"Plants embody everything that I like to have around me: presence, personality, character. They are supple and therefore strong, yet softly-spoken and gentle; they are fragrant and delicate; they have movement, colour, structure, scale and proportion. Plants are large in form, tiny in detail and always a single whole. Plants are beautiful in sun and rain, in tropical heat, fighting immortal cold, dancing in the wind, buffeted by storms.
Plants have long been part of the earth’s history. They come from afar. Their beauty is deep and beyond question. It can be overwhelming; their fragrance beguiling. I look at my garden and I see vibrancy, opulence, serenity; I see dignity, playfulness, infinite tenderness, the nodding kindness of Herb Roberti, and in the larger, beautiful picture, I discover small, modest dots of colour that enhance the luxuriant whole."
"A garden is the most intimate landscape ensemble I know of. It is close to us. In it we cultivate the plants we need. A garden requires care and protection. And so we encircle it, we defend it and fend for it. We give it shelter. The garden turns into a place.
Enclosed gardens fascinate me. A forerunner of this fascination is my love of the fenced vegetable gardens on farms in the Alps, where farmers’ wives often planted flowers as well. I love the image of these small rectangles cut out of vast alpine meadows, the fence keeping the animals out. There is something else that strikes me in this image of a garden fenced off within the larger landscape around it: something small has found sanctuary within something big."
(to see the whole article, go here- http://archidose.blogspot.com/2011/07/half-dose-89-serpentine-gallery.html )
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Saturday, September 10, 2011
Friday, September 9, 2011
Quote about hearts
All children are heartless. They have not grown a heart yet, which is why they can climb tall trees and say shocking things and leap so very high that grown-up hearts flutter in terror. Hearts weigh quite a lot. That is why it takes so long to grow one. But, as in their reading and arithmetic and drawing, different children proceed at different speeds. (It is well known that reading quickens the growth of a heart like nothing else.)
-Catherynne Valente "The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her own Making"
-Catherynne Valente "The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her own Making"
Thursday, September 8, 2011
Xenocide quotes
"Those who know each other only through symbolic representations are forced to imagine each other. And because their imagination is imperfect, they are often wrong.
...Humans mate with beings who challenge their supremacy. They have conflict between mates, not because thier communication is inferior to ours, but because they commune with each other at all."
Xenocide, Orson Scott Card
...Humans mate with beings who challenge their supremacy. They have conflict between mates, not because thier communication is inferior to ours, but because they commune with each other at all."
Xenocide, Orson Scott Card
Sunday, July 24, 2011
All Quiet on The Western Front
"Bombardment, barrage, curtain-fire, mines, gas, tanks, machine-guns, hand-grenades--words, words, words, but they hold the horror of the world." Erich Maria Remarque
"It will be like this too. If I am lucky, when the war is over and I come back here for good. I wil sit here just like this and look at my room and wait. I feel excited; but I do not want to be, for that is not right. I want that quiet rapture again. I want to feel the same powerful, mameless urge that I used to feel when I turned to my books. The breath of desire that then arose from the coloured backs of the books, shall fill me again, melt the heavy, dead lump of lead that lies somewhere in me and waken again the impatience of the future, the quick joy in the world of thought, it shall bring back again the lost eagerness of my youth. I sit and wait." pg 151
"It will be like this too. If I am lucky, when the war is over and I come back here for good. I wil sit here just like this and look at my room and wait. I feel excited; but I do not want to be, for that is not right. I want that quiet rapture again. I want to feel the same powerful, mameless urge that I used to feel when I turned to my books. The breath of desire that then arose from the coloured backs of the books, shall fill me again, melt the heavy, dead lump of lead that lies somewhere in me and waken again the impatience of the future, the quick joy in the world of thought, it shall bring back again the lost eagerness of my youth. I sit and wait." pg 151
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Highlights from Savannah
Jen Library- I don't have a picture yet, but there is a Jen Library. How cool is that!! This is the link for all you non-believers... Jen Library and a better picture of the sign on Flickr.
We saw the original metal film canister from Troop Beverly Hills (one of my favorite childhood movies) at Leopold's.
Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) owns half the town. literally. and we are thankful, because they are who helped spur/finance the restoration of the town.
St. John's Cathedral was pretty. No docent led tours of it :( The Baptismal font was GIGANTIC.
