Lift Up Your Hearts!

For those of you who might be a little homesick for Florida:

  

Serious collectors of anything can have serious problems when they die.  We've all heard of the numismatist whose rare coins were piously dropped one by one into the church collection plate by his widow, and the philatelist whose valuable stamps were used for postage; of antiques sold at estate sales for junk-furniture prices; of a genealogist's lifetime's worth of painstaking work tossed as worthless papers.

But geologists might have another problem.  Someone's carefully documented rock collection caused panic in a Florida pawn shop. (More)

I wrote earlier about our failing telephone system.  We limped along for a week with all calls forwarded to one or the other of our cell phones.  Actually, it wasn't much of a limp.  It was slightly annoying not to be able to have more than one person on this end of a call, and since my cell phone has no "free" minutes (it's a prepaid plan), I was conscious of the cost of every call.  But it wasn't that much, really.  A definite plus was that the forwarding message, "please wait while we try to contact your party" effectively foiled all those robotic telemarketers!

Still, now that it's fixed (details follow), I'm glad not to be so tied to my cell phone.  I said to Heather, "I feel like a teenager, carrying my cell phone in my pocket all the time," to which she replied, "You're not a teenager, Mom.  You still jump every time it rings."

So, I'm sure you're all wondering:  What was wrong, and how did we fix it?  (More)

Bearing in mind that one of this children is eight, and the other three—can anyone doubt they are related?

  

I know most of my Loyal Readers are shivering, with temperatures in the teens and even single digits, so you'll be glad to know that spring it on its way.  A week ago I was working in our backyard when a flock of robins came through:  bird after bird, alighting only long enough for identification before resuming their steady course—straight north.   As I stood there with sweat pouring down my face—my below-zero wind chill experience of ten days earlier barely a dim memory—I could hardly blame them.  Our highs were in the 80's and a few days later we switched the thermostat from "Heat" to "A/C."

Poor robins!  I hope they didn't get too far north last week.  It's 47 degrees at the moment, and the thermostat switch has reverted.  Then again, I'm sure 47 degrees sounds like a tropical paradise to most of you....

I had an incredible experience recently.  Having been transplanted, through the woders of modern aviation technology, from our unseasonably warm Florida home to some of the coldest Connecticut weather of the season, I was a little chilled.  Our kind hosts provided a fire in the fireplace and a space heater in our bedroom, so we weren't uncomfortable, but going outside was an adventure, despite heavy coats, hats, gloves, and scarves.

That is, until I found it desirable to take some pictures of the low Old Saybrook tide.  Leaning gloveless (I had to operate the camera) against a stiff, steady blow that pushed the wind chill-modified temperature below zero, I was beyond cold.  But when my hand finally thawed, something inside me snapped—or more accurately, some internal fire ignited.  For the rest of the week, I was warm!  Forget the hat, scarf, and gloves; if all I was doing was going from building to car to building again, my coat—and that often enough not even zipped—was sufficient.

On our sledding adventure, I condescended to don hat and gloves (and zip the coat), and the chill never reached me.  What a glorious feeling, to feel the cold without being cold!

Alas—though probably all for the best—my internal fire was quenched by returning to Florida's tropical temperatures.  Our current cold snap (presently 47 degrees outside) has me feeling quite chilly, even though it's above 60 degrees in the house.   I think I'll go fix some hot cocoa while the rest of you laugh at me.

We were in Old Saybrook for what in my personal expert assures me was the lowest tide in his nearly 80-year-old memory.  (We forgot to think about tsunamis.) (More)

If you try to call us in the next few days, please be patient.  All calls are being forwarded to our cell phones, so it may take a little longer than usual to connect.

Our CallVantage Linksys router stopped working.  Well, to be more accurate, the router still works, or I wouldn't be posting this.  But the Telephone Adaptor part no longer functions. (More)

So who is Celia Nicklin?  Beats me, but she is responsible for my getting up before five o'clock this morning.

