We took our cousin Kathy to the Hula Hut for dinner last night - a nice taste of Austin in the summer. And then to Mozart's next door for coffee and dessert. Fun!

                                    This is where we were. Such a nice view at sunset.

Mozart's outdoors

Mozart's indoors

                         There was live music here.  Just a guy and his guitar, singing. Nice.

Grab a fork and sit down!

           My roma tomatoes, growing volunteer in my compost tank.

               Figs from one of Raymond's trees.

         Garden sauce - the tomatoes, a bell pepper, onion, garlic, olive oil and fennel.

          Topped with slices of sautéed chicken breast.

And ice cream topped with a little fig sauce - those figs above, stewed a few minutes with a little sugar, vanilla, and a splash of Raymond's whiskey. Delightful meal!

There's a whisper in the story.

I love the word whisper. Onomatopoeia.

      MY DEAR FRIEND

        

                                             Your age is WHO you are, not when -
                                             You never stop being the ages you've been.
                                             You just keep adding ages to be,
                                             Like rings on a beautiful, well-watered tree.

Poetry - Words become ambiguous so meaning can be clear.

Woo-hoo! Years ago we planted a pear tree on our property,  but it was very young so it would take a while to produce. Then we had so many years of drought, I got out of the habit of going to that corner of the yard. The other day Raymond took me over there and showed me what's been happening while I wasn't looking.  They're not ready to pick yet, but we're in for some yummies soon!

I AM
  - John Clare

I am: yet what I am none cares or knows,
   My friends forsake me like a memory lost;
I am the self-consumer of my woes,
   They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shades in love and death's oblivion lost;
 And yet I am, and live with shadows tost.

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
   Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life nor joys,
   But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;
And even the dearest - that I loved the best -
 Are strange - nay, rather stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes where man has never trod;
   A place where woman never smiled or wept;
There to abide with my Creator, GOD,
   And sleep, as in childhood sweetly slept:
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie
 The grass below - above the vaulted sky.
   

Black and Tan Fantasy. Duke Ellington

"She expressed something that we couldn't put into words." - Mahalia Jackson on Bessie Smith

PROTOCOLS
      - Vikram Seth

What can I say to you? How can I retract
   All that that fool, my voice, has spoken -
Now that the facts are plain, the placid surface cracked,
   The protocols of friendship broken?

I cannot walk by day as now I walk at dawn
   Past the still house where you lie sleeping.
May the sun burn away these footprints on the lawn
   And hold you in its warmth and keeping.

RENDEZVOUS
     - Alan Seeger

I have a rendezvous with Death
At some disputed barricade,
When Spring comes back with rustling shade
And apple-blossoms fill the air -
I have a rendezvous with Death
When Spring brings back blue days and fair.

It may be he shall take my hand
And lead me into his dark land
And close my eyes and quench my breath -
It may be I shall pass him still.
I have a rendezvous with Death
On some scarred slope  of battered hill,
When Spring comes round again this year
And the first meadow-flowers appear.

God knows 'twere better to be deep
Pillowed in silk and scented down,
Where love throbs out in blissful sleep,
Pulse nigh to pulse and breath to breath,
Where hushed awakenings are dear....
But I've a rendezvous with Death
At midnight in some flaming town,
When Spring trips north again this year,
And I to my pledged word am true,
I shall not fail that rendezvous.

Some treasures I found at the Galveston  Bookshop. 

From THE TEMPEST
          - Shakespeare

Be not afeard: the island is full of noises;
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twanging instruments
Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices,
That, if I then had wak'd after a long sleep,
Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me; that, when I wak'd
I cried to dream again.

ON ISLAND TIME.......

                                         One of my fave t-shirts. Fading now, but still fun.

                                                  Why the sea is boiling hot......

                                               View from the breakfast table at the hotel

                                                                  Morning.....

                                                       My favorite place for breakfast

 

                                                           Found an old bookshop!

                                                        Of course it has a tiny upstairs.....

           Took these pics for my girls, especially Yvonne who has worked with mosaics. Cool stuff!

                                                         View from the dinner table

                          Talked with the owner, who said he thought of the name because he hunts deer.

                                                       My perch in the morning

   If you don't see me for a few days....... I am headed to the coast with Hubby, to celebrate our 32nd anniversary. A couple of days across the street from the sea...... I could sit there forever.
  A few hours of driving, in a marvelous mood, with music playing, and no one and nothing but us. No TV, no internet (except Youtube). Just The Two of Us.  

   See you soon!  :)
   

MY OWN HEART LET ME MORE HAVE PITY ON
                                          - Gerard Manley Hopkins

My own heart let me more have pity on; let
Me live to my sad self hereafter kind,
Charitable; not live this tormented mind
With this tormented mind tormenting yet.
  I cast for comfort I can no more get
By groping round my comfortless, than blind
Eyes in their dark can day or thirst can find
Thirst's all-in-all in all a world of wet.

Soul, self; come, poor Jackself, I do advise
You, jaded, let be; call off thoughts awhile
Elsewhere; leave comfort root-room; let joy size
At God knows when to God knows what; whose smile
's not wrung, see you; unforeseen times rather - as skies
Betweenpie mountains - lights a lovely mile.

Kidhood........

I'm just wild about Harry.....

