Moby-Dickulous

For some bizarre reason, Sonlight American Lit spends 5 weeks on Moby-Dick.

I actually like this book. It’s a bit of a slow read, I can’t read more than a few chapters at a time before I get distracted, but it is well written and interesting.

Honestly though. If you saw a whale would you really name it “Moby-Dick”?

Moreover, if you got your leg chewed off by a whale, a giant scary albino whale, and then made it your life goal to kill this whale because you had a twisted god-complex type thing going on, would you name it Moby-Dick? Really?

I recently asked on my Facebook what people would named whales if they had them. The results were: Humphrey, Willy, Phil, Oswald, Astrid, Morgan, Danielle, Obie, Woody, and Sparkles. Ben informed me that he would have two whales: Yesterday’s Lunch, his food whale, and Money Money Money, his cash whale.

I would name my whale Snowball.

&c

I am feeling a little incoherent right now and I don’t really want to write…but.

I do not understand Obama’s new stimulus package. I thought that to restrict inflation you were supposed to restrict the cash flow, not flood the market with more money. But then again I have had no economics at all and he’s the president.

Ampersands are cool, don’t you think? Even the word ampersand is cool. And they’re hard to handwrite.

All the school I did today was math, some Language Arts, and Latin. And music. In Latin I really need to learn some more words, because all my translation excercises are about the Gallic Wars or the Virgin Mary.

Literature is Emma this month. I didn’t actually care for Emma THAT much…I’ve read it before. I thought that the plot was good but not big enough for a three-volume novel. So far this year my favorites have been the Importance of Being Earnest, Sherlock Holmes, Beowulf, and Three Men in a Boat.

Viola update: I am really happy now because my orchestra director gave me unlimited access to an entire drawer full of old solo and small ensemble music, proving that all you have to do is ask. I chose a Corelli sonata to start with, and a transcription of the Telemann violin concerto and a graded repertoire book of easier pieces.  Another plus is that after playing viola, I can find the big intervals on the violin much more easily. AND I just got nearly begged to do a gig on the viola after having played for three days!

That was a true statement that sounds much cooler than it was, but I’m gonna keep the illusion of coolness and not elaborate.

I actually was kind of enjoying writing about nothing but it turns out I have a mysterious violin lesson they all forgot to tell me about, so I have to eat supper, get dressed, find my music and get out the door in 15 minutes. And I didn’t practice my Wolfhart this morning….uh-oh.

Seven Books that Have Affected My Life

This was an assignment for Language Arts.

My mother and father for some bizarre unknown reason decided that my schoolwork needs to be “rigorous” and gave me Sonlight Core 600 (I think) which is the equivalent of AP Brit Lit on steroids. This means that, for the first time ever, I actually have to study for everything this year. Grr.

This was supposed to be 25 books…but Mom gave me dispensation to only do five. But I came up with seven.

           

Because really, at fifteen, how am I supposed to know which books are going to affect my life? Goodnight Moon? One of the examples they gave was a book on how to improve your marriage. Like THAT helps me.

           

But anyway.

 

Obviously the Bible has to be on this list.

 

And then I would choose the Hardy Boys, because they made me fall in love with reading from the very beginning and since then I have never put a book down. I remember I used to carry a Hardy Boys book in one hand and put my other hand on the wall so I could read while I walked…but then I fell and Mom said no more.

           

Suzuki comes next. I know they’re not technically books…but the computer dictionary defines “book” as “a bound collection of pages” and Suzuki certainly is that. And they are the books I have used the most and spent a LOT of my free time as well as my school time with. And yes, I know that it is wrong to end a sentence with “with” on account of it is a preposition, which I know because they made me do stupid Easy Grammar in the sixth grade and I still know the prepositions by heart.

Also, I don’t think you’re technically supposed to say “on account of”, you’re supposed to say “because”, except in Latin there is a special word just for “on account of” so I totally think it should be allowed.

           

Then I would say the Harry Potter series…because they deserve to be on any list of modern classics.

 

And 1984 reminded me to live the present and also if I grow up to be an author never to inflict the hideous dream of negative utopia upon thousands of innocent high school students. What IS it with these Utopia people? We’ve got Paradise Lost, and Gulliver’s Travels, and that one by someone called VanAuken (I think) that I’ve got to read later this year…and then 1984 is negative utopia…argh. I don’t want to find meaning! I just want to read!

           

The Grapes of Wrath ALSO goes on here…I don’t think it affected my life in any big way per se, but it certainly left an impression on my poor ten-year-old brain (yes Dad…I was only ten when you made me read this.) with all the vivid, frighteningly accurate descriptions of Oklahoma. Plus I know it’s one of Dad’s favorite books so he should definitely give me extra points for mentioning it.

           

 Last is Bartleby the Scrivener, the best work poor old Herman Melville ever did. This was my favorite book from American Literature in 7th grade, and it provided me with my answer to so many of life’s little questions:

           

I prefer not to.

Cento Cento Cento!

This was a Language Arts project in which I had to write a poem by combining lines from other poems.

Once upon a midnight dreary,
After nightfall he set out:
Down to a sunless sea
For he heard the loud bassoon.

The tide rises, the tide falls.
Not an instant stopped nor stayed he!
For ox and ass before him bowed,
Lying at impossible distances.

He gives his harness bells a shake—
Sweet is death forevermore.

Double points if you can guess which poems I used!

Randomness

The Friar Chuck Update: Friar Chuck versions 1,2, and 3 have been dispatched. Dad finally bought a Havahart trap to catch them. They promptly figured out how to lift up the trap and get the bait. It’s a constant battle.

In other news, Mom is in the process of staining the armoire, which is a long hard slog. Our kitchen is stain central, and the fumes are going to everybody’s heads.

Last weekend Mom took me to see Mamma Mia, which is a musical based on the songs of ABBA. Mom and Dad went to see it for their anniversary this year, and she liked it so much she took me too. It’s actually a really cute movie. Plus, it has Meryl Streep, and Peirce Brosnan, and Colin Firth* and Julie Walters, so how can you NOT see it? Dad got Mom the soundtrack, so now we are all listening to ABBA nonstop. Mom has even decreed that it’s unamerican not to like ABBA.Take a chance on meeeee….

I have gotten Facebook and become addicted.

I have also started school. Grr. BUT, hopefully I will be able to take December off the way I did last year! A&P is going super so far, and so is Latin. Math is just really really annoying, especially today’s lesson where all Dr. Shorman is was yak on and on about the area of transversal laterals or something. Brit Lit is OK, but Sonlight, so involved. I’m done with Beowulf and onto Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. I just started Logic, and I haven’t begun French yet, although I have a new resolution to work harder at it after being to Taize. It comes easily to me but I haven’t been studying it the way I should. Orchestra and whatever band I end up with starts next week.

More on Taize tomorrow.

Um, that’s all the news from here I guess…boring boring end of summer…

*Incidentally, he has a really high voice. Like in Manly Men, the first verse, only actually very true.

Ethel the Singing Cow Goes to Paris

There is this children’s book called “The Cows are Going to Paris”. So naturally, I had to take our very own Ethel to Paris with me and do pictures of her in front of touristy places!

This is on the first day on the bus, right after we’d gotten off the plane. Yes, my hair is in braids; I know that I never, ever, ever, braid my hair, but I did at Taize. It’s still me, OK? My brother kept squinting at photos and saying, “Which one are you again?”. It’s embarrassing.

We then did about a week’s worth of touring in 2 days with very little sleep, so consequently I have no idea what order these were taken in. This is Ethel in front of Notre Dame.

All the carvings on Notre Dame were amazing. Also, I had no idea that The Hunchback of Notre Dame was written to raise money for the reconstruction of the cathedral! Also, our guide would point to a carved person and say something like, “This is Saint Dennis of so-and-so, who did something famous and then had his head chopped off in Ireland or somewhere and walked 25 miles holding his head in his hands and was canonized in 1873 under the reign of Pope Urban the 16th” and I wished that I was Catholic. But only shortly. (I know that the real phrase is “only briefly” but I met non-American people who said “only shortly” and I found it rather charming. More translation stories to come.)

This is Ethel and my hand on TOP of Notre Dame. We got to climb all the way up, something like 844 stairs on a teeny winding stone staircase, which was very cool but I would not do it again unless there was an elevator. Whatever tour we were on should have been called “The Steps of Paris”. My legs hurt a lot by the time we got to Taize, and then the first afternoon we did a hike involving steps.

But back to Paris.

This is Ethel in front of Sacre Coure. I’m not sure if I’m spelling that right but it’s a cathedral built on the biggest hill in Paris, apparently. They call it a hill, but it’s about 40 times bigger than Mount Sunflower, so that shows you cultural differences right there! We climbed the hill, and then we climbed about 30 million steps to get to the actual cathedral. (hyperbole: gross exaggeration for comic effect) (just in case you are one of those irritatingly technical people who are always saying things like, “well, actually, it’s roughly 437 steps”) (man, that bugs me)

One thing I found interesting about Sacre Coure is that there were breakdancers on the way up, which sounds reasonable, except that they were dancing to Britney Spears. Foreign people like the worst of our music. That comes in later in my post entitled, “Oyak”.

Eiffel Tower Ethel!!!!

This is Ethel (duh) on a boat cruise of the Seine. If you look closely you’ll be able to spot the Bishop’s head in the background!

Goodbye!

