At Considerable Cost

I've been working on several posts lately, but I've not published any of them here, so I'll join Hallie Lord's fun link-up at Moxie Wife . 1. Buckskin Bill Black I grew up watching Buckskin Bill's television show every weekday morning on WAFB-TV in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.   He told stories, talked to his puppet named "What'sYourName?" (if you wrote a letter and asked, he would say his name was yours for the day), showed cartoons, and taught children to turn Monday into a Fun Day by doing the Monday Morning March.   Mama loved to tell people how cute I was, marching around our living room as I did the March along with Buckskin Bill.   Before my time, he decided Baton Rouge needed a zoo and worked to make it happen.   Then, he led a penny drive so the children of the area could contribute enough pennies to purchase two elephants for the zoo.   I love this man and I'm so happy he was a part of my childhood.   It's worth ...

It's still the Easter season, so these are not late!   Happy Easter to all.   The children made it through another Easter Vigil Mass.   The fire at the beginning and the candlelight as we entered the sanctuary were highlights for them.   As always, it brought back memories of my baptism and welcome into the Catholic Church.   My 16h Anniversary as a Catholic was Good Friday.   Easter Sunday was a beautiful day of an extraordinary amount of chocolate and time spent together with dear friends.   And desserts.   Lots of delicious desserts!   The children's lunches reflected the joy of the Octave with one of Joey's homemade coconut cupcakes every day. I realized I haven't taken outdoor Easter pictures in their Easter finery for the past two years.   Who takes indoor Easter pictures at home?! Very excited over stuffed bunnies.   We don't have that many stuffed animal...

I don't feel the popular appeal of Pride and Prejudice as a love story.    I totally understand the reaction to Colin Firth and Matthew Macfadyen on-screen as Mr. Darcy (boy, do I get that), but that's unrelated to the story for me.   Yes, I love the romantic story within the larger story, but it always annoys me to levels quite abnormal when Pride and Prejudice is seen simply as a love story.   It's so much more complicated than that.  My biggest criticism of the feature-length film from 2005, starring Matthew Macfadyen and Keira Knightley is that it distilled the whole novel into just a love story.   The first time I watched the movie was under miserable circumstances, but after viewing it under more pleasant ones, I can now find things to compliment.  The great success of the 1995 BBC television adaptation of the novel, besides showcasing Colin Firth, was that it included some key elements of the novel.    I...

Last night, I watched a beautiful documentary on PBS, Defiant Requiem .   It is the true story of a 1944 performance of Verdi's beautiful Requiem Mass in Terezín, a Nazi concentration camp.   The performance was arranged by inmate and conductor, Rafael Schächter.   It was performed by a chorus of his fellow prisoners, many of whom would be shipped out to face death following the performance. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jason-apuzzo/voices-raised-in-resistan_b_3029488.html?utm_hp_ref=entertainment The link above is for a great article by Jason Apuzzo, of The Huffington Post. "Know before whom you stand."  A wall of the secret synagogue at Terezin. There's not much to add to Apuzzo's article, other than: 1. My favorite quote, amongst many: Survivor Edgar Krasa says of the Requiem , "It was a prayer that overcame hunger ... you were there [singing] in that cellar and you were a different person." Another survivor who sang in th...

This week's link-up with Hallie Lord at Moxie Wife: British, kitchen, and flowers 1. Call the Midwife It's BACK on PBS Masterpiece for Season 2.   I've avoided spoilers from the UK as much as I can since the episodes have already aired there.   I love the characters, every last one of them, especially Jenny Lee, Chummy, and Sister Monica Joan.    It's just a simple, but beautiful story of life--and the search for real love in all its forms-- in the East End of London in the 1950s.   It's is based on the memoirs of Jennifer Worth and it is narrated by the older Nurse Jenny Lee.   She recounts leaving her sheltered life to live in a convent clinic where she works as a newly certified midwife.   The show is not what we might expect in the US, where such a title might denote an anti-doctor, anti-hospital message.   It shows the NHS (National Health Service) bringing trained midwives (also certified nurses), under...

I did not give up Facebook for Lent, but I ended up nearly abandoning it during Holy Week.   I only glanced at notifications and "liked" all the beautiful family Easter photos that I found on my news feed late Sunday evening.   This evening, I found a notification that Marc at BadCatholic on the Patheos Catholic Channel had finally gotten back to writing.   And what a return!   It seems there's constantly a post churning in the back of my mind about what drew me to the Catholic Church, despite my anti-Catholic upbringing.   I loved novels set amongst devout Jewish families, with their calendar centered around festivals that even dictated the use of their time and foodstuffs.   Why had that disappeared with Christianity?   Liturgy?   And then I attended my first mass and felt the draw and the first pull for me to find that which my heart so desperately sought.   Now, I've read this, though, a...