Happy New Year!

Welcome sweet 2005!

A Walk to Remember is sad... wrenchingly sad! Wendylyn said it'd make me cry, but she didn't tell me *why*... :-)

Life of Pi is a happy surprise. Required reading for World Lit - but happily, I am enjoying it! Yay!!

"We drink eggnag -- it's made from horse's milk"

"Salamander Clause!"

Princess Diaries II: The Royal Engagement totally rocks!!!

Movies to see in the New Year:
Racing Stripes
Merchant of Venice
Because of Winn-Dixie
The Pacifier

There's only one...

There's only one... first kiss
There's only one... [something I can't remember all of a sudden]
There's only one... honeybaked ham

the commerical of the evening. I just can't remember the second thing right now... it was something stupid I think. lol... whatever...

Bear with me...

Ok, so I found a passage in Anne of the Island that sums up my philosophy. Or rather, what I was trying to say one day in JCQ and didnt quite succeed to my ambitions...
(And for what it's worth -- there's going to be a ton of Anne-quotes at various points when I feel they are needed, hehe...)

"I hope no great sorrow ever will come to you, Anne," said Gilbert, who could not connect the idea of sorrow with the vivid, joyous creature beside him, unwitting that those who can soar to the highest heights can also plunge to the deepest depths, and that the natures which enjoy most keenly are those which also suffer most sharply.
"But there must -- sometime," mused Anne. "Life seems like a cup of glory held to my lips just now. But there must be some bitterness in it -- there is in every cup. I shall taste mine one day. Well, I hope I shall be strong and brave to meet it. And I hope it won't be through my own fault that it will come. Do you remember what Dr. Davis said last Sunday evening -- that the sorrows God sent us brought comfort and strength with them, while the sorrows we brought on ourselves, through folly or wickedness, were by far the hardest to bear? But we musn't talk of sorrow on an afternoon like this. It's meant for the sheer joy of living, isn't it?"
"If I had my way I'd shut everything out of your life but happiness and pleasure, Anne," said Gilbert in the tone that meant 'danger ahead.'
"Then you'd be very unwise," rejoined Anne hastily. "I'm sure no life can be properly developed and rounded out without some trial and sorrow -- though I suppose it is only when we are pretty comfortable that we admit it. ... "

*happy sigh*

I dont care what anyone says -- the Anne books are the world's best comfort read!

"Isn't it beautiful to think how everything has turned out ... how they have come together again after all the years of separation and misunderstanding?"
"Yes, it's beautiful," said Gilbert, looking steadily down into Anne's uplifted face, "but wouldn't it have been more beautiful still, Anne, if there had been no separation or misunderstanding ... if they had come hand in hand all the way through life, with no memories behind them but those which belonged to each other?"
For a moment Anne's heart fluttered queerly and for the first time her eyes faltered under Gilbert's gaze and a rosy flush stained the paleness of her face. It was as if a veil that had hung before her inner consciousness had been lifted, giving to her a view of a revelation of unsuspected feelings and realities. Perhaps, after all, romance did not come into one's life with pomp and blare, like a gay knight riding down; perhaps it crept to one's side like an old friend through quiet ways; perhaps it revealed itself in seeming prose, until some sudden shaft of illumination flung athwart its pages betrayed the rhythm and the music; perhaps ... perhaps ... love unfolded naturally out of a beautiful friendship, as a golden-hearted rose slipping from its green sheath.
Then the veil dropped again; but the Anne who walked up the dark lane was not quite the same Anne who had driven gaily down it the evening before. The page of girlhood had been turned, as by an unseen finger, and the page of womanhood was before her with all its charm and mystery, its pain and gladness.
Anne of Avonlea
L.M. Montgomery

that poem again!!!!

Argh... It shows up in weird places and at strange times -- irregular as clockwork and just as reliable as the tide's ebb. Each time I read it I remember the first time: that time when I was reading with my heart, because one I held so close was in agony because of it - and with his suffering I was suffering. Because of that, it holds a 'twinge-y memory' in that it's beautiful writing, and had I read/found it under other circumstances, I would have loved it. But since I was introduced to it the way I was, well... it aches me inside still.
I posted it on my other blog, but it needs to go here, it belongs here, especially since the other is no longer. Read it. Take it for what it is - to you - and make your own memories of it. Mine, aye, mine will also be twinged with the chill of that late-winter night when I read it within the context of an email and my eyes burned and my heart trembled from the hurt it felt... And yet, even then, even now, I must recognize the power. The truth. The strange wild untamed beauty. I remember. *quiet smile* And I love.

Dulce Et Decorum Est
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!--
An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
~ Wilfred Owen

The V Club and YA Lit

Well... After a long absence, I ventured back into the world of YA Lit. It was nice to be back, but I still prefer my classics. (Although Spinelli's Stargirl would be a good read tonight...)

The V Club
It was good... typical contemporary Young Adult lit: fluffy and trivial and worldly. Howsomever, it DID have some star-points. Namely, it dealt mainly with keeping friends in a enemies-everywhere highschool world. Much like the Sisterhood books. :-) Also - while the whole thing is dealing with this purity-scholarship, there seems to be a heavy undertone for sexuality. HOWEVER, even with this, it is written so the 2 "purest" characters are the ones who win your hearts and attentions. You cheer for klutzy, shy Eva as she finds her dream and falls in love with "beach boy" Riley who's vowed to wait for marriage.
[Spoiler Warning] When the two end up sharing the prize and ..... you're very very happy for them.
The other girls all come through as better people too. I like it on the whole... But i wouldnt buy it. It's still no Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants! ;-) lol...

