Handiwork

I've been silent for a while, but I have a little more of my (brilliant, of course) work to share.



These were a gift to a friend of mine who had kindly made me a beautiful cape last year...so I owed her something. I made them to match one of her ball dresses.






I made this for an equally good friend as a graduation present. She isn't exactly girly, so she needed something different.

I need to get some clearer pictures of this, but that will have to wait for another day, when it's not so late.
That is one of the best parts of jewelry making, I think: making something that is right for a certain person, occasion or outfit. And there's just something fun about working on some radically different projects; each one can be nice without any of them being the same.

What You've All Been Waiting For

Ta-da! This is really the first thing I started. A necklace and earring set! Thanks to Peter and my dad I figured out how to take the pictures I need.
When I started this, I could not believe how nice it looked! I didn't know you could make stuff like this with just pliers, wire, beads, and a little time. I may be making more stuff, but I made a deal with myself that I will buy no more jewelry making stuff until at least the end of May. That way I can evaluate how much money to spend on this here hobby. But I have a spool of wire and a spool of beading thread and some beads so I can probably still indulge myself just fine. :)

wanting it to happen

My favorite part of Perelandra, the first book in Lewis' space trilogy, is the part in which Weston is making a speech which Ransom is translating into Malacandrian. It brings an amazing amount of clarity to silly humanist reasoning. Here's just the last bit.

"I may fall," said Weston. "But while I live I will not, with such a key in my hand, consent to close the gates of the future on my race. What lies in that future, beyond our present ken, passes imagination to conceive: it is enough for me that there is a Beyond."
"He is saying," Ransom translated, "that he will not stop trying to do all this unless you kill him. And he says that though he doesn't know what will happen to the creatures sprung from us, he wants it to happen very much."

More Creativity

As I find myself with less school to do, and sort of at loose ends due to a lack of decision about my future, I am really having fun with being crafty. I bought a copy of Beadwork Magazine while buying stuff for my other project that I mentioned earlier (which is finished but I'm having difficulty taking pictures where you can see it clearly, so we'll wait on that) and yesterday I bought the stuff to make a project out of there (yes, this is getting expensive; I'm going to have to start selling the stuff or something if I'm going to keep this up). So last night and this morning I made it.
I'm going to have to figure out this photography thing if I want to keep showing off my work, because y'all can't see it very well.

Potato soup

I make dinner Wednesday nights, and sometimes I have a hard time deciding what to make. I did find a really good recipe this week (just stumbled upon it) that everybody enjoyed. It's a spicy potato soup! I cut the cayenne in half (a tablespoon is a lot) and even so it was very spicy. I liked it that way, but that's a personal choice. Anyway, I was happy to find a potato soup with some meat (Italian sausage) in it because I love potato soup and it's quite filling but I feel that it needs a little help to make a complete meal. I served it with (store-bought) sour-dough bread. (hm. Note to self, maybe, just maybe, I should consider getting sour-dough starter going...hm....)

I'm being creative!

"cre·a·tive
adj.

1. Having the ability or power to create: Human beings are creative animals.
2. Productive; creating.
3. Characterized by originality and expressiveness; imaginative: creative writing.

n. One who displays productive originality: the creatives in the advertising department.
cre·a'tive·ly adv., cre'a·tiv'i·ty (-ĭ-tē), cre·a'tive·ness n."


I was at the library yesterday and I picked up a book on making cool stuff with wire, so I checked it out, picked something I wanted to make and bought the supplies to get started. Now, it will be a little while to finish that 'cause I need to buy a few more things, that I will probably have to get from a craft store instead of Wal-Mart, but I'm feeling pretty proud of myself, doing something creative for once. Also, using my nifty new tools, a barrette, and some beads I had lying around, I made something pretty without any help from anybody! Behold:

I know you can't see it very well, but I can't get a better image right now, so it will have to do. It's really pretty; just trust me

Me and my ball dress:

Bluegrass Jam

I stayed with Fred and Leon a little bit ago, and got to sit in on a bluegrass jam. It was fun. I have a video of Fred singing, but I'd have to get her permission to post it I think. I also have another video where Leon is making funny faces when she's not playing but that's not her fault because I was making faces at her and she didn't know (I don't think she did anyway) that I was taking a video.

I just finished reading Green Dolphin Street by Elizabeth Goudge. I was really impressed.

Goudge has some slightly unorthodox views of religion, I think, or at least there are hints of that kind in this book. However there is a great deal of wisdom contained within its pages.

It is not a nice book at all. Happiness is elusive for most of the characters in the book. Also it holds a mirror up to the selfish, striving complaining woman that I am, and that really wasn't pleasant at all.

