Sun and moon and stars of light

Even though I keep thinking Thanksgiving is two weeks off (not to worry—I have the wherewithal to make the pumpkin pie and the cranberry relish), it’s in fact next Thursday. So today’s earworm is my favorite Thanksgiving hymn, “For the Beauty of the Earth”.

Although it’s been taken over by Americans (ish), the hymn was written by an English hymnodist, Folliott S. Pierpont, in 1864. Despite Pierpont’s Tractarian leanings, “For the Beauty” strikes me as very Low Church, somehow. The simple listing of all the natural wonders that enrich our lives actually makes me think of “Pied Beauty”, one of my all-time favorite poems, and written by a Roman Catholic priest, so maybe I have no notion of high or low church. Um.

These days, it’s hard to find an online rendition that hasn’t been polluted by John Rutter. For me, the only tune is “Dix”, and here’s one of those ubiquitous and frankly indistinguishable all-male a capella groups singing it.

 

And welcome to it

You know my feelings about squirrels—come the Apocalypse, it’ll just be cockroaches and squirrels left to inherit the wasteland. And somehow they’ll make it work for them.

And you may recall that I have a permanent topic of conversation about squirrels with one of my colleagues.

Well, yesterday, we had an IM convo that even now is making me howl with laughter:

 

You’re welcome.

 

 

Happy dog

I’d just returned a bunch of books to the library when I came across a vanity plate in the parking lot. So of course I hauled out my mobile to take a photo.

The driver was just getting out of the car, so I pointed out the obvious: I was taking a pic of the plate because I liked it. She asked me what I thought it meant, and I said, “A happy dog.”

Well, no.

Seems barkhaa means “rainy season” in her language (she didn’t specify, but clearly one of those spoken in India), and she has a Tesla with a license plate that means “lightning” (or “electricity”) and a motorcycle with “storm”. Also, her Himalayan cat’s name means “cloud” and her calico cat is called “sound of rain”.

She showed me pix of all of them. The Himalayan is fluffy, like a cloud.

I really got a kick out of the whole weather event theme in her life, and I’m glad I got the story. (I told her that I was a little concerned about a motorcycle invoking storm, tho.)