Here’s something fun: the Cloud Appreciation Society. Float on over to check out some amazing photos, learn about the different types of clouds, and marvel at the Cloud of the Month. I particularly enjoyed the Society’s manifesto:
WE BELIEVE that clouds are unjustly maligned
and that life would be immeasurably poorer without them.
We think that they are Nature’s poetry,
and the most egalitarian of her displays, since
everyone can have a fantastic view of them.
We pledge to fight ‘blue-sky thinking’ wherever we find it.
Life would be dull if we had to look up at
cloudless monotony day after day.
We sing that song all the time, especially when there are good clouds to comment on. They are sorely lacking here in So Cal though. Thanks for the smile this morning.
(A roundup post with links to my notes and reviews)
Hey, what happened to all those booklists you used to have in your sidebars at the old blog?
They're still accessible at melissawiley.typepad.com, where this blog lived from January 2005-March 2008. You can also find all my Lilting House posts there, or try the search bar here. All my previous Bonny Glen and Lilting House posts have been imported to this site.
Every day is complicated, messy, and full of friction. And every day has glorious or cozy moments worth celebrating. I seldom bother to chronicle the friction and the mess because writing time is fleeting and precious—and childhood even more so. I’d rather capture the small joys that I might forget—or take for granted—if I don’t take time to set them down in words.
(Excerpt from this post about Real Life, quoted here because I don't want anyone to be under the impression that things are always perfect around here! Heaven knows we are anything but. Perfect, frictionless, orderly? Nope. Happy? Most of the time!)
Be like the bird
Who, pausing in flight
On limb too slight,
Feels it give way beneath her,
Yet sings,
Knowing she has wings.
—Victor Hugo
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“Exploration,” says John Stilgoe, author of Outside Lies Magic, “is a liberal art, because it is an art that liberates, that frees, that opens away from narrowness. And it is fun.”
Yes: it is so, so much fun, and that is why I write these posts all chattery with excitement over this or that connection the kids made today. (Or that I made myself!) I know I get carried away, but that’s the point, isn’t it, that way leading on to way has carried me away?
And yet—and yet—I think we are at once ‘carried away’ and made more fully present in the now, more rooted, by these relationships between ideas about things past and future. The joy of connection makes me want to celebrate this moment, this brief encounter with wild-haired child and broad-trunked tree, bus going by, sign on church wall, Scottish warlord creeping over the tower wall and startling the English soldier’s wife who has just put her babe in arms to sleep by crooning that the Black Douglas won’t get him. Child, laughing, shouting “Dinna ye be sae sure aboot that!” across the courtyard outside the library. How can I not celebrate this freedom?
How timely – we’ve had some spectacular clouds and skies this week – a cloud study has been much on my mind.
Thanks for the links, I’ll be checking them out soon!
Posted on October 30th, 2009 at 7:20 amI love the Snoopy Clouds song!
Posted on October 30th, 2009 at 7:21 amWe sing that song all the time, especially when there are good clouds to comment on. They are sorely lacking here in So Cal though. Thanks for the smile this morning.
Posted on October 30th, 2009 at 9:17 amWhat a great link! I’m especially interested as my husband’s 5xgreat-grandfather, Luke Howard, named the clouds
Posted on October 30th, 2009 at 10:00 amWe had a lovely time recently watching the clouds, although it involved some conscious letting go on my part:
http://dillerhome.blogspot.com/2009/09/boredom-arent-you-hooked.html
It inspired me to read my children William Wordsworth poem that begins, “I wandered lonely as a cloud …”
Posted on October 30th, 2009 at 3:42 pmThey liked it.
NAMED the clouds! How fabulous is that! What a great piece of family history, Elizabeth.
Posted on October 31st, 2009 at 10:49 am