The lessons to be learned about the nature of love and humility are priceless. Most wonderful of is for a book to show honestly what the cost of real self-sacrificing love. I have been encouraged to work harder, and more importantly to complain less.

This book would certainly be much more appealing to women than men. I think its intended audience is women, but I do believe that a guy could learn a lot from it as well. It has its silly, sentimental moments, but has many poignant, awesome insights as well.

Progress? What progress?

What did I learn from Winston Churchill's History of the English Speaking Peoples? I learned a sort of drearily hopeful thing: people have always blundered through life. Politics (at least in England and the US) have always involved crazy legislation that generally makes things worse...and yet the human race limps onward.

I learned that people are blinded by their own culture.

I learned that small mistakes have awful consequences.

I learned that few people actually do learn from history, and the mistakes of the past are repeated over and over again.

AND

I learned that the nobility, humility, power, brilliance, or virtue of some people can still inspire and fascinate hundreds of years after they lived and died, even when they seem to be on 'the wrong side' or when you've no idea which side is the right side.

Which leads to the conclusion that we should obey God and love our neighbors, be as wise we can be, and maybe not struggle too hard to always be right, because there are things we cannot see. This may be encouraging in the present chaos concerning money and politics and all that.

Keeping it Holy

Exodus 23:10-12 "Six years you shall sow your land and gather in its produce, but the seventh year you shall let it rest and lie fallow, that the poor of your people may eat; and what they leave, the beasts of the field may eat. In like manner you shall do with your vineyard and your olive grove. Six days you shall do your work, and on the seventh day you shall rest, that your ox and your donkey may rest, and the son of your female servant and the stranger may be refreshed."

What is the Sabbath all about? It is about sitting on your butt and thinking holy thoughts? Sabbath also more about getting to church on Sunday mornings.

Isaiah 1:11-17

"'To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices to Me?”
Says the LORD.
'I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams
And the fat of fed cattle.
I do not delight in the blood of bulls,
Or of lambs or goats.
When you come to appear before Me,
Who has required this from your hand,
To trample My courts?
Bring no more futile sacrifices;
Incense is an abomination to Me.
The New Moons, the Sabbaths, and the calling of assemblies—
I cannot endure iniquity and the sacred meeting.
Your New Moons and your appointed feasts
My soul hates;
They are a trouble to Me,
I am weary of bearing them.
When you spread out your hands,
I will hide My eyes from you;
Even though you make many prayers,
I will not hear.
Your hands are full of blood.
Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean;
Put away the evil of your doings from before My eyes.
Cease to do evil,
Learn to do good;
Seek justice,
Rebuke the oppressor;
Defend the fatherless,
Plead for the widow.'"

These people were bringing a multitude of sacrifices. Sounds like they're really on top of things. They forgot one little thing about the Sabbath, though, I think: ceasing to do evil, and doing good. While offering incense and sacrifices you can't just forget about the weak.

We all need Sabbath rest, I believe we were created (pre-fall) to need it. God made the earth in six days and rested, and we were made to do like him. So by all means rest, but consider: many of us are fortunate; we only have to work five days; we only have school fives days; overall we've got it pretty darn cushy. So give rest; don't just take it. There are lots of people who have to work on Sunday, and they dang-well can't help it because they have to keep their job. So help them however you can, and give rest to the single mother, give rest to the elderly, the poor, the miserable. Have them for dinner on Sunday, watch their kids, do their dishes, and for heaven's sake don't "keep the Sabbath" and keep someone else from keeping the Sabbath.

The worst (or best, depending how you look at it) example of this is the story I read in Touchstone magazine about a church that requested a diner to be open on Sundays so that the congregants could eat there, which forced a waitress who attended that church to work on Sunday, so she served them while they sat at their leisure. Ick. It makes me sick. (no, I don't doubt that I'm like that sometimes.)

That is backwards. They should have all been sitting together at the Lord's table in His house, serving one another and instead she misses the chance to go to the Lord's house, and they sit down and eat while she, less fortunate than they, serves them.

Baby Snatching

Keep a close eye on anyone who says "our children are our future," because they usually mean that your children are their future. Anyone who thinks that children are the collective property of the community is kooky.

The Great Gatsby

We read The Great Gatsby in English class. It is my favorite, so far of the novels we have read in class. Anyway, I was really proud of my essay, so I'm posting it. I think one of the reasons I felt the way I did about the book was that I had been meditating on Ecclesiastes, and Fitzgerald does a fantastic job of showing the vaporous, nature of life.

