Music Tuesday: Refuge For You by Annie Karto

Back on May 20th right after the first of two tornadoes to hit Oklahoma in the span of a week, this one causing its powerful destruction in the city of Moore, my friend and fellow blogger at J's Cafe Nette, Jeanette put up a blog post in sympathy for all those effected. 

The next day it was with great surprise that the Catholic Contemporary singer and songwriter, Annie Karto stopped by that blog to offer a prayer and post a link to one of her songs, "Refuge For You."  I was in complete shock, and I think my reply to her was rather overly gushing in adoration.  Now I don't get excited when I see a celebrity in real life, but this one caught me by surprise.  At first I didn't even think it was really her, but after thinking about it, I don't see any reason to discount her. 

In honor of her stopping by, I'm going to post that very song she linked.  I do have a couple of her albums, and I did post her song on Divine Mercy a few weeks back.  She's got a very delicate voice, like a cicada wing, transparent and gentle.  I certainly recommend her music.  I suspect I'll be posting more of her works. 

Thank you Annie for stopping by, and of course for your blessed music.

Matthew Monday: Father’s Day Weekend , Two Quick Takes

Well here are two stories that show that I might not be the best father in the world.

Take 1:

Saturday Matthew woke up with red spots all over his face and body.  I was the first to notice it.  I told my wife to look at it and she took his temperature.  We suspected mumps or chicken pox.  He had no fever.  I told my wife he needs to go see a doctor nonetheless.  Matthew started whining.

“I don’t want to go to the doctor,” he cried.

“You need to,” I said.

“He doesn’t have fever,” my wife put up the opposing rationale.

“Mommy, I don’t want to go to the doctor,” Matthew appealed.

“We don’t know what this is.  It doesn’t look right.”  I replied to my wife.

 “Mommy, I don’t want a shot.”

“You’re not going to get a shot,” my wife reassured him.

“Mommy I don’t want any shots.” 

This back and forth between them went on for a few times.  Finally in my full ogre father persona I said, “Hush up.  If the doctor says you need a shot, you’re going to get one.”

“No, no, no!” he screamed.  “I don’t want a shot.

I got on the phone and called the doctor’s office and got us in for 12:30. 

 “No, mommy, no, I don’t want to go.  I don’t want a shot.”

My wife tried to tell him he wasn’t going to get a shot.  His whining was just too much.  I took my pointing index finger and simulating a needle poked him in the leg and said “shot.”  That’s when he really cried and my wife said something nasty to me. 

“Come on,” she said to him.  We’ll call grandma and have her come with us.”  After a little more reassuring Matthew finally said, “Oh alright.”  But then he pointed his finger at me and loudly said, “But Daddy doesn’t come.  No daddy.”

LOL!!! 

[To conclude this story the doctor said it was probably related to the fever he had last week (I blogged it here) and it was nothing to worry about.  Still I have to say that the diagnosis wasn’t satisfying.  What exactly was this?  My wife posted it on FaceBook and her cousin replied that her daughter gets that all the time after taking antibiotics.  It goes away in 3-5 days.  Now that made sense, but now I worry about whether I have a good pediatrician.  She’s very experienced and highly recommended, but why didn’t she tell us this?]

Take 2:

I wanted to take Matthew to the zoo for Father’s Day, but unfortunately the weather was expected to rain and with Matthew with all his spots on his body we figured let’s stay home and do something.  My wife suggested we “go camping” in his room.  It was a pretend camping.  She set up a structure with sheets over it to crawl into as a tent.  We used a battery powered lantern to pretend it was the campfire, and we had these two (not exactly sure how to describe them) light sabers that lit up as sticks to pretend we were roasting marshmallows.  We ate a few “marshmallows” and then I said let’s go into the tent and tell scary stories.

Ok, we crawled under and I thought about a story about a man who buys a house and he hears a cat screech every night.  I think I must have merged a couple of different Edgar Allan Poe stories to come up with this on the spot.  Well, the man investigates every corner of the house and can’t find the cat.  He goes through all the closets and the basement and nothing.  He goes to sleep and he hears it again.  He goes through the house (and I take Matthew through the closets and basement again) and still finds nothing.  Finally he just goes to sleep but every night the same thing.  The cat screeches and the man concludes it’s a ghost cat.  Matthew then volunteered, “Maybe the cat was outside?”  Smart boy with good visual skills I thought.  Well, the man looked out the window and still no cat.

