(Posted for Lil Red Hen)
For most people, Easter Sunday coming on the 12th of April simply means it’s about as late in the year as Easter can come. Since it is not a fixed date, Easter can occur from late March to late April, on the first Sunday following the vernal equinox or the first full moon of spring.
Easter brings to mind new clothes for the youngsters, filling baskets with green plastic “grass” and hard-boiled colored eggs, marshmallow bunnies, and jellybeans. Then there’s the meal of baked ham and casseroles, concluded with angel food cake or coconut cake. All this comes after the morning church services, attended by some for the first time since the previous Easter Sunday.
On April 12, 1914, Easter Sunday brought special meaning to one family; another baby girl was born into their family. They already had three girls and had lost a baby boy, so more than likely they were hoping for another boy. Therefore, after using the traditional names of Marie, Hazel, and Louise, what could they name this new baby girl? Somehow she was given the name, Easter Lily; after all, it was Easter Sunday and lilies were Easter flowers.
One woman, hearing about the name, said, “Poor girl! Can you imagine growing up with a name like that?” Maybe it would be the source of ridicule among children in today’s society; however, Easter was always proud of her name. It was unique, original, and had a special Christian meaning to her.
Some probably think, since she was born on Easter Sunday, that she had a birthday every Easter; but, as mentioned before, Easter has no fixed date. By searching the internet and using “A Perpetual Easter and Passover Calculator,” I have found that Easter’s birthday coincided with Easter Sunday only three times during her lifetime, including the year in which she was born: 1914, 1925, and 1936. She passed away in 1987.
Happy Birthday, Mama.
Charlotte
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
We're on Baby Watch...
We've acquired several animals on our farm over the past couple of years, and the time has come for the cows and the ewes to have their babies. So far we've had three calves -- two little bulls and a heifer. But today we had a new experience - our first lamb was born.
It's a little female lamb, and the funny thing is that she is black when both her mother and her father are white. She makes the cutest little bleating sounds, and her mother makes these soft, low sounds. Lily named the baby "Fluffball," which doesn't seem all that appropriate right now, but maybe some day!
Now we're just keeping our eyes on the rest of the cows - I certainly hope the rest of the babies arrive with no more trouble than these did.
It's a little female lamb, and the funny thing is that she is black when both her mother and her father are white. She makes the cutest little bleating sounds, and her mother makes these soft, low sounds. Lily named the baby "Fluffball," which doesn't seem all that appropriate right now, but maybe some day!
Now we're just keeping our eyes on the rest of the cows - I certainly hope the rest of the babies arrive with no more trouble than these did.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Apple-head Update
It's been a week since the last update and two weeks since Lily started her apple-head doll. The apple has now developed a personality!
When Lily was cutting the mouth in the apple, I didn't want to say anything to discourage her, but the mouth was obviously off to one side. However, as the apple dried and shriveled, the mouth sort of migrated so that now it looks like a twisted smile. Her apple looks like a kindly little old soul!
If we're going to make a doll out of this, we need to put a body with the head. Anybody have any suggestions as to how to do that?
When Lily was cutting the mouth in the apple, I didn't want to say anything to discourage her, but the mouth was obviously off to one side. However, as the apple dried and shriveled, the mouth sort of migrated so that now it looks like a twisted smile. Her apple looks like a kindly little old soul!
If we're going to make a doll out of this, we need to put a body with the head. Anybody have any suggestions as to how to do that?
Monday, February 2, 2009
Fun Both Before and After
As it turned out, we didn't get any ice, after all. We consider ourselves most fortunate when we see the damage that was done in Northwest Arkansas. Many people are still without power.
Although we didn't get the bad stuff, school was still cancelled two days for my husband and kids (this is Arkansas - sometimes the threat of bad weather is enough to call off school!). As usual on a snow day, my daughter got in a "crafty" mood and pulled out the kids' science experiment books. She settled on the experiment to make an apple-head doll. So I went to the crisper and found a Granny Smith apple that was starting to shrivel a little. And we embarked on the project of making the head for a doll like a little girl Lily's age might have had two hundred years ago.
I peeled the apple for her (she's still a little young for something that takes that much control of the knife). But I let her carve out the face by herself. The mouth was a little tilted off to one side, but that's part of the charm, right? The directions in the book said to paint the apple with a mixture of lemon juice (to bleach the apple's skin) and salt (I suppose to help start the drying process). Then we set the apple aside to dry.
Well, it's been a week, and the apple now looks like this:
It's definitely smaller, and the features are more exaggerated. It's quite obvious now that the mouth is off-center! But the lemon juice seems to be doing its job; the apple hasn't turned brown, except for the very bottom. She must not have painted that area as thoroughly.
I suppose we just keep watching to see how shriveled it will become. I'll post an updated picture (if it's worth seeing!)
