Photographs from our life

So, a friend of mine suggested I write a blog entry about Friedrich Nietzsche. I am working on it. As you can probably well imagine, I've been thinking about it for many days. Also I am gathering enough questions to produce another Bull Roaring blog entry. As soon as I get enough questions we'll have more of that.
But rather than going several days between posts (and leaving us the foul taste of Walden in our mouths) I thought it might be fun to post a few photos of some of the things Laurie and I have been doing.


The big news is the dining room (formerly the "other" living room.) As you probably noticed in our Christmas pictures, we have brought a dining room table into that room. We have now (and by "we" I mainly mean Laurie. In this particular room project I seem to have been little more than a furniture mover) stripped the old, disgusting wallpaper (long time readers will remember that was the wallpaper that we said, when we first had a walk-through of this house almost three years ago, would be the first thing to go.) We've painted the upper wall a sort of burnt sienna and the lower and trim a sharp white. Also, Laurie has a new hat.


We've moved the bookshelves back since I took this picture, but it gives you an idea of what the room now looks like. The front room, which you can see in the background through the arch, is going to be painted gold very soon.
















Of course and as usual, I am spending a lot of time walking in Bidwell Park when weather permits.

















Laurie and I have some foul hell-beast living beneath the house (not on purpose and it is not the animal in this picture.) We are fairly certain that it is an opossum. So we went to the feed store to rent a trap. At the feed store we encountered the largest cat we've ever seen in our life (which is the animal in this picture. You'll notice it's about one-fourth the size of Laurie.)
So, I've set the trap for several nights, caught both of our outdoor cats at least once, and still the Stygian beast claws at the bottom of our bathtub to the gross chagrin of our menagerie of pets.
When I do trap it, I will drive it 15 minutes away in some direction and let it go.



The other news is Agnes, our cat who you'll remember we rescued over the summer. She is doing remarkably well and adjusting wonderfully. Her eyes are bright and she jumps up on our laps now, we've even caught her playing a few times. She had a horrible life outside and we're really happy that she's doing so well in our home. She does have an ear problem of some kind (you'll notice her left ear is down) and we're taking her to the vet next week.

A few words on the December cusp

I'm teaching a class on Church History. Some of you know that around this time last year through the Spring I taught a class on the Puritans. This time the class focuses on the Enlightenment through what I'm calling The Birth of the Modern (which means we're ending somewhere around Marx, Darwin, or maybe even Spurgeon. I thought about ending with a composer from the Birth of the Modern period for symmetry, but as much as I'd like to teach on them, I can hardly do a church history class on Brahms or Stravinsky.) This week's class was about the Pietist movement in 1600's Germany and also on the subject of Johann Sebastian Bach who was both The Protestant Composer and, arguably, the pinnacle of church music to date.

I started with a story about Karl Lagerfeld, because that's the kind of church history teacher I am. This is why you should come to my class. They are unconventional and fun. I would publish my notes here for interested parties and, upon reflection, perhaps in the future I can assemble my notes in a way more conducive to that end. My notes from Sunday are written in some complex and alien language that only my brain can understand. Sorry. Come to the class!

Also I've been called upon to give a devotional Advent service in two weeks. The series of four Sunday nights leading up to Christmas are each taught by someone different. This year we are covering the subject of Jesus as Prophet, Priest, King and God. I chose King and will give my message in two weeks. So, I'm keeping busy.

Laurie and I moved furniture to make room for the Tannenbaum and stumbled upon a configuration of the front room which we like so much better than what we had. We trimmed our tree and put on the Christmas albums (I had my annual "where the blue blazes is the second Projekt Christmas compilation?") Tonight I will start reading Dickens' A Christmas Carol to Laurie. Tomorrow we will begin opening the doors of our chocolate Advent calendar.
The above photograph is what it now looks like from the doorway of my office looking into the front room.



Laurie and I decorated the house. When I lived in Orange County, my Yuletide season beginning was marked by the Shakespeare Orange County Christmas Show. I don't remember a lot of Shakespeare in the actual show except for the bit where director Tom Bradac would come in dressed as a mix between Shakespeare and Santa Claus to throw candy to the children. Also a bit where one of the more venerable and hoary Shakespearean actors would read a sonnet to a young lady in the audience and end by giving her a book of Shakespeare's sonnets. The rest of the show comprised holiday songs: The Winter Wassail, Let It Snow, and a particularly heart-breaking war-time focused I'll Be Home For Christmas. It is a tradition that I miss.

Of course, one must wait to even make mention of the holiday until after the Thanksgiving meal. To break that protocol one may as well take to wearing white after Labor Day.

Our nativity set is on the little black table. In the upper right is a picture of Tony as a boy with a frame made by Tony when he was a boy.

To the lower right is Mango.














Here is the finished product of our tree. The little square you see slightly to the right is the Bob Geldolf single "Do They Know It's Christmas?" from deep in the 1980s. I think it's secretly one of Laurie and my favorite decorations. I have to wonder if what the good the artists aimed to accomplish with the proceeds from the song was offset by the environmental damage they did with hair products.












When I started this post, I didn't have anything particularly profound I meant to add to the holiday conversation. I was just going to do a quick "we are getting in a holiday way" sort of check-in post. But, I was moved very deeply by this photograph and thought it might make for a decent ending point.

We aim to have a home marked by the Fruit of the Spirit which are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (although I suppose Laurie might mention that my diet habits around the holidays do not seem to fall strictly under the heading of self-control.) I was struck by this image of our rescued cat Agnes. Long time readers remember that we brought her in over the summer. She is old and asthmatic. She has divots out of her ears from fights from when she lived in the alley, and she's very bashful. She's clearly far happier and at peace than she was when she lived in the alley, but she still requires a lot of gentleness.


