I came across this fantastic website: wordle.net
Deryck and I are both a little sick on this Friday night. I made some honey/lemon juice “elixir” and we’re relaxing on the couch. This is preferable to being a party person, according to me. According to Deryck, he’d probably rather be out somewhere. You win some, you lose some. Right now, I’m winning…
All Engrish aside, I made a list of books that I like that I think everyone should read. If I were an English professor, this reading list would be mandatory!
1. “The Brothers Karamazov” by Fyodor Dostoevsky
2. “Crime & Punishment” by Fyodor Dostoevsky
3. “Rebecca” by Daphne du Maurier
4. “Anne of Green Gables” by Lucy Maud Montgomery
5. “Wives & Daughters” by Elizabeth Gaskell
6. “North & South” by Elizabeth Gaskell
7. The Little House on the Prairie series by Laura Ingalls Wilder
8. “Christy” by Catherine Marshall
9. “The Blue Castle” by Lucy Maud Montgomery
10. “Natasha’s Dance” by Orlando Figes
11. “Emma” by Jane Austen
12. “The Moon by Night” by Madeleine L’Engle
13. “Jews Without Money” by Michael Gold
14. “Their Eyes were Watching God” by Zora Neale Hurston
15. “Little Women” by Louisa May Alcott
16. “Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Bronte
17. “Wuthering Heights” by Emily Bronte
18. Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling
19. “The Mother Tongue” by Bill Bryson
20. “The Lost Heart of Asia” by Colin Thubron
21. “We the Living” by Ayn Rand
22. “Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand
23. “Tender is the Night” by F. Scott Fitzgerald
24. “The Return of the Native” by Thomas Hardy
25. “The Importance of Being Earnest” by Oscar Wilde
There, that’s plenty. A lot of them seem to me to be written especially for women, but I included them in the list because they’ve got really great stuff in them. “Christy” is a good example of that!
Well, I should be doing other things on this rainy Friday.
Ciao!
Anna
I have a lot that I want to complain about right now. There’s nothing big, no terminal illness or creditors pounding on the door.
It’s just a lot of small injustices that are beginning to burn. Why does doing the right thing sometimes turn up less desirable results than the results of people who haven’t been as responsible, or as dedicated, or as smart as you think you have been?
Why do the workers who just arrived receive just as much as those who have been toiling faithfully all day?
What is the point of toiling faithfully if the world teaches you that you can throw responsibility to the wind and be rewarded?
I have a lot more that I want to complain about, but I’ll stop.
When I was a kid and my siblings and I fought, Mom would make the fighting siblings say three nice things about each of the offending parties. In the spirit of nostalgia I will say three great things about being me:
1. Cincinnati’s trees are gorgeous right now.
2. I actually have a job.
3. My husband is absolutely and without a doubt the greatest guy in the world.
(4.) Justice is the Ultimate End.
So it’s been a rainy summer. It has also been a cool summer. I couldn’t be happier!
Here’s my top ten list for the summer of 2009:
1. My parents are in the states! Because my youngest sister is getting married!
2. I have been slowly learning about the wide world of canning. So far: hot garlic pickles, sweet-hot mustard, and peach jam.
3. Rain, rain and rain…I love it!
4. Visiting Jungle Jim’s. This occurred earlier this evening and that had the best selection of fruits and vegetables I’ve ever seen. There were rows and rows of things I’d never even heard of, let alone seen or tasted. We got a nice selection of “exotic” fruits, some of which I have tried (rambutan, lychee, breadfruit) and others I have not (I don’t remember the names).
5. Trips to various “zippy dips” around the Cincy area as well as the root beer stand in Sharonville.
6. Getting tennis elbow for the first time from playing Wii tennis.
7. Tending my little garden on the balcony has been fantastic. We have lots and lots of mint and basil, and cherry tomatoes, and the most hardworking little banana pepper plants.
8. Construction. Our street has been torn up for weeks now, but I believe the work is almost done. I can’t wait!
9. I finally completed my last class (at U.C.) in June!! I am not officially graduated, but I am finished with classes and that is a wonderful feeling!
