From the archives: What violence kills

From a post in November 2015

I read an interesting blog post recently: Simone Weil and Homer, by David Beardsley, on the Circe Institute blog. This is the part that struck me:

"By not making the clear connection to the one war, however, she made a clear connection to all War; to the eternal process that is inevitable when one country, one sect, one person, seeks domination.

"She also describes those moments of love that do break through the 'monotonous desolation:' hospitable, filial, brotherly, conjugal, even the friendship that can occur between mortal enemies such as Achilles and Priam.  'These moments of grace,' she says, 'are rare in the Iliad, but they are enough to make us feel with sharp regret what it is that violence has killed and will kill again.'”

Remembrance Day: An image of hope

Woldemar Neufeld, "In the Midst of Life"

Wednesday Hodgepodge

1. What does Veteran's Day / Remembrance Day mean to you?

I read an interesting blog post recently: Simone Weil and Homer, by David Beardsley, on the Circe Institute blog. This is the part that struck me:

By not making the clear connection to the one war, however, she made a clear connection to all War; to the eternal process that is inevitable when one country, one sect, one person, seeks domination over another. 

She also describes those moments of love that do break through the “monotonous desolation:” hospitable, filial, brotherly, conjugal, even the friendship that can occur between mortal enemies such as Achilles and Priam.  “These moments of grace,” she says, “are rare in the Iliad, but they are enough to make us feel with sharp regret what it is that violence has killed and will kill again.”

2. What's your favorite film with a patriotic theme woven into the storyline?

Right now I'm in the middle of reading War and Remembrance, so I guess that counts too.

But a movie? How about the 1979 O Canada T.V. signoff?

3. Flu shot-yes or no? If you answered no, do you plan to get a flu shot? If not, why not? Have you ever had the flu?

I am ambivalent about the shot, that's all I can say. And yes, I've had the flu. To quote Jan Karon: "It feels like you've just eaten a dish of Miss Rose's week-old, unrefrigerated banana pudding and on are on your way to the emergency room in the back of a van that's been lived in through a long, hard winter by seven Russian wolfhounds..."

4. I've seen lots of people posting pictures of their Christmas trees up and decorated. Many stores have had Christmas on display since well before Halloween. Red cups are back at Starbucks, sans the holiday decor; and that has some people up in arms. What are your thoughts on all the holiday ruckus this second week of November?

My November ruckus is just about making things--it's the month when the holiday crafting roundups appear, and I'm usually in the mood to sew or crochet something. I pretty much ignore whatever other quasi-holiday stuff is going on out there, until after we light the first Advent candle.

5. What 'critter' are you most afraid of encountering unexpectedly? Why that one?

I am not really afraid of bugs, other than the fact that they can bite you and make you sick. I cheerfully swat them, or go somewhere else without feeling particularly traumatized. However, I am phobic about mice. I've decided that the differences between mice and bugs are a) they're bigger, and b) they have faces, c) with teeth.  Hamsters, I was okay with; I usually knew the hamster. (We haven't had a hamster here since Snowball.) Mice are just anonymous housebreakers.  I'm not so sure about Rose Fyleman's "I think mice are nice"; I agree more with the lines that come before that one: "They nibble things they shouldn't touch, and no-one seems to like them much." 

6. Do you like building things? What's the last thing you 'built'?

No, not really a builder here. Mr. Fixit is the tool guy.

7. In keeping with this month's theme of gratitude...what are you most grateful for that brings beauty to your daily life?

The sugar maple beside our driveway, for its greenness in the summer and its orangeness in the fall.

This post is linked from The Wednesday Hodgepodge at This Side of the Pond.

Lydia's Grade Eight: On Remembrance Day

Some things to do for school today:

Read chapter 11, How to Be Your Own Selfiish Pig.  Susan Schaeffer Macaulay includes a quote from C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity: "Your real, new self (which is Christ's and also yours, and yours just because it is His) will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for Him."

Poem: Shakespeare, Sonnet LXIV

WHEN I have seen by Time’s fell hand defac’d
The rich-proud cost of outworn buried age;
When sometime lofty towers I see down-raz’d,
And brass eternal slave to mortal rage;
When I have seen the hungry ocean gain	5
Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,
And the firm soil win of the watery main,
Increasing store with loss, and loss with store;
When I have seen such interchange of state,
Or state itself confounded to decay;	10
Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate—
That Time will come and take my love away.
This thought is as a death, which cannot choose
But weep to have that which it fears to lose.

Picture Talk: Titian, The Three Ages of Man

French lesson, including our song for the week, Que sont devenues les fleurs (Where have all the flowers gone)

Nature notebooks

Read from Out of the Silent Planet.

"'And now,' said Oyarsa, when silence was restored, 'let us honour my dead hnau.'
At his words ten of the hrossa grouped themselves about the biers. Lifting their heads, and with no signal given as far as Ransom could see, they began to sing.... its rhythms were based on a different blood from ours, on a heart that beat more quickly, and a fiercer internal heat."

"Through his knowledge of the creatures and his love for them he began, ever so little, to hear it with their ears.  A sense of great masses moving at visionary speeds, of giants dancing, of eternal sorrows eternally consoled, of he knew not what and yet what he had always known, awoke in him with the very first bars of the deep-mouthed dirge, and bowed down his spirit as if the gate of heaven had opened before him." ~~ Out of the Silent Planet

Watch the national Remembrance Day ceremony from Ottawa, as we usually do.

Today's News from the Treehouse

Weather: sloppy, snowy/rainy, wet, cold. (Did I mention dark?)  Garbage cans blown over.

Dinner:  spaghetti and meatballs, poppy seed cake.  (For Remembrance Day.)

Where's the Apprentice been lately?  Mostly at university, finished midterms but heading into finals soon too.

What's Ponytails been doing?  A project for film class, plus her hairstyling class is up to cuts now.

What's Dollygirl doing?  Making Rainbow Loom bracelets.  Practicing the Cup Song with her friends.  She's also trying to film a doll version. She has swimming tonight, wet sloppy snow or not.

What's Mr. Fixit been doing?  Fewer radios and more cameras...the market for vintage stuff has shifted recently.  He's even back to doing some darkroom work--something I never expected to see.

Anything else you wanted to know?

Thanks to all our brave vegetarians

Crayons, trying to read the label on a wreath while watching the national Remembrance Day ceremony on T.V.:

"What's that say? Vegetarians of Canada?"