Originally, Catholicism wasn't allowed in Georgia, but they had an Anglican church and an Episcopalian church...and TWO African churches. They also had a John Wesley statue.
I love the large oaks that you can walk under, and the moss hanging off them. It's beautiful! Brittany said "You just like it because it's Spanish moss." hahaha.
Everything our tour guide said was "_____ is the 1st/oldest__________ in America/Georgia."
We visited the only Gothic Architecture style Synagogue in America. It was a little disconcerting. I kept thinking I'd see a stain glass window depicting Jesus or a station of the cross. The congregation is the 3rd oldest Jewish congregation in America.
She-crab soup!!!!!!!!
Rum Bisque Ice Cream!!!!!!
I'd almost like to come back to Savannah and just spend the whole week eating at every restaurant. That might get a leeetle expensive.
so Flannery O'Connor...
-according to our tour book, the house was only open on the weekends, so you can imagine my surprise and delight when it was open when we showed up!!
1. She started calling her parents by their first names when she was SIX.
2. She stopped playing with dolls when she was FOUR.
3. She wrote in her books at a young age, on the title page. "splendid first read" or "not a very good book"
4. The only fairy tales she liked were Grimm's.
5. She had a pet chicken that she taught to walk backwards.
http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=28819
and then she was on film for it!
6. She quit going to children's Mass and started going to adult latin Mass at age 6. When her school teachers found out, they told her parents she should be at the children's Mass, and Flannery said "I won't let the church dictate which service I go to!"' She was the only child in the adult latin Mass.
7. She didn't like other kids, but her mom forced her to have play dates.
8. She didn't care to spell right. About each of her classes she said "I would have gotten 100, but they marked me down for my spelling." On her report card that they showcased, spelling was her worst grade, 78, and algebra was her best! ha.
9. Her house was super skinny!!! But it had a fabulous door with multicolored glass.
10. She made her "friends" read her books out loud, or her writings out loud. That was her favorite activity, and she often made them reread parts she liked.
11. The tour guide said we should read her books out loud, because that's how she wrote them, saying all the words out loud while writing them down.
12. The bed set that her parents got when they were married was two tiny pine beds. They almost looked child sized. eeek. Later, their cousin Katie bought them a real bed.
ok. that's all :)
Highlights from the beach include:
My brother getting stung by a sting ray.
Catching 56 sand dollars.
The children that are so precocious and talk to strangers, i.e. me.
Running into one of my sister's college friends! (She knew he was on the island, but there are 12 miles of beach, what are the odds?!)
The white sand blowing over the hard wet sand like snow flurries
Kicking a soccer ball WITH the wind. It went faster than we could run! eeek.
The 230498309248 families getting their family pictures taken on the beach every night wearing all white. Really, it's only 10-15 families, but gracious me, it seems like an epidemic.
If you have never read "I am the Cheese" by Robert Cormier, you should.
ok. that's really all.
We saw the original metal film canister from Troop Beverly Hills (one of my favorite childhood movies) at Leopold's.
Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) owns half the town. literally. and we are thankful, because they are who helped spur/finance the restoration of the town.
St. John's Cathedral was pretty. No docent led tours of it :( The Baptismal font was GIGANTIC.
Originally, Catholicism wasn't allowed in Georgia, but they had an Anglican church and an Episcopalian church...and TWO African churches. They also had a John Wesley statue.
I love the large oaks that you can walk under, and the moss hanging off them. It's beautiful! Brittany said "You just like it because it's Spanish moss." hahaha.
Everything our tour guide said was "_____ is the 1st/oldest__________ in America/Georgia."
We visited the only Gothic Architecture style Synagogue in America. It was a little disconcerting. I kept thinking I'd see a stain glass window depicting Jesus or a station of the cross. The congregation is the 3rd oldest Jewish congregation in America.
She-crab soup!!!!!!!!
Rum Bisque Ice Cream!!!!!!
I'd almost like to come back to Savannah and just spend the whole week eating at every restaurant. That might get a leeetle expensive.
so Flannery O'Connor...
-according to our tour book, the house was only open on the weekends, so you can imagine my surprise and delight when it was open when we showed up!!
