Beautiful October Day

My bumper sticker.

From where I sit, the day looks pretty good. I have a plate of heart and onions in front of me (which I like even more than liver and onions), I have a manageable amount of things to do today, children were successfully gotten off to school, I have some cool pictures to intersperse with the words (Grandma, I need to get you caught up with the printed version so you can have the pictures, too), there weren’t any poops or puddles on the floor this morning, I get to go to New Hampshire to meet with Anji Church, and so it goes on.

What does this look like to you?
It's fungus that looks like nanny berries.

I'd like to find out what they are called.

Yesterday was an okay sort of day. Nothing spectacular or terribly out of the ordinary happened. I went to class in the morning and most of the students had colds and no one was in an overly garrulous mood. The subject matter was art as propaganda, particularly in regard to the Harlem Renaissance but also in general. Specifically we had read a couple of essays. One by Alain Locke called “Art or Propaganda?” He was basically saying that we should have art for art’s sake, to create or express beauty and truth, not as propaganda although sometimes art becomes propaganda which is okay, as long as it wasn’t created with that in mind. The other, “Criteria of Negro Art” was by WEB DuBois. His premise is that we need to create art as propaganda in order to make the world or society aware. If it happens to be beautiful and true, fine, but that is secondary. In spite of the fact that both men wanted the same thing, recognition and equality for blacks, I have to say that I agree with Locke. Art created for propaganda is advertising or marketing and although it may be physically beautiful, the message it represents might not be and I do not think it should be considered in the same category as art created by someone wishing to express the contents of the heart.

Waxing moon taken on the 20th.

After class, I went to Winchendon to get grain for the goats. I got two bags of sweet grain, as usual, for milking. I also got a bag of crimped oats because they make more milk when they have more grain and I don’t want them eating up all our rolled oats and granola (just the extremely outdated ones). They really liked some really old wheat that we had. It was from 1978 I think and I ground some of it. The resultant flour was so dry that it really didn’t work well in any recipes without serious recalculating. The wheat itself was very dusty which I do not like. I fed the rest of the wheat to the goats over the course of about three or four days and they loved it. At the bottom of the bucket was a layer of caked dirt in which there were a few dozen grains of wheat stuck. I really don’t like the idea of eating that much dirt with my food. Anyway, I also got a couple of boxes of bulbs to plant down at Daniel’s grave. They are deer resistant they say which is good because I know we have some.

The wood pile. It needs to get a lot bigger. This is the side nearest the house.

After I got home, there was time to make a couple of burritos (of which I could only eat one) and a tiny bit of school work before going to get Cedric and Seth for soccer practice. I took my accounting with me and got some of it done. I really do like doing the work in the book before I do the work online as it makes it easier to get the online work done faster. When we got home, it was time to take Joanna to work. When I got back from that, it was almost time to take Joseph to soccer practice. I don’t bother taking anything with me for Joseph’s practice. It’s shorter and the field is too far from the parking lot for me to sit in the car so I’d have to take not only whatever schoolwork I decide to take but a chair as well. I find it much simpler to just take me and stand and watch him. They’re fun to watch anyway (so are Cedric and Seth, and I do, between problems and napping). Yesterday, the coach divided the team in two and they played a practice game. They were supposed to be practicing passing and they are so darn cute. Joseph was good at protecting the goal. He blocked a couple really well and when someone kicked the ball and it missed, he said, “Awesome!” At one point they were headed down the field and a boy from the other side got the ball and started kicking it the other way. Joseph got in there and took it away, kicking it far enough that the other boy couldn’t get to it causing him to say, “That’s not fair!” To which Joseph said, “Yes, it is!”

The center of Amena's art project.

When we got back, Laura was in the shower. I wanted her to have warmed up spaghetti to get everyone fed so we could head to church. Ha ha ha. Her shower was fast and I stuck the spaghetti in the microwave. I had one of the shakes I’ve been having for one or two meals a day. Amena ended up staying home because she had a project for art that she was working on and needed to have finished to take to school today. Since she was staying home, I had Joseph stay as well. Laura, Cedric, Seth and I took off for church. I dropped them off and went to Staples. I needed to get a couple of things (and ended up getting more—I love Staples but it’s annoying because there’s always something that I want) and it’s close to Friendly’s and Joanna was supposed to get off at 7:45. I finished up at Staples at 7:30 and went to the Friendly’s parking lot where I put together the new planner I got for next year (which is so nice and awesome and cool and groovy [well, maybe not groovy] I want to start using it NOW). I looked at the time at 7:54 and wondered where Joanna was. She was greeting and said she was training someone so she would be done at 7:45. It appears the manager wanted her to do a couple things before leaving so she was nine minutes late. Such is life.

The whole thing. She used pastels to add color.

Back at church, Joanna went in with the Young Women, the boys finished up Scouts, and I was talking to various people. Nick and Jared are in the ROTC at their school and Saturday are doing a walk/run to raise money for I don’t remember exactly what. I want to say veterans and an animal shelter but that seems a bit odd. Anyway, I pledged some money to both of them. I talked a bit to Sheri Brimhall and Amy Troop. I got some money from Rich Gougen for potatoes. Then Joanna was done and since we were leaving Laura, we left. Paul beat us home by just a few seconds. He was driving the truck around to the other side of the barn as we drove up. Joseph wasn’t in bed yet so I sent all three boys to get ready for bed quickly since it was almost an hour past bedtime. Amena had finished her project and it turned out good. The boys went to bed without too much fuss. I worked on the online part of accounting homework. When I got to the part I hadn’t done in the book yet, I gave up because I was tired and went to bed. Pretty darn exciting.

Our sunrise this morning.

More sunrise.

Today I get to go to New Hampshire to talk to Anji again. I am hoping that goes well. Other than that, we have missionaries for supper tonight and I’ll be getting done as much accounting and marketing as possible and studying tubes for phlebotomy and perhaps coming up with an outline for the English presentation I did Monday. Currently it is sunny outside and beautiful. Sunday we are supposed to get slammed with a cold front from Canada, the hurricane, and a storm coming from the west. If they all arrive at the same time, we are in store for a duzzy of a storm that ‘they’ say could be a billion dollar storm and leave us without power until just before election day. Holy crud. Paul just drove Jonathan’s car up to the front of the house. I need to take pictures of it so Paul and sell it on Craigslist. It’s a Mercedes and a nice car, but a gas hog (at best 15 mph—I wouldn’t drive it for that). Paul thinks Jonathan and Elizabeth would be better off with a smaller car that has better fuel economy. I agree.

I think this is my favorite from today.

The last one. It was fading fast.

And now I’ll be off. Have an absolutely splendiferous day!