Writing in Faith

Wordless Wednesday

Our World Tuesday: Little People Village

2012-01-23T08:00:00.000-05:00

Geocaching has a way of uncovering history for the local yokels at the same time it gets us outside and roaming the landscape for tucked-away Tupperware. My daughter's geocaching adventures brought her to Little People Village in Middlebury a few weeks ago with her father.

About a century ago, a trolley line ran from Waterbury to Middlebury, Connecticut, where merry makers could hop off to visit this village or go a little farther down the line to Quassy Amusement Park. It was an ornamental garden called The Fairy Garden.

There area is dotted with the ruins of little people houses with arches, verandas, balustrades, and thrones. These have suffered from neglect, the elements, and vandalism so that imagining what it might have been like requires a fair amount of imagination. Here in Connecticut, there is no shortage of that. According to Damned Connecticut, "One of the many versions of the story goes that back about a century ago, a man and his wife (who may or may not have been a witch) were living peacefully in Middlebury when she started seeing small fairy folk in the woods around their home. To accommodate these pixie-like creatures, she demanded her husband build a tiny village. As the years passed and the village grew, the enchantment faded into madness. The abandoned smurf-scale town is all that’s left to mark the couple’s anguished demise."

Mother Nature is reclaiming the remains of this quaint garden. Pines tower over the gift shop in the first photo, and vines are shaking loose the foundations of these little concrete constructions. There isn't much left of the road, either. It runs parallel to Interstate 84, but you'd hardly know it if you were mucking around in these quiet woods.

Mother Nature's got a way of doing her thing. Just ask the bittersweet.

Our World Tuesday

Today's Flowers: Winter Pansies

2012-01-21T20:40:00.000-05:00

This mosaic turtle sails through the air outside the Quarter Moon Bookstore on Topsail Beach. At Christmastime, the pansies were blooming in all their glory in the sunshine. So beautiful.

Today's Flowers

One Single Impression: Smile

2012-01-21T08:00:00.000-05:00

From December 29, 2011

Seagulls In their high-steppingBroad-shoulderedPuffed up Way Of surveying the shore
Make me smile.
These feathered dons own the place.They privilege me with the opportunityTo breathe their airTo see their skyTo walk in stepWith the surf whose pounding cadenceIs a caress,The fingers-through-the-hair Of a familiar lover,A touch that is always welcome,A leaning in To the strengthThat says all is well and You are safe.Walk with me,
Be with me, Custodian of the tide.
Keep your fingerOn the pulse of the world.
Enter the world of a seagull
And smile.
One Single Impression

Movie Review: War Horse

2012-01-20T08:00:00.000-05:00

There's only one way to watch a movie that focuses on an animal, and that's with a kid. Kids and animals grab hold of your heart and run with it like there's no going back. In addition, kids will jump with two feet into a compelling story line, and they won't look at you like you're simple when happily-ever-after comes to the screen with a pretty sunset and silhouettes that let you claim the very bigness of life for yourself.

Kids know how to enjoy a good story.

I was glad to be with my kid and her friend to see War Horse this week. Steven Spielberg's movie adaptation of the children's novel by Michael Morpurgo captures the magical relationship of Albie, the son of a dirt-poor farmer in Devon, England, and Joey, a powerful young race horse his alcoholic father impetuously buys at auction--to the chagrin of his wife. Albie does not break the horse but wins him over, and this elegantly powerful animal becomes a work horse.

When World War I breaks out, Joey becomes a war horse who is pressed into service alternately by the Brits and the Germans, suffering as much as anyone else at the Battle of the Somme and other confrontations and surviving with more than his share of scars.

In the end, he is reunited with Albie. This statement is not a spoiler but a foregone conclusion. The old-school Disney-style opening tells you the story will come full circle. How and at what price are the questions that keep us on the edge of our seats for the length of this beautifully filmed movie.

After the movie, my daughter and her friend were talking about the War, who was on what side and how cruel the whole gig was and how wrong because so many people suffer. They remarked on the silliness of the British army to believe it could march on a German garrison and honestly believe it was unprotected. How beautiful the horse was, how cruel the landlord, how strange the dad.

How strange and beautiful that the story of a horse could open children's minds to some big life questions. That horse got those girls closer to some good answers that few adults have come close to in the century since that war. Truly, an honest heart is its own reward--and a compass that helps one find home. Just ask the horse.

(I wrote this review after reading several negative reviews by reviewers that seem not to know or care what a movie is to a child.)