1. She started calling her parents by their first names when she was SIX.
2. She stopped playing with dolls when she was FOUR.
3. She wrote in her books at a young age, on the title page. "splendid first read" or "not a very good book"
4. The only fairy tales she liked were Grimm's.
5. She had a pet chicken that she taught to walk backwards.
http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=28819
and then she was on film for it!
6. She quit going to children's Mass and started going to adult latin Mass at age 6. When her school teachers found out, they told her parents she should be at the children's Mass, and Flannery said "I won't let the church dictate which service I go to!"' She was the only child in the adult latin Mass.
7. She didn't like other kids, but her mom forced her to have play dates.
8. She didn't care to spell right. About each of her classes she said "I would have gotten 100, but they marked me down for my spelling." On her report card that they showcased, spelling was her worst grade, 78, and algebra was her best! ha.
9. Her house was super skinny!!! But it had a fabulous door with multicolored glass.
10. She made her "friends" read her books out loud, or her writings out loud. That was her favorite activity, and she often made them reread parts she liked.
11. The tour guide said we should read her books out loud, because that's how she wrote them, saying all the words out loud while writing them down.
12. The bed set that her parents got when they were married was two tiny pine beds. They almost looked child sized. eeek. Later, their cousin Katie bought them a real bed.
ok. that's all :)
Highlights from the beach include:
My brother getting stung by a sting ray.
Catching 56 sand dollars.
The children that are so precocious and talk to strangers, i.e. me.
Running into one of my sister's college friends! (She knew he was on the island, but there are 12 miles of beach, what are the odds?!)
The white sand blowing over the hard wet sand like snow flurries
Kicking a soccer ball WITH the wind. It went faster than we could run! eeek.
The 230498309248 families getting their family pictures taken on the beach every night wearing all white. Really, it's only 10-15 families, but gracious me, it seems like an epidemic.
If you have never read "I am the Cheese" by Robert Cormier, you should.
ok. that's really all.
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Communication
This is just a funny little quote from That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis which I read a couple months ago... (of course, it is also a gross generalization)
"The cardinal difficulty," said MacPhee, "in collaboration between the sexes is that women speak a language without nouns. If two men are doing a bit of work, one will say to the other, 'Put this bowl inside the bigger bowl which you'll find on the top shelf of the green cupboard.' The female for this is, 'Put that in the other one in there.' And then if you ask them, 'in where?' they say, 'in there, of course.' There is consequently a phatic hiatus."
"The cardinal difficulty," said MacPhee, "in collaboration between the sexes is that women speak a language without nouns. If two men are doing a bit of work, one will say to the other, 'Put this bowl inside the bigger bowl which you'll find on the top shelf of the green cupboard.' The female for this is, 'Put that in the other one in there.' And then if you ask them, 'in where?' they say, 'in there, of course.' There is consequently a phatic hiatus."
Saturday, May 28, 2011
For Whom the Bell Tolls- Quotes
There were a couple of my favorite quotes from Ernest Hemingway's For Whom The Bell Tolls...
"Why do you speak in English?" Pablo asked.
"I don't know," Robert Jordan said. "When I get very tired sometimes I speak english. Or when I get very disgusted. Or baffled, say. when I get highly baffled I just talk English to hear the sound of it. It's a reassuring noise. You ought to try it sometime."
"What do you say, Ingles?" Pilar said. "It sounds very interesting but I do not undersand."
"Nothing," Robert Jordan said. "I said 'nothing' in English."
"Well then, talk Spanish, " Pilar said, "It's shorter and simpler in Spanish."
"Let me finish, you mule," Pilar said to him. "He teaches Spanish to Americans. North Americans."
"Can they not speak Spanish?" Fernando asked. "South Americans can." (16.171-2
"Why do you speak in English?" Pablo asked.
"I don't know," Robert Jordan said. "When I get very tired sometimes I speak english. Or when I get very disgusted. Or baffled, say. when I get highly baffled I just talk English to hear the sound of it. It's a reassuring noise. You ought to try it sometime."
"What do you say, Ingles?" Pilar said. "It sounds very interesting but I do not undersand."
"Nothing," Robert Jordan said. "I said 'nothing' in English."
"Well then, talk Spanish, " Pilar said, "It's shorter and simpler in Spanish."
"Let me finish, you mule," Pilar said to him. "He teaches Spanish to Americans. North Americans."
"Can they not speak Spanish?" Fernando asked. "South Americans can." (16.171-2
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