A sidenote diversion before I head to bed...To those of you who teased me for beginning my summer reading with Anna Karenina, well, guess what? I was reading the vogue book of the summer before any of us knew it was vogue!! Oprah has chosen it as her Book Club book of the summer (I suppose?) and it's a number 1 seller! How's that for coolness? ;-) And you give me grief for reading Russian classics... tsk tsk.

Off to read of Italian horse races...

Remembering Reagan

To commemorate the passing of one of the most beloved and remembered Presidents of American history, I thought it fitting to post some of his quotes. (Their sources "cited" at the end of each selection.)


‘One for the Gipper’
"Someday when things are tough, maybe you can ask the boys to go in there and win just one for the Gipper." —Portraying football player George Gipp in the film “Knute Rockne, All American,” 1940

'Shining city on a hill'
Let us resolve tonight that young Americans will always ... find there a city of hope in a country that is free.... And let us resolve they will say of our day and our generation, we did keep the faith with our God, that we did act worthy of ourselves, that we did protect and pass on lovingly that shining city on a hill."
— Election Eve speech, Nov. 3, 1980

‘We have piled deficit upon deficit’
"For decades, we have piled deficit upon deficit, mortgaging our future and our children's future for the temporary convenience of the present. To continue this long trend is to guarantee tremendous social, cultural, political, and economic upheavals.
You and I, as individuals, can, by borrowing, live beyond our means, but for only a limited period of time. Why, then, should we think that collectively, as a nation, we are not bound by that same limitation?"
—Inaugural address, Jan. 20, 1981

‘Tear down this wall’
“If you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here, to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.”
—Speech at the Berlin Wall, June 12, 1987

‘Grown beyond the consent of the governed’"We are a nation that has a government — not the other way around. And this makes us special among the nations of the Earth. Our government has no power except that granted it by the people. It is time to check and reverse the growth of government which shows signs of having grown beyond the consent of the governed."
—Inaugural address, Jan. 20, 1981

‘A special interest group that has been too long neglected’
"We hear much of special interest groups. Our concern must be for a special interest group that has been too long neglected.

"It knows no sectional boundaries or ethnic and racial divisions, and it crosses political party lines. It is made up of men and women who raise our food, patrol our streets, man our mines and our factories, teach our children, keep our homes, and heal us when we are sick—professionals, industrialists, shopkeepers, clerks, cabbies, and truck drivers.

"They are, in short, 'We the people,' this breed called Americans."
—Inaugural address, Jan. 20, 1981


‘I forgot to duck’"Honey, I forgot to duck."
— 1981, Reagan to his wife, as he recovered gunshot wounds after an assassination attempt by John Hinckley on March 30, 1981

‘A time of reckoning’
"An almost unbroken 50 years of deficit spending has finally brought us to a time of reckoning. We have come to a turning point, a moment for hard decisions. I have asked the Cabinet and my staff a question, and now I put the same question to all of you: If not us, who? And if not now, when? It must be done by all of us going forward with a program aimed at reaching a balanced budget. We can then begin reducing the national debt."
—Second inaugural address, Jan. 21, 1985

‘Render nuclear weapons obsolete’"For decades, we and the Soviets have lived under the threat of mutual assured destruction; if either resorted to the use of nuclear weapons, the other could retaliate and destroy the one who had started it. Is there either logic or morality in believing that if one side threatens to kill tens of millions of our people, our only recourse is to threaten killing tens of millions of theirs?

"I have approved a research program to find, if we can, a security shield that would destroy nuclear missiles before they reach their target. It wouldn't kill people, it would destroy weapons. It wouldn't militarize space, it would help demilitarize the arsenals of Earth. It would render nuclear weapons obsolete."
—Second inaugural address, Jan. 21, 1985

‘Whatever else history may say’
“Whatever else history may say about me when I'm gone, I hope it will record that I appealed to your best hopes, not your worst fears....

“May all of you as Americans never forget your heroic origins, never fail to seek divine guidance and never lose your natural, God-given optimism.”
—Speech to Republican National Convention, Aug. 17, 1992

‘Go ahead, make my day’
"I have only one thing to say to the tax increasers: Go ahead, make my day."
—March 13, 1985, in a speech threatening to veto legislation raising taxes.

‘You don't become president of the United States’"When people tell me I became president on January 20, 1981, I feel I have to correct them. You don't become president of the United States. You are given temporary custody of an institution called the presidency, which belongs to our people."
— Address to the Republican national convention. Aug. 15, 1988
MSNBC Reagan Quotes

At first, only a minority of Americans recognized and deplored the moral crisis brought about by denying the full humanity of our black brothers and sisters; but that minority persisted in their vision and finally prevailed. They did it by appealing to the hearts and minds of their countrymen, to the truth of human dignity under God. From their example, we know that respect for the sacred value of human life is too deeply engrained in the hearts of our people to remain forever suppressed.
— From "Abortion and the Conscience of a Nation"

Abraham Lincoln recognized that we could not survive as a free land when some men could decide that others were not fit to be free and should therefore be slaves. Likewise, we cannot survive as a free nation when some men decide that others are not fit to live and should be abandoned to abortion or infanticide.
— From "Abortion and the Conscience of a Nation"

Nations crumble from within when the citizenry asks of government those things which the citizenry might better provide for itself. ... Man is not free unless government is limited. There’s a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts.
i.e. Quotebook

May the memory of the man who changed Conservatism and Republicanism in the South never fade from the annals of the history of this land.