Author: Jay the Ent-Larch

nonbinary they/them mystical forest cryptid & merwrangler with Orange Cat Energy INGREDIENTS: coffee, books, music, podcasts, NPR, cats, movies, the Oxford comma, and comfort shows - - - WARNING: may contain nuts

Sunday Snapshots

Despite the flood of papers threatening to overwhelm my desk in these last weeks of school, I did manage to take a few photographs this week.

This week was Teacher Appreciation Week. This is what I received:

DewShine Bottle

Then, my sister-in-law bought yet another car in her seemingly never ending quest to find the perfect used car. The newest candidate is this 1996 soft-top Mustang convertible:

'96 Mustang

I attempted to capture the morning fog, inspired by Eclectic Odds n Sods current theme of “Momentarily:”

Foggy Morning

This week was also the school’s Junior/Senior Banquet – one event I honestly don’t mind chaperoning. Not only did I find a snazzy new silver bow tie (on sale!), but I also found some angry jewelry while my wife looked for something to match her dress:

We were invited by several of the students to come take pictures with them down by the river, which coincided with the heraldric winds of Tropical Storm Ana:

Ana is Coming

This weekend I was finally able to finish typing my exams and exam reviews. Smokey lent moral support.

LapCat Smokey

 

Don’t forget to follow me on:

Facebook – where I share news stories, articles from other blogs, and various and sundry miscellany that happens to catch my eye. It’s stuff you won’t see here! Well, mostly.

Instagram – where I show you my Life in Motion and share quotes and such. The widget only shows my last three photographs – don’t you want to see them all?

Twitter – where you can see my thoughts in 140 characters or less. Also, funny retweets.

Seventy Years After VE Day

mirrorvedayMay 8. Such an innocuous day.

Seventy years ago, this was not the case. Seventy years ago, the Allied Powers declared victory over Adolf Hitler’s Reich.

I could write about the power and significance of this moment, but the historian in me knows that only those who lived it can truly understand.

In his speech to the British people, Winston Churchill said

My dear friends, this is your hour. This is not victory of a party or of any class. It’s a victory of the great British nation as a whole. We were the first, in this ancient island, to draw the sword against tyranny. After a while we were left all alone against the most tremendous military power that has been seen. We were all alone for a whole year . . . The lights went out and the bombs came down. But every man, woman and child in the country had no thought of quitting the struggle. London can take it. So we came back after long months from the jaws of death, out of the mouth of hell, while all the world wondered. When shall the reputation and faith of this generation of English men and women fail? I say that in the long years to come not only will the people of this island but of the world, wherever the bird of freedom chirps in human hearts, look back to what we’ve done and they will say “do not despair, do not yield to violence and tyranny, march straightforward and die if need be-unconquered.”

Every year I have students ask how things like the Holocaust could have happened and explain what they would have done under similar circumstances. After kindly explaining that no-one knows what they will do in any given situation until they are in it, I share this quote from Rod Sterling’s Twilight Zone episode Deaths-Head Revisited: 

All the Dachaus must remain standing. The Dachaus, 
the Belsens, the Buchenwalds, the Auschwitzes – all 
of them. They must remain standing because they are a 
monument to a moment in time when some men decided to 
turn the Earth into a graveyard. Into it they 
shoveled all of their reason, their logic, their 
knowledge, but worst of all their conscience. And the 
moment we forget this, the moment we cease to be 
haunted by its remembrance, then we become the 
gravediggers. 

Something to dwell on and to remember, not only in 
the Twilight Zone but wherever men walk God's Earth.

Arbeit Macht Frei

On the Loss of F_____

I’m not one to give trigger warnings. That said, I’m giving one now.

Things have a tendency to not go as planned. Several weeks ago, a dear friend’s health declined rapidly – unexpectedly, even – and he passed away. Even after days of relative sleeplessness, I found it hard to rest. My thoughts kept turning and churning and refusing to let me be until I wrote them down. This is an exercise in catharsis.

Some of my readers knew F_____. One of my regular readers is his wife.

[edit] For the record, I have permission and outright encouragement from the family to share this. [/edit]

If, after all that, you want to continue, click on to the next page.