This goes on for a long time and finally the man gets scared and leaves the house to live in a hotel.  After a while he’s running out of money and needs to go back home.  So he comes home but the cat screeched is gone.  No more.  (Mind you, I’m making this up on the fly.)  After a long time he decides to get  married, and the wife comes to live with him.  That first night the cat screech is back.  “Wheeeow.”  What’s that she asks?  Oh no, the cat is back.  And so the wife goes investigating the house, all the rooms, the closets, and the basement.  Nothing.  And the cat keeps screeching. 

This goes on for a few nights.  Finally the wife says I hear it inside the wall.  The cat is inside the wall!  We have to cut a hole in the wall.  So they get a saw and they cut a big hole in the wall.  The man is scared but the wife is not.  He tells her to look in the hole.  She sticks her head and looks back and forth, back and forth and sees nothing.  So the man looks in the hole, and that’s when I took my hands and formed a cat’s claw and clutched Matthew in the face, screeching “Wheaooow.”

And that’s when Matthew jumped out of his skin and screamed!  LOL!!  He screamed and started to cry.  I had to take him out of the “tent” and hold him to let him know it wasn’t real. 

So no kudos for Father’s Day.  I’m not sure I was that good a father this weekend.

Cicadas on Staten Island

On Staten Island, cicadas only make their presence every seventeen years.  I had no idea they were native to this place when I first moved here.  I had heard of cicadas in poetry, but when I came across one on a page I read right over it as another of the million insects I had no real knowledge of.  There is the ancient Greek myth of Tithonus, a musician who is granted eternal life by the Aphrodite but who forgets to give him eternal youth with eternal life, and so forever grows older and older until he is transfigured into a cicada.   I knew the insect were associated with music or sound or such but I had no idea when in 1996 they came out.  I was overwhelmed with the sound.  I went out to learn about these creatures, which after birth hibernate for seventeen years (less in other parts of the world) and come out to sing their mating song and then die.  And then not heard of again for seventeen years. 

2013 is my second cicada cycle.  I have to say I was disappointed at first this year.  It seemed like a dud of a cicada year, but this has been an unusual spring, cold and rainy.  I remembered from the previous time the sound being louder than an orchestra.  This year for a while it sounded like tweets.  The newspapers had written them off as they write off losing politicians or injured or aging athletes.  Apparently the weather delayed the cicada peak, and so they have been in full song now for two weeks.  I can’t say they are as loud as in 1996, but either their habitat has shrunk or the weather has staggered their lives for a more muted crescendo. 

Staten Island, despite being part of New York City, still has a good portion of green area, not just as parks but as natural wooded habitat.  It’s protected as part of the Staten Island Greenbelt, a preserved natural landmark that keeps kinship to our past and is more than three times the size of Manhattan’s Central Park.  It’s ideal for the cicadas if not to thrive to at least survive.  They must have been at one time throughout the land masses that comprise New York City.  Over in Brooklyn where I grew up I had never heard them or of them.  I assume they’ve been pushed out of the city, though I wonder if in some of the other large parks they may still subsist.

The past few weekends in the early mornings when I take the dog out for an extended walk, I hear their choric chant, a rhythmic mantra of “ahhh—uum, ahh—uum, ahh—uum.”   The Greenbelt woods are just a couple of blocks from my house, and as I walk up to the perimeter the sound doubles in intensity.  How do people that live right here deal with this, I wonder?  Scattered on the street are a score of dead or dying cicadas.  Their wings are transparent, like angel’s wings.  A host of them is flying, ungainly and bumbling, out of the woods and into trees, houses, and parked cars.  They are klutzy flyers; one flies into my head, and I watch him collapse to the ground like a stalled airplane falling out of the sky.  He is on his back, wings and legs flailing, trying to flip himself over as if he were a tortoise.  The dog approaches him with caution, extending her neck and bringing her nose to him.  He is buzzing.  Up close his buzz is conspicuous to the whole.   They are harmless; they don’t bite nor sting.  I bend down and with my flinger flip him over so that he stumbles to his legs and regains flight. 

