madameblogalot

My daughter started a new book today, Tuck Everlasting. I really like this book (more so than the movie.) I hope she enjoys it as well. I think she will. It raises the question of “What would it be like to live forever? What would it really be like?” Now I just need to get her activity packet together. The way she reads, she’ll be done in a day or two!

Shelly recently posted her “hit or miss” list for September. My list is nowhere as long, but I thought it would be fun to post my own hit or misses.

I’ve only seen a couple of movies this month, which is really more than I do most months! Both were hits for me. Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, 1945 version. It differs from the book, but overall it was pretty good. My daughter liked how they explained the mystery better than it was done in the book.
We also saw Journey to the Center of the Earth. Although it was cheesy in several places, I was ok with it and thought it ended up being a good movie for our family to see together.

As for books, maybe the only one I finished this month was And Then There Were None. I enjoyed this book even though I knew how it was going to turn out (I read the teacher’s literature guide before reading the book.) That did somewhat spoil it for me, but not too much. There were even a couple of spots where I got a little confused, in spite of knowing “who done it”.

I always enjoy reading Reader’s Digest. I have not read everything in it yet, but that is part of what I like about it. I can enjoy pieces and chunks without having to finish it. I also finished reading the General Instruction of the Roman Missal. Some friends of ours are Catholic and gave this to me to read through to try to understand some of what goes on in their worship services. We will likely try to attend Christmas Eve mass with them this year. This text was hard for me to get through and I only read small parts at any given time.

I am still reading The Singer Trilogy. It is not hard to read, just hard to find the time. I am enjoying it so far and want my son to read it when I am done.

So for the most part, my reading and viewing this month have been “hits”.

I got this in an email today. It is written by a group of homeschooled students.

IKE

Tall waves warning doom
Ikes unexpected mercy
chaotic echoes….

- written by the Clear Lake Literary Club

A friend of ours was attending college in Galveston. They have been transferred out and are getting set up on another campus this week. He emailed me today and asked if things are getting back to normal. Well, somewhat. Many traffic lights are still out, not everyone has electricity and phones and internet are still unreliable. School won’t start back for another week.

It has even been a bit “weird” going to the grocery stores. This is such a common event that when you don’t have any around you open, it seems weird. And then when they do open, seeing all the cold and frozen cases completely empty seems a bit strange. Many of the stores have done a great job of getting supplies in. Now most common items are available; bread, ice, some milk, some meat and even some “local” ice cream. But it is a weird sight to see such empty shelves and freezers throughout the store.

Ike came to visit over the weekend. We are still recovering.

If you don’t know, Ike is the name of the hurricane that hit the Texas Gulf Coast last Friday/Saturday. It was a high cat 2/low cat 3. It could have been much, much worse. It was bad enough.

We chose to stay through the storm. As scary as it was, I am glad we did. We had almost all our windows boarded and were able to start the clean up process as soon as the weather calmed. It was awesome to see how our neighborhood stuck together. We helped each other prepare, we helped each other clean, and we shared our food. Even tonight at dinner time we carried out what we had left and stood in the street to eat and visit…

There is still much to do for many people in our area. I know it will take time for so many to recover. We have been very blessed. I wish everyone in the area well…

We will likely be visited by hurricane Ike within the 24-30 hours. Many people are choosing to stay and “hunker down” through this one. Nearly all of our neighbors have decided to stay. My husband and another neighbor worked putting up boards over the windows today. Then a few other neighbors decided to as well. One lady’s husband had to work a full day today, so all the guys pitched in and helped her as well as finished up a couple of other family’s homes as well. It was just like an old fashioned barn-raising! But instead of us women frying up some chickens, we actually found a pizza delivery place open so we all pitched in and ordered about ten pizzas, added some fruit and brownies and had a regular hurricane party!

Everyone was so pleased by the camaraderie and the pulling together to help each other out. One man said he’d never seen a neighborhood pull together like that. My son said he hopes to live in a neighborhood like this when he gets to that age. It was really great to see everyone working together (although there were a couple of moments when it seemed as if there were “too many cooks in the kitchen”!) I am sure that the feeling of community and counting on each other and helping each other along is what those old fashioned barn-raisings were all about!

Yesterday on PBS I watched a few minutes of a show that was all about several of our National Parks. It spoke about the treasure these are for each one of us and how we need to care for them and protect them. Within the space of just a few minutes, I had virtually visited Olympia National Park in Washington, Glacier National Park in Montana, Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming and the Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona. I would love to see these (I’ve seen a couple of these) and many others in real life.

As I thought about the title of the show, Timeless, I recalled a book I have only half read. The book, The Man Who Walked Through Time, is about one man’s journey on foot through the Grand Canyon. He talked about being absorbed by thoughts of time. How “timeless” things can seem when you are alone in a canyon. How the way we use our time when in the “outside” world differs from the way he used and noted time while in the canyon. He also was drawn by thoughts of his own place in time. His own twenty or thirty years were minuscule in light of the ages that were drawn on the face of the cliffs of the canyon.

The dual ideas of timelessness and walking through time were fascinating to me as I ruminated over the weaving of these two thoughts. I guess time has always been a fascinating idea to me and many other people over the course of history. We love to dream about traveling through time. I think Colin Fletcher may have had the idea that he indeed was traveling through time while walking the timeless wonder of the canyon.

My son found a towel in his closet the other day. There is a date on this towel. He found it amusing that the date corresponds with this week’s date, Sept. 3. I showed him why the towel is dated. We had painted his feet and he had walked all over the towel leaving his foot prints. (This corresponded to a shower curtain we had that was a “paint splattered” design.) He compared his foot now, fourteen years later, to the foot prints he made as a little guy.