I've been feeling a little homesick and nostalgic lately--with the holidays I suppose thoughts always turn towards home.  And usually, what you are longing for is a return to the past--days that were perhaps more carefree and innocent.  Terry Redlin, one of South Dakota's best known artists, specialized in portraying those glimpses back into a way of life that no longer exists.  I've always loved a beautiful full moon, and the picture below captures it beautifully, don't you think?  And of course what better poem to offer today than Longfellow's 'The Harvest Moon', whose mystic splendor surely rests on the scene below.  Anyone want to join me at the dance?  I bet there's apple cider and donuts inside!


 

The Harvest Moon

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

It is the Harvest Moon!  On gilded vanes

  And roofs of villages, on woodland crests

  And their aerial neighborhoods of nests

  Deserted, on the curtained window-panes

Of rooms where children sleep, on country lanes

  And harvest-fields, its mystic splendor rests!

  Gone are the birds that were our summer guests,

  With the last sheaves return the laboring wains!

All things are symbols: the external shows

  Of Nature have their image in the mind,

  As flowers and fruits and falling of the leaves;

The song-birds leave us at the summer's close,

  Only the empty nests are left behind,

  And pipings of the quail among the sheaves.

If you have enjoyed the beautiful paintings I've highlighted yesterday and today, you might want to consider a trip to the Terry Redlin Art Center, a magnificent building designed by Terry's son, Charles, as the permanent home of his father's original oil paintings.  Since Terry always attributed his interest in outdoor themes to his childhood in Watertown and was grateful for the fact that he was able to attend art school via a South Dakota scholarship for disabled students, the art center is a gift from the Redlin family to the great state of South Dakota and the people of Watertown.  It's worth a visit if you are in the area!  Oh...and did I mention he went to the same school as my dad?  No wonder his paintings make me nostalgic for home! 

 Red states, blue states....today let's renew our commitment to the UNITED STATES of America.

In honor of our country, I hope you enjoy today's poem/hymn, lyrics by Katherine Lee Bates.  The beautiful images are by Terry Redlin, noted South Dakota artist.









...America's choosing day....

Some of my earliest November memories are of the days my mother would walk to our neighborhood school and serve as an election official.  My parents were both deeply patriotic, and they strongly believed that one of the best ways to honor the sacrifices of those who had lived before us was to exercise our freedom to vote.  After a long and contentious season of debates, political ads, commercials, talk shows and heated letters to the editor election day has arrived, or as Walt Whitman phrased it, America's choosing day.  I love that phrase--today we have the right to choose the path that America will follow for the next four years.  Today we come to the polls to vote, but tomorrow let us come together as Americans, no longer divided by party but united by dreams for our families' futures. 

Election Day, November 1884

Walt Whitman

If I should need to name, O Western World, your powerfulest scene and show,
’Twould not be you, Niagara—nor you, ye limitless prairies—nor your huge rifts of canyons, Colorado,
Nor you, Yosemite—nor Yellowstone, with all its spasmic geyserloops ascending to the skies, appearing and disappearing,
Nor Oregon’s white cones—nor Huron’s belt of mighty lakes—nor Mississippi’s stream:
—This seething hemisphere’s humanity, as now, I’d name—the still small voice vibrating—America’s choosing day,
(The heart of it not in the chosen—the act itself the main, the quadrennial choosing,)
The stretch of North and South arous’d-sea-board and inland-Texas to Maine—the Prairie States—Vermont, Virginia, California,
The final ballot-shower from East to West—the paradox and conflict,
The countless snow-flakes falling—(a swordless conflict,
Yet more than all Rome’s wars of old, or modern Napoleon’s:) the peaceful choice of all,
Or good or ill humanity—welcoming the darker odds, the dross:
—Foams and ferments the wine? it serves to purify—while the heart pants, life glows:
These stormy gusts and winds waft precious ships,
Swell’d Washington’s, Jefferson’s, Lincoln’s sails.

Beautiful, glorious Scotland, has spoilt me for every other country!
Mary Todd Lincoln

 

A few years ago I fell in love with Scotland.  I thought I knew a decent amount about the country--a little history, a little geography, some poetry and fiction (I knew a few of Rabbie Burns' poems by heart, and had many vicarious adventures through the years with Kidnapped, Treasure Island, and Ivanhoe, and later with books by M.C. Beaton and Ian Rankin).  The Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond was one of the folk songs I crooned my little ones to sleep with (although I must confess at the time I sang it I didn't realize it was really a sad song about death--the 'low road' is the passage to the underworld), and I grew up listening to my mother's beautiful recording of Flow Gently, Sweet Afton.  I had watched Braveheart and Rob Roy a kazillion times with my husband--surely that had to make me something of an expert!  And once I discovered Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series, about an English nurse that is sent back in time to 18th century Jacobite Scotland through mysterious standing stones, I was hooked--I had to go see for myself what this land of poets and warriors was really like.

