Thursday Theme=Toy

Thursday Theme=Toy

A toy is an object used in play. Toys are usually associated with children and pets, but it is not unusual for adult humans and some non-domesticated animals to play with toys. Many items are manufactured to serve as toys, but items produced for other purposes can also be used as toys. ...Wikipedia

What does a large cardboard box, an empty oatmeal box, a cooking pot and a wooden mixing spoon have in common? Why they are items when given to a small child will keep that child joyfully occupied for some time. Just watch a child with their innocent imagination and these items mentioned above. The oatmeal box and cooking pot become a drum when whacked with the wooden spoon . A large cardboard box becomes a house, a cave, a fort or whatever.

I remember as a young girl having Lincoln logs, Tinker toys and dolls among other things. When I was a little girl we all wanted a doll known as a Betsy Wetsy doll. She came with a bottle. After filling it with water( hopefully), you gave her a bottle she would wet her pants. I now find it perplexing why we all wanted that doll.

As we grow older the toys can become more sophisticated and expensive. For instance the person who must own all the latest technological gadgets. In my case my toys are cameras. I got my first camera when I was a young teenager. My father gave me a large black Eastman Kodak box camera. That was replaced with a Kodak Brownie Flash Camera that I still have to this day forgotten in a bottom dresser drawer. Overtime these two cameras were replaced. The film SLR and point and shoot cameras have been replaced or put aside with digital SLR and other digital cameras. I always wanted so much to draw, but I just don't have the talent. So, photography has become my art form.

But, the cameras are the least of my toys. I became a scrapbooker about six years ago. That is one expensive endeavor. Besides the photos, papers, scissors, adhesives and albums, there are so many gadgets, devices and cutting machines that can be bought. I think I have bought a substantial number of them all . Do I use most of them? No! I just like to buy them with the idea I will use them someday. Of course I have no idea when that some day will come. Matter of fact some of the items are still in their boxes. Meanwhile, I need to find a place to display / store all this stuff. So now I’m contemplating setting up a scrapbooking section in my library / computer room. The sooner I do this the better. Than I'll have no excuse not to use all the toys I have accumulated.

No matter what age we are from the time we are babies with a rattle and mobile over our crib through our adult life, most of us have some toy or toys that we enjoy and that make our lives full. What toy(s) do you have today?

Thursday Theme=Library

New Milford Public Library

This is my local library where I took my children as soon as they were old enough to have their own library cards. I myself grew up in a small CT town as well. I spent as much time as possible in the library when I was a child. I remember there being a thick glass floor in one section of the library and you could see through it to the downstairs. I remember feeling adventurous and frighten at the same time whenever I stood on that glass floor. To me reading has always been the most important thing I could do. I have traveled all over the world and experienced so many adventures just by reading a book. Following are several quotes about a library.

"The library is not a shrine for the worship of books, It is not a temple where literary incense must be burned or where one’s devotion to the bound book is expressed in ritual. A library, to modify the famous metaphor of Socrates, should be the delivery room for the birth of ideas, a
place where history comes to life."
Norman Cousins(1915-1990)

"Access to knowledge is the superb,
the supreme act of truly great civilizations.
Of all the institutions that purport to do this,
free libraries stand virtually alone in accomplishing this."
Toni Morrison

"A book is the only place in which you can
examine a fragile thought without breaking it,
or explore an explosive idea without
fear it will go off in your face...
one of the few havens remaining where
a man's mind can get both provocation and privacy."
Charles Langbridge Morgan(1894-1958)

"To read a book for the first time is to make an acquaintance with a new friend; to read it for a second time is to meet an old one."
— Anonymous, Chinese saying

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY

Valentine Treasures
Valentine treasures are people who
have often crossed your mind,
family, friends and others, too,
who in your life have shined
the warmth of love or a spark of light
that makes you remember them;
no matter how long since you’ve actually met,
each one is a luminous gem
who gleams and glows in your memory,
bringing special pleasures,
and that’s why this Valentine comes to you:
You’re one of those sparkling treasures!
By Joanna Fuchs

Thursday Theme=Fish, the Symbol of Christianity

The fish was an early symbol of Christian faith that endures today on bumper stickers and businesses as a sign of Christian faith.

The fish is thought to have been chosen by the early Christians for several reasons:

• the Greek word for fish (ICHTUS), works nicely as an acrostic for "Jesus Christ, God’s Son, Savior”.
• The fish would not be an obvious Christian symbol to persecutors
• Jesus' ministry is associated with fish: he chose several fishermen to be his disciples and declared he would make them "fishers of men."
  

It is said that during the persecution of the early church, a Christian meeting someone new would draw a single arc in the sand. If the other person was a Christian, he or she would complete the drawing of a fish with a second arc. If the second person was not a Christian, the ambiguity of the half-symbol would not reveal the first person as a Christian.

