An excerpt from the journal of Emma Vanderpol on September 29th, 2017.
So. I splashed beef stock on my keyboard today. It has mostly revived, so matters could be worse, but the experience was a somewhat traumatic one for both me and the keyboard.
To set up the story, Mom is not currently here, being gone with Charlotte for a CM conference in Seattle; and Friday is the evening for Theology of the Body. I mean, for the Theology of the Body Class. Anyways, most of the time one parent takes me and the other stays behind, so everything is fine. But now, this leaves no one at home old enough to watch the younger kids successfully. The answer, of course, is fairly obvious: Grandma and Grandpa helpfully came down for dinner so they could watch the kids afterward and Dad could take me to class.
That’s great. A good opportunity for Hannah and Justin to get extra books read to them, a good opportunity for me to show off my cooking skills. But I guess I was feeling a little extra-stressed or wanted to look extra good, because for some reason I decided that I should pull stock out of the freezer and thaw it to use in the pilaf Mom had scheduled along with salmon patties and roasted broccoli and cauliflower.
As a CM student, I keep a commonplace book—a practice which was once common to most well-educated people. This is a place where I can copy down and keep near me especially beautiful or important or thought-provoking or amusing quotes from what I read. While I’m backlogged on copying these into my physical commonplace book, I’ve encountered some lovely thoughts recently, and I thought I’d share some of them with you.
To start, some common sense from George MacDonald. The Princess and the Goblin is the second book I have read aloud. Hannah, Justin, and I read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe together, then Irene and Curdie’s first adventures. We’re onto The Princess and Curdie now.
“That’s all nonsense,” said Curdie. “I don’t know what you mean.” “Then if you don’t know what I mean, what right have you to call it nonsense?” asked the princess, a little offended.
“Come in,” said the Bishop. The door opened. A singular and violent group made its appearance on the threshold. Three men were holding a fourth man by the collar. The three men were gendarmes; the other was Jean Valjean. … “Ah! here you are!” he exclaimed, looking at Jean Valjean. “I am glad to see you. Well, but how is this? I gave you the candlesticks too, which are of silver like the rest, and for which you can certainly get two hundred francs. Why did you not carry them away with your forks and spoons?” Jean Valjean opened his eyes wide, and stared at the venerable Bishop with an expression which no human tongue can render any account of.
Victor Hugo, Les Miserables, pages 85 and 86
Jean Valjean stole the bishop’s silver while the bishop’s guest. In the morning, he is arrested and brought back to the bishop. And before Valjean is even accused of stealing the silverware, the bishop gives the thief silver candlesticks as well.
This of the bishop’s is assuredly a very unjust act.
True, the Lord says: “But if any one strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also; and if any one would sue you and take your coat, let him have your cloak as well; and if any one forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles.” (Matthew 5:39-41). But isn’t this a direction for behavior in the face of adversity—not of restitution?
‘Do you ever visit a farm,’ I asked Mom, ‘and get the feeling that you know how to do nothing of any use whatsoever?’
‘I was just thinking about that,’ she said. ‘I’ve read Wendell Berry, and that counts for—exactly nothing.’
We were in the car on Lazy Valley Ranch, in between the barn where you got registered and directed and the u-pick blueberry patch. I don’t know what parts of the surroundings went together, but it was the overall effect that was important to us. The blue-and-white buildings looked practical and aged. A large open shed overflowed with rusty pieces of what, perhaps not having eyes to see with at a brief glance, I can only call junk. More-or-less dry fields held horses, cows, a donkey, and an emu. Another field had several large pieces of equipment in it and hay bales scattered through it. The vehicles looked long and well used. And we felt like unnecessary and inferior city mice.
I’m reading Hannah Coulter right now, Mom just reread it and is reading some of Wendell Berry’s essays, and we’ve both recently read an interview with Berry in the CiRCE Institute’s FORMA magazine. Part of the message we’re getting is about the value and usefulness of small farms, and—in some ways—the unnecessariness or less-wholeness of sophisticated modern ways of life. Going to Lazy Valley Ranch, this farm which looked like something out of Wendell Berry, brought our reading and considering into a new proximity. I at least felt ashamed of being in the Tahoe there among those rusty vehicles, as if it were a faux pas of some sort (though Mom pointed out that that’s rather funny, as many Americans would look distinctly down at our chunky 2005 eight-seater).