So I packed my raincoat, umbrella, warm coat, gloves, hat, scarf and sensible walking shoes (for a May visit!) and my husband packed his golf clubs, and off we set on a beautiful and unforgettable trip to the land of mountains and lochs, a land of castles, sea monsters, highland clans, and political intrigue.  I started out loving the Scotland of my imagination, and ended up loving the real Scotland oh so much more than I could have ever dreamt.  While in Edinburgh we visited the National Art Galleries, where I happily discovered the beautiful paintings of Joseph Farquharson, Laird of Finzean in Aberdeenshire (doesn't that just roll off the tongue?!).  Best known for his evocative winter landscapes, his Shortening Winter's Day literally took my breath away. The snow laden boughs, the last gleam of the setting sun and the oncoming shadows were so perfect I felt I could almost step into the picture.  Of course I had to buy a print, that now hangs in a special place of honor in my home, and every day I look at it and wish I could step back in to the glen and feel the brush of snow on my cheeks and breathe the clean, frosty air of Scotland again.

With the time change this weekend, night will start drawing nigh earlier and earlier, so I thought today was the perfect time to share this lovely painting with you.  And who knew?  In researching this painting, I discovered that my old friend Robert Burns had first used the phrase the short'ning winter day in the section November Evening, taken from his poem "The Cotter's Saturday Night."  I hope you enjoy both the art and the poem, two exemplary offerings from the land of lochs and legends. 

November Evening

from "The Cotter's Saturday Night"

by Robert Burns

November chill blaws loud wi' angry sugh,

The short'ning winter day is near a close;

The miry beasts retreating frae the pleugh,

The black'ning trains o' craws to their repose;

The toil-worn cotter frae his labor goes,

This night his weekly moil is at an end,

collects his spades, his mattocks, and his hoes,

Hoping the morn in ease and rest to spend.

And weary, oe'r the moor, his course does hameward bend.

At length his lonely cot appears in view,

Beneath the shelter of an aged tree;

Th' expectant wee-things, toddlin, stacher through

to meet their dad, wi' flicterin noise an' glee.

His wee bit ingle, blinkin bonilie,

His clean hearth-stane, his thrifty wifie's smile,

The lisping infant prattling on his knee,

Does a' his weary kiaugh and care beguile,

An' makes him quite forget his labor an' his toil.

I hope your week gets off to a bonnie start!  And oh, by the way...all those suggested winter clothes I packed for my trip?  Edinburgh experienced a veritable heat wave of 60 degrees while we were there--everyone walked around in shorts, t-shirts and ate ice cream in the parks!

  “True friends are always together in spirit" --Anne Shirley in Anne of Green Gables

Do you share my fondness for those childhood books that touched your heart, made you laugh, made you cry, and along the way taught us some valuable life lessons about the grown-up world that we were so eager to join?  My mother and aunts passed on to me their love for a spunky pig-tailed red-head  who was eager to embrace life to its fullest in her little green-gabled house by the sea.  I am referring, of course, to Anne (with an 'e') of Green Gables, one of my favorite heroines.  Anne's exploits, adventures, and misadventures (of which there were many--getting Diana drunk on cherry cordial, jumping on Aunt Josephine's bed and scaring her half to death in the middle of the night, almost sinking with the rowboat while re-enacting a scene from Lady of Shallot) have been read and enjoyed by young girls for over hundred years now.  How I loved to read about Anne and her loyal friend Diana Barry and imagine myself in Anne's bedroom at night, gazing out at her beautiful cherry tree and catching a glimpse of the Lake of Shining Waters in the distance.  And oh, how I longed for puffed sleeves, just like Anne's Christmas dress!

So in celebration of kindred spirits everywhere, today I'm sharing one of my favorite birthday presents, a gift from my mother a number of years ago.  My Anne doll holds a place of honor in one of my favorite rooms in my home.  When my husband was away on a golf outing a couple of years ago, I claimed an unused office space in our basement and transformed it over the course of a weekend to my own personal retreat, a place where all my books and special memories can reside.  I hope you like my library and my Anne!

Welcome to my library--feel free to borrow a book anytime!

After all," Anne had said to Marilla once, "I believe the nicest and sweetest days are not those on which anything very splendid or wonderful or exciting happens but just those that bring simple little pleasures, following one another softly, like pearls slipping off a string.” 

"A bosom friend--an intimate friend, you know--a really
kindred spirit to whom I can confide my inmost soul."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here is a lovely poem by Lucy Maude Montgomery, who gave us the gifts of Anne, Diana, Gilbert, Marilla and Matthew, as well as some sweet poetry about her beautiful Prince Edward Island.  Doesn't this poem sound like one Anne might have written while she was studying at Queen's College? 

An Autumn Evening

Dark hills against a hollow crocus sky
Scarfed with its crimson pennons, and below
The dome of sunset long, hushed valleys lie
Cradling the twilight, where the lone winds blow
And wake among the harps of leafless trees
Fantastic runes and mournful melodies.

The chilly purple air is threaded through
With silver from the rising moon afar,
And from a gulf of clear, unfathomed blue
In the southwest glimmers a great gold star
Above the darkening druid glens of fir
Where beckoning boughs and elfin voices stir.

And so I wander through the shadows still,
And look and listen with a rapt delight,
Pausing again and yet again at will
To drink the elusive beauty of the night,
Until my soul is filled, as some deep cup,
That with divine enchantment is brimmed up. 