There is a feeling of pathos for these little creatures.  As insects go, they are not ugly.  Actually I find them gawkishly cute, sort of like the chubby shy girl in class who has a handsome look to her.  They buzz and stumble, gather and disperse, blossom and die.  They live too short a life.  Their sonorous chant, their dead bodies on the ground, the fact that they are defenseless creatures that harm no one, the sense that they will not return for another seventeen years like clockwork, like from a divine command, makes this moment feel holy.  I mutter a Glory Be and walk the dog home.

Here are a couple of educational videos on cicadas.

 

 

 

 

 

Faith Filled Friday: Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence

This hymn never caught my attention until last night while working out at the gym and listening to my religious music play list on my ipod.  Yes, I listen to religious music while working out!  And I've got 844 songs on that play list, and throughout the grunts and heavy breathing of the workout I feel God's grace with heavenly prayer.  Singing hymns as St. Augustine says is praying twice.

Colin Raye does a magnificent job singing it.  That's the version I have that came up on the play list.  Unfortunately his version is not on Youtube, so I can't post it here, but you can hear 30 seconds worth on Amazon here.  It's most definitely worth 99 cents but actually get the entire album, His Love Remains.  Every song on there is a brilliant version of a classic hymn.  I recommend it.

According to Wikipedia this hymn is ancient:

Let all mortal flesh keep silence is an ancient chant of Eucharistic devotion based on words from Habakkuk 2:20, "Let all the earth keep silence before him". The original was composed in Greek as a Cherubic Hymn for the Offertory of the Divine Liturgy of St James in the fourth century AD, with local churches adopting arrangements in Syriac.

The fourth century is 1800 years ago!

The best version I could find off Youtube was this by Robert Kochis, also a very beautiful version.  Ignore that last twenty seconds at the end of the video.  Not sure why it's there, but I really wanted to keep this version. 

What's different on the Colin Raye version is that unlike most of the versions on Youtube which feature a piano as the principle accompaniment, Raye's version uses a violin, and I think it complements wonderfully.  I must say that a male vocal contrasted against a solo violin really captures me.  There's an added tension which I can't explain that a piano just doesn't provide.

Alleluia, Alleluia
Alleluia, Lord Most High!

 

Free E-Book: Five Lessons from the Carmelite Saints That Will Change Your Life.

I thought many of the people who follow my blog might be interested in this free E-Book: Five Lessons from the Carmelite Saints That Will Change Your Life. 

The author is Connie Rossini and she blogs at Contemplative Homeschool.  I haven't read the book, so I can't give a review, but I have frequently visited Connie's blog, which I've found informative and up beat.  Plus how can you go wrong with a free book.

I decided to buy the Kindle version for 99 cents.  It's convenient for me since I have a Kindle and find it convenient to store books on it.  I told Connie she could keep the royalties, but not spend it all in one place. ;)

Matthew Monday: Strep Throat

Matthew has been remarkably healthy since he’s come home to us.  In the two and a half years he’s only had a couple of mild instances of fever, and nothing else.  These past few days he got strep throat. 

We sensed there was something going on in the middle of the night on Wednesday, going into Thursday morning.  He was in bed and I downstairs and I heard what sounded like crying sounds.  Of course that had to be Matthew so I went upstairs to his room and found him on the floor beside his bed crying.  At first I thought he had fallen out of bed, but he said he didn’t.  He asked if mommy was going to leave him, so I suspected he had a bad dream.  He kind of nodded he had a bad dream and went back to sleep.

My wife also had walked in to his room in the early morning to find him crying.  At school Thursday he wasn’t right, she said.  He didn’t feel he had fever, but something was going on.  He kept whining and wanting his mother.  That night he finally got a mild fever.  My wife handled it with children’s Tylenol.  It helped but boy was he whiny and crying.  He normally attaches himself to me when I’m home, but not this time.  It was mommy for everything.    My wife called the doctor’s office and they had an opening right then.  She got him over and the doctor diagnosed Strep Throat, and he said it was going to get worse before getting better.  He prescribed antibiotics.