King Louis

From LITTLE TOWN ON THE PRAIRIE
                         - Laura Ingalls Wilder

Laura wrote this at the age of 14, on 4th of July, after spending the day listening to the speeches, the reading of the Declaration of Independence, and the songs. I have my students memorize it.  The responsibility that comes with freedom.....

"Americans won't obey any king on earth. Americans are free. That means they have to obey their own consciences. No king bosses Pa. He has to boss himself. When I'm a little older, Pa and Ma will stop telling me what to do, and there isn't anyone else who has the right to give me orders. I'll have to make myself be good. This is what it means to be free. It means you have to be good. The laws of Nature and of Nature's God endow you with the right to life and liberty. Then you have to keep the laws of God, for God's law is the only thing that gives you the right to be free."

THE NEW COLOSSUS
          - Emma Lazurus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I life my lamp beside the golden door!"

Happy 4th of July, Peeps!

It was unavailable by Bobby Goldsboro. But this is a lovely version. My mama used to sing this while Dad played it on his guitar. 💖

From several yeas ago......

SPYGLASS

You watch her dance

    - See the whole show

    Watch her leap across the stage,

    Her body smiling, shouting, singing rage

    and love

    and hope.

    You see her through a kaleidoscope.

    The turning of your toy

    Translates her moves

    Stutters her spins

    Staccatos her grooves

    Turns her suspended arms

    her reaching legs

    her flowing gown

    Into falling fractals of color

    Splattering down.

    The swivel of her hips

    Is now a triangular twist.

    The curving smile, the hot blood pulsing 

    Are ruby crystals sliding into place.

    Her warm, watercolor tears

    Are a rainbow of iced glitter

    Sprinkled down her face.

    Put down the toy, my dear.

    See the live show.

    Change the action from flutter to flow

    From glisten to glow

    Release the dancer

    Who would live, love, say so much

    Free her, please, with one

    Warm touch.

To my friend Richard - the album, not the song. Tho the song is good too. Welcome back to West of Tomorrow. I'm sorry about the circumstances that bring you here, but the Present is aways glad to see you!

THE AUTHOR TO HER BOOK
                        - Anne Bradstreet

Thou ill-formed offspring of my feeble brain,
Who after birth did'st by my side remain,
Till snatched from thence by friends less wise than true,
Who thee abroad exposed to public view;
Made thee in rags, halting, to press to trudge,
Where errors were not lessened, all my judge.
At thy return my blushing was not small,
My rambling brat (in print) should mother call;
I cast thee by as one unfit for light,
Thy visage was so irksome in my sight;
Yet being mine own, at length affection would
Thy blemishes amend, if so I could:
I washed thy face, but more defects I saw,
And rubbing off a spot still made a flaw.
I stretched thy joints to make thee even feet,
Yet still thou run'st more hobbling than is meet;
In better dress to trim thee was my mind,
But nought but homespun cloth in the house I find.
In this array 'mongst vulgars may'st thou roam
In critics hands beware thou dost not come;
And take thy way where yet thou art not known.
If for thy Father asked, say thou had'st none;
And for thy Mother, she alas is poor,
Which caused her thus to send thee out the door.

My driveway grapes are almost ready, and my compost tomatoes are giving me a bountiful harvest. Might be BLT time!  :)

From MY FRIEND FLICKA, by Mary O'Hara - the next book my 10-year-old student will be reading.

"It had amused Nell at first to be addressed as the Missus, but it had not taken her long to learn that, it here in the West, it meant "the woman," with all that word signified of gentleness and motherliness. Here, in her world of men, husband and sons, hired men, haying crew, horse buyers, to be the Missus meant to be that before which they could remove their hats, and bend their heads. In the cities a woman could turn into a driving machine, or harden herself to meet difficulties, but the Missus on a farm or ranch, though she might be a milker of cows or a trainer of horses, must be more and not less woman for all of that, or she would rob the men around her of something which was as sweet to them as the sugar in their coffee."
    

"There was so much music in the air that if you held up a horn, it would play by itself."

Lunch of champions. Hashwe (ground beef or lamb, onions, and the Lebanese 7 spices. Usually used as a stuffing, but great by itself), with pita bread to scoop it up with, half a cuke, and a roma tomato. With a glass of cab. So no, it's not alcohol I'm abstaining from this week. ;)

I don't do Ramadan and I don't do Lent (usually) But I do my own little thang. Every 7th, 8th, and 9th week I take a break from a couple of my favorite indulgences (tho there are many more). Not for religious reasons, unless self-control and being master of my domain (so to speak) is a religious thing. I do take to heart the words of Paul: All things are lawful for me, but I will not be under the power of any. What are they? It doesn't matter. Dey ain't a thing God's given us that we haven't found a way to destroy ourselves with, so now and then saying no to appetite is a good exercise. I find that it's become a sort of ritual, and almost as though the denial of some things becomes a celebration of other, more important things, starting with self-possession.
I'm starting week two.   :)

"Sometimes nothing can be a real cool hand."

 The slave-turned-philosopher Publilius Syrus: “If you are to have a great kingdom,” he said, “rule over yourself!” That’s what we should think about today. Real power can’t be taken away—not by the economy or by an election or by anything else. A populist surfs on the moods of the crowd, but a philosopher—a person worthy of our respect—rests on principles. 

They can hate you, they can send you away, they can mock you or even kill you, but no one can take away those principles. No one can stop you from ruling over yourself. It’s the best and the biggest and the strongest kingdom there is.