Some Quick Takes: Graduation Edition

It's true. Homeschooling works. You insert child into Intake Slot A, and you turn the crank, all the while repeating things like, "Read the directions again," and, "You'll thank me someday," and eventually -- since I can't decide whether "after several eternities" or "an hour later" would be the more appropriate expression of the movement of time in these instances, "eventually" will have to do -- some unseen spigot splorts out a more or less convincingly fully-grown demi-adult. With, in our case, a driver's license and some spiffy thong sandals with metal stuff on them that she went out and bought with money earned by the sweat of whatever part of you sweats while babysitting. So you buy a diploma and give it to her.

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Well, let me back up. You don't just give it to her, like, "Your diploma came in the mail. Here."

Non non non. Jamais jamais. Pas du tout. Et cetera. Jamais. 

No, you talk other people with kids the same age into putting on a graduation with you, and you all tell yourselves that this will be simple, like, I don't know, your wedding or something, right?

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Simple, like sending your graduation announcements, which you made up yourself on Snapfish using photos you had lying around, to the rented beach house where you plan to spend the week, because that way you'll get them out on time.

Simple, like it's not going to occur to you that the beach house might have no mailbox, and that this might pose some impediment to the valiant endeavors of the U.S. Postal Service.

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The fun part is planning the music for the Mass of Thanksgiving. At least, if you're me that's the fun part. Here's what we're having, sung by a trio ensemble including me, with, I am sure, an accompaniment of choking up:

Introit:  Regina Coeli
Processional:  O God Beyond All Praising (Richard Proulx, arr.)

Kyrie and Gloria:  Missa de Angelis

Psalm 40 (a not-bad setting from the ol' Respond and Acclaim book;  Gospel Acclamation from same)

Offertory Hymn:  I Want to Walk as a Child of the Light

Offertory Anthem:  Hail, O Star That Pointest:  it's really just a hymn setting, but we do it as an a capella soprano-alto duet, and the 18th-century tune and harmony are lovely.

Communion Mass Parts:  Jubilate Deo Mass

Communion Antiphon:  Non Nobis Domine (Byrd)


Just like this, only with two treble voices and a bass. Or maybe more like this, only with about thirty-eight fewer people, and a guy:



Communion Anthem:  Jesu, Rex Admirabilis (Palestrina)

Communion Hymn:  Love Divine, All Loves Excelling (Hyfrydol)

Retiring Procession:  Holy God, We Praise Thy Name

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Then they all come back in, and we have awarding of diplomas, and another retiring procession with Pomp and Circumstance, because you have to.

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Then you have a swing dance, because you have to do that, too. And you feed the two hundred people in attendance hotdogs, because, after all, it's Memorial Day, and you are three homeschooling families on a grand total of three incomes.

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But of course none of these things has  happened yet, which means that I really do not have time to be writing this now.

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I had never, before this week, connected the idea of the first day of the rest of your life with increased housecleaning. Today's revelation:  The interior life involves a lot of fuming and spazzing. I suppose that this could be construed as speaking in tongues, and therefore a gift.

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Snapfish has just written to say that they are overnighting the graduation announcements. Good thing we already had email. Meanwhile, if  people out there have scrapbooks they're just dying to put a graduation announcement in -- any graduation announcement -- I think I may have a few to share.

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And now I have to pass the computer along, because various younger siblings are . . . doing things . . . which I can't talk about publicly right now. And I have to tweak the grocery budget again.

Thanks, Jen!

Flipping Out

Graduation next week. Company coming. Book review deadlines. House in chaos. Back soon.

News From the Land of Silence

Mostly offline this week, but there's a new chapter up at the story blog. Boo-yah, baby.

(newbies:  it's a private blog, but if you want to read, drop me an email and I'll send you an invitation)

Floodwaters

And a dude in a boat:  my brother in the Washington Post.

Screen Porch Sunday

Okay, so whenever I read home-makeover kinds of articles about houses with screened porches, the makeover almost always begins with getting rid of the screened porch. Look how much more light and airy! Look how open! Look how now there's nothing to stop the bugs getting in and the dog running away!

Apparently in makeoverland the screened porch is a liability. For us, however, it was the number-one selling point. We would have bought a cardboard box to live in, as long as it had a screened porch. That this one came with an indoors attached was a bonus. Never mind that right now, if you're on this porch,  you have to be careful where you step, unless you want a tour of the crawlspace. It's still the best room in the house.

A Screened Porch in the Country

All of them are sitting
Inside a lamp of coarse wire
And being in all directions
Shed upon darkness,
Their bodies softening to shadow, until
They come to rest out in the yard
In a kind of blurred golden country
In which they more deeply lie
Than if they were being created
Of Heavenly light.

Where they are floating beyond
Themselves, in peace,
Where they have laid down
Their souls and not known it,
The smallest creatures,
As every night they do,
Come to the edge of them
And sing, if the can,
And if they can't, simply shine
Their eyes back, sitting on haunches,

Pulsating and thinking of music.
Occasionally, something weightless
Touches the screen
With its body, dies,
Or is unmurmuringly hurt,
But mainly nothing happens
Except that a family continues
To be laid down
In the midst of its nightly creatures,
Not one of which openly comes

Into the golden shadow
Where the people are lying,
Emitted by their own house
So humanly that they become
More than human, and enter the place
Of small, blindly singing things,
Seeming to rejoice
Perpetually, without effort,
Without knowing why
Or how they do it.

James Dickey
from Contemporary American Poetry
A. Poulin, ed.
Houghton Mifflin Company
1980 

A golden evening to all. 

Saturday Night Music

Scholarship Alert!

Still trying to make that college decision? Think nobody has any money left to give away? Think it's all beyond your reach?

Think again.

H/T several places today, but most recently here.

Middle-Ages Spread

source

If things are quiet here, it's because I'm working on the high-school humanities website this week, trying to get the Medieval//Renaissance course up and off to the races. The Anglo-Saxon unit has been hanging around for a while, waiting for the rest of history to catch up with it;  now some Norse sagas and a bunch of hooty-tooty Normans have come along -- forcefully, of course -- to keep it company and revolutionize its language.

Still lots to add to that page, so if you don't find what you're looking for today, come back tomorrow. And tomorrow. And tomorrow.

And the day after that, too.

Quite the Weekend

A royal wedding which eschewed the fairytale meme in favor of, believe it or not, some actual theology of marriage. Followed by a joyous  beatification, with kielbasas and pierogis and people polka-ing to "She's Too Fat for Me"  -- that was how our parish celebrated, anyway. Irish-Italians from New Jersey, Costa Ricans from Costa Rica, all Polish for a day. Followed by, unbelievably -- well, you've read the news and heard the speech. 

And. And! I finally finished a new chapter for the story blog, only ten short months after I vowed to finish a chapter every ten days. Breaking news, folks.

If you haven't already joined the story blog and want to read, send me an email and I'll send you an invitation. Otherwise, enjoy the following video, which you have surely already seen. We ourselves have watched it approximately thirty-seven gazillion times since Friday, and some people still aren't tired of it: