Vlog: A Reading from Gulliver's Travels

Dear Friend,

I like to read aloud, so I've made a short video for you.

How embarrassing! But also fun.

Why in the world did I pick this particular passage? Just tonight I was telling my oldest two kids not to talk about such things on social media!

Oh well. :-)




Love,

A

Traveling with Gulliver: A Photo Essay

Hi friends,

Hope you are well. I've been a little under the weather lately, but I'm doing what I need to do to get back to health. Thought I'd share a photo essay with you today. These pictures are from a trip we took with extended family back in March. I took my Kindle along and listened to Gulliver's Travels.

 Uncle Indy

Zip

Gifts from my son: "Mama Pinecone", "Baby Pinecone", & "Daddy Pinecone"

A Motherhood of a Different Kind (and a bit about books)

My husband planted this meadow for me a few years ago for Mother's Day.

Yesterday my six year old son made a comment about Mother's Day that I want to remember. He said, 

"Mother's Day is like a birthday all moms share."  

That's true. I love sharing my special day with all mothers -- both biological mothers and those who have a "motherhood of a different kind" like the woman whom C.S. Lewis described in The Great Divorce:

Only partly do I remember the unbearable beauty of her face. "Is it?" I whispered to my guide.

"Not at all," said he, "It's someone ye'll never have heard of. Her name on earth was Sarah Smith and she lived at Golders Green."

"She seems to be . . . well, a person of particular importance?"

"Aye. She is one of the great ones. Ye have heard that fame in this country and fame on Earth are two quite different things." . . .

"And who are all these young men and women on each side?"

"They are her sons and daughters."

"She must have had a very large family, Sir."

"Every young man or boy that met her became her son -- even if it was only the boy that brought the meat to her back door. Every girl that met her was her daughter."

"Isn't that a bit hard on their own parents?"

"No. There are those that steal other people's children. But her motherhood was of a different kind. Those on whom it fell went back to their natural parents loving them more. Few men looked on her without becoming, in a certain fashion, her lovers. But it was the kind of love that made them not less true, but truer, to their own wives . . . It is like when you throw a stone into a pool and the concentric waves spread out further and further. Who knows where it will end? . . . But already there is joy enough in the little finger of a great saint such as yonder lady to waken all the dead things of the universe into life.

It's that lovely and inspiring? We need spiritual mothers in this aching fear-filled world -- mothers to nurture, to calm, to visualize achievement for us, and to love us unconditionally! Such mothers truly are "the great ones."

I mentioned the other day that I finished Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift. What I didn't tell you is that I did a lot of traveling on foot while listened to an audio version. It seems like for each strange place Gulliver traveled to, I now have a real place to associate with it -- a river bank, a wooded path, a road, a meadow, a farm.

I'm starting Oliver Twist today. I'm really looking forward to this one, so I hope it's not a disappointment. I've never read a single piece of Charles Dickens' work. I feel like Mr. Dickens is an acquaintance but not yet a friend. I've seen a few Masterpiece Theatre movies based on his books -- Bleak House, Little Dorrit, Great Expectations, and A Christmas Carol. And I saw a version of Oliver Twist years ago. 

Some of what I know about Mr. Dickens I learned while studying Harriet Beecher Stowe. She sent him a copy of Uncle Tom's Cabin. He read her novel and responded with praise for her "generous feeling", yet he went on to gently criticized her for seeking to "prove too much."

I once stayed in an American hotel that Charles Dickens stayed in. The proprietors tell an amusing story about the historic visit. Maybe I'll tell you about it in my next post.

Until next time then. :)

Dear Diary, I'm Back!

Hello friends! Good to be back!

My oh my, what a month! I took the time I needed to get several pressing things squared away. It feels good to have these things checked off my very long to-do list.

I'll be honest with you -- I had hoped to return to blogging with several really clever posts in queue . . .

But that just didn't happen.

Last night I realized -- with a little panic -- that I haven't written anything at all this month. (Well, except for a few Twitter and Facebook status updates, but they don't really count as writing.) I tossed and turned in bed until I remembered something my blog friend Jillian (who now goes by Mabel) used to say:

"My blog: my rules." 

Simple as that. So I'm going to do what I need to do so that I don't have to give up blogging and studying the classics during this busy season of my life. Right now that means I need to write in more of a "dear diary" fashion. Why am I cringing as I type this? I feel like I'm apologizing!

I'm deeply grateful to all of you who have stayed with me this month. Your encouragement gives me joy!

Quick update: I finished Gulliver's Travels. I found it a bit odd, but I wasn't bored. I'm hoping to decode some of the satire soon. I expect to say, "Oh! Now I get it!" or something like that. We'll see.

I'm planning to start reading Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens on Monday May 13th. If you'd like to read along, please join me for the Oliver Twist synchro-read on Facebook!


What have you been up to this past month? Anything you want to bring me up to speed on?

Crossing Off P&P and Why I'm Reading Gulliver's Travels

Yesterday at 2:55PM -- just before tea -- I completed Jane Austen's exceedingly fine novel -- Pride & Prejudice! (I daresay -- Miss Austen was rather fond of dashes -- do you not agree?)

Next up is Gulliver's Travels.  I saw a movie version a few years ago that I didn't like. I was going to skip it until I read Chapter 7 of Karen Swallow Prior's Booked: Literature in the Soul of Me, which in entitled, "Sex, Symbol, and Satire: Gulliver's Travels." As Prior says:

 . . . everything I needed to know about sex I could have learned from a celibate, eighteenth-century, Anglican priest named Jonathan Swift.

So, see? How could I skip GT after reading that?

She goes on to say:

Swift understood, too, the power of symbols and the importance of community, and how both of these are as much a part of what it means to be fully human as sex is.

I own a Dover Thrift Edition, but I've decided to use an annotated version instead. I just ordered it, so it looks like I'm going to have a few days "off" to work on spring cleaning and read The Gifts of Imperfection.


Trying to decide if I should syncro-read Gulliver's Travels. Anyone up for it?