, Bennett's music has virtually disappeared from the repertoire.

I really think something should be done about that. I did find a small music company called Lyrita that still sells two of his CD's, but they're in England (I ordered one anyway!) Other than that, his CD's and sheet music seem non-existent. If you go to Lyrita and click on "William Sterndale Bennett," you can see the two CD's - and if you click on them, you can hear samples. Listen and be amazed! One way or another, I plan to acquire all of the music of his that I can.

Another composer I'd like to see come back from oblivion is Samuel Wesley, 1766-1837. He was related to Methodists John and Charles Wesley (Charles Wesley's son), and was called "The English Mozart" when he was young because he was a child prodigy.

Stacks Challenge: Roller Skates

I finished Roller Skates by Ruth Sawyer. It was okay. It's about Lucinda, an awkward, spirited girl who's seen as an unpleasant, unattractive, difficult child to her family. When her parents take a trip, she spends a year with her aunts and befriends all kinds of people - the kind of people her parents probably wouldn't approve of. In that respect, she's like Pollyanna. She sees beauty and worth in people that high society wouldn't value. The book has moments of brilliance, but in between those moments, I was bored and had a hard time keeping all the names of her various friends straight.

Towards the end, the book suddenly takes a realistic turn and becomes less fun, then finally ends sadly because Lucinda has to go back home and she doesn't want to leave the wonderful life she's discovered. In that respect, the book ends in despair - there isn't any indication that life gets any better for her when she goes back home, just that she's leaving and is going to leave a large part of herself behind in this place where she's discovered her true self. In fact, in the last scene, she's staring at her own reflection in the water insisting that she'll never leave, and one wonders if she jumped in so she could stay there forever, always ten years old. The beginning of the book is circular, with an unknown person confronting Lucinda years later, and she's still a ten-year-old in roller skates, as if her life never got beyond that one year. Really sad.

I've started Linnets and Valerians by Elizabeth Goudge and I'm enjoying that one a lot more.

A Happy Birthday

The great composer was born 236 years ago today - and the world was never the same again . . .

"Life can't be all bad when for ten dollars you can buy all the Beethoven sonatas and listen to them for ten years." - William F. Buckley, Jr.

Merry Christmas to my AO/HEO Sisters!

Earth, strike up your music,
Birds that sing and bells that ring;
Heaven hath answering music
For all Angels soon to sing:
Earth, put on your whitest
Bridal robe of spotless snow:
For Christmas bringeth Jesus,
Brought for us so low.
~ Christina Rossetti



May your Christmas be filled with traditional trimmings and warm memories!

A Gallery of Old-fashioned Christmas Cards