He was right.  Fever went over 104F (40C) and Matthew was either crying non-stop or laying on the couch like a half dead animal.  We tried to get him to drink fluids and all he wanted was chocolate milk.  I don’t think that was a good idea.  I tried to sooth him at one point and the chocolate milk expectorated out of his mouth as if it were a garden hose.  It was a whoosh, like that child in the vomit movie scene in The Exorcist, only it was chocolate brown instead of green.  And guess where it propelled to?  You got it, all over my shirt…lol.  Yuck.  But what are daddies for?

 

Well, at least it didn’t hit me in the face.

 

The antibiotic worked marvelously.  His fever came down that night and then gone in the morning.  He spent the weekend inside and he still whined for his mommy the whole time.  But the fever never came back. It passed remarkably quick.  So even with this illness, he seems remarkably healthy, healthier than I was as a child. 

 

 

 

Book Excerpt: The Cossacks by Leo Tolstoy, Part 3

You can read Part 1 of Book Excerpt: The Cossacks by Leo Tolstoy here and Part 2 here. Excerpts taken from etext from Wikisource Library through Classic Literature By Great Authors ; translation by Louise and Aylmer Maude.

 

In the first blog on The Cossacks I delineated the central character Olenin, an overly sophisticated, disillusioned, even cynical young man who decides to leave his Moscow life for a military stint in the wilds of the Caucasus.  On the second blog I delineated his contracting character, Lukashka, a young Cossack man who is heroic and at one with the nature of his upbringing.  Both these characters fall in love with the beautiful Cossack girl, Maryanka, and so the novel forms a triangle.  Lukashka and Maryanka are betrothed by their parents in a traditional arrangement, but besides the arrangement there is a true, youthful attraction, and they are presented as a natural and likely couple.   Olenin is the outsider, the rich man from Moscow, from the big and sophisticated city.  He has denied that love is possible or even real, but once in contact with the natural elements and natural people, his outlook is challenged and he starts to change.  He becomes drawn to Maryanka, at whose parent’s home he is a lodger.  Here is a passage when Olenin first meets Maryanka.

Olenin ran up the steps of the porch and pushed open the door of the hut. Maryanka, wearing nothing but a pink smock, as all Cossack women do in the house, jumped away from the door, frightened, and pressing herself against the wall covered the lower part other face with the broad sleeve of her Tartar smock. Having opened the door wider, Olenin in the semi-darkness of the passage saw the whole tall, shapely figure of the young Cossack girl. With the quick and eager curiosity of youth he involuntarily noticed the firm maidenly form revealed by the fine print smock, and the beautiful black eyes fixed on him with childlike terror and wild curiosity. 'This is SHE,' thought Olenin. 'But there will be many others like her' came at once into his head, and he opened the inner door.  [chpt 10]

 

Love at first sight, love from contact through the eyes is a motif in several of Tolstoy’s works.  (It happens with Lukashka and Maryanka later on as well.)  There is a magic when Tolstoy brings two people’s eyes in contact as they fall in love.  Such a moment happens here to Olenin: “'This is SHE,' thought Olenin.”  But notice how in the very next thought that moment of love becomes warped: “'But there will be many others like her' came at once into his head.”  He has choked off the feeling of love with the thought of sexual objectification.  It isn’t the “she” he embraces, but the sexual object.  Let’s compare Lukashka’s interaction with Maryanka.  A group of girls including Maryanka are talking about the lodger at Maryank’s house when Lukashka walks over and listens.  Finally Lukashka feels a pang of jealousy.

Lukashka rose and raised his cap.

'I expect I had better go home too, that will be best,' he said, trying to appear unconcerned but hardly able to repress a smile, and he disappeared behind the corner of the house.

Meanwhile night had entirely enveloped the village. Bright stars were scattered over the dark sky. The streets became dark and empty. Nazarka remained with the women on the earth-bank and their laughter was still heard, but Lukashka, having slowly moved away from the girls, crouched down like a cat and then suddenly started running lightly, holding his dagger to steady it: not homeward, however, but towards the cornet's house. Having passed two streets he turned into a lane and lifting the skirt of his coat sat down on the ground in the shadow of a fence. 'A regular cornet's daughter!' he thought about Maryanka. 'Won't even have a lark--the devil! But just wait a bit.'