Although we didn't get the bad stuff, school was still cancelled two days for my husband and kids (this is Arkansas - sometimes the threat of bad weather is enough to call off school!). As usual on a snow day, my daughter got in a "crafty" mood and pulled out the kids' science experiment books. She settled on the experiment to make an apple-head doll. So I went to the crisper and found a Granny Smith apple that was starting to shrivel a little. And we embarked on the project of making the head for a doll like a little girl Lily's age might have had two hundred years ago.
I peeled the apple for her (she's still a little young for something that takes that much control of the knife). But I let her carve out the face by herself. The mouth was a little tilted off to one side, but that's part of the charm, right? The directions in the book said to paint the apple with a mixture of lemon juice (to bleach the apple's skin) and salt (I suppose to help start the drying process). Then we set the apple aside to dry.Well, it's been a week, and the apple now looks like this:
It's definitely smaller, and the features are more exaggerated. It's quite obvious now that the mouth is off-center! But the lemon juice seems to be doing its job; the apple hasn't turned brown, except for the very bottom. She must not have painted that area as thoroughly. I suppose we just keep watching to see how shriveled it will become. I'll post an updated picture (if it's worth seeing!)
Monday, January 26, 2009
A World of Pain
(We're supposed to get as much as 1.5 inches of ice tonight and tomorrow. IF it happens - after all, this is Arkansas! - our power will probably go off and I may get a chance to try out my skills of living like someone from a pre-electric age!)
Last night, I was reading a passage from An Involuntary King by Nan Hawthorne in which the king is being treated for an arrow wound he received in a battle. The passage reminded me of two other things I've read: the scene in Janice Holt Giles' Hannah Fowler when Hannah and Tice are treating a wound on her father's badly infected leg, and a scene in a young adult book called The Apprenticeship of Lucas Whitaker, by Cynthia DeFelice, in which Lucas helps the local doctor with an amputation. The thread that tied all these thoughts together in my mind was, "Wow, people back then used to have to bear up under a lot more pain than we have to today!"
I guess what really made me think about that is that the healer in Hawthorne's book gave the king a little stick of wood to put between his teeth so he could bite down on it when the pain got too bad. I'd heard about women in childbirth being given a bit of leather to bite on; I guess I always thought it was just to give the patient something they could transfer the pain to - sort of like the old joke of hitting your thumb with a hammer when your toe hurts. But the healer told the king it would keep him from biting his tongue, which makes a lot of sense. I guess a person could also conceivably hurt his/her teeth by grinding them together while in pain.
I remember when I was reading the scene in Hannah Fowler thinking I didn't see how anyone could bear up under the treatment they were giving him - scalding hot rags applied to the outside of the wound, with nothing more than rum to dull the pain (it didn't work). Hawthorne's book had an even worse scenario - the healer was using boiling hot oil to cauterize the inside of the king's wound to stop the bleeding. The thing is, I trust both Giles and Hawthorne as researchers and believe that what they described must be a real method of treatment they found in records of past times.
I suppose we are a "soft" generation. We use ibuprofen to ease the slightest headache. Codeine is a part of any medicines we take to ease our sore throats, and pain medication is prescribed as a routine practice as a followup to any major injury or a surgery. Epidurals administered during childbirth are so common they've become a stock element in jokes. Don't get me wrong; I'm relieved that we have methods of pain relief that would keep me or those I care about from having to endure the terrible pain of these fictional characters. I do wonder, though, if we are doing ourselves something of a disservice by removing all trivial pain from our lives (if there is such a thing as "trivial" pain!). Does it make us less able to tolerate pain - emotional as well as physical - when it's necessary?
Last night, I was reading a passage from An Involuntary King by Nan Hawthorne in which the king is being treated for an arrow wound he received in a battle. The passage reminded me of two other things I've read: the scene in Janice Holt Giles' Hannah Fowler when Hannah and Tice are treating a wound on her father's badly infected leg, and a scene in a young adult book called The Apprenticeship of Lucas Whitaker, by Cynthia DeFelice, in which Lucas helps the local doctor with an amputation. The thread that tied all these thoughts together in my mind was, "Wow, people back then used to have to bear up under a lot more pain than we have to today!"
I guess what really made me think about that is that the healer in Hawthorne's book gave the king a little stick of wood to put between his teeth so he could bite down on it when the pain got too bad. I'd heard about women in childbirth being given a bit of leather to bite on; I guess I always thought it was just to give the patient something they could transfer the pain to - sort of like the old joke of hitting your thumb with a hammer when your toe hurts. But the healer told the king it would keep him from biting his tongue, which makes a lot of sense. I guess a person could also conceivably hurt his/her teeth by grinding them together while in pain.
I remember when I was reading the scene in Hannah Fowler thinking I didn't see how anyone could bear up under the treatment they were giving him - scalding hot rags applied to the outside of the wound, with nothing more than rum to dull the pain (it didn't work). Hawthorne's book had an even worse scenario - the healer was using boiling hot oil to cauterize the inside of the king's wound to stop the bleeding. The thing is, I trust both Giles and Hawthorne as researchers and believe that what they described must be a real method of treatment they found in records of past times.