I awoke at 4:20; although I normally have no trouble falling back to sleep at such an hour, today the process was taking a little longer, so I turned on the radio to distract my mind.  I came in on the tail end of a Chopin piano piece, then heard the next selection announced:  Johann Vanhal's Symphony in g minor.  You all know Vanhal, right?  Neither do I.  Nor had I heard of the London Mozart Players.  Perhaps I'm just ignorant; perhaps there's good reason:  in any case, I was back asleep after only a few bars. (More)

Or maybe not.  I don't really have time to post this morning (or I'd be working on my Why the Rest Hates the West review), but one of the blogs I check occasionally has a post so fitting to Janet's frustration with the unsmiling Swiss that I had to write. (More)

Why the Rest Hates the West:  Understanding the Roots of Global Rage, by Meic Pearse (Intervarsity Press, Downers Grove, Illinois, 2004)

This is not a book review; not yet.  I long to write about Meic Pearse's book, but it deserves a detailed and extensive review which I cannot at the moment accomplish.  Rather than wait entirely until I can put in the requisite time and effort, however, I'm posting this placeholder, because this is an incredibly valuable book!  Its somewhat unfortunate title calls to mind the hand-wringing post-9/11 whine, "Why do they hate us?" but Why the Rest Hates the West is a serious, insightful analysis of the chasm between modern Western culture—more precisely, "anti-culture"—and the rest of the world that no one with more than a few years left on this earth can afford to ignore.

Find the book!  Read it!  Then come back here and tell me what you think.

And I'll put Li'l Writer Guy to work on the review.

Tonight I had some mushrooms to use up, and created a dish that Porter really, really liked.  (So did I, for that matter.)  So I'm writing it down, as best I can, in hopes of being able to repeat it.  Since it was all spur-of-the-moment and I didn't measure anything, all quantities and even the directions are approximate.

2 tablespoons butter
1/2 medium onion, chopped
4 oz. mushrooms, sliced (I used a mixture of portabella, shiitake, and oyster)
1 tablespoon minced garlic
3/4 cup sherry
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1/2 teaspoon ketchup
1 bay leaf
1/2 teaspoon thyme
1/4 teaspoon mace
dash allspice
1/2 cup heavy cream

Caramelize onions in butter.  Add mushrooms and garlic and cook until soft.   Add sherry, simmer till somewhat reduced.  Add remaining ingredients; simmer till somewhat reduced.  Serve over pasta, rice, or wild rice.

Janet has a remarkable memory for faces, especially if seen in a dramatic/musical context.  I'll never forget when she was 13 years old, and immediately recognized the new high school chorus intern years after seeing him perform—in a video, on a small-screen television, in a non-speaking part—in a college opera production.

My memory for faces is quite the opposite.  I have a hard time recognizing good friends out of context!  What I've seen in print, however, is another story.  (More)

I figured out why I am so impatient with sermons and generally find them the least important part of the church service:  I'm definitely a print person.  I'd rather read a story than hear it, and find written arguments more persuasive than spoken ones.  Still, I can't resist posting this homeschooler's speech, which Janet found.  The only quarrel I'd make with him is over his statement that community colleges provide "high level education."  Otherwise, he gives a good speech on the basic advantages of home education and counters some of the popular objections.

Everyone wants to "fix" our educational system.  But as long as most people have no choice over which school they attend, which teachers they sit under, and what they study, the system as a whole cannot be fixed.  At best we will continue to have an education lottery, because as long as schools are where people go to be taught, rather than to learn, everything depends on the teachers.

Today's Orlando Sentinel reports that although Florida's schools are being asked to place greater emphasis on the sciences, participation in county-wide science fairs is down drastically.  Some are blaming competition for students' time by other contests, such as Odyssey of the Mind; others bring out those customary whipping-boys, the pressures of standardized testing and of too many hours of employment. (More)