Pages: 1 2

Teaser Tuesday: Wayfaring Strangers

As the school year races on at breakneck speed towards final exams, graduation, and – ultimately – summer break, I’m finding less time to read and blog.

Be that as it may, the wheel of time has once again turned to

Teaser Tuesday

Just in case you don’t know, Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by A Daily Rhythm. Anyone can play along! All you have to do is grab the book you’re currently reading, open to a random page and share two sentences from that page. But make sure you don’t share any spoilers!*

*I wish I could take credit for this introduction, but I shamelessly stole it from Heather over at bitsnbooks. To help me make amends, you should go check out her blog.

This week I’m reading Wayfaring Strangers: The Musical Voyage from Scotland and Ulster to Appalachia by Fiona Ritchie of Thistle and Shamrock fame . 

For example, Scots and Ulster Scots are likely to 
feel a strong yearning for the sea. This is, for 
most Appalachian people, a long-forgotten emotion 
preserved only through ballads.

As an added bonus, the book comes with a twenty-track accompaniment CD, allowing me to listen to the music I’m reading about! Honestly, every book should come with its own soundtrack, and this one does not disappoint.

Wayfaring Strangers cover

In Retrospect

I gave Sam Kean’s The Violinist’s Thumb: And Other Lost Tales of Love, War, and Genius, as Written by Our Genetic Code 3 out of 5 stars for his vitriol towards religion and religious scientists as well as his unvarnished presentism.

 

Don’t forget to follow me on:

Facebook – where I share news stories, articles from other blogs, and various and sundry miscellany that happens to catch my eye. It’s stuff you won’t see here! Well, mostly.

Instagram – where I show you my Life in Motion and share quotes and such. The widget only shows my last three photographs – don’t you want to see them all?

Twitter – where you can see my thoughts in 140 characters or less. Also, funny retweets.

Sunday Snaphots

I actually took quite a few photographs this week, mostly for the upcoming yearbook.

Nevertheless, I did take a few I can share with you. I’ve taken the liberty of arranging them into a sort of photographic story.

storm comingIs there a storm coming?

Hail Hail HailYes. Yes there is.

OCD at the Gas PumpGood thing I put gas in the car!

And what wonderful numbers, too!

down the roadIt’s still sunny on the drive home.

And no, I didn’t take this while I was driving.

I was in the car, but I was in park.

No one was behind be, either.

springform panIt’s a perfect night to make some cheesecake!

fortune cookieMaybe we’ll go out to eat instead.

You will overcome great obstacles to achieve success.

Lost in Translation

The other day I decided to have some fun by running book titles through the Bad Translator engine.

One of the first I did was Neil Gaiman’s Fragile Things: Short Stories and Wonders, which changed to

You Can Write A Secret Medical History of Miracles

I found it funny, tweeted it, and went about my day. Imagine my surprise several hours later when I went back to Twitter and found close to an hundred notifications. How did this happen? How did this little tweet gain such traction?

The answer was not found on Twitter; instead, it was in my inbox:

Neil Gaiman Retweeted MeThat’s right; Neil Gaiman – the author himself – retweeted me! This means that I have now been retweeted by both Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer. To me, that’s epic.

Other titles I ran through the translator and their new titles are:

Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances (Neil Gaiman)

An Experience to Report to the Police

The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help (Amanda Palmer)

This Basis may not be According to Plan, but there is a Way, as You Know, of Fear.

The Silkworm (J.K. Rowling aka Robert Galbraith)

Insects, Of Course

The Cuckoo’s Calling (J.K. Rowling aka Robert Galbraith)

People say Crazy Things

From the Earth to the Moon (Jules Verne)

A Few Months Ago

A Pocket Full of Rye (Agatha Christie)

Large Sports Bag

Gone Girl (Gillian Flynn)

Come On, Guys!

What about you? What titles can you mangle?

 

Don’t forget to follow me on:

Facebook – where I share news stories, articles from other blogs, and various and sundry miscellany that happens to catch my eye. It’s stuff you won’t see here! Well, mostly.

Instagram – where I show you my Life in Motion and share quotes and such. The widget only shows my last three photographs – don’t you want to see them all?

Twitter – where you can see my thoughts in 140 characters or less. Also, funny retweets.

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