Tangents

My dear, dear friend M R B (@MBDigital001) sent to me French marshmallow candy drops earlier this week, and also some beautiful photos, which I am re-posting here with permission. (She sometimes moonlights as a photog for hire, btw - mainly NY state and DC area.)



They reminded me immediately of Alicia S. Carpenter's "A Promise Through the Ages Rings," a hymn in Singing the Living Tradition I have posted about before (in 2008, 2013, and elsewhen), and which I have been singing to myself again and again through the past few days:

A promise through the ages rings,
that always, always, something sings.
Not just in May, in finch-filled bower,
but in December’s coldest hour,
a note of hope sustains us all.

A life is made of many things:
bright stars, bleak years, and broken rings.
Can it be true that through all things,
there always, always something sings?
The universal song of life.

Entombed within our deep despair,
our pain seems more than we can bear;
but days shall pass, and nature knows
that deep beneath the winter snow
a rose lies curled and hums a song.

For something always, always sings.
This is the message Easter brings:
from deep despair and perished things
a green shoot always, always springs,
and something always, always sings.

This entry was originally posted at http://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/141308.html.

The subject line is from Alison Luterman's "Telling Your Own Fortune."




Elvis's shooting range, Graceland, Memphis, February 2012

I devoted most of my Saturday was to one of the tulip beds. There is more weeding and digging and hauling to be done -- it is not a large patch of dirt, but I have neglected it for several seasons. This year's shoots are looking scraggly, and I am not feeling confident about the two hollyhock seedlings I have been sheltering with pasta jars, but I shall start more plants after the cleaning and prepping, and spending time outside was my chief priority.

I also stopped by Woodland Wine Merchant for the Saturday tasting. Of today's samples, I liked the Domaine de Fontsainte Gris de Gris (a rosé) the best.

Over at nineveh_uk's DW and LJ, I'm enjoying the discussions about naff hymns and mondegreens and Boredom Increments for wedding singers.

This entry was originally posted at http://bronze-ribbons.dreamwidth.org/401194.html. I see comments at DW, IJ, and LJ (when notifications are working, anyway), but not on feeds.

While hunting for some tights I'd stashed somewhere out of the way, I came across a sheet of notes for a paper I was drafting back in 1991 or 1992. At this remove, I don't quite understand all of it, especially as it refers back to even older notes from February 1990 (a Michael Murrin lecture on the Holy Grail), but I am amused to see this quote (of Murrin, I think):

"We're never going to get done, we never do, but then, this is medieval lit."

If my house weren't so firmly 20th century (thank God!), I'd be tempted to nickname it Medieval Lit. There is so much to do and to deal with. But then, it's a house. And sprucing it up is not that high on the list -- not when there are indexes to draft and avocadoes to mash (K&S had a one-day sale yesterday) and housemates to giggle at:



(That is a jack-o-lantern squeaky toy in Miss Dawg's mouth.)

Prompts 45 and 46 in Upper Rubber Boot's photo challenge, 100 Untimed Books, are "miniature" and "coming home."



The mini-book (created by Roger Culbertson and illustrated by Sarah McMenemy, 1997) contains pop-ups, including the wagging tail of a dog on a beach and the turning wheel of a bicycle.

I used to own a copy of Rosamunde Pilcher's Coming Home, and it contains scenes that remain in my memory, such as the night that Jeremy cooks steaks in butter for Judith. Though I'd forgotten that Judith had a cold until I looked up the scene again just now. (And glancing at some of the other pages online has reminded me of why the book irritated me enough to sell it.)

The Shell Seekers remains on my shelves, though. I think I picked it up at a used bookstore in Chicago, and it too has various characters returning to places they consider "home."

I didn't go to church today, what with the still-nasty cough, but I have The Shell Seekers open to a funeral scene, where the congregation is singing "For all the saints"": "It wasn't perhaps the most suitable hymn for a funeral, but ____ had chosen it because it was the only one she knew that ____ really liked." Another congregant thoroughly approves of the choice: "Music, flowers, and now a rousing hymn . . . just what _____ would have enjoyed."

This entry was originally posted at http://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/121460.html.

I have been humming "I Am That Great and Fiery Force" to myself since Sunday, when it was sung as one of the morning songs at church. Words by Hildegarde von Bingen, set to "Ave Vera Virginitas" by Josquin Desprez -- you can hear a bit of it sung by Missing Rachel, and longer versions of the tune on YouTube, inluding one by a Slovak choir, the Hilliard Ensemble, et al. The verses:

I am that great and fiery force
sparkling in everything that lives;
in shining of the river's course,
in greening grass that glory gives.

I shine in glitter on the seas,
in burning sun, in moon and stars.
In unseen wind, in verdant trees
I breathe within, both near and far.

And where I breathe there is no death,
and meadows glow with beauties rife.
I am in all, the spirit's breath,
the thundered word, for I am Life.

The chamber choir sang two pieces, including the Real Group's "Words," which was applauded at both services.

Present reading: Erica E. Hirshler's Sargent's Daughters: The Biography of a Painting

Recent cooking: Chicken with mushroom-wine sauce (and parsley from an early birthday present); Mexican-ish brownies for a Cinco de Mayo potluck (using salted caramel cocoa mix, throwing in a cupful of chocolate chips, cutting the sugar in half, and ancho chile powder -- they turned out fine. The intern who shares my office gushed about them without knowing I was the one who made them. \o/); fufu (to go with the leftover chicken)

Today's workout: a long swim. I had lane 2 to myself, which meant I could indulge in backstroke as well as freestyle.

Today's remaining goal: some ironing. Chores toward comfort: story of my life. ;)

This entry was originally posted at http://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/105325.html.

Last summer, when I went to the

Today's subject line is from Jane Hirshfield's Hope and Love. It is one of the pieces I am currently rehearsing for this Sunday's services. The other one is a lively setting of Emily Dickinson's "Hope Is the Thing with Feathers":



I've also been looking at various hymns set to "Charleston" (albeit wayyy slower than the midi at Hymnary). We sang the version that begins "There's a wideness in your mercy" (words by Frederick William Faber) at church not too long ago:


There's a wideness in your mercy like the wideness of the sea;
there's a kindness in your justice which is more than liberty.

But we make your love too narrow by false limits of our own,
and we magnify your strictness with a zeal you will not own.

For the love of God is broader than the measures of our minds
and the heart of the Eternal is most wonderfully kind.

This entry was originally posted at http://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/45865.html.