Wordless Wednesday: Visit With Sr. MaryAnn

Sisterly Visits

 One of the best things about this summer was that I got to see both of my sisters, even if it wasn't at the same time!

Sr. Rejoice made it home at the end of July (she flew in from Italy earlier in the month, but I was too sick to travel), and we all went up to see her.

 We had a great, but too short visit!

Fortunately, we're all on What's App, so we can text even when she's in Italy or Ghana.

She's setting up her convents in Ghana and finishing up her doctorate in Rome, so it was wonderful to hear all the news about how everything is going!

 And then Sr. MaryAnn made it back in early August.  She flew in to our local airport, and then I drove her up to see our folks.

Curiously, she and Sr.Rejoice went to the Assembly (the big annual meeting of their order) in the Middle of July, so they got a chance to hang out together as well!

After my and Mumpy's experience with Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, we were all a little paranoid about ticks!

This is Sr. MaryAnn standing on the pavement near the field of sunflowers, but far away from any possible ticks!

She also spent some time with us back in Maryland, more on that in another post!

Poem of the Week: The Day of Gifts

The Day of Gifts

By Paul Claudel

Translated from the French by Jonathan Monroe Geltner

Read the translator's notes

It’s not true that Your saints have won everything: they left me with sins enough.

Someday I’ll lie on my deathbed, Lord, ill-shaven and yellow as a lifelong drunk.

And I’ll make a general examination of myself, looking back over all my days,

And I’ll see that I’m rich after all, ripe and rich with evil in its unnumbered paths and ways.

I haven’t lost one single chance, Lord, to make matter for You to pardon.

Now I hearten myself with vice, having long ago sloughed off virtue’s burden.

Each day has its own kind of crime, plain to see, and I count them like some paranoid miser.

If what you need, Lord, are virgins, if what you need are brave men beneath your standard;

If there are people for whom to be Christian words alone would not suffice,

But who know rather that only in stirring themselves to chase after You is there any life,

Well then there’s Dominic and Francis, Saint Lawrence and Saint Cecilia and plenty more!

But if by chance You should have need of a lazy and imbecilic bore,

If a prideful coward could prove useful to You, or perhaps a soiled ingrate,

Or the sort of man whose hard heart shows up in a hard face—

Well, anyway, You didn’t come to save the just but that other type that abounds,

And if, miraculously, You run out of them elsewhere . . . Lord, I’m still around.

And what kind of a man is so crude that he hasn’t held a little something back from You,

Hasn’t in his free time fashioned something special for You,

Hoping that one day the idea will come to You to ask it of him,

And maybe this little that he’s made himself, kept back until then, though horrid and tortuous, will please Your whim.

It would be something that he’d put his whole heart into, something useless and malformed.

Just like that my little daughter once, on my birthday, teetered forward with encumbered arms

And offered me, her heart at once full of timidity and pride,

A magnificent little duck she had made with her own two hands, a pincushion, made of red wool and gold thread. 

HT: Poetry Foundation

Summer Vacation

This year we went someplace completely new: an old manganese mine! 

The mine itself closed years ago, and as soon as they stopped pumping out groundwater, the mine flooded, turning into a small (deep!) lake. 

Someone bought the property and decided to build a vacation home near the lake.




And then they added a boathouse with kayaks!

 And a firepit!




The interesting thing was that, unlike a beach trip where there are a lot of things to do away from the property, there was almost nothing to do away, but lots of things to do on the property.

They billed it as a "retreat" and it really was.

They were well stocked with games and puzzles, and they had a foozball table and two pool tables!

Best of all, because it was away from everything, it had a beautiful view of the stars and Milky Way!

We really had a great time, although I was still sick while we were there, so I didn't get to explore the woods and trails as I would have liked.

Although I did reread  six Jane Austen novels in three days, so I did enjoy myself quite a bit!

And we saw a lot of wildlife, including this fellow coming across the road... He turned out to be a rattlesnake, the only one I've ever seen in the wild!

It's not a great picture because I didn't want to get too close (as in, I stayed in the car!).

Hopefully we'll go back next year!

Back and Catching Up

So, yes, I'm finally back and I'm finally well!  It just really took a few months to recover.  My advice: don't get bitten by a tick!

I have lots of photos and things to blog from the summer, and I am gearing up for the new school year (actually, my Anatomy and Physiology class starts today!), so I'll have lots to blog about.

In the mean time, here are a few pictures from the summer:

Happy Eclipse!

At our local maximum,  the eclipse covered about 80% of the sun.  That meant we didn't get the cool coronal ring effects, but we did get some really interesting shadow effects.



 The dappled sunlight turned into beautiful crescents!







We didn't have solar glasses, but we had several other ways to observe the actual eclipse besides the shadows.



We did successfully use a pinhole in paper to project the sun's image, but we found it projected much more clearly if we used binoculars.

Please note we were not looking through the binoculars, even to line them up!  

We just moved them around until the sun's light passed through them and projected onto the paper.

Then we realized we could observe these effects inside, where it was 78 degrees and low humidity!

We had punched a page full of holes, and, when held to the light, you could see the moon and sun clearly.

It was interesting, at 80% occlusion, it didn't get super dark, it just got weird. 

It definitely got darker, but not really like night time - it more felt like we were wearing sunglasses.

I think what made it feel odd was that it was dim, but the shadows were (crescent shaped) midafternoon shadows,

And, of course, we also live streamed the eclipse from areas where they had totality!

Poem of the Week: Barter

Barter

By Sara Teasdale

Life has loveliness to sell,

     All beautiful and splendid things,

Blue waves whitened on a cliff,

     Soaring fire that sways and sings,

And children's faces looking up

Holding wonder like a cup.

Life has loveliness to sell,

     Music like a curve of gold,

Scent of pine trees in the rain,

     Eyes that love you, arms that hold,

And for your spirit's still delight,

Holy thoughts that star the night.

Spend all you have for loveliness,

     Buy it and never count the cost;

For one white singing hour of peace

     Count many a year of strife well lost,

And for a breath of ecstasy

Give all you have been, or could be.

HT: Poetry Foundation