Skywatch Friday: Get My Good Side

2012-01-19T08:00:00.000-05:00

I can taste the ocean on your skinThat is where it all beganWe all go back to where we belongWe all go back to where we belongThis really what you wantThis really what you want
Skywatch Friday

Wordless Wednesday: My Girl

2012-01-18T00:00:00.000-05:00

From January 15, 2012

(This is my daughter Adella with the Canon PowerShot I passed on to her as her photography experiences continue to grow and expand.)

Wordless Wednesday

Book Review: The Secret Holocaust Diaries of Nonna Bannister

2012-01-17T05:39:00.000-05:00

The Secret Holocaust Diaries: The Untold Story of Nonna Bannister by Nonna Bannister

The Secret Holocaust Diaries of Nonna Bannister is the narrative of an adolescent Russian girl whose idyllic life is transformed by the horrors of the Second World War. Walks in the park with her mother, language lessons with her father, and holidays in ther grandmother's Great House come to an abrupt end as war comes to her family, separating them as they struggle to survive.

Nonna witnesses first-hand the abuse of starving, freezing German soldiers who stab her dead father through the chest as he lay in bed--after weeks of suffering from injuries inflicted by other German soldiers who had found him hiding in a tunnel connected to a root cellar at her grandmother's home.

Nonna and her mother, Anna, forage for food in the fields and make temporary homes in the abandoned houses of villages whose residents were driven out by retreating Russians or marauding Germans. They rescue a Jewish baby tossed onto a train by her mother only to witness the baby's murder as a Nazi soldier snaps the baby like a twig. They endure the indignities of life in slave labor camps. They are afforded a modicum of comfort when the Nazis discover Nonna's mother's talents as a painter, singer, and violinist. However, when Anna is too tired to perform any more, Gestapo agents break her arms and leave her without medical care.

Throughout the war, Nonna keeps her diaries secreted in a little down pillow that her grandmother had made for her. These diaries survive the war and travel to America with Nonna when she emigrates from Germany in 1950. She keeps to herself the stories they tell until late in her life, when she shares her own translations of them with her husband.

The sole member of her family to survive the war, Nonna becomes a wife and mother of three children in the US. She died in 2004.

Though the pages of these diaries are filled with horrors that defy the imagination, the fact of their being written by a teenaged girl who would go on to live a good and productive life shows that integrity and honesty can trump evil. That Nonna Bannister has the grace to forgive those men who savagely tore her life apart speaks to the power of the soul to heal itself by choosing grace.

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Our World Tuesday: A Captive Audience for Dell and Me

2012-01-16T08:00:00.000-05:00

Della and I headed out on a very cold Sunday afternoon to play with our cameras. I gave Dell my Canon PowerShot because it's time for her to move up from her pocket Canon and for me to make better use of my DSLR. So we literally stepped out of the comfort zone, froze our fannies off, and spent some time with subjects that didn't moan and groan as we made our way around the buttons and dials of our picture machines.

From January 15, 2012

This graveyard in Roxbury, Connecticut, is filled with families and war heroes. It's a neat place. There is "wife of" after "wife of", children resting under tiny stones, and there is Edd. His last name is Ward (Edd Ward. Yes.) and he was killed by a horse on a July 4 in the 19th century. Poor Edd.

Our World Tuesday

Flowers from Today: Marsh Grasses

2012-01-14T16:00:00.000-05:00

The winter sun shining on the marsh grasses in Surf City were very beautiful on New Year's Eve. Winter sunlight has a wonderful way getting under and around things like warm and loving fingers caressing a beloved. I enjoy the shapes and the abstract patterns that emerge from the landscape in this light.

Today's Flowers

One Single Impression: Soul

2012-01-14T08:00:00.000-05:00

Draw the line
Raise the fence

Let the sun rise
The wind blow
The seasons change

Time passes through

What you draw
What you make
What you are

Let the sun rise
The wind blow
The seasons change

You are the time

That passes,

The line that blurs,

You are the fence
That will

In time

Need mending.

Draw the line.

One Single Impression

Skywatch Friday: Dreamin'

2012-01-12T08:00:00.000-05:00

From December 29, 2011

Thinking back of the people I have known who are photographers--persons who seek to capture in a picture what they see as the glory of a moment's most exquisite beauty--I find that these people are loners. They are people who are completely comfortable to stand alone. In fact, they prefer the company of their lens to any other company. Most of the time. These photographers fearlessly capture dreams. Sometimes they do that despite their cameras.

There are days I have turned the dials and adjusted every possible measurement on my camera in the hopes of capturing what I see. Instead, I have captured some other reality. Usually, that is the world I have felt while looking at what I seem unable to report. That vast space between the heart and mind is the site of some very strange alchemy sometimes. So says the camera. Some days, the camera insists on what is right and true and real. On these days, I wonder where I am. Nevertheless, the conversation is good and passionate and honest. And the colors manage to be warm.

