Recently in Art Category

If you, like dear @JacobiteRose on Twitter, are looking for a St. Patrick coloring page, here are a few links which might help:

One

Two

Three (PDF) - This is the one I like best.

Four (PDF)

If you take one Martha Stewart poster (about 13-years-old) and you remove the cheap plastic poster frame and you take a free picture & frame from the Eighties and you remove the tacky pastel print, you may get a sunflower poster in a wooden frame with an interesting mat.

This is hanging in my hallway, by the school closet and visible from the living room. Sorry for the awkward angle and using the flash.

What do you think?

I think I like it but the mat is throwing me. But see how perfectly it fits the poster? Also, see my ugggggggly door bell box? That needs to be painted or disguised.

Back to the picture. Yay or nay?

Don't forget that today begins Extreme Shakespeare.

I also wanted to mention this post regarding Vincent van Gogh and his love of the Bard. Thanks to the internet we can read Van Gogh's letters and we find that he was very pleased to own his own book of Shakespeare and reread it often.

Not too long before his death, Van Gogh writes that he read this passage from Henry VIII (Act III, scene ii):

'And when I am forgotten, as I shall be,
And sleep in dull cold marble, where no mention
Of me more must be heard of, say I taught thee;

Appropriate for Shakespeare...and Van Gogh, don't you think?

This weekend, H went after his Honey-do list with a passion and one item he marked off the list was hanging some items above my sewing desk in the Family Room.

I know it's a bit late in the season to think of snowmen, but I wanted to show you this adorable miniature that D made for me. He's only 1 3/4 inches tall!

I asked her to make him look like a traditional snowman and she did. However, this little guy is made of polymer clay and toothpicks and he's been baked in the oven so I can keep him forever. No melting in the sun for this snowman. 

As we study the Medieval Age this term, D is reading and discussing with me Thomas Cahill's "How the Irish Saved Civilization". Yesterday, she came upon a very interesting quotation from mystery and fantasy author and Christian apologist G. K. Chesterton:

For the great Gaels of Ireland
Are the men that God made mad,
For all their wars are merry,
And all their songs are sad.

Isn't that so accurate? I have yet to meet an Irishman who didn't love a good fight, a melancholy song,..and a strong drink. I think many would agree with Chesterton.

The quotation comes from Chesterton's "The Ballad of the White Horse," a narrative poem published in 1911 about King Alfred the Great's defeat of the Danes in England.

Chesterton explains the ballad in his Prefatory Note:

This ballad needs no historical notes, for the simple reason that it does not profess to be historical. All of it that is not frankly fictitious, as in any prose romance about the past, is meant to emphasize tradition rather than history. King Alfred is not a legend in the sense that King Arthur may be a legend; that is, in the sense that he may possibly be a lie. But King Alfred is a legend in this broader and more human sense, that the legends are the most important things about him.

The cult of Alfred was a popular cult, from the darkness of the ninth century to the deepening twilight of the twentieth. It is wholly as a popular legend that I deal with him here. I write as one ignorant of everything, except that I have found the legend of a King of Wessex still alive in the land. I will give three curt cases of what I mean. A tradition connects the ultimate victory of Alfred with the valley in Berkshire called the Vale of the White Horse. I have seen doubts of the tradition, which may be valid doubts. I do not know when or where the story started; it is enough that it started somewhere and ended with me; for I only seek to write upon a hearsay, as the old balladists did. For the second case, there is a popular tale that Alfred played the harp and sang in the Danish camp; I select it because it is a popular tale, at whatever time it arose. For the third case, there is a popular tale that Alfred came in contact with a woman and cakes; I select it because it is a popular tale, because it is a vulgar one. It has been disputed by grave historians, who were, I think, a little too grave to be good judges of it. The two chief charges against the story are that it was first recorded long after Alfred¹s death, and that (as Mr. Oman urges) Alfred never really wandered all alone without any thanes or soldiers. Both these objections might possibly be met. It has taken us nearly as long to learn the whole truth about Byron, and perhaps longer to learn the whole truth about Pepys, than elapsed between Alfred and the first writing of such tales. And as for the other objection, do the historians really think that Alfred after Wilton, or Napoleon after Leipsic, never walked about in a wood by himself for the matter of an hour or two? Ten minutes might be made sufficient for the essence of the story. But I am not concerned to prove the truth of these popular traditions. It is enough for me to maintain two things: that they are popular traditions; and that without these popular traditions we should have bothered about Alfred about as much as we bother about Eadwig.

One other consideration needs a note. Alfred has come down to us in the best way (that is, by national legends) solely for the same reason as Arthur and Roland and the other giants of that darkness, because he fought for the Christian civilization against the heathen nihilism. But since this work was really done by generation after generation, by the Romans before they withdrew, and by the Britons while they remained, I have summarised this first crusade in a triple symbol, and given to a fictitious Roman, Celt, and Saxon, a part in the glory of Ethandune. I fancy that in fact Alfred¹s Wessex was of very mixed bloods; but in any case, it is the chief value of legend to mix up the centuries while preserving the sentiment; to see all ages in a sort of splendid foreshortening. That is the use of tradition: it telescopes history.

G.K.C.

You can read the entire ballad online. You can view the actual White Horse in Uffington, England.

An aerial view of the 374 foot White Horse. 

It is an amazing Bronze Age landmark that was, sadly, unbeknownst to me.

Just another discovery made on a homeschooling rabbit trail. 

Monica had a hard lot. Her pagan husband was a cheating, abusive drunk; her son, Augustine, was a heretic and had a mistress and an out-of-wedlock child. Monica kept praying, though. Her husband eventually repented and became a Christian, but still she was greatly troubled by Augustine's sinful behavior. She tried to tag along with her son on a long trip; he made sure to leave early and avoid her. Out of desperation, Monica tried banning Augustine from her house - then relented. Despite everything, a bishop told her not to worry: "It is impossible that a son of so many tears should be lost." The bishop was correct and that wayward rogue of a son became a bishop and one of the four Doctors of the Western Church, famous for his writings, including Confessions and City of God. Augustine is also considered one of the forefathers of the Reformation.

"The day on which she was to die came closer and closer. It was a day unknown to us, but You were fully aware of it. I firmly believe that in Your inscrutable ways You had arranged that she and I were alone at the window and looking out into the inner garden of that house on the Tiber at Ostia. Away from the crowds, we had retired there after a long and tiresome journey to renew our strength for the ocean voyage.

"It was a sweet and pleasant talk we had together in the peaceful and quiet retreat, our thoughts straining forward to what is before, forgetting what is behind (Phil. 3:13). In Your presence, You who are Truth Itself, we would ask each other how wonderful the heavenly life of Your saints must be, a life that no earthly eye has as yet seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man (1 Cor. 2:9). We noted that the fleshly pleasures of sense, even when most intense or presented in the most alluring light, cannot be compared to the joys of eternal life, in fact, should not even be mentioned in the same breath."