I had no idea Laurie even took this picture, but Agnes found a safe, secure and warm spot for the night over the holidays.

Whoever and where ever you are, I wish all of you peaceful, good and splendid holidays.

Autumnal Update of the Paul Branch of Clan Mathers

"Oh!—fruit loved of boyhood!—the old days recalling,

When wood-grapes were purpling and brown nuts were falling!
When wild, ugly faces we carved in its skin,
Glaring out through the dark with a candle within!"

-Whittier

Well, the flash doesn't quite capture it, but there's the Guy Fawkes Jack-o'-Lantern. I sculpted it last night, blasting Camille Saint-Saens, and baked and then over-salted pumpkin seeds. Also, it would appear from this picture that I've been over-watering the toy pomegranate bush. Duly noted. In the end, I am both proud of my jack-o'-lantern and bracing for mentions of Col. Sanders.

My parents are coming up for a week. They should be here in a few hours. I think my Dad is going bear hunting and my mother will have a lot of time to spend with the family. Tony, my step-son, is coming up with them and it is our understanding that it is his intention to stay.

In other news, our church is moving. We found a space that is both better for our purposes and significantly cheaper. Just in time for Reformation Sunday, we'll now be meeting at the Seventh Day Adventist chapel (they're renting to us as, you know, they meet on Saturday and don't use it on Sunday.) Our Monday night men's study through the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith has quickly become one of my favorite parts of the week. Laurie's Jonathan Edwards study takes place across the street on Mondays. I'm in awe of the great work she's done on that study. It continues to be a seemingly endless conversation source in our house.

Also, Laurie and I are reconsidering home-ownership. Considering it enough for me to feel okay remarking on it on my blog. Options are being studied. Pros and cons listed. Much more on that soon I'm sure.

I am still unemployed, but we are still entirely above water, by the grace of God and the American Unemployment Insurance system which, like everything else, is in His Hand. I have at least two job plausibilities at present and they both would a) bring in adequate money and b) I think I would enjoy. I am endeavoring to avoid placing too many eggs in those mental baskets, but I hope at least one of them pans out (although I think I just mixed myself into a scrambled egg metaphor. What does this portend?) I also have a business venture I am actively putting into motion. Also more on that soon.

Other than that, I'm reading Alexander Woollcott and Evelyn Waugh. I've taken to having black tea in the afternoon and I've taken to milk and honey in my tea. I've also taken to afternoon walks up Park Avenue by our house toward Midway on the surprisingly under-used bike path through one of the most heavily industrial districts of Chico. Singulair seems to have my asthma entirely under control, almost undetectable in my day to day life.

Our cat Agnes has filled out and is looking much better than she's probably ever looked in her life. Her coat is thicker and her eyes brighter. She still has some sort of kitty asthma and, of course, her ears will always be mangled from the fights in her outdoor past. But she seems very happy with her life now. The other cats still haven't taken to her, but Ginger and her are fast friends. Ginger defends her and they take naps curled up together on the couch. Agnes is very sweet, but seems to take deep offense if one closes the blinds at night. She'll sit next to the offending window and beat at the blinds with her paw until one of us (usually Laurie) gets up and opens them. Afterward, her signature wheeze sounds suspiciously more like a chuckle.

So, all things considered, life is fair to middlin' for us right now. Laurie and I remain very happy. The near future is a bit uncertain for us, sure, but I would add that yours is too whether you know it or not. Ta!

And while I'm at it...

The big news of the day around our house is Agnes. Agnes was a stray cat who has been around our house since we moved in. The guy next door used to feed her but he's since moved away and died actually, so we've been taking care of her. We kind of thought taking her in might be in some cosmic way a sort of memorial to our old neighbor.
Clearly she's been homeless for a long time (at the very least for the 3 years we've lived here) but also clearly she's fixed as she's one of the few female stray cats in the neighborhood not shooting out kittens all the time. She's not wild at all. She's very meek, gentle and sweet to the point of seeming quite fragile.
Of course, having three indoor cats, we couldn't really bring another one in. Any more than three and I think it ceases to be a better life for everyone involved. I think three cats is cat capacity for our house.
So, when Mao Mao died we had an opening although we weren't sure if we were going to fill it. We decided if we did get another cat, the right thing to do would be to bring in Agnes although we would need to get her all of the appropriate medicine including tapeworm pills and earmite treatments. Agnes was old when we met her, she wheezes, she has parts of her ears missing, her fur is patchy, her eyes are sunken. And she doesn't meow so much as she makes little beeping sounds. We wanted to give her a good life.
So last night we finally got the last pill in her and brought her into the house. She adjusted almost immediately and seems to love it here. She seems very comfortable and at peace.





























Also last night we had a massive power outage in our neighborhood. This is what I look like in a power outage. Yep, just as much of a dork as when not in a power outage.















The other recent feline addition to our lives is the decidedly outdoor cat we call Evil Tom. Evil is the father of Napoleon and Mao and thousands of other kittens in the neighborhood. We call him Evil Tom because he fights with pretty much everything that moves. Getting him fixed is our next philanthropic savings project. Lately he's finally come around to being friendly to us and we are feeding him and harboring him under our porch. The feeding came first and then he became very friendly to us, so we're under no illusions that he likes us for our winning personalities.
He's very skittish, but for some reason the power outage made him sociable enough to snap a few pictures of him.

















Before the power outage, here's Laurie petting Evil Tom.














Yep. That's what we have for news in our lives. That's why I don't use this blog as a journal of my personal life very often.