Most of us who have an idea of God offer thanksgiving to Him occasionally, whether when our blessings are brought unusually to our notice or when a prayer—for an opportunity, for a success, for the recovery of a loved one—is answered. But these thanksgivings can be few and far between; the Lord has told us through Scripture that He is honored by our thanksgiving, and we ought to make thanksgiving often. These frequent thanksgivings should be habitual in two ways—that we often have voluntary-involuntary liftings of the soul toward God in thanksgiving, and that at regular intervals we remember what we are thankful to Him for. We should remember that we all have many, many things to be thankful for: the gift of life and family, the gladness of work, whatever amount of health the Lord has given us, the pleasantness of our clothing. To go outside, even when we are in the city, should always be a joy to us, and we should thank God for it.
Praise, too, we should often offer to God—He has told us that He is pleased and honored by our praise, as the human artisan is honored and pleased by judicious praise of his work. The works of God for which we may offer praise are always before us, from the trees outside my window to the iPad I am writing this narration on—because God designed the world in which the human artisans could discover, the way of making the device. The wonders that the scientists show us of the universe are wonders by seeing which we can see more the wonders that God has wrought; and we should offer Him praise for them.
Now all we need are Fire and Earthquake: yesterday evening the washer leaked all through the mudroom and out into the entry and around to the game table, making for Flood, and we have already had Plague: perhaps we can get a complete collection this month. “The May of the Cataclysms.” Mom says she hopes not. Well, still, “sluttishness may come hereafter…”
However that may be, we got to have an adventure this evening—our drawing lesson was adjourned, without formality, by wordless mutual consent, when Hannah pointed out the puddle creeping around the corner. Then we got to spend a while cleaning it up: moving a table and a cabinet, setting things out to dry, laying towels down so we could traverse the flooded rooms, and getting over half a gallon of water off the mudroom floor by sponge and wetted-and-wrung-out towel.‘If I were Pollyanna,’ I said, ‘I’d say that at least the floor was getting well cleaned.’ ‘I was thinking about the same thing,’ Mom said, though she didn’t detail if that included Pollyanna. A good deal of gunk got cleaned out of corners, and the whole mudroom floor got meticulously hand-sponged; none o’ yer in-and-out speed-mopping jobs. The water in the tubs which we wrung sponges and towels into was of the color that water used to become when my siblings and I were in outdoor play-kitchens and wanted to make hot chocolate—though I’ll guess that we tried to keep bits of twig and bark out of our beverages.
From our campsite to the sea there are two dunes. The first is high, dirt mixed into its sand, covered in brush and wildflowers: yellow and blue and white lupins, orange-hearted, yellow-edged California poppies, ice-plant like pink sea anemones, blue on a bush reminiscent of rosemary, majestic deep-red thistles, light purple on a low, spreading plant growing at the dune’s seaward base. The second dune, much smaller and gentler, is all of sand, fewer plants growing there, but the lavender-flowered plant is happy. So is one with succulent-like leaves and blooms like small, flat, yellow poppies. They hug the sand closely, but are cheerily bright.
As we come up to the top of each dune, all we can see over its edge is sky and clouds and layered, cris-crossing contrails. It is like walking up to the edge of the world. Then we come up over the sandy crest, and see another blue, a darker one, in the trail’s sand-floored hollow between the bush-topped hillocks covering the dune. A few steps higher, and the edge between the sand and the blue is seamed with white. A little higher still, and there is a broad band of brown between the sea and us. The sea: we can see the real edge of the world now, inasmuch as it has an edge.