In the Great Gatsby, emphasis is placed on the emptiness of modern life. The characters float here and there, trying to fill their purposeless lives, but continually finding themselves bored by everything. Gatsby is in contrast to the bored masses of people he collects around him. However, it is Gatsby's differentness, the very purpose in his life, that dooms him to misery and loneliness in the end,

Throughout the book there is a great contrast between East Egg and West Egg and between Daisy and Tom's tranquil, soporific life and Gatsby's fantastic, lively parties. Daisy's life could be said to simply happen to her, she is a passive observer and although she is somewhat dissatisfied with her life as it is, she does not like to take action to change it. Jordan Baker exemplifies the carelessness of this set of people. When Nick speaks to her about her careless driving, she says in that case the other drivers had better be careful. Daisy, Tom, and their friends are essentially careless, and leave other people to clean up the messes they make.

Gatsby, on the other hand is not so careless. He has been planning his life in grand detail since his childhood, as Nick discovers from reading the schedule Gatsby had written in the back of “Hopalong Cassidy.” Everything he has done for the past several years has been with the purpose of getting Daisy. He has a purpose in his life which is everything to him, and he will do anything to gain his object. In the end, however, all of Gatsby's attempts at control fail miserably, his sense of purpose is insufficient to make him happy, and after his death his former friends desert him. Gatsby is, indeed, “great” in some ways, but he is ultimately as pathetic and lonely as the others.

Meanwhile, the eyes of Dr. T. J. Eckleberg look down on everyone. The old billboard represents God. Mr. Wilson points to it when he is speaking about God seeing what goes on. The billboard was put up by an optometrist who has long since disappeared. Likewise, God is apparently absent from the empty lives of the residents of the East and West Eggs. The empty eyes of a missing deity look down on the empty lives of people below. It would appear that, not only is there no immediate purpose in their lives, but neither have they any greater hope than whatever enjoyment can be drawn out of their own dull lives.

The Great Gatsby is an honest book, that presents truthfully the horribleness of a life without God (and thus without meaning). Lives may be bright, even beautiful, but they are brief, without meaning, and often destructive. There is no interconnectedness in life, people are not connected with one another, or with anything- there is no accountability for the damage people cause one another, and there is no change. Everyone continues as they were before, until the light goes out and they die.

Reading through Winston Churchill's A History of the English Speaking Peoples today, as I am wont to do (mostly because if I didn't, I would be in trouble- I'm reading it for school.), I came at length to the French Revolution (or at least to the beginning of it. A phrase about Rousseau struck my already troubled brain.

"Rousseau in his famous Social Contract and other essays had preached the theme of equality. Every man, however humble, was born with a right to play his part in the government of State. This is doctrine long since acknowledged by all democracies, but Rousseau was the first to formulate it in broad and piercing terms."

This idea of the right of everyone to play a part in government appears to me to be deeply ingrained in our culture and completely unexamined.

It seems to me if an "accident of birth" is not enough to entitle someone to be a king, millions of such accidents can hardly be sufficient to entitle millions of people to vote. I mean, from whence came this right?

Furthermore, when such an idea is accepted without question, it is not surprising that the populace of European countries have been known to complain that they cannot vote in US elections. After all, are they not our equals? I demand justice!

Of course, the use of the words preached and doctrine is apposite. After all, the religion of democracy grew from such ideas. I have read The Social Contract and I must admit, I merely thought it foolish. It is entirely made up, reality plays little part in the formulation of his ideas, including his history of mankind. As Chesteron wrote "[T]hey really were wrong in so far as they suggested that men had ever aimed at order or ethics directly by a conscious exchange of interests. Morality did not begin by one man saying to another, 'I will not hit you if you do not hit me'; there is no trace of such a transaction. There is a trace of both men having said, 'We must not hit each other in the holy place.'" And that is probably a better history of the evolution of government than Rousseau ever made. In any case, I still think it's rather nonsense. There was a lot of stuff about the "general will" or something, which is NOT the same as majority rule, only if someone doesn't agree, we must make him agree, which DOES sound like majority rule, and on it goes.

What I was saying in the last paragraph is this: Whether it makes sense, whether it is poorly reasoned is irrelevant; it is doctrine, and it may not be questioned.

Of course, "We hold these truths to be self-evident..." but self-evident is not the same as obvious, and that argument depends on, "that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights." The thing is that, while men are created equal, they are never born equal. This is why fairness and justice rarely look the same. It would be fair to take Jimmy's eight blocks and give half of them to Stephen, but it would hardly be just, because it's stealing. In any case, I think everything goes crazy when you abandon simple rules (you shall not steal) in favor of "the greater good" 'cause from then on, you're just making stuff up.