I'm linking up with Claudia at A Favorite Thing Saturdays at http://mockingbirdhillcottage.com/.  Please go visit all the lovely posts there if you have time, and I hope your weekend is filled with simple little pleasures!

In the cookies of life, sisters are the chocolate chips

When I was eight years old, my dad dropped my little sister and me off at my aunt's house on his way to the hospital with my mother.  A few hours later I was sitting in her living room when my aunt came in and announced good news--I had another baby sister!  To be perfectly honest, at the time I didn't see what all the hubbub was about...I already HAD a sister!!  But over time, I have come to cherish my baby sister.  Growing up, we were eight years apart so we had wildly divergent tastes--I was the ultimate first-born goody-two shoes prissy sort of girl, and she was a tomboy through and through when she was young. 

After college she followed her heart and served in the Peace Corps, and then went on to serve as a mental health counselor, providing comfort and help to so many in need.  She is a wonderful and supportive wife, a loving mother, and simply the best daughter, sister and friend you could ask for.  She rolled up her sleeves and carrried on as a 'single mom' through two deployments of her husband in Afghanistan.  She is currently serving as a 'surrogate mom' to an Italian high school exchange student, while her own son is studying abroad this year.  Yesterday she spent hours on the phone securing help for a woman who desperately needed someone in her corner.  When tornados struck the Midwest a couple of years ago, my sister and her family cut short their vacation in order to drive to one of the hardest hit areas, where they spent two days in merciless heat unloading food and water with the American Red Cross. 

Not a day goes by that we don't text, email, facebook or call each other.  I am so blessed that she is in my life, and I guess I have figured out what all the hubbub was about (and I'm being kind and not telling how many years ago it happened!)  Every time I listen to Carly Simon's beautiful song, Two Little Sisters, I think of my little sister--she has gone as far as the corners of the sky and wears the brighest stars in her hair.  And one day, we'll be lucky enough to be two daughters dancing at the edge of the sea.  I love you, Stephanie--happy birthday!

 Two little sisters gazing at the sea,

Imagining what their futures will be.

The older one says, as her eyes look around,

"I will go as far as the corners of the town.

I'll plant a little garden, flowers everywhere.

And pluck the most fragrant for my hair."

Two little sisters gazing at the sea,

Imagining what their futures will be.

The younger one stands with her eyes open wide.

And says, "I'll go as far as the corners of the sky.

I'll gather all the stars each night as they appear,

And pick the very brightest one to wear in my ear."

I didn't choose you and you didn't choose me.

I didn't choose you, who would guess we're from the same family?

But, what will you do when the nights get cold?

When the stars grow dim and your dreams seem old.

Watcha gonna do when winter calls,

And your flowers fall from the garden walls?

I'll come home to you, you'll come home to me.

My love will be your remedy.

I'll choose you and you'll choose me.

We'll be two daughters dancing by the edge of the sea

"November always seemed to me the Norway of the year."-   Emily Dickinson

Bidden or not, November has arrived.  Today is All Saints' Day, where traditionally families visit family graves.  Here's a picture from the First Burying Ground of the Settlers in Newburyport, MA.  My husband and mother and I visited it two years ago, hoping to find the grave of our first American ancestor, Giles Badger, who arrived on the Mary and John in 1632, and was one of the original settlers of Newburyport.  The headstones were so old we couldn't read most of them, but it was a very interesting stroll around this 'fine and private place'.   I discovered a new poet while working on today's blog, Frances Bellerby, an English poet born in 1899.  Somehow using a poem by an Englishwoman about All Saints' Day seems appropriate in honor of these brave and adventurous pilgrims of long ago. 

 

 

 

 



I always love the details found on really old headstones...note the ancient skull faces and angel wings!





And here was a surprise...the headstone of Newburyport's first witch, Elizabeth Morse, accused of witchcraft a dozen years before the Salem witch trial hysteria.  Her headstone is next to her husband's, but her body was buried outside the cemetery fence.



All Soul's Day

Frances Bellerby

Let's go our old way
by the stream, and kick the leaves
as we always did, to make
the rhythm of breaking waves.

This day draws no breath –
shows no colour anywhere
except for the leaves - in their death
brilliant as never before.

Yellow of Brimstone Butterfly,
brown of Oak Eggar Moth –
you'd say. And I'd be wondering why
a summer never seems lost

if two have been together
witnessing the variousness of light,
and the same two in lustreless November
enter the year's night…

The slow-worm stream - how still!
Above that spider's unguarded door,
look – dull pearls…Time's full,
brimming, can hold no more.

Next moment (we well know,
my darling, you and I)
what the small day cannot hold
must spill into eternity.

So perhaps we should move cat-soft
meanwhile, and leave everything unsaid,
until no shadow of risk can be left
of disturbing the scatheless dead.

Ah, but you were always leaf-light.
And you so seldom talk
as we go. But there at my side
through the bright leaves you walk.

And yet – touch my hand
that I may be quite without fear,
for it seems as if a mist descends,
and the leaves where you walk do not stir.