Skywatch Friday

Wordless Wednesday: How's the Fishing?

2012-01-11T00:00:00.000-05:00

Wordless Wednesday

Our World Tuesday Meme: Flying By

2012-01-09T12:28:00.000-05:00

There's nothing like a day near the water, especially in an unpretentious place like Topsail. The happy face below greeted me on my morning walk. I admired his "feathered" hair style.

After an afternoon of photographing pelicans, I made my way back to the store to get some food for supper. Crossing the high-rise bridge, I did a no-no and snapped a few random shots of the setting sun. Braver souls have pulled over to take photos, but I haven't managed that feat yet.

Back at the laundromat-lounge bar, things were cooking on Thursday. Another party I missed.

Life is perfect just the way it is.

From December 30, 2011

And then one day you came back home You were a creature all in raptureYou had the key to your soul
And you did open
That day you came back
(Van Morrison) Our World Tuesday

Today's Flowers: My Love is Like

2012-01-07T19:00:00.000-05:00

This rose was thriving outside the Assembly Building on Topsail Island before New Year's Eve. Talk about paradise.

Today's Flowers

One Single Impression: Invincible

2012-01-07T08:00:00.000-05:00

What hunger drives?

The pelican dives

Deep and direct

Eyes open wide

Again and again

It is a game:

We do not eat to live

Or live to eat

But dive deep

To dive deep

And come back

Satisfied.

Hunger drives.

One Single Impression

Skywatch Friday: Looks Easy

2012-01-05T08:00:00.000-05:00

I was the pelican stalker in Surf City for a few nights last week. Fisherman would dump their bait overboard before taking their boats out of the water, and the pelicans were making the most of a free and easy meal. They put on quite a performance. Now and again, some cormorants would come in for a landing and bob around the big guys, who could not be bothered with the birds that didn't meet the height requirement on that ride.

Skywatch Friday

Wordless Wednesday: That Worthwhile Uphill Climb

2012-01-04T00:00:00.000-05:00

From December 31, 2011

Wordless Wednesday

Book Review: The Book Whisperer

2012-01-03T21:07:00.004-05:00

The Book Whisperer: Awakening the Inner Reader in Every Child by Donalyn Miller

In his autobiography, Ben Franklin talks about teaching himself to write by reading good writers and then emulating their style as well as the quality of their thought.

Franklin's words resonated with me when I read the Book Whisperer, in which sixth-grade language arts teacher Donalyn Miller talks about bringing her students into the pleasure of reading by allowing young readers to choose the books that they want and then jumping in.

Allowing readers to choose books means knowing those readers well enough to know what they might like and then providing the options that they might enjoy. It's that simple: know your students. Let them be. Let them read. And they will, and they will do well and if you are a language arts teacher, they will write, and they will write well.

The Book Whisperer had me thinking of Franklin and how he built his life on the books he read. They led him to the company he kept, and up he went through the various social circles of people who created this nation.

Read well, be well, and do good. That's everything.

Everything starts with knowing just a little and connecting through text. There begins the world.I liked this book for the good, practical insights that Miller offers on teaching reading to middle school kids. Basically, good teaching comes down to knowing your students and helping them find the books that will speak to them. We who love to read know this. We who love kids know that letting the kids know you love them and respect them as capable human beings is 90 percent of teaching. When this attitude comes naturally to a teacher, it's almost like getting paid to show up.

I gained a lot from this book, and I'm looking forward to trying some of Miller's strategies in the classroom and using the resources she recommends.

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Our World Tuesday: What Are You Looking at?

2012-01-02T08:00:00.000-05:00

What are you looking at? is the question I asked myself at the beach last week to challenge myself to look at the beach in different ways. I used my DSLR, my beloved big Canon PowerShot, my trusty little Canon PowerShot, and my Christmas gift the iPod to look again at those things I love so much. That big, blue, beauty the Atlantic tossed up some amazing things.

Like this strange shell or fossil or whatever it is. I have not seen these kinds of shells anywhere else. I was once told they are fossilized shellfish. Maybe so.

This snail shell seemed to be in the process of disappearing while the scallop shell seemed to be in the process of becoming a fossil.

Then there's this clam shell which seemed to be an undercover agent for the ocean, filtering water and slipping into the sunny sand. It's funny to me that the ocean is gigantic, yet the gifts on the shore are so small, tiny really--whispers of the great mysteries that lie deep below the surface.