I suppose we are a "soft" generation. We use ibuprofen to ease the slightest headache. Codeine is a part of any medicines we take to ease our sore throats, and pain medication is prescribed as a routine practice as a followup to any major injury or a surgery. Epidurals administered during childbirth are so common they've become a stock element in jokes. Don't get me wrong; I'm relieved that we have methods of pain relief that would keep me or those I care about from having to endure the terrible pain of these fictional characters. I do wonder, though, if we are doing ourselves something of a disservice by removing all trivial pain from our lives (if there is such a thing as "trivial" pain!). Does it make us less able to tolerate pain - emotional as well as physical - when it's necessary?
Saturday, January 24, 2009
'Til Death Do Us Part
A man from our church died this week. I didn't know him well, so he may have had a lot of accomplishments in his long life. The one thing I did know about him was that he and his wife had been married for 74 years. Wow! That's a LONG time!
My husband and I just celebrated our 19th anniversary a month ago. We still haven't yet made it to the point where we've lived with each other longer than we lived apart (still about 6 years to go). Still, it's hard to remember (or imagine) living without him. Can you imagine how much more true that would be if you'd been married to someone for a period of time as long as some people's actual lifespan?
When my husband and I got married, I remember joking that we would both have to live to be 100 or more to be able to celebrate our 75th anniversary. (I also remember joking that I might have the tablecloth I was crocheting finished by that time!) But in the 19 years since then, I don't know that we've consciously thought about trying to achieve that milestone -- or any other. We've been too busy with daily life, with going to work and paying the bills and raising the kids. And somewhere along the way, we've accumulated 6,968 of those days. I guess that's how it is for any married couple - the days keep coming, passing quickly or slowly. And one day, if we stick with it, we look up and those days equal 25 years, or 50, or in a very few cases, 75.
My husband and I just celebrated our 19th anniversary a month ago. We still haven't yet made it to the point where we've lived with each other longer than we lived apart (still about 6 years to go). Still, it's hard to remember (or imagine) living without him. Can you imagine how much more true that would be if you'd been married to someone for a period of time as long as some people's actual lifespan?
When my husband and I got married, I remember joking that we would both have to live to be 100 or more to be able to celebrate our 75th anniversary. (I also remember joking that I might have the tablecloth I was crocheting finished by that time!) But in the 19 years since then, I don't know that we've consciously thought about trying to achieve that milestone -- or any other. We've been too busy with daily life, with going to work and paying the bills and raising the kids. And somewhere along the way, we've accumulated 6,968 of those days. I guess that's how it is for any married couple - the days keep coming, passing quickly or slowly. And one day, if we stick with it, we look up and those days equal 25 years, or 50, or in a very few cases, 75.
Monday, January 19, 2009
The Long Winter, Southern-Style
We had a couple of REALLY cold days last week, which happened to coincide with the time when my husband was away on a business trip. That meant I had the responsibility of caring for his livestock (notice I said his livestock!). The main concern was keeping water for them, since the temperature was well below freezing both days. I wasn't so worried about most of the cattle, since they get their water from a running source, which is less likely to freeze. However, the sheep's water was covered with a layer of ice about an inch thick, and the hens' water was frozen solid. The pond the bull drinks from also had some ice, but I don't think it was frozen over completely.
Anyway, I carried water to the hens and broke the ice on the sheep's tank with the splitting maul (like a sledge hammer with an axe edge on one side). That was a perfect tool for the task, and it didn't take much effort. As I was walking back to the house, I remembered reading in Laura Ingalls Wilder's Long Winter about the cattle whose heads were frozen to the ground after a blizzard. The temperatures were so cold that the moisture in their breath froze, trapping the cow in an icy muzzle. Laura's Pa had to go to each of the cattle and break their noses free of the ice. It made me glad to live in the South, where weather is the teens is considered "frigid," and we don't have to deal with blizzards and sub-zero temperatures, and any cold weather we do have is generally short-lived and followed by days in the 50s or 60s!
Anyway, I carried water to the hens and broke the ice on the sheep's tank with the splitting maul (like a sledge hammer with an axe edge on one side). That was a perfect tool for the task, and it didn't take much effort. As I was walking back to the house, I remembered reading in Laura Ingalls Wilder's Long Winter about the cattle whose heads were frozen to the ground after a blizzard. The temperatures were so cold that the moisture in their breath froze, trapping the cow in an icy muzzle. Laura's Pa had to go to each of the cattle and break their noses free of the ice. It made me glad to live in the South, where weather is the teens is considered "frigid," and we don't have to deal with blizzards and sub-zero temperatures, and any cold weather we do have is generally short-lived and followed by days in the 50s or 60s!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