Yes, I’ll admit it. I have trouble visualizing geologic amounts of time. Then again, you probably do too. I doubt that there are many people for whom the span of time “a hundred and thirty-five million years” makes immediate, intuitive, graspable sense. This still doesn’t make much sense for me… but at least now I have an idea of “Paleozoic,” of “Mesozoic,” of “Cenozoic,” relative to the age of the earth, via a visualization from Basin and Range, by John McPhee. This is a school read, so I copied the helpful concept into my science notebook, then figured that I’d share it on here!
“Who chooseth me shall gain what many men desire,” the gold casket says. “Who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves,” says the silver casket. “Who chooseth me must give and hazard all he has,” says the lead casket. (II.VII, 5,7,9) The portrait of Portia, a beautiful and wealthy young noblewoman, lies in one of these caskets; if a suitor picks that casket, he weds her, but if he choose another, he must forswear marriage forever. Besides finding Portia’s husband, the caskets illustrate different ways – gilded but false, or true as a plumbed line – of looking at love.
On Tuesday, Sky Guide, a handbook-to-the-heavens-on-your-screen which our family uses, sent me a notification that early the next morning there would be a lunar eclipse + blood moon + supermoon. I didn’t take action in the evening, but at two-something a.m. I woke up randomly, looked up times, and set an alarm for around the three-something the eclipse was supposed to start at. When the alarm went off, I got some brothers, my nature journal, and the first pencil-stub I could find, and headed outside. The boys went back in pretty soon, but I stayed out to do my conscientious duty as a Charlotte Mason student—something I do more dutifully in interesting or unusual situations—and wrote about the eclipse as best I could. So here’s a transcription of it—slightly edited, because I wrote it in the wee hours of the morning by bad light—as my first post here; a piece of writing influenced both by the education I’m being given and my ongoing attempts to put words to the world.
1/31/18—Lunar eclipse
~3:50 am
The visible part of the eclipse is just starting, and I’m sitting on the side of the driveway shivering. In addition to undergoing an eclipse, tonight the moon is an extra-large “supermoon.” It is very large and bright and casts distinct shadows. The pencil lines appear to fade in and out rather, but it’s even possible to write by—but a little hard, so please pardon the handwriting. While writing I am noticing the slice cut off the edge of the moon getting larger when I look up. The night is pretty clear, but there’s a thin cloud layer; you can see the moon through it easily, but not many stars are visible and the moon has a faint white halo at about the distance from stretched thumb-tip to pinky-tip held at arm’s length. The edge of earth’s shadow can now be seen to be curved, but it is not nearly as curved as the moon’s bite from the sun last August. Writing is getting dimmer and harder, but it’s nice to have an eclipse you can stare at without special glasses. Now the moon is almost half obscured. It is possible that it has a ruddy tinge—this is supposed to be a blood moon as well—but the visible part of its disk looks dimmer now we I (the boys went back inside ere I started writing) can’t see the whole thing. This writing is hard.
Note at top of the page: the thermometer out back says 37°
Caption by sketch: even harder to draw than to write by scant moon-light!
1/31/18—Lunar eclipse
~4:50 am—After watching for a while, I went back inside for around half an hour, and now wish I hadn’t! When I went inside the mostly white moon was more than half obscured by a dark, somewhat convex shadow. I was noticing dimmer light and more stars. Coming out again, I expected to see no apparent moon or a slight sliver disappearing behind a shadow. One expectation was met, that there would be much less light; the stars look almost new-moon bright, and I wouldn’t be writing this if not for my headlamp. But the moon did not look as I expected! This, I suppose, is where the prognosticated “blood moon” bit comes in; the disk was lit at the bottom and up the edges, as in my drawing above-right—and the lit part was definitely reddish! The red has now faded, and the moon is somewhat dimmer and less lit, I think, than when I came out. Also, it’s sinking—this time I’m sitting on the asphalt above the driveway to be able to see (cold). I can see and recognize Cassiopeia and the big dipper. Cassiopeia has moved from where I saw her at the beginning of the night. I saw Orion at the beginning of the night, but don’t now; I don’t know if he’s set or I’m just in the wrong spot (on a local level) to see him. I saw a meteor a little bit ago!
