The Fair Graduate

"Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts, the book of their deeds, the book of their words, and the book of their art. Not one of these books can be understood unless we read the two others, but of the three the only trustworthy one is the last."

-- John Ruskin

"Obedience is the best form of poverty."

-- Michael O'Brien, Father Elijah

In Honour of the Anniversary of His Death

"It is Jesus that you seek when you dream of happiness; He is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you; He is the beauty to which you are so attracted; it is He who provoked you with that thirst for fullness that will not let you settle for compromise; it is He who urges you to shed the masks of a false life; it is He who reads in your heart your most genuine choices, the choices that others try to stifle.

It is Jesus who stirs in you the desire to do something great with your lives, the will to follow an ideal, the refusal to allow yourselves to be ground down by mediocrity, the courage to commit yourselves humbly and patiently to improving yourselves and society, making the world more human and more fraternal."

-- Blessed John Paul II

Here lived a great person!

"What I'm saying to you this morning, my friends, even if it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, go on out and sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures; sweep streets like Handel and Beethoven composed music; sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry; sweep streets so well that all the host of heaven and earth will have to pause and say, 'Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well.'"

-- Martin Luther King

I've always loved this quote, although I give the credit to a friend of mine who sent this to me in an email this morning. I've always thought this can be attributed to anything we do in life: that 20 page paper due next week, the piles of laundry that need to be washed and dried and folded and put away, the mountains of housework that never seem to end (allusion that mothers of families will especially understand), homework that never ends (even if you finish it, you'll end up with more!), your part-time (or full-time job), your spiritual life - all these things we can do well if we put our hearts into it. "Here lived a great (fill in position/job here) who did his/her job well!" 

Here! Here!

A conversation about trees

"What times are these, where

A conversation about trees is almost a crime

Because it contains silence about so many atrocities."

-- Bertolt Brecht,

Used by Carole Fink in "Jews in Contemporary Europe"

Memory

"If any one faculty of our nature may be called more wonderful than the rest, I do think it is memory. There seems something more speakingly incomprehensible in the powers, the failures, the inequalities of memory, than in any other of our intelligences. The memory is sometimes so retentive, so serviceable, so obedient; at others, so bewildered and so weak; and at others again, so tyrannic, so beyond control! We are, to be sure, a miracle every way; but our powers of recollecting and of forgetting do seem peculiarly past finding out."

-- Jane Austen, Mansfield Park

The Beauty of Human Nature

"I say we need to discover this second wing [responsibility], and how to use the first [our freedom], in order to be content as human beings. To discover the beauty in our nature…unique in each individual, but created whole and beautiful. Then our souls will soar effortlessly above the sufferings and harshness of our material world. Then our souls will rest close to the heart of God, Who made us to soar above the peaks of the mountains and the crests of the clouds, in the heights of the sky. It is then that we will discover what it means to be fully human, and to rejoice in the beauty of human nature."

-- "My Soul Cries Out With Longing: Philosophical Reflection on Beauty" in The Imaginative Conservative

Chance

"It is the magic of nationalism to turn chance into destiny."

- Benedict Anderson, 

Opening quote in "Preface" of Who Owns Antiquity, by James Cuno

Just Be

"Sometimes I think a soulmate is someone who will make you be the most 'you' that you could possibly be."

 I don't know where this quote comes from but I read it somewhere and loved it. This can be true of certain friends too.

 

I have a few of those: friends who make me the most 'me'. So much so that it is very hard when things change and people travel their separate ways. But sometimes, distance doesn't interfere...and we can be soulmates despite the miles (or years or whatever) between us.  

 

Value of an Object

"Just as objects belong to people, so do people come to belong to objects, through layered and complex histories of exchange, display and travel."

- Ruth B. Phillips, "The Travels of a Mi'kmaq Coat" in A Nineteenth-Century World Art History and Twenty-First-Century Cultural Politics

A Curious Old Chest

"'That is a curious old chest, is not it?' said Miss Tilney, as Catherine hastily closed it and turned away to the glass. 'It is impossible to say how many generations it has been here. How it came to be first put in this room I know not, but I have not had it moved, because I thought it might sometimes be of use in holding hats and bonnets. The worst of it is that its weight makes it difficult to open. In that corner, however, it is at least out of the way.'"

-- Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey, p. 154-5

Invisible Dance

"For the only artist, who, besides myself, knows what the dance of seven veils is, 

and can see that invisible dance. Oscar."

-- Oscar Wilde, handwritten inscription annotated into one of his poetry volumes,

discussed in Books as History by David Pearson

Hope

"You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. 

Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone forever."

- Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

There is always a light at the end of the tunnel. It is just that sometimes you don't see it. If we let the darkness overcome us...if we stop right then and there...we will never see the light. Hope sometimes depends on us moving forward, knowing that goodness and light are just around the bend. Even when there are many bends, many twists, and great blackness. 

Hope expects that "such precious feelings" of joy and pleasure and peace are not gone for ever.

My Week in Pictures -- and Words

There is no more beautiful experience than that of being in nature. The feel of the winter sun as it begins to share its warmth. The first signs of spring. The calm of a frozen river, covered in a sheet of pure white snow, disturbed only by tracks from passing skies and daring footsteps. Trees, stripped of their fall finery, have had a chance to recover, now slumbering peacefully. Soon they will be awoken by the sun's growing warmth, and the sap will begin to flow. This has its own surprises.

On Sunday, I visited the beautiful Montebello resort with some of my friends. We relaxed for the entire afternoon, settled in the hotel (built from British Columbia pine logs) with the dim lights and classic lobby music, away from the hustle and bustle of every day student and professional life, safe within the rustic contours of this star-shaped building. Some of us went swimming or skiing or walking; but there were moments of quiet rest, settled comfortable between the cushions of a sofa with a good book. (Side note: I'm reading "People of the Book" by Geraldine Brooks - right down my alley, if you ask me!). When I wasn't reading, I was outside watching the slowly setting sun sparkle through the trees.

The resort was built on land that belonged to Louis-Joseph Papineau, a not-so-reknowned Rebel leader of the Lower Canada Rebellions in the 1840s. He fled from the area of the rebellions when he became known as a rebel fighter, and eventually settled on this beautiful piece of land along the banks of the Ottawa River. His 1850s mansion still stands not more than a kilometre or two away from the resort. It is his land that sparkles and shimmers with several feet of snow. 

Most of these images reflect the somber and beautiful and relaxing time that one can have on a relaxing excursion such as this.  

However, this last one reflects simply how life can be relaxing and peaceful in spite of the continuation of studies and professional life. There is a time to step aside and have a work-rest balance. But at home, such a balance is important and necessary as well. But in the right moments.  

Love until it Hurts

"I have found the paradox: 

if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, 

only love."

-- Mother Teresa

Historical Detective Work -- The Art of Surveying

He thrives on patterns,

his marks and monuments

transform a wilderness

and by his carefully tagged

and numbered squares,

neat roads, correction lines

and small cadastral lots

he clothes in certainty,

in geometrical designs,

man's ancient rights.

He scans the skies,

reading some far-off star

by which he plots

meridians and makes his maps,

stitching a new-found world

into a patch work quilt,

a net of metes and bounds,

so lands may know their own

and live in peace.

-- Don W. Thompson, "The Surveyor"

I am fascinated with this poem because it captures my new obsession and potential career: that of a "detective historian". Actually, the poem talks about surveyors and the work they do to map out the topographical, geographical, and other -graphical aspects of a land. But it is connected to that of a "detective historian" because we have opportunities to study topographical and surveying instruments, maps, artifacts, etc. that were used by surveyors for a variety of different purposes. 

Interestingly enough, I am working on a project right now with the Canada Science and Technology Museum, through a seminar with the University of Ottawa, to uncover the provenance of a medical kit which was possibly lost or left behind by a group of explorers with the H.M.S. Alert in 1875 or 1876. This kit was discovered by two scientists (Hattersley-Smith and Blackadar) in 1953 a few miles south of Cape Sheridan (in the Arctic). There is little we know about the kit yet...the file is virtually bare. This poem stands out as a link (for me) between surveying (particularly within Canada) and the vast number of artifacts that have (or have not) been discovered and still need "detective work" to uncover the stories behind the objects. All very fascinating stuff!

If interested, you can see pictures of the medical kit artifact here.

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Inspiration

"It is never too late to be what you might have been."

-- George Eliot

I love this quote! I think there are so many things I could be if I had the courage. And so many things I want that may not be for me, but that I should still try. We cannot really know who we could be unless we try things, experiment, learn from our mistakes, and trust the people who matter in our lives. 

This gives me inspiration for today.