Mary's Boy

 As a holiday present, I offer a set of lyrics for a Christmas carol I'm working on.  This is the first verse and chorus - other verses may follow.  The tentative title is 'Mary's Boy'.  The tune is the old French carol 'Il est Ne, le Divin Enfant':      

Underneath him a bed of hay,

All around him the angels lullaby;

High above him a single star

Points the way in the midnight sky.

Who is he that is born today,

In a stable for humble animals?

He is Jesus, Mary's boy,

Man and God, our Emmanuel.

From our family to all of yours, may you have a happy and blessed Christmas, and much joy in the New Year!

November

So is there anything more depressing than a gray November horizon?

Sure, there is.  It's a gray November horizon full of colossal wind turbines.

(About 30 degrees north from the first shot)

A New Adventure

I haven't blogged for a while, because I've been organizing a new adventure.  As most of you know, the writing job search has yielded some good interviews, but no job offers, and I've been getting frustrated about it.  Going back to school seemed like it might be a good idea, so I've been researching training for a new career.  Now I'm officially a college student again - I'm attending Elgin Community College, taking full-time classes to get a paralegal certificate.

The paralegal certificate will (hopefully) help me get a job in a law office, or with some other firm that does a lot of legal filing. I've already started my classes in Legal Technology and Writing, and tonight I go to my Real Property Class.  Should be exciting.  Tomorrow I have Legal Tech again, in the morning, and Litigation at night.  I'm in class Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday of every week.

So far I think I'm really going to like it.  I'm excited about the opportunity to make a change.  I have to take 12 credit hours this semester, and at least 12 next semester, and then I get my certificate.  If things go well the first semester I may even take 15 hours in the spring.  We'll see.  My brain isn't as young as it was, so I'm cautiously optimistic.

Wish me luck! 

Random Thoughts

Some things that have been occurring to me lately:

- I would probably fail most history and sociology classes these days, because I wouldn't agree with the instructor that everything my grandparents believed was stupid.

- If anybody else in my 'village' had ever tried to raise one of my children, I probably would have wanted to punch his lights out.

- Look for the word 'detroit' to come into the language as a passive verb denoting civic chaos and impotence, such as 'Hey Bob, you still waiting for the cops to come out on that break-in?  Looks like you've been detroited.'

- How much fun could a movie that's part mystery be, if everybody in the audience knows that the first wealthy male character to come on screen will eventually turn out the villain?  I've had this experience literally dozens of times the last few years, most recently with 'The Lone Ranger'.  Honestly, I don't think I need to say 'SPOILER ALERT', when every person in the theater knew Tom Wilkinson was the bad guy in the first five minutes.  Hollywood is killing itself by constantly writing to formula.

- Hate to see summer pass and autumn looming.  Maybe if I lived someplace other than the upper Midwest... 

It Happens Every Summer

It's been two weeks since our annual Ribfest reunion in Pecatonica, and I've finally had a chance to pull together some memories and impressions from a whole week of family time:

- Our family trip to Brookfield Zoo was a blast.  There were seven adults and two toddlers, and we covered the whole place in one beautiful, sunny day.  I'll never forget little Elijah, with a very determined look on his face, pushing the boys' wagon from behind up and down the asphalt walkways.  Priceless.

- Brian, bounding down the stairs one morning, proclaimed to his Nonna 'There you are!', as if his night's sleep was just part of a grand game of hide-and-seek.

- Anne's friend Chris is from New Jersey, and he seemed puzzled that there are truly no street lights where we live.

- First experiences for the boys: running through the sprinkler, playing with the puppy, swinging plastic golf clubs, walking down to the stream to watch the fish.  I think the fish got a little shell-shocked, because the highlight of that last was actually bombarding them with gravel from the bridge.  It was a good thing Brian was wearing bib overalls for his visit to the country, so that we could grab him from behind as he leaned out over the water.

- Watching the storms roll up out of the west.  It's a lot more open where we live now, and we can really see the weather as it arrives. The cooking crew had the same experience on Ribfest Saturday in Pec, as a big storm full of wind and rain hit us about 11:00AM.  Gotta love that shelter house!

