Today is Library Day...and there are ever so many things to research as always.
Top Topics To Hunt For This Week:
Arizona Travel Tips (We're going for a weekend in March!)
Watercolor Projects (I'm teaching a class for Middle and High School students.)
Lego Ideas (Everyone's obsessed)
Crystals (Today is Science Day...we had a gorgeous snowfall....and crystal study came to us)
Gardening (The seed catalogs have started to arrive!!!! YAY!)
Jewelry Making (We moved on from ice crystals to rock crystals and suddenly we were looking over our rock collections and pondering pendants.)
Epsom salts crystals....so pretty!
Crystals from our collection.
The winter time is the ideal time to library our little heads off. So much wonderful cozy, indoor enthusiasm and so much dark and snug time to read. Reading is one thing I'm really going to throw myself into again this year.
I had a less prolific reading year in 2014 and I miss it a lot. I have so many books on my list and a stack of them that are waiting in the wings on my bedside table but I need to knock a few of my in-process tomes out of the way first.
Happy Poetry Friday one and all! I hope you've survived this chilly week in style and are launching into a weekend that will treat you well. I am a walking stereotype, the biggest thing I'm looking forward to is a grocery shopping trip to fortify the house with all my food cravings. Heh. That's what you get when a pregnant woman tells you about her inner life.
Sharing a love poem today. This is only the second one I've ever written and although I aspire to emit bodies of amorous verse it doesn't come easily to me. I am very wary of mush and trite sentiment and also of untruth both of which seem more icky than sweet to me.
Carving Our Initials
Here in our tenth year of marriage, Love has arrived
Gently swooping in to roost in the dormer over our heads.
It came when we traded totems, I saw you let go of your
Iron plans and glinting thoughts to consider and hold mine,
Smooth in my hands like beach stones, well worn and loved.
I have seen you open your mind like a creaking Dutch door,
Allowed it to sag agape, not closing out the interior glimpse.
You have seen me halved like a avocado, showing you my
Damp pit, and you have looked, open eyed on my green center.
Love has been born in our mutual loss and in the tender
Hope that grows up like a bright shoot pressed between
Two people feeling powerless in each others arms.
If you would like to sample the other contributions for this week's Poetry Friday celebration, click over to Wild Rose Reader where our host Elaine is compiling a list of participating bloggers.
A and I read together, its one of the ways (as discussed in this post ) that I manage to fit literature into my life. We read on the daily commute occasionally, we read on long road trips and we sometimes even read in the evenings while we take turns getting ready for bed or after the little ones are down for the night instead of a movie or some other relaxy activity.
"Steinbeck's slippers" shoved under a quilt covered bed at the Steinbeck Museum
We both really love Steinbeck and our recent trip to California only reminded us. Excitingly, we have not even come close to reading his works and so there's still a lot out there to discover. We talked a little during that trip and then recently, when we finished our latest read about how we'd love to read more Steinbeck and, which one should we pick for our next tome?
A had never read The Grapes of Wrath. Never read it! Really! He's a very well-read guy so this kind of discovery is quite astonishing. I had read it which immediately made me feel very cool. (thank you public high school English teacher) These little moments of achievement in which I have done something intelligent that A hasn't are the kind of things we hold onto. *grin*
Dustbowl ephemera from The Steinbeck Center in Salinas
Even though I'd read it once and I'm not the kind of person who re-reads anything....ever. Still, I was more than happy to pick it for our next read-aloud. I loved the book the first time around and I know how much fun we both have reading Steinbeck together and I'm certain A will love it which will make it a complete joy to live through again as a couple.
So, this week the copy we ordered off of Amazon arrived in the mail and we ripped it right open in the van and proceeded to make story-hour out of the traffic jam we were stuck in on our way home. Such fun. I really love Steinbeck. And folks, granted, I'm still rather deeply hormonal but still, I was crying within pages of the front cover. The man is a word wizard with such an empathetic and beauty probing gift that I can't help but wish we had time for one long non-stop reading time. It was so hard to see our driveway approaching and know that it was time to wrap it up. I've been salivating ever since about when we'll get another little moment to dive in again.
Steinbeck quote about our local area
And today, thinking about the whole story and the characters (I do love Ma Joad) I was stumbling around through YouTube and discovered accidently that Woodie Guthrie, one of those golden American songwriters had a similiar fascination. He wrote several rambling songs, set to plucky guitar accompaniment that are on the subject of The Dust Bowl, the Great Depression, Tom Joad himself, and the migrant workers that Steinbeck was so absorbed by. Enjoy the following:
Also, check out this amazing painting by artist Ashley Cecil who was commission by Oxfam to illustrate the poverty of modern farmers in the third world. Love the brilliant colors, the swirling dust coming from the bowl of the harvesting woman and elegant use of emotion. Lest we forget, The Dust Bowl was not just a quaint event in American history, it has just rolled on to other places where mothers still struggle to feed their little ones and the hand to mouth life drives families on in desperation.
And folks, if you somehow managed to escape school without reading Grapes...do yourself a favor and pick up this brilliant bittersweet American masterpiece. I also highly recommend Travels With Charley and Of Mice and Men.
