Sunday, March 29, 2009

National Poetry Month

It starts tomorrow! Unfortunately, given that I'm studying abroad and am without my poetry books I won't be able to do my traditional "30 days, 30 poems" series. However, here are the indexes to the past years: 2007 and 2008. There are some wonderful poems there so I encourage you to take a look at them. And next year I will be returning with the series.

I will also try to post some poems here. However, I don't want to promise you 30 poems and then not be able to follow through with that.

Linkage

Here are a few links I've come across in the last few days that I wanted to pass on.

Excellent quote from Fr. Alexey Young at Mind in the Heart.

A good reminder from Study in Brown.

RJ Anderson has a thought-provoking post on double standards and Christian censorship.

And on a similar subject, the Common Room has a post about categorizations.

A few of these I'd like to return to in more detail later. Remind me of that if they don't appear within a few days. :)

Friday, March 27, 2009

A few Edinburgh pictures


The view towards Salisbury Crags, from just outside Edinburgh Castle.


The Scottish War Memorial, in the castle complex.


Edinburgh, from the castle.


Still at Edinburgh Castle, St. Margaret's chapel, built by her son King David.


Out towards the city.


Castle walls.


The view from Calton Hill out to the North Sea.


The National Monument and North Sea.


A spire near St. Giles'.


St. Giles' Cathedral.


A tombstone in Greyfriars Kirk cemetery.


A broken urn in one of the enclosed tombs at the Greyfriars cemetery.


Door of St. Giles' Cathedral.


Stained glass inside. I believe it's not the original.


Fields, sea, and sky.


On the train back to London: a white house and the sea.


Sea and cliff.

Update

Where have I been? Midterms and then spring break. A glorious week in Bath, Wales, and the Lake District. I'll be writing more about that later.

I've put up a new post on our trip to Edinburgh. If you're interested, you can find that here.

I find this news somewhat amusing.

And I've been terribly distracted by Anthropologie's website. Especially their dishes. I love dishes. *drools*

Sunday, March 08, 2009

Happy-making things

Tea and buttered toast

Sunshine on an English garden

Wind whipping the trees around (sorry trees)

A swingy, silky skirt

London post

There's a new post about my Friday up at my London blog, entitled Friday, or the Day of Awesomeness. Check it out if you're interested.

I'm hoping to get a review of RJ Anderson's excellent Knife up later today but we'll see how that goes. The homework, it is looming.

Wednesday, March 04, 2009

Thinking

I'm feeling distinctly lazy this morning. Not a good thing, as I have things I need to do before I go to class. Maybe some tea and food would help?

Did some editing yesterday. It's a difficult process for me because it doesn't have the kind of high that the first draft does. It's much more slogging through, trying to rescue the bad bits and leave the good bits alone. And sometimes (as yesterday) it definitely gets emotionally wearisome.

Also, I have an essay due in my Shakespeare class tomorrow. Almost done but I have NO motivation to work on it. BAH.

I guess I'm feeling a bit isolated at the moment. Don't get me wrong, I love being here. But...I have no idea what's going on in the lives of a number of people. *sigh* I've not had very good experiences in the past with people responding to me if I leave them a message or note asking how they are and I don't feel emotionally up to it at the moment.

Just reflecting on some things. Now I think I'll go have my tea.

Monday, March 02, 2009

Lent

We're beginning Lent today. I suppose in a sense we began it last night, with Forgiveness Vespers and the first reading of the Prayer of St. Ephraim. But this morning is the first Lenten morning.

I'm trying to figure out ways to observe the season of Lent without observing the Fast entirely. (That is, not completely abstaining from meat and dairy.) While ideally I would be doing both, this year it's just not practical to try to observe the Fast all the time. I will be trying to eat smaller portions and also trying to avoid meat.

I'd like to take this opportunity to ask all of you to forgive me if I've offended or wounded you in the past year. Forgive me a sinner!