I leave for Taize tomorrow morning, so I just wanted to take this opportunity to let everyone know I won’t be posting (actually, I have a few things on the AutoPoster but I’m not sure I did it right) for the next 10 days or so, although I promise to post lots and lots of pictures when I come back! Seeing photos of other people’s trips can get rather boring though, can’t it? I have been thinking of different sorts of trips lately:

• Mission trips, where you go to help others and usually become very very dirty in the process
• Pilgrimages, such as to Taize, where you look for God in yourself
• Vacations, which are usually fun fun fun, but not always
• Trips. I think everyone knows what I mean when I say, “trips”.

We often go on trips to the Midwest, where there is a lot of empty land. We’ve seen the great sights of America, such as Mount Rushmore, which consists of the heads of dead people carved in stone; EVERY DARN ONE  of the Laura Ingalls Wilder historical monuments, including the dugout on the Banks of Plum Creek, which interestingly enough has quite a bit of marijuana growing near it; or the Geographical Center of the 48 Contiguous States, which is in the middle of nowhere Kansas and is extremely windy. It does have a cute chapel though. Also, the Land of Oz theme/adventure park, which if I remember correctly is in Garden City Kansas, and is made up of a) a yellow brick road, b) a swingset, c) an old train, for some reason, and d) a mysterious red barn with pictures of the flying monkeys that is never open.

Other people may go on trips to the Scottish highlands, where they can meet braepeople and watch men in skirts singing songs containing words like “brankie”, while eating haggis; or they may go to the Milford Highlands, where they can stay at the Scottish Inn, and, during select weekends such as Milford Music Festival weekend, experience the charming quaintness of Milford by getting stuck in traffic made up of 1400 people from New Jersey, shop, and listen to music, much of it provided by people not yet out of high school. (I just had to find a way to work the Milford Highlands in there cause I find it highly ironic.)

Anyway. Goodbye for now, I love you all, pray for me, see you in August!

Au Revoir!

Beowulf.

Beowulf is the first book I have to study for Language Arts. It’s actually pretty interesting….I like the translation they picked. The names get kind of confusing sometimes though—Hrothgar and Heorot and Heowulf and Halga and Healfdane.

Wiglaf. Wiglaf is pretty easy to keep track of.

Interestingly enough, Beowulf isn’t mentioned by name until line 343.

I am in the midst of answering thoughtful questions about “exposition” and “rising action” and “allusion”. Sometimes I wish a story was just a story. The first time I read Animal Farm I thought it was a story. A really, really dumb story about a pig who talked. (I was 12, OK?) And then Dad explained the hidden meaning. And I was recently informed that The Walrus and the Carpenter is about capitalism and the proletariat, which depresses me greatly.

When I did The Red Badge of Courage in American Lit I thought that when the war was over Henry would get a nice medal of some sort, like a Purple Heart, for being courageous, and that was what the title referred to. And then I found out that the “Red Badge of Courage” is blood and became annoyed and refused to read the rest of Stephen Crane’s depressing literature.

Some questions are a little too much. Like why on earth would I want to take the option of researching Viking funerals and comparing them to Shield Sheafson’s? Why? This is the reason my parents will not let me unschool, I would never do anything but read.

Next I have to read The Canterbury Tales, which are basically indecipherable. Hopefully the translation the Sonlight people picked is better than the one Dad used, cause I tried to read his last year and got about to page three. I’ve read most of the books that are required this year already: my favorites were Alice in Wonderland, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Importance of Being Earnest, and Wuthering Heights. I know that actually liking Wuthering Heights is like enjoying Crime and Punishment, but I did. If I find out that Alice in Wonderland is really representational of Chairman Mao or Sherlock Holmes is Amelia Earhart (thus the secretive death) I will cry.

The only CS Lewis book this year is The Great Debate. I haven’t read that one, but I’ve enjoyed all the Chronicles of Narnia and the Screwtape Letters and that other famous one I don’t remember…….Pilgrim’s Regress? Hmm. I also enjoyed My Fair Lady, the movie adaption of Pygmalion.

May ogres and elves and evil phantoms, those begat of the Clan of Cain, leave you alone through all your days.

Contest Winner! and other stuff

I have been slacking in my blogging! Majorly! So here is an update on my general life situation! Yay for exclamation points!

OK, the contest thing didn’t really work….oh well. Next time I’ll have to get a real prize. Thank you to everybody (all three of you ) for your quotes…..they will begin appearing in the header as soon as I get my act together. I put the names on little slips of paper and picked one out of a hat…..and MEAGAN WINS! So I will get those to you next week, Meg!

With blogging comes a little addiction to feedback, I think….and even though I get about 25 unique visitors per day, only about five ever comment. Those select few….I love you best.

 JUST KIDDING!