10. My whole family, including Deryck and Jason (who will be my brother-in-law very soon), spent a week in southern Indiana in a remote cabin. That was really great! It was the hottest week of the entire summer, but we had lots of quality time reading Calvin & Hobbes books and eating ethnic food. It was nice getting out of the city, especially our neighborhood with firework-happy neighbors.
Voila! I don’t feel at all satisfied with this list, but it’s too late to edit it (as in: nearly midnight, and I’m tired). I forgot to mention that Deryck and I will have been married for a year on August 15! I will say in advance, in case I don’t write again for a while, this has been one wonderful year with a wonderful husband!
Love, Anna
I read about this guy named Hilary Berseth who is an artist of a different color. He gets bees to create honeycomb sculptures. I think that’s pretty nifty.
Spring came. With it, color returned to Samarkand. People shed their drab black coats and the magenta, tangerine, aqua, yellow, and purple-flowered dresses bloomed on the streets like the flowers blooming in the parks. The distant mountains that were always quietly shadowing the city were emerald green with new growth, as lush as the hills of Ireland. No longer a mistily painted backdrop, they were the star of the show. The scent of the locust blossoms perfumed the air with an exquisite fragrance. My spirits rose with the water table. The early morning showers—this was rainy season—watered the world and then drifted off to make way for sparkling sunshine.
The locust trees bloomed. At home, there were a few locusts scattered along the roads, and once in a while you’d catch a whiff and stop to sniff. There, you had to wait before you caught the scent again, sorting out the sweet locust fragrance from the smells of tar from the road and liquid manure and wind.
But in Samarkand, the locusts were abundant. Their heavenly aroma permeated the wind. It was with me everywhere I went. The white blossoms frosted the trees everywhere I looked. I gathered fistloads of them and put them in cups and vases in my room, in the schoolroom.
(from “Earth, Oil, Tea”)
well, guess who is really awful at keeping up with her wordpress account lately?
i don’t have anything specific to say today. so, i’ll do a top ten list. top ten whatever; it doesn’t matter.
1. my cousin brian (the one who had cancer) is doing very, very well at home. can we get an amen?!?
2. it’s may! cincinnati is so beautiful and green. we’re at that perfect place when some of the trees are still in bloom, but most of them are full of leaves. the windows and screen doors have been open for weeks and my plants love all the sunshine and fresh air.
3. i got a new job! i am a receptionist at custom cast marbleworks. i can tell you a lot about countertops nowadays, should you ever care to know. i now work very, very close to the sharonville root beer stand, which is a daily temptation.
4. there is a lot of horrible stuff going on in the world: wars, swine flu, the problems in sri lanka, human trafficking, starvation, etc. etc. BUT classical music exists too. this week was fund-raising week at wguc, which is the local classical music station. the “free” gift with an $120.00 contribution was a cd of chorale music conducted by robert shaw, so all week they were playing gorgeous, heavenly, beautiful selections from the cd: o fortuna from carmina burrana, o magnum mysterium, requiem, and so on. beautiful!
5. i love fridays! deryck and i have been going to “five after five” at whole foods market on fridays nights for a while. basically, you pay 5 bucks and get a wine glass (which you can keep and bring back the next time for a one dollar discount) and then are privileged to try five different wine and food pairings. they tell you all about the wines, and serve delicious little bites of things like fresh mango and red pepper spring rolls, marinated fresh mozzarella, balsamic brussels sprouts, and a new selection of three gourmet cheeses every week. it makes me feel like a grown-up. also like a city girl.
6. speaking of cheese, our favorites are: vintage gouda and san simon. yum! the gouda is absolutely amazing. it has a hint of butterscotch flavor and crunchy salt crystals.
7. i’m taking my FINAL class at u.c. right now. it’s actually an environmental geography lab. i’m learning a load about the environment, conservation, the carbon cycle and that sort of thing, which i enjoy but i still don’t like the class a ton. one thing i do enjoy very much is learning about cincinnati watersheds, pollution, parks, etc. and what the city is doing to change things.
