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| Hmm...I don't know why but I feel like posting about books. :)
I was doing quick rate on my flixter application on Facebook, and one of the movies that came up was the Secret Garden. I was amazed, I haven't thought of that book in years. As I thoght about it I remembered the plot and hat I used to quite love the story. :) When I was young I would lie in bed reading until late late late....like 10:00!!! The flights of fancy my imagination would take were magnificent. The secret garden was one of my favorites, a young girl (like myself) is brought from her home to a place utterly foreign to her. (That it was an english manor made it all the more appealing and probably foreign to me) An austere uncle and strange housekeeper make her plight magnificently dreadful, and drew my empathy. The poor thing must live there coping with with the oddness. That she is not perfect caused me to like her more. Then I loved the maid who became her friend, the maid who was an older daughter of a large family, with an adorable brother, Colin, who is a friend of wild things. Add to all these wonderful elements a mysterious moaning in the night and an invalid cousin, and the story's magnificence grows. As we get to know the cousin, we hate him and love him in turn. And then, the Secret Garden itself is discovered. What more magical mysterious place can there be than a highly walled garden to which no one holds the key, and everyone has forgotten the door. Inside there must be beautiful exotic plants, and perhaps a fairy land. When Mary finally enters the garden it is not like we thought, but through love and care and hard work, it blossoms. And in the end, the invalid cousin walks, the austere uncle becomes happy, and we are happy, because the friends we have made in the book are happy.
I love my books. and happy memories.
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| Late night waxingsI'm at home for a few days, and in sitting up late with my parents around our table, the subject of Phrenology came up. If you don't know what that is, it's a rather interesting thing to study up on. It's based in Eugenics, and if you've taken Foundations of Science, you'll know what that is. :D
Anyway...I was explaining Phrenology to my mom, and I pulled out this old book we own in order to illustrate my point. The book is called Hill's Album of Biography and Art. Copyright 1881 at the earliest and the latest printing at the time 1888. Within we've discovered a newspaper clipping bearing the story of "Jack" Cooke, the Famous boy preacher. I looked him up tonight and the very few things I could find were NY Times articles mentioning him as being 15 in 1901, the clipping I have says he's 13, thus, I have in my possession a piece of newspaper from 1899. That makes me feel rather special. The book's title page reads thus,
"Hill's Album of Biography and Art: containing Portraits and Pen-Sketches of Many Persons who have been and are prominent ad Religionists, Military Heroes, Inventors, Financiers, Scientists, Explorers, Writers, Physicians, Actors, Lawyers, Musicians, Artists, Poets, Sovereigns, Humorists, Orators, and Statesmen: Together with chapters relating to History, Science, and Important Work in which prominent people have been engaged at various periods of time."
In the book I have found many fascinating things in addition to the above, there are also descriptions of many various domestic creatures, such as pigeons, chickens, and rabbits.
This book for me is a link to some many people in History, my predecessors, and when I open it and begin to read I am transported to far gone days of an excitement at new discoveries, I feel like Vesper Holly coming upon an ancient Aztec Treasure, or a miner, as Eureka I shout on turning a page and discovering a new variety of pigeon.
I love old books and remember with fond memories my large collection of Henty books from when I was young, many of which were first edition printings inscribed with declarations of ownership such as this "Steal not this book for fear of strife, the owner carries a big jack-knife." That one always makes me laugh, I believe it was a gift to a Jack in the early 1990's. I wonder who he was, I'm sure he was an interesting boy, to be reading Henty and carrying a Jack-knife. I wonder if he was a typical Henty boy, running off to the Pampas or the battlefields in India for do or die adventures, in which he rescued the captain's daughter, fell in love, found Christ, inherited a fortune, and was married on the last page of the book, before living happily ever after. Perchance he backpacked around "the continent" on a grand tour after leaving University and starting a career. Perchance he had a beautiful young sweetheart who waited for him, but in her innocence and saintliness died of consumption or brain fever. He kept a lock of her hair close to his heart, never to let it part from him. And he planted red roses on her grave and they climbed a trellis he mounted there. And her headstone bore a line from a Byron poem, "a mind at peace with all below, a heart whose love was innocent." I'd like to find her grave someday.
I was reading Dickinson today and found that she wrote a poem that sums up much of what I feel on the topic...
A precious, mouldering pleasure 't is
To meet an antique book,
In just the dress his century wore;
A privilege, I think,
His venerable hand to take,
And warming in our own,
A passage back, or two, to make
To times when he was young.
His quaint opinions to inspect,
His knowledge to unfold
On what concerns our mutual mind,
The literature of old;
What interested scholars most,
What competitions ran
When Plato was a certainty.
And Sophocles a man;
When Sappho was a living girl,
And Beatrice wore
The gown that Dante deified.
Facts, centuries before,
He traverses familiar,
As one should come to town
And tell you all your dreams were true;
He lived where dreams were sown.
His presence is enchantment,
You beg him not to go;
Old volumes shake their vellum heads
And tantalize, just so. | | |
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Hmmm ok...8 random things about me. Shouldn't be too hard...I'm a rather random one...
1. I love Fire escapes
2. I've never been on a fire escape
3. I love eating corn bread in a glass of milk
4. I have sprained the arch of my foot
5. I often break the flow of a conversation with a random fact that I've just observed
6. I like to sleep with my face cold but the rest of me warm and cozy.
7. Things that I see often end up becoming murder mystery plots in my head.
8. People think I'm shy, but I'm so not.
The rules
1. Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
2. People who are tagged need to write a post on their own blog (about their eight things) and post these rules.
3. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
4. Don't forget to leave them a comment telling them they are tagged, and to read your blog.
I tag: Sarah, Steven and Val.
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| So, today I followed a photomanipulation tutorial for making people look kinad like Anime Characters...:D
Here's my results:
From This:
To This:
Kinda interesting anyway. :D and it was fun to do. ;d
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| Gasp, yes, she had to update. ;D
College is amazing, but crazy crazy crazy. :D
Right now I feel rather inundated with Descarte and Galileo and Kepler and Brahe...studying for Foundations of Science and Philosophy class will do that for you. I have a long road to walk before sleep can come tonight. Late night choir practice, math homework, and Boyd's OT class figure in there somewhere along with finishing Leviticus. :D
Sometimes I find myself wishing that the church would have declared all the above people heretics and done away with them BEFORE they had the chance to think up things and preserve them for posterity.
Oy...I'm sleepy sleepy sleepy. :D
But I love all of you and I love the world and I love God and elf puppies.
Farewell for now...
Oh, and pray for me pleases. :D Pretty Pleases.
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