A monthlong celebration of delight and glory and oddity and light

April is National Poetry Month,

brought to you for the 13th year by the Academy of American Poets.
Why poetry? Because, as Dylan Thomas wrote in
Notes on the Art of Poetry
I could never have dreamt that there were such goings-on
in the world between the covers of books,
such sandstorms and ice blasts of words,
such staggering peace, such [...]

A man and his wolf

There’s a new BBC2 documentary, part of the “Natural World” series, about Ernest Thompson Seton (1860-1946) and his wolf Lobo, one of the subjects of Seton’s Wild Animals I Have Known. The new documentary isn’t to be confused with the 1962 Disney live action movie, “The Legend of Lobo”.
In The Telegraph, Steve Gooder, director [...]

Our Maggie and Our Anne

Still plowing through weekend papers:
In The Guardian, Margaret Atwood’s salute to Anne of Green Gables and “Annery”:
Nor is this process at an end: from the Anne of Green Gables Licensing Authority that gives the nod to all collateral products, expect more Anne boxed sets, Anne notepaper and Anne pencils, Anne coffee mugs and Anne [...]

I’ll be spending tonight

at home with Paul Gross. Well, I’ll be at home, on the couch, and he’ll be on television, in the first part of the CBC political thriller miniseries Trojan Horse, the sequel to H20 (fictional but timely) the other year. Here’s the Globe & Mail interview before it disappears. If it does, try [...]

Conditional love, or, Going, going, gone

Maybe I missed the memo, but when oh when did “had went” and “would have went” become so popular? Perhaps when teachers quit writing verb conjugations on the blackboard?
I realize I live in the boonies in the back of beyond, and I know the local school system, erm, needs work (there’s a reason we [...]

Sunday catch-up

English celebrity Katie Price (apparently also known as Jordan when she’s modeling for Page 3 of The Sun and Playboy; Wikipedia seems more than adequate here if you haven’t heard of her either) is in the middle of a book brouhaha in the UK. In 2006, Random House UK handed over a £300,000 advance [...]

Robert Fagles (1933-2008)

From Chris Hedges’s article in The New York Times, “A Bridge Between the Classics and the Masses”, April 13, 2004:
On his deathbed, the Roman poet Virgil asked that the manuscript of his greatest work, The Aeneid, be destroyed. It was, after a decade of writing, still flawed. And perhaps, as some have suggested, this gentle [...]

Poetry Friday

Nothing here today — we’ve been waylaid by the big hockey tournament in town, where we spent a good chunk of today cheering on the children’s friend and the rest of the team (they won, hurray!) — but head over to Gina at Cuentesitos, who’s hosting this week’s Poetry Friday roundup.

Uh-oh Canada

I forgot.
I recuperated and got busy with Easter, and then Tom’s birthday (Tuesday) and Laura’s 4H field trip to a nearby bakery (also Tuesday and delicious), and then got thoroughly sidetracked by some Spring cleaning and shopping (yesterday).
Which means I missed getting anything ready for Colleen Mondor at Chasing Ray’s literary salute to Canada. [...]

Clouding the glow with angels and liars

Before The Globe & Mail makes it disappear, from today’s news (I’ve added the links and italics myself):
OTTAWA — China’s ambassador has rejected Canadian criticisms of his country’s actions in Tibet as uninformed, and called assertions of rights violations “irresponsible.”
Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his government have reacted to China’s crackdown in Tibet by calling [...]

No surprise that “buffoon” is a French word

Main Entry: buf·foon
Pronunciation: \(ˌ)bə-ˈfün\
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle French bouffon, from Old Italian buffone
Date: 1585
* * *
Encore un roi du crazy. From today’s radio news this morning (emphasis mine, as usual):
Having France’s highest honour bestowed on him didn’t stop former Alberta premier Ralph Klein from recalling how he used to get mad at his cousins [...]

Early Spring snaps

The only thing green things in my garden (where the snow has melted) — nice young stinkweed. And oh what a healthy crop already. It figures it would be a weed!

The farm team (so called because they’re in their coveralls and tractor dealership gimme caps):

Sadly (ha!), the box of ice skates has [...]

Science shopping

Even with no plans to attend a home school conference or convention this Spring (the big one next month conflicts with a. calving, b. Arts Festival, c. previously scheduled 4H activity, and d. calving), something in the air has compelled me to start making shopping lists of educational resources and waving my credit card around.
Today [...]

Richard Widmark (1914-2008)

Hollywood actor Richard Widmark died on Monday at the age of 93; he was also Sandy Koufax’s father-in-law for a time. The New York Times obituary, by Aljean Harmetz, is here. From which,
In reality, the screen’s most vicious psychopath was a mild-mannered former teacher who had married his college sweetheart, the actress Jean [...]

Canadian science sale

Just until tomorrow, Wednesday, March 26, at midnight.
Boreal Northwest is celebrating its new website redesign by offering free shipping on all orders of at least $25.
Fine print: Use “Promo Code BM25 during checkout. (Applies to standard ground shipments only – excludes air freight and overweight items. Offer expires at midnight, March 26, 2008.”

A breath of fresh Spring air

U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, in India last Friday.
Some of the very few words that filtered through my consciousness while in bed that day:
If freedom-loving people throughout the world do not speak out against China’s oppression in China and Tibet, we have lost all moral authority to speak on behalf of human rights [...]

Spreading the news

Bella Dia has an announcement:
I have a new blog called The Crafty Crow! I have seen so many great kids crafts in blogland that I wanted a blog to keep them all in one place with a bit of organization thrown in. I would love it if you would check it out and [...]

Happy Easter from Farm School

(The picture is from last summer, but the good wishes are current!)

Under the (Spring) weather

After three nutty busy days at the beginning of the week (library board committee meeting, semiannual teeth cleaning and checkup, and music lessons, and that was without two meetings I couldn’t squeeze in), Daniel and I got sick. For me that was aside from the three consecutive days of headaches — first migraine, next [...]

Something new for the vernal equinox

While ordering our favorite children’s Spring solstice book — Ellen Jackson’s The Spring Equinox: Celebrating the Greening of the Earth — I noticed that another favorite seasonal author, Wendy Pfeffer, has a new book out this year, A New Beginning, illustrated by Linda Bleck (January 2008, Dutton). It’s on order throughout our library system; [...]