- Getting a chance to reconnect with people from both sides of our family.  There were about one hundred and fifty of us there, and the party went on very late.  How much fun is that?

G'Day, Bruce!

I'm reading Alison Weir's biography of Henry VIII of England, and I'm struck again, as I have been before, by one strange concurrence.  See if you can spot it in the following list of the most eminent men who served  the second Tudor:

Wolsey, Cardinal Archbishop of York and Lord Chancellor
More, also Lord Chancellor
Cromwell, also Lord Chancellor
Audley, also Lord Chancellor
Howard, the 2nd Duke of Norfolk
Howard, the 3rd Duke of Norfolk

Cranmer, first Protestant Archbishop of Canterbury
Boleyn, Earl of Wiltshire and Anne Boleyn's father
Knyvet, Henry's Master of the Horse
Seymour, younger of the two brothers to Queen Jane Seymour
Wyatt, courtier and early lyric poet
Linacre, the King's physician
Elyot, courtier and historian
Carwarden, first permanent Master of the Revels
Heneage, Privy Councillor
Abell, Chaplain to Queen Katherine of Aragon
Cheney, Privy Councillor



See it yet?  I'll give you a hint:  when you see a movie and play about this time, and there are many because it was an era of high drama, all of these guys call each other by either their titles or their surnames.  They have to, because it would be too confusing for the viewers otherwise.  Each and every one was given the name 'Thomas' at birth.  

I don't know whether it was a fashion that got out of hand or what, but it's true.  Makes me think of the old Monty Python sketch about the philosophy department of an Australian university - G,day Bruce!'  'How are ya, Bruce?'  'What's up, Bruce?'   I can just imagine some middle-class matron saying to her husband, 'It doesn't matter what your dad's name was!  We want the King to notice and promote him, so we're going to name him Thomas!'  

Faint and Far Away

I've got the windows open today, and I can hear the train whistle.  It sounds faint and far away, and that's a blessing.

Nonna and I just finished moving from the village of Shabbona to a rental house on a farmette a few miles north.  We got an offer on our house in town, and had to move pretty fast, so this seemed like a good fit. To people living in a city or suburb, moving from a small town in the country to an actual farm might not seem like much of a change, but it certainly is to us. We've always lived within the boundaries of a municipality of some kind, but not anymore. 

(I should make it clear here that although we're living on a farm, we're not responsible for working the land - the acreage is rented to someone else.  I'm so clumsy and bad with machinery that if I actually tried to farm, the next piece of writing you'd see with my name in it would probably be an accident report.)

The first thing that's different is infrastructure.  We've never used a well and septic system before, and had to ask the landlords if there is anything special to monitor.  Apparently the heat lamp in the well pit is VERY important in winter - who knew?  There's no garbage pickup, so that will have to be arranged.  We had to go from cable TV/internet to separate services for dish television and internet. And the basement is a genuine old creepy limestone vault with six-foot clearance and posts everywhere.  If you know Uncle Marty, you know what Nonna called it right away.

The thing we're most scared of is what will happen in winter.  They usually get the streets in Shabbona plowed pretty quickly after a snowstorm, but how long will it take to get our little gravel road cleared?  Nonna needs to get out and going pretty early in the morning, so that's a concern.  We'll have to see how things go. 

There are positives to the change, too.  The thing that I'm most impressed with right away is the privacy.  Hardly any cars come down our road in a day, and the nearest neighbor is a quarter-mile away, so it's a big change from having our back yard being center stage for two stories of assisted-living residents. If it ever warms up, I could walk around in a bathing suit all day and not make a single soul want to swear off bacon.  It will probably get dusty and noisy around harvest time, but I suppose we can handle that.  Mail delivery is kind of nice, too - we've been going to the post office to pick up our mail for over two decades.  And as I said, that far-off train whistle is a HUGE step in the right direction.  We've lived within a a couple of blocks of a busy freight line for just as long.

So, I'm looking at this as a real adventure.  Expect to hear more about our 'Green Acres Project' in coming posts.  And I really want to thank our kids for all their help - Elizabeth and Eric, Margaret and Nathan really worked their tails off.  And Uncles Matt and Jeff came down with a pickup to help on Saturday - what a great family we have!