Father’s Day! Was nice….despite a little meltdown during lunch and the fact that church lasted about sixteen billion hours and it was 90 degrees in the sanctuary. We got Dad an assortment of grill paraphernalia. Here’s a photo of Ben’s present, a watch:

Guess who wrapped that? Ben has the Hanson gene for insane wrapping, I believe. Both he and my grandmother wrap gifts in such a manner that it takes a knife to open them. Some of these packages I’ve gotten could survive a bomb attack. Although my grandmother tends to use more attractive wrapping, while Ben sticks to the 12-year-old boy standby…..newspaper, duct tape, and rope. For my last birthday, he gave me a book that was wrapped in newspaper. And taped up with packing tape. And put in a box, which was not only sealed but literally wrapped in duct tape, which was then covered in more newspaper and tied with string. I must mention though that he thoughtfully arranged the newspaper so that the Students of the Month were on the bottom, the Lucky Few Who Read a Book and Got to Eat Lunch With the Principal were on the front, and the District 10 Chorus Winners were on the top. So the entire package was showing pictures of people I don’t know! It took me at least ten minutes to open it.

The Friar Chuck Update: Ben got one of them in the eye with a pellet gun, so we think that one is probably dead….the other one has not been seen for a while.

The School Update: I am taking the rest of the week off and then starting 10th grade next week. Portfolios are done, reviewed, etc.

The Music Update: Violin is in a slump….for some reason the Suzuki movement that I’ve been practicing for two months sounds awful and the one I just started playing today cause I was bored sounds pretty good. No rational explanation for this. I am trying to polish Fiocco Allegro up for no discernable reason, and teach myself the districts piece. Just in case. I also pulled out our old folk music and have been playing that.

Anyway. Happy Wednesday!

CONTEST! Enter now!

And win! Win big! Or small, in this case! No charge! Only $13.99! Plus tax! Plus shipping and handling! And we reserve the right to send you a rabid weasel in lieu of a real prize!

 

 

Just kidding! This is a real contest, from which there will be one real winner chosen…..and they will get the prize that I am about to describe to you in a moment. But only cause my dad would kill me if I tried to ship a weasel in the mail. Not to mention a rabid weasel.

So, to enter this contest is extremely easy. And the prize is not all that great, but sort of interesting and frankly I have a very small and sometimes sporadic allowance, so it’s the best I could do.

As you may (or is it might?) have noticed, right below the header of my blog, which reads “lapsus calumni”, there is a tagline. And in the tagline there is usually a quote. I am partial to “I prefer not to”, but there have been many up there over the past 8 months. Right now, it contains a line from JK Rowling’s HP prequel, which diehard Potter fans saw and laughed, and the rest of the world wants to know why on earth it says, “Elvendork is unisex” at the top of my blog.

Anyway, I need ideas for quotes. They can be anything—a quote from a book, a TV show, a famous person, whatever. All you have to do is type it in the comments on this post and you will have chance to win! Please include the quote, where it comes from or who said it, even if you made it up, and put an email address in the email address field so I can reach you. Enter as many times as you want. You have an unspecified period of time in which to do so…….KIDDING! You have at least two days.

And the prize: BOOKS! A kind reader sent me a boxful the other day, and my mother has this suggestion that whenever we get new books we get rid of some of the old ones. That rule is the only thing that keeps my dad from completely overflowing our house with books.

So here are the three books I will be giving away, arranged attractively on my bedroom floor with my sister’s new Croc Knockoff:

The shoe has nothing to do with anything. The books are Digital Fortress, by Dan Brown, the author of the controversial DaVinci Code, which is in slightly used condition and large print; Holes, by Louis Sachar, which won a Newbery Medal, and has a cover that does not quite reach all the way across on the front; and The Sufi Path of Love: the Spiritual Teachings of Rumi, but William C. Chittick, which is pretty beat up. Although, the back cover says that it is the most accesssible work in English on the greatest mystical poet of Islam. It has a dedication that reads, Ali Ihsan is one of the spiritual leaders of the Masjid-Al-Farek, representing an intimate aspect of my own mind and heart, and bears responsibilty with the other leaders for spiritual guidance and loving service of the dervish community and its guests. Nim. 

 I love book dedications, and underlining, and stuff people have left as bookmarks and later forgotten such as money and once I found a Sweet-Tart.

 

These are the books arranged in a different manner.

This is the sidewalk at our church, which reads, Jesus Christ is Coming Again.

That has nothing to do with the contest! At all! Ha!

So enter, if only to make me feel better……remember, one quote is all it takes to win a rabid weasel great books!

I’ll end this with a quote, because it seems apt and maybe it will inspire me to get my rear in gear and practice my violin: When you are not practicing, someone somewhere is practicing, and when you meet him, he will win. (anonymous)