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"I am often asked where I get my ideas from. It's a very good question and one I always feel I should be able to answer. And yet, I struggle.
How can I not know? I think it's because there are many ways, some clearer than others. I walk around with a notebook, and for many months before writing a book I observe and listen, taking down turns of phrase, single words, quotes from poems or books, snippets of conversation, or clipped articles from magazines and news reports. I often liken it to a pointillist work of art. Putting a dot of an idea here, another there. Some large, some tiny." Louise Penny, A World of Curiosities, Acknowledgements
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"Not so long ago we were never checking anything in our hands, scrolling down, pecking with a finger, obsessively tuning in. My entire childhood did not involve a single deletion. These are relatively new acts on earth.
In those archaic but still vivid days, there might be a meandering walk into trees, an all-day bike ride, a backyard conversation with pines, a dig in the dirt, to find our messages. When we got home, there was nothing to check or catch up on - no one speaking to us in our absence. " ~ Naomi Shihab Nye  Cornell says vernal pools are decreasing. I think about this as I listen to the Spring Peepers and the Wood Frogs. "For being a foreigner, Ashima is beginning to realize, is a sort of lifelong pregnancy-- a perpetual wait, a constant burden, a continuous feeling out of sorts. It is an on-going responsibility, a parenthesis in what had once been ordinary life, only to discover that the previous life has vanished, replaced by something more complicated and demanding. Like pregnancy, being a foreigner, Ashima believes, is something that elicits the same curiosity from strangers, the same combination of pity and respect." ~Jumpa Lahiri, The Namesake “Wear the world like a loose garment, which touches us in a few places and there lightly.” ~ attributed to St. Francis of Assisi  The calendar says 10 days more of winter but today it might be time to read the sky instead and reach for a kite.  Welcome, March Artwork: George William Russell  Vintage Tomie dePaola What You Missed That Day You Were Absent from Fourth Grade
Written by Brad Aaron Modlin Read by Pádraig Ó Tuama Mrs. Nelson explained how to stand still and listen to the wind, how to find meaning in pumping gas, how peeling potatoes can be a form of prayer. She took questions on how not to feel lost in the dark After lunch she distributed worksheets that covered ways to remember your grandfather’s voice. Then the class discussed falling asleep without feeling you had forgotten to do something else --something important—and how to believe the house you wake in is your home. This prompted Mrs. Nelson to draw a chalkboard diagram detailing how to chant the Psalms during cigarette breaks, and how not to squirm for sound when your own thoughts are all you hear; also, that you have enough. The English lesson was that I am is a complete sentence. And just before the afternoon bell, she made the math equation look easy. The one that proves that hundreds of questions, and feeling cold, and all those nights spent looking for whatever it was you lost, and one person add up to something. Editor's P.S. Don't be absent -- join our 100 Days of Keeping! Where I Come From
by Elizabeth Brewster People are made of places. They carry with them hints of jungles or mountains, a tropic grace or the cool eyes of sea gazers. Atmosphere of cities how different drops from them, like the smell of smog or the almost-not-smell of tulips in the spring, nature tidily plotted with a guidebook; or the smell of work, glue factories maybe, chromium-plated offices; smell of subways crowded at rush hours. Where I come from, people carry woods in their minds, acres of pine woods; blueberry patches in the burned-out bush; wooden farmhouses, old, in need of paint, with yards where hens and chickens circle about, clucking aimlessly; battered schoolhouses behind which violets grow. Spring and winter are the mind's chief seasons: ice and the breaking of ice. A door in the mind blows open, and there blows a frosty wind from fields of snow. |
"Ideas
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"Perhaps this is one of the secrets of life--to know 'glory' when we see it."
~ Charlotte Mason
Virtual Life?
A wee explanation: this website was created as a way to amplify the daily surprise of seeing glory in one small life. The notebook entries represented here are all selected from things actually lived and noted on paper in an effort to live the full life British educator Charlotte Mason so ably championed.
In Appreciation
Images are linked to their original posts where possible. They were chosen because I have found something of value there and hope my readers will likewise find a helpful resource as we explore the philosophy of Charlotte Mason together. In the case of miss-attribution or if you desire your work not be linked, please let me know.
Images are linked to their original posts where possible. They were chosen because I have found something of value there and hope my readers will likewise find a helpful resource as we explore the philosophy of Charlotte Mason together. In the case of miss-attribution or if you desire your work not be linked, please let me know.
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