8. deryck and i went antiquing today! we can’t really afford to buy much, but it’s fun to look. we bought a sweet old plant stand today. it is on the front porch waiting for me to move my plants out into the sunshine.
9. while waiting at the bus stop before class on tuesday, an elderly couple out for a walk passed me on the sidewalk. they both had walking sticks and the man had a special velcro contraption on his shirt for holding a can of mace. it was hilarious! i’m pretty sure they thought a velcro mace holster was a darn good invention.
10. i have forgotten almost all the russian i learned… i am not pleased to have discovered that. i was trying to remember how to say “i can’t remember how to say…” in russian and, ironically, i couldn’t remember how to say it! i am resolved to relearn it asap!
dear friends,
a while back i wrote a post remarking on how odd it is that something that is bad but not the worst can be seen as good. i wrote it in regards to my 9-year-old cousin, brian, and the fact that cancer was discovered in his body this past fall, but not the really really bad type they originally thought it was. he was diagnosed with a.l.l. (leukemia) and has had some pretty rocky months since it was discovered.
in the midst of all the bad news–the viruses he caught, the hard days for his family–his older sister was found to be a perfect bone marrow match for him.
last week he went into remission. that was a green light for the transplant.
today, he had the transplant and it went wonderfully and he is in recovery.
for the next 100 days his family has to be extra cautious about what they feed him, what he is around, et cetera, but…
God is good.
thanks to everyone for their prayers for brian and the ricer family. don’t stop now!
love, anna
PART ONE: GOD
and now, finally, God answered job from the eye of a violent storm. He said:
…i have some questions for you, and i want some straight answers.
where were you when i created the earth? tell me, since you know so much!
who decided on its size? certainly you’ll know that!
who came up with the blueprints and measurements?
how was its foundation poured, and who set the cornerstone, while the morning stars sang in chorus and all the angels shouted praise?
…have you ever ordered morning, “get up!”
told dawn, “get to work!”
so you could seize earth like a blanket and shake out the wicked like cockroaches?
…do you know where light comes from and where darkness lives so you can take them by the hand and lead them home when they get lost? why, of course you know that.
…have you ever traveled to where snow is made, seen the vault where hail is stockpiled, the arsenals of hail and snow that i keep in readiness for times of trouble and battle and war?
can you find your way to where lightning is launched, or to the place from which the wind blows?
who do you suppose carves canyons for the downpours of rain, and charts the route of thunderstorms that bring water to unvisited fields, deserts no one ever lays eyes on, drenching the useless wastelands so they’re carpeted with wildflowers and grass? and who do you think is the father of rain and dew, the mother of ice and frost? you don’t for a minute imagine these marvels of weather just happen, do you?
can you catch the eye of the beautiful pleiades sisters, or distract orion from his hunt? can you get venus to look your way, or get the great bear and her cubs to come out and play?
can you get the attention of the clouds, and commission a shower of rain?
can you take charge of the lightning bolts and have them report to you for orders?
…now what do you have to say for yourself? are you going to haul me, the Mighty One, into court and press charges?
PART TWO: US
job answered: i’m speechless, in awe–words fail me. i should never have opened my mouth! i’ve talked too much, way too much. i’m ready to shut up and listen.
(from job 38-40, the message)
I used to love nothing more than writing and reading. Nowadays, I feel that I don’t have enough time, or don’t make enough time, to do those things.
Maybe reading and writing are a shy girl’s way of living vicariously through words rather than experiencing life’s adventures in person. Maybe that means now I am really living.
But I can’t say that I don’t miss my old friends, Laptop and Library. Spending hours writing a story was so satisfying and I really, really wish I could get back into that groove. And I want to be focused enough to really dig into a fat, convoluted Russian novel. Right now, my mind is full of null hypotheses and confidence intervals, glaciation processes and stream channel patterns, plutons and large igneous provinces. I don’t give a crap for those things, and yet my brain has to concentrate on them.
So, one day, when I graduate, I may have to reintroduce myself to Library and Laptop and renew our faltering relationship.
Ciao!
Note: I have been to Servatii Bakery twice in the past two days, and may I say: their coffee is outstanding! It is great! Try Servatii’s coffee!