The approaching footsteps of a woman attracted his attention. He began listening, and laughed all by himself. Maryanka with bowed head, striking the pales of the fences with a switch, was walking with rapid regular strides straight towards him. Lukashka rose. Maryanka started and stopped.

'What an accursed devil! You frightened me! So you have not gone home?' she said, and laughed aloud.

Lukashka put one arm round her and with the other hand raised her face. 'What I wanted to tell you, by Heaven!' his voice trembled and broke.

'What are you talking of, at night time!' answered Maryanka. 'Mother is waiting for me, and you'd better go to your sweetheart.'

And freeing herself from his arms she ran away a few steps. When she had reached the wattle fence of her home she stopped and turned to the Cossack who was running beside her and still trying to persuade her to stay a while with him.

'Well, what do you want to say, midnight-gadabout?' and she again began laughing.

'Don't laugh at me, Maryanka! By the Heaven! Well, what if I have a sweetheart? May the devil take her! Only say the word and now I'll love you--I'll do anything you wish. Here they are!' and he jingled the money in his pocket. 'Now we can live splendidly. Others have pleasures, and I? I get no pleasure from you, Maryanka dear!'

The girl did not answer. She stood before him breaking her switch into little bits with a rapid movement other fingers.

Lukashka suddenly clenched his teeth and fists.

'And why keep waiting and waiting? Don't I love you, darling? You can do what you like with me,' said he suddenly, frowning angrily and seizing both her hands.

The calm expression of Maryanka's face and voice did not change.

'Don't bluster, Lukashka, but listen to me,' she answered, not pulling away her hands but holding the Cossack at arm's length. 'It's true I am a girl, but you listen to me! It does not depend on me, but if you love me I'll tell you this. Let go my hands, I'll tell you without.--I'll marry you, but you'll never get any nonsense from me,' said Maryanka without turning her face.

'What, you'll marry me? Marriage does not depend on us. Love me yourself, Maryanka dear,' said Lukashka, from sullen and furious becoming again gentle, submissive, and tender, and smiling as he looked closely into her eyes.

Maryanka clung to him and kissed him firmly on the lips.

'Brother dear!' she whispered, pressing him convulsively to her. Then, suddenly tearing herself away, she ran into the gate of her house without looking round.    [Chpt 13]

 

Their courting is youthful, natural, even impulsive.  Lukashka’s jealousy sets up the love triangle, the conflict, and the narrative tension.  Olenin, on the other hand, courts Maryanka at Beletski’s party.  Prince Beletski is an acquaintance of Olenin’s from Moscow society who is a rising officer in the army and has arrived during the summer to participate with Olenin’s troop.  While in the Caucuses he arranges evening parties, a sort of meat market gathering where Beletski lures women and then brags about his conquests.  He has brought the Moscow sophistication to the country, and when he hears about Olenin’s attraction to Maryanka, he brings them together at his party.  Here Olenin notices Maryanka at the party. 

Olenin noticed Maryanka among the group of girls, who without exception were all handsome, and he felt vexed and hurt that he met her in such vulgar and awkward circumstances. He felt stupid and awkward, and made up his mind to do what Beletski did. Beletski stepped to the table somewhat solemnly yet with confidence and ease, drank a glass of wine to Ustenka's health, and invited the others to do the same. Ustenka announced that girls don't drink. 'We might with a little honey,' exclaimed a voice from among the group of girls. The orderly, who had just returned with the honey and spice-cakes, was called in. He looked askance (whether with envy or with contempt) at the gentlemen, who in his opinion were on the spree; and carefully and conscientiously handed over to them a piece of honeycomb and the cakes wrapped up in a piece of greyish paper, and began explaining circumstantially all about the price and the change, but Beletski sent him away. Having mixed honey with wine in the glasses, and having lavishly scattered the three pounds of spice-cakes on the table, Beletski dragged the girls from their comers by force, made them sit down at the table, and began distributing the cakes among them. Olenin involuntarily noticed how Maryanka's sunburnt but small hand closed on two round peppermint nuts and one brown one, and that she did not know what to do with them. The conversation was halting and constrained, in spite of Ustenka's and Beletski's free and easy manner and their wish to enliven the company. Olenin faltered, and tried to think of something to say, feeling that he was exciting curiosity and perhaps provoking ridicule and infecting the others with his shyness. He blushed, and it seemed to him that Maryanka in particular was feeling uncomfortable. 'Most likely they are expecting us to give them some money,' thought he. 'How are we to do it? And how can we manage quickest to give it and get away?'    [Chpt 24] 

