Books
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Roots Above The Stones
Every year at this season we watch the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and their Christmas concert. Last night we watched it; we had recorded it the night before, and I was grateful because I was able to fast forward through much of it. The vibe of the show was very different from what we usually experience. First of all, we noticed that the word “Mormon” has been expunged from the group’s title. They’re now The Tabernacle Choir. This seems logical, given what I have read in recent months about the LDS church bending over backwards to fit in with the rainbow regiment people. Also, the tone of the programs was…off. The…
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Second Sunday in Advent
We attended a Christmas party last night, the only one to which we’ll show up this year, except for the upcoming annual gathering with eldest son and his clan, to which will be added a son in late January. The party wasn’t excruciating, and we were well fed. We don’t eat a lot of beef these days because of the high cost, but I made up for it last night. Extremely tender beef tenderloin, a nice herbed chicken, green beans, lumpy mashed potatoes (and that is NOT a complaint), salad, and rolls, and started off with chicken salad, crab rangoon, pimento cheese, and several other finger foods and croo dee…
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Almost A Lot of Things
The other morning I bent to get a watering can so I could give some of my wife’s porch flowers a drink. When I looked down at the can, I saw movement inside. A butterfly was marooned inside, flapping its wings with less-than-vigorous motion. I reached in and scooped the little fellow up, then held him before my face. I have no way to prove this, but I could tell that the butterfly was exhausted. I held him on my hand for a minute, then called to Mrs. Orr and asked her to hold him on her palm so I could have some perspective for a photo. She whispered to…
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Shut Down Upon Our Little Days
I’ve always been something of a worrier, a personal trait that has never done me or anyone around me any good. Like so many other of my quirks, I have tried to pray it away or master it by stern self-discipline, but it remains as much a part of me as my freckles or my bone structure. Last time we were back in Texas, I found a tattered little prayer book in an antique store and bought it for five dollars (I’ve since learned that a used copy of this book sells on a major website for something like $80 or $90). Stuffed inside its pages were various holy cards…
- Bluebelle, Books, Daily Life, Holy Days, I Never Thought I'd Be In This Situation, Jinx, Movies, Music, Photographs, Poems, Prayers, Quotations, Reflections
The Fourth Sunday in Lent
Salmon patties for supper, and it’s not even a Friday. Ah, deliciousity…. *** It was too frigid and windy to do much outside today, though I did prepare the beds for Mrs. Orr’s new roses. Not just any roses, but certified Tyler, Texas roses. And climbing roses, at that. Tonight it will frost, and then we’re supposed to have at least ten days of no-freeze, so I’ll try to get them planted tomorrow, and then I can cover the tender leaves. They’ll run up the side of the old goat shed if everything goes well. I never could have thought I’d have to get out the San Angelo bar…
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The First Day of Spring
…and the third Sunday in Lent. Yesterday, the winter went out quite lion-like with gusty winds preventing us from describing the day as “warm.” The temperature was in fact nice, but we had to bundle into jackets as we sat with the dogs on the back porch in the afternoon, talking in our quiet Orr voices and watching the greening of our acres in this warming half of the world, the day, the so very awake day rushing along with the urgency of a waterfall, even an unseen waterfall. Things are warming, but I was also chilled by something I encountered while we were out shopping for supplies yesterday. I…
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The Ides of Memoir
As I grow older, I live more and more in the past. And so I have decided to try and return to setting down my memoir, though in a different fashion than in the past. Previously, I started and stopped a memoir focusing mainly on my mother and my relationship with her (see here, here, here, and here). For reasons I won’t delve into here, I have decided that this focus was not conducive to regular effort, and so I have decided to start again. I feel the need to record my memories of certain things, places, people, and events that have remained clanging around in my mind, and I…
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Deserts And Caves
One of the books I got last week at the library book sale was Spirituality and the Desert Experience, by Charles Cummings, OCSO (1978, Dimension Books, Denville, NJ). This exploration of spiritual deserts by a Trappist monk (he died in 2020) is very readable and possesses one of those qualities that I so enjoy in a book: the need to set the book down frequently and ruminate on what I’ve just read. In chapter two (pp. 42-44), Father Cummings describes a sleep study profiled in National Geographic magazine from March of 1975 (Vol.147, number 3) which was conducted by a French scientist named Michel Siffre. Father Cummings tells us: [Siffre]…
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The First Sunday in Lent
Another glorious day. I think it got up to about 72F today. Started out cloudy and gradually cleared through the day, with the breeze intensifying every hour. The weather people — none of whom are fit to touch the hem of my maternal grandmother’s apron when it comes to weather forecasting — are saying it’ll be snowing by this Friday night. Mrs. Orr and I had a lovely, leisurely, reading morning, settled in chair and sofa with dogs all around, our new used treasures piled before us, and we dipped into them like a all you can eat dim sum restaurant. I spent part of the day outside planting bulbs…
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39 for 35; or, 25 or 6 to four
Our maple reawakens The dogs awakened us extra-early today, which annoyed my beloved wife to no end. We let them outside, but made them wait for breakfast while we went back to sleep for a while. Mrs. Orr never really did get her sea legs the rest of the day, though, and felt groggy. Worse than toddlers, trust me. When I stepped out into the back yard, I saw the maple was decked with tiny pink blossoms. As quick as the moon changes, it will be covered in suncatching leaves. It’s hard to believe that it was a slender sapling, smaller in diameter than my wrist, when we planted it…