Ohio Trail

Last week a librarian friend shared an article that included a Minnesota 7th/8th grade reading list from 1908. In it were authors I’d known and loved when I was in those grades: Longfellow, Hawthorne, Poe, Dickens, and Kipling. James Fenimore Cooper was there, as were Washington Irving, Robert Louis Stevenson, Oliver Wendell Holmes and Joel Chandler Harris. (Not familiar with Harris? You are if you remember Song of the South.) Curious, I looked up the suggested Common Core reading list for those grades and found some pleasant surprises. Little Women is in there, and so is Tom Sawyer. Lawrence Yep’s Dragonwings was suggested reading, too. (I found that a bit odd. It’s the fifth in a series of ten books with little to recommend itself on its own.) But the two that caught my eye were Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time and Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising. I’d have given my right arm to read those “for credit” in middle school!

Puzzles

“Following baptism, one is confirmed a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in a brief ordinance, during which there is conferred the gift of the Holy Ghost. Thereafter, all through life, men, women, even little children receive the right to inspired direction to guide them in their lives—personal revelation! The Holy Ghost communicates with the spirit through the mind more than through the physical senses. This guidance comes as thoughts, as feelings, through impressions and promptings. It is not always easy to describe inspiration. The scriptures teach us that we may feel the words of spiritual communication more than hear them, and see with spiritual rather than with mortal eyes.” – Boyd K. Packer

Old Chelsea Windmill

One reason I love my Franklin Covey planner is that every day comes with an interesting quote. Today’s is from Maria Edgeworth, Anglo-Irish author: “The human heart, at whatever age, opens only to the heart that opens in return.” I bought a T-shirt last week and carried it home in a shopping bag that said, “Life isn’t a loose sweater you toss off casually. Life is woven of people and places you wrap tightly around you. A tangle of mesh moments and jumbled emotions, cherished for all its delightful imperfection. You embrace each day for what it is and aspire to make it more.” My Celestial Seasonings tea reminds me that Ralph Waldo Emerson believed, “Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.” I suppose this is what one does in today’s economy with a philosophy degree; decorates shopping bags, planner pages and boxes of herbal tea.

Road to Oklahoma

We discovered these Saturday at the grocery store, and had to make them at home the very next morning:

Wensleydale Cranberry Pancakes

1 egg

1 cup flour

1 tablespoon granulated cane sugar

3 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

3/4 cup milk

2 tablespoons melted butter

3 ounces Wensleydale cheese with cranberries (If you can’t get to Hawes, Harmon’s carries it.)

Vegetable oil for greasing

Beat egg until fluffy; add remaining ingredients except cheese and oil. Stir just until moistened. Heat pan until a few water droplets skitter. Brush pan with oil. Pour 1/4 cup batter on hot pan and crumble about a teaspoon of the cheese over the pancake. Cook 2 or 3 minutes, until the top bubbles and edges begin to look dry. Flip pancake and cook until bottom is golden brown. Serve immediately. We had ours with butter and maple syrup, but I’ll bet they’d have been great with orange marmalade, too.  

Easy Eight Block

Today’s block is perfectly named. It couldn’t possibly be simpler to make, and when it’s done it looks exactly like the number 8 resting on its side. You start with a 6” square of background fabric. (No, not 6 1/2, just 6 inches.) Build a contrasting border around it using two 6x3 rectangles and two 11x3” rectangles. Press all the seams away from the center as you go. Then you take the resulting really boring square-within-a-square, and cut it into four equal parts. They should each be 5 1/2" square. Take the northeast and southwest quadrants and flip them 180 degrees. Sew all four patches together, and you have a 10” finished block! What I like best about it is that pressing the seams outward and turning half the block in on itself means all the seams will click together when you’re done. More than that, if you put these blocks together without sashing, they’ll all click, too!

Disappearing Hourglass

Five things I mean to do daily, even when I’m very busy:

The first is to make my bed as soon as it’s empty. It seems like a Sisyphean task; after all, it’ll just get messed up again tonight. But it takes less than five minutes and improves both the room and my outlook. It may just be the boost I need to tackle bigger projects. Second is clean the kitty litter. I probably won’t notice a big improvement, but I’m sure everyone who visits will notice if I didn’t do it. Third: do a little laundry every day. Even a single daily load will keep it from piling up. Fourth: wipe the kitchen counters. Lots of things happen in my kitchen. Salmonella shouldn’t be one of them. Last, I mean to load and run the dishwasher every night before bedtime. How wonderful to wake to a clean, empty sink! It might even make me feel like making my bed!