It ‘s in that setting that Maryanka, now become mesmerized with the social scene, and begins to feel tempted to Olenin’s entreats.  It comes to a head one day when Olenin is drunk. 

Olenin drank with Eroshka, with the other Cossack, and again with Eroshka, and the more he drank the heavier was his heart. But the two old men grew merry. The girls climbed onto the oven, where they sat whispering and looking at the men, who drank till it was late. Olenin did not talk, but drank more than the others. The Cossacks were shouting. The old woman would not let them have any more chikhir, and at last turned them out. The girls laughed at Daddy Eroshka, and it was past ten when they all went out into the porch. The old men invited themselves to finish their merry-making at Olenin's. Ustenka ran off home and Eroshka led the old Cossack to Vanyusha. The old woman went out to tidy up the shed. Maryanka remained alone in the hut. Olenin felt fresh and joyous, as if he had only just woke up. He noticed everything, and having let the old men pass ahead he turned back to the hut where Maryanka was preparing for bed. He went up to her and wished to say something, but his voice broke. She moved away from him, sat down cross-legged on her bed in the corner, and looked at him silently with wild and frightened eyes. She was evidently afraid of him. Olenin felt this. He felt sorry and ashamed of himself, and at the same time proud and pleased that he aroused even that feeling in her.

'Maryanka!' he said. 'Will you never take pity on me? I can't tell you how I love you.'

She moved still farther away.

'Just hear how the wine is speaking! ... You'll get nothing from me!'

'No, it is not the wine. Don't marry Lukashka. I will marry you.' ('What am I saying,' he thought as he uttered these words. 'Shall I be able to say the same to-morrow?' 'Yes, I shall, I am sure I shall, and I will repeat them now,' replied an inner voice.)

'Will you marry me?'

She looked at him seriously and her fear seemed to have passed.

'Maryanka, I shall go out of my mind! I am not myself. I will do whatever you command,' and madly tender words came from his lips of their own accord.

'Now then, what are you drivelling about?' she interrupted, suddenly seizing the arm he was stretching towards her. She did not push his arm away but pressed it firmly with her strong hard fingers. 'Do gentlemen marry Cossack girls? Go away!'

'But will you? Everything...'

'And what shall we do with Lukashka?' said she, laughing.

He snatched away the arm she was holding and firmly embraced her young body, but she sprang away like a fawn and ran barefoot into the porch: Olenin came to his senses and was terrified at himself. He again felt himself inexpressibly vile compared to her, yet not repenting for an instant of what he had said he went home, and without even glancing at the old men who were drinking in his room he lay down and fell asleep more soundly than he had done for a long time.  [Chpt 34]

And so what Tolstoy has set up through the triangle is a decision point for Maryanka, and then the culmination of the struggle between Olenin and Lukashka.  You would expect the resolution of that struggle, perhaps a life and death fight between the antagonists, to be the climax of the novel.  However, it isn’t, and it never takes place.  Maryanka, in effect, does make a decision, though not a considered choice.  Tolstoy projects a culminating conflict but it never happens.  An event, which I won’t spoil for the reader here, occurs that changes the trajectory of the narrative. 

To be forthright, I can’t claim I understand why Tolstoy ended the novel in this fashion.   I can’t say if it holds together.  Intuitively it seems off.  But I’ve only read this once and I would need at least another reading—especially now that I know how it ends—to see if Tolstoy has found a sparkling and fitting, though original, ending or one that is forced and flawed.  Perhaps in the future I will read this novel again.  It’s worth a second read.  This is definitely an enjoyable novel, especially if you like Tolstoy.  In the meantime, anyone that has read the novel, I would appreciate your thoughts, especially on the ending.