The second fish symbol is the ICHTHUS fish, with the Greek word for fish written out to emphasize the symbolic acrostic described above.
Although the word looks like IXOYE, the letters are from the Greek alphabet, so the "I" is actually an iota, the "X" is actually a chi, the "O" is actually a theta, the "Y" is an upsilon, and the "E" or "C" at the end is a sigma. Taking the first sound from each of these Greek letter names, we get the transliteration into our alphabet of ICHTHUS.

Today, when Christians (in the West) do not need to worry about persecution, the Christian fish symbol often has "Jesus" written inside or includes a cross symbol. And of course, there have been many spoofs and variations of the popular Christian symbol, such as the famous "Darwin fish" (with legs).

The fish is also a symbol of baptism, since a fish is at home in the water.

References
Patricia S. Klein, Worship without Words: The Signs and Symbols of Our Faith (2000).
Carolle E. Whittenmore, ed., Symbols of the Church.
George Wells Ferguson, Signs & Symbols in Christian Art.
Frederick Rest, Our Christian Symbols.

Scrapbooking

What is Scrapbooking?
Definition: Scrapbooking (verb): The creative art of taking books with blank pages and adding photos, memorabilia, journaling, and embellishments. The primary purpose of scrapbooking is to preserve memories for future generations, but a secondary purpose often is to exercise your creativity as you display your memories in a scrapbook.

I spent Friday, Saturday and Sunday at beautiful Simsbury Inn in CT attending a weekend scrapbooking summit. My third daughter, who drove down from the Boston area, and I were among approximately a hundred women gathered to let our creative juices flow. These are gatherings where women stay up into the middle of the night, if not all night or they get up very early the next morning and start all over again.
There was plenty of chatting, laughter, slicing, cutting, gluing, oohing and aahing going on. There were friends meeting friends and new friends to be made. It appeared a good time was had by all.

What are some of the your hobbies?

Thursday Theme=Statues

Plegaria
By Delmira Agustini

Eros: have you never felt
Piety for the statues?
These chrysalides of stone,
Some formidable race
In an eternal, unutterable hope.
The sleeping craters of their mouths
Utter the black ash of silence;
A copious shroud of Calm
Falls from the columns of their arms,
And night flows from their eyesockets;
Victims of Destiny or Mystery,
In magnificent and terrible cocoons,
They wait for Life or Death.
Eros: have you never perhaps felt
Piety for the statues?
Piety for the lives
That will not strew nor rend your battles
Nor gild your fiery truces;
Piety for the bodies clothed
In the solemn ermine of Calm,
The luminous foreheads that endure
Their marble wreaths, grand and pure,
Weighty and glacial as icebergs;
Piety for the gloved hands of ice
That cannot uproot
The delicious fruits of the Flesh,
The fantastic flowers of the soul;
Piety for the eyes that flutter
Their spiritual eyelids:
Mysterious fish scales,
Dark curtains on rose visions...
For looking so far, they never see!
Piety for the tidy heads of hair
-Mystical haloes-
Gently combed like lakes
Which the storm's black fan,
Black and enormous, never thrashes;
Piety for the spirits, illustrious,
Carved of diamonds,
High, clear, ecstatic
Lightning rods on pious domes;
Piety for the lips like celestial settings
Where the invisible pearls of the Host gleam;
-Lips that never existed,
Never seized anything,
A fiery vampire
With more thirst and hunger than an abyss.
Piety for the sacrosanct sexes
That armor themselves with sheaths
From the astral vineyards of Chastity;
Piety for the magnetized footsoles
Who eternally drag
Sandals burning with sores
Through the eternal azure;
Piety, piety, pity
For all the lives defended
By the lighthouse of Pride
From your marvelous raw weathers:
Aim your suns and rays at them!
Eros: have you never perhaps felt
Pity for the statues?


Taken in Chalone-sur-Saone France














Taken at Chantilly in France

Birds at the Feeder

I had been waiting for the first birds to come to the feeder this winter season and I finally had to wait no longer. Well I knew someone had been at the feeder, because there was seed in the snow below, but I had not seen them. Than finally last week I saw the cute Tufted Titmouse. Seeing birds and hearing their song is one of many things that put a smile on my face. On Saturday I finally took some photos of the Tufted Titmouse having lunch at the feeder.

What birds have your feeders attracted this season?

Another Snowy Day

We are experiencing an snowy day. We are forecast to get only three inches. That is just adding on top of what we already have on the ground since the beginning of January. We usually have a January thaw, but that didn't happen this year, The snow on the woods floor is at least a foot deep. So other than blogging and watching the snow falling, it's time to settle in a comfortable chair, with a cup of tea and a good book. I'm going to finish reading Up Island by Anne Rivers Siddons.










Majestic trees and grey snowy